AU 601: Chronicles of Rome under Nbarclius Caesar, Vol. III

[nbarclay]

Rome entered the modern era in AD 1325 with a lead of six mandatory technologies: Electronics, and Refining and its descendent technologies. However, Persia had Fascism and some of the others had Espionage, neither of which Rome had bothered to acquire. Rome had very briefly gotten its technological pace down to four turns per technology, but Computers would take six. The discovery of Motorized Transportation had brought a scientific great leader, Rome's first of the game, who was waiting to be put to work - probably to build the SETI program in a city with relatively high income potential but relatively low production.

In the war Rome had started to provide a military distraction for its rivals, Persia captured the five Carthaginian cities previously held by the Germans. The Celts were making major inroads in northern Germany, having captured three of Germany's eight core cities.

At that point, Caesar saw the light: in vino veritas. Rome couuld build a city next to Berlin, see to it that Germany fell (or at least that its capital did), and take over Germany's role as the world's leading supplier of wines. Rome arranged a Right of Passage agreement with the Celts and dispatched a settler with a heavy escort of infantry and guerillas and, in 1330, founded the city of Treveri. Rome's culture was gaining ground rapidly, so Caesar hoped his new town could fend off foreign cultural influences

[At that point, I ran into a quirk of game mechanics that I've never seen before. Note how Berlin's cultural radius creates an isolated two-tile pocket of German culture southeast of Treveri even though the pocket is surrounded by Roman and Celtic territory. I've always wondered whether that could happen.]

[Theseus]

Interesting how the different dynamics of a 2 person PBEM result in cultural territories so wildly different than SP games...

Having fun, Nathan?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Interesting how the different dynamics of a 2 person PBEM result in cultural territories so wildly different than SP games...

Having fun, Nathan?

I'm definitely having fun. And your Greek lands are shaping up nicely under their new managment; Athens is completely built up (at least unless and until I get in a mood to start building airports), and some other Greek cities are getting close. The only catch is, your tight spacing is giving me fits with labor assignments in a few places.

[Theseus]

Given that I was pretty focused on 3-tile spacing, you might want to try the methodology that Solomonwi recently discussed... instead of camps, purposefully take some of the cities down to towns via starvation or building Workers & Settlers, and thus allow the stronger cities to become metros or simply have higher production capabilities.

[nbarclay]

The Germanic Tribes were finished off around 1370. Persia claimed two of the northern Germanic cities and Babylon, which Caesar had added to his alliance along with Egypt when he decided to settle in Germanic territory, ended up with Berlin. One Germanic city was razed, and the rest were claimed by the Celts.

Rome mostly stayed out of the fighting after Persia finished conquering the former Carthaginian lands, but Caesar could not resist the opportunity to claim a little more territory. A total of five new Roman cities were settled in the former Germanic lands. Each was heavily garrisoned to remind its residents that whatever the culture of others living around them, they were Romans.

The harder part for Caesar was the question of who could build cultural improvements more quickly, the Roman settlers or their new neighbors. Back when Rome was a Monarchy, standard operating procedure would have been to use gold to rush temples. But in Communism, that is not an option. On the plus side, Rome has Longevity, so growing the population enough to have decent production isn't as difficult as it would be under other circumstances. Longevity also makes the possibility of pop rushing a lot less painful.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Given that I was pretty focused on 3-tile spacing, you might want to try the methodology that Solomonwi recently discussed... instead of camps, purposefully take some of the cities down to towns via starvation or building Workers & Settlers, and thus allow the stronger cities to become metros or simply have higher production capabilities.

If my goal were to get a few cities fully developed and cranking out units as quickly as possible, that would be a good option to consider, although the cost of hospitals makes the value of pushing some cities up into the metropolis spectrum a bit more questionable. But what I generally prefer to do is try to get all of my cities as fully developed as I can. For that purpose, having the cities closer to the same size works better because I don't have as much trouble with the big cities' being fully developed with nothing to build but units while the small towns can't find enough shields to build the improvements they need. (Of course there's almost always trouble trying to find sufficient production in coastal towns, especially as their neighbors start crowding them more and more into the water.)

[nbarclay]

This wraps up the new material for this DAR. I've discovered Rocketry, so it's time to move on to DAR 4 when next I post an update on my progress.

It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned much about the industrial wonder races. I had a long-standing prebuild that ended up producing Universal Suffrage in the year 990, shortly after I researched Industrialization. The AIs actually got a small head start on me on Longevity and the Theory of Evolution, but the reason for that was my detour to build factories, coal plants, and police stations in my planned wonder cities. So I was able to win both races, completing ToE in 1260 and Longevity in 1270. Hoover followed in 1305.

[nbarclay]

I just realized that when I was worrying about the culture contest, I overlooked an important point. I'm very close to having the Internet completed, at which time any city I build gets two culture points per turn from that in additon to whatever it gets from improvements I build. With that in mind, I have a couple more thoughts about places where I might build cities in former Germanic territory, assuming I can get settlers to the right places in time.

There's also one other thing I forgot to mention. Thanks in part to the Greek influence, Rome is now the world's cultural leader. That makes aggressive settling at least a little safer than it would be otherwise.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by nbarclay

(Of course there's almost always trouble trying to find sufficient production in coastal towns, especially as their neighbors start crowding them more and more into the water.)

Just a quick note on that methodology: Coastal production was the primary reason I developed it to begin with. I started taking shield-productive tiles from next-tier-inland cities to get enough production for a quick navy, then decided the next logical step was to shrink those cities some more to gain a handful of powerhouses farther inland. I'm not saying it fits your current situation by any means, just presenting a point of information from right down the highway.