Chronicles of Rome under Nbarclius Caesar, Vol. IV

[vmxa1]

In the modern age, I do not see a need for lots of arty. They only slow down the armies I will be using to smash into cities.

A dozen is enough to move around on rails to do damage to shipping or attackers. Anyway you tend to capture a few here and there.

[nbarclay]

In 1635, Babylon finished conquering Egypt. Caesar and his council then started considering whether to ally with Persia against Babylon or with Babylon against Persia.

On one hand, the situation had reached a point where Babylon actually had a larger population than Persia. Further, Babylon's communist regime could make good use of its territory. And the fact that Babylon had won the greater number of cities in the wars with the Celts and especially with Egypt argued that Babylon could be the stronger ally.

But while that was true, Caesar also had it within his power to ensure that Babylon would be a relatively weak enemy. Babylon's two sources of rubber and one of oil were all adjacent to Rome's borders where they could be pillaged easily - and where any workers that tried to reconnect them could be captured. Babylon's advantage over Persia in control of luxuries could also be dealt with through appropriate pillaging.

Finally, there was some geographic advantage involved in allying with Persia against Babylon rather than vice versa. Most of Persia's cities had enough cultural depth for Babylonian forces approaching Persia to be vulnerable to counterattack. But Persian tanks could strike at numerous Babylonian cities without warning, including not only the isolated cities but also core cities where Rome had founded cities just on the Egyptian side of the former Egyptian-Babylonian border. With a little luck, Babylon could be defeated in detail by Persian forces achieving local superiority.

And finally, there was the worker situation. Babylon had around twenty workers, some native and some slaves, working along the border between Babylon and Rome. By choosing Babylon as his target, Caesar could add to his already extensive collection of slaves.

After weighing those issues, Caesar decided to make Babylon his target. Radar artillery and artillery pounded the Babylonian forces that had not yet returned to their cities after defeating Egypt, including a 2-tank, 1-infantry army. Modern armor and an old elite tank unit moved in to finish off the enemy forces, finally gaining Rome its first great leader. The only Roman losses of the initial operation were a single modern armor unit that lost to a mechanized infantry force that was defending the Babylonian army.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by vmxa1
In the modern age, I do not see a need for lots of arty. They only slow down the armies I will be using to smash into cities.

Radar artillery can bombard anything Modern Armor can attack: move one and bombard two, versus move three. Only MA armies (and armies of older 3-move units) can outrun the reach of radar artillery, and even then, radar artillery can support them more often than not. The RA/MA combination is a very powerful one.

But remember that I'm not attacking cities in this game. So my force mix is heavily overbalanced toward defensive rather than offensive units. The only thing my bombardment forces are normally needed for is to weaken any enemy units that try to enter my territory before I use tanks or MAs to dispatch them.

A dozen is enough to move around on rails to do damage to shipping or attackers. Anyway you tend to capture a few here and there.

In the AU Mod, we told the AIs not to build artillery-type units because when it does, human players usually seem to get more use out of them than the AIs do. (Actually, AIs probably get some decent use out of them at times defending against other AIs, but against a good human player, they usually just get one shot before they're captured.)

[vmxa1]

RA comes too late for me to even think about and I am talking about MA armies and a few calv armies to take out those last old or wounded units.

So in this game (AU mod and rules) it makes even more sense to go light on arty later in the game.

My other consideration is being lazy. I do not want to fire and move 50 arties or RA. It takes a bit longer, but I will use MA armies. I am in no rush to shave a few turns off, if it means 100's of additional firings of atillery.

It is not a statement of techniques, so much as ease for me.

[nbarclay]

Domination Achieved

The endgame was a bit anticlimactic. During the war between Persia and Babylon, I was not inclined to try to squeeze cities into Babylonian territory, mostly because I wasn't in a hurry to win under conditions that would leave the new Roman cities culturally crowded and isolated. As time went on, a couple more towns that were horribly crowded by Roman culture decided to join the Roman Empire.

Then, as the year turned over to AD 1730, two events conspired to bring victory. Persia conquered a core Babylonian city along the former Babylonian-Greek border, allowing Roman borders to expand a little, and the former Germanic city of Nuremburg with its nine tiles flipped.

Due to how long it took to win by domination without attacking AI cities myself, I actually researched through the entire tech tree for the first time ever. I got to have some fun with stealth bombers, first building them to destroy the Babylonian navy (which was seriously annoying me by futilly bombarding me and retreating into a city turn after turn) and then using them to destroy invading Babylonian land units.

There was one oddity regarding the tech picture: I actually had to go back and research Free Artistry myself as my next-to-last tech (the last being Advanced Flight) before I could move on and start researching Future Tech 1. The research effort required for Free Artistry was one turn at twenty percent and three at ten percent - the equivalent of half of a single turn's potential research output. I had just started on Future Tech 1 when the game ended.

Playing out the game for domination in this fashion has proven to be an interesting exercise in the manipulation of AIs. I doubt that I'll ever do it again because of how much time is involved, but it is an interesting thing to have done once.

[nbarclay]

And here's the final F8 information.

[vmxa1]

I did not realize you had to research all optional techs to do future techs. I never tried it before either. I remember doing them in Civ2.

Nice game and report.

[Jawa Jocky]

Just when I thought I had seen it all