Babylon and On - Spoilers and Strategy

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Arrian

Then it's a question of getting the city names/locations correct, along with roads and fortifications (do I want the Antoine wall in there, or just Hadrians?). I know almost nothing of Persia in the time of Rome's height. Same thing, but even worse with India. I've taken courses on Dynastic China, but actually setting up late Han China... yeesh. What is needed, actually, are experts on each empire. Let's say 100-200 AD for the time period. One person set's up a civ, and passes it on. The problem is... I'm not really "expert" on any of 'em.

-Arrian

I can help you getting the Chineses names right.

I suggest to begin your scenario at 181AD, a time when Rome and China were still at height or their powers, but started facing troubles. Commodus would be crowned emperor this year, and the massive "Yellow Turban" uprising would break out in 3 years.

[dawidge]

I have a name for this scenario:

Remember Los Alamos!

[Arrian]

Good one, dawidge.

Merciless, thanks for the offer. If I motivate enough to actually do this thing, I will definitely need all the help I can get.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Finally I finished this game... whew, those turns sure take long the year is 1971, score 2639. I'm not going to tell the whole story in all its details, I'm a bit too tired right now (it's 4.30 am in Belgium, tomorrow another working day). But just a few quick notes on what was different in my game from the others, and some lessons I learned replaying it (you might remember that I replayed, after my first attempt ended in 1958 as my whole attack force was destroyed conquering just a few German cities.)

trade
last time, I started trading atomic theory and electronics in the first turn, in order to get one scientist working on radio. This time, I started with refining, so I could use the extra oil to get to electronics in the first turn as well. With one scientist on radio, I had all needed industrial techs well before my scientist discovered radio (he still had some 20 turns to do). But, stubborn as I am, I wanted to show that the one scientist approach was a good strat, so I saved a lot of money waiting to advance to the modern era. When I finally got there, I could buy 4 techs right away, including synthetic fibers. I thought about setting my scientist on stealth, but choose super conductor instead. This might not have been the best choice, with the oil and trading away my last rubber; trade was too quick, and before my scientist was nearly done (24 turns remaining, IIRC) I bought the rest of the tree. stubborness has its limits

initial expansion and beach heads
Last time I noticed that once the AIs had MIs and MAs total war broke out, and a lot of space became vacant. Last game I was only able to settle two cities where I could have gotten 10 as I was not prepared, this time I was not going to make the same mistake. I made 4 settler teams (galleon and transports with 2 settlers each), which were divided over the high seas so I could get to all islands in just a few turns. But, I guess I was punished for my foreknowledge... in this game not one space became vacant! I finally made a beach head on the largest continent as the Indians conquered a Russian and a German town, one tile became unclaimed for just one turn, and I took it (the Germans recaptured their town after that and their borders flipped back, but it was too late, my town was already started.)

Everybody was at war with the Japanese, and if that wasn't enough they had to sneak attack one of my settler teams patiently waiting off their coast with a sub in 1820. I signed an MPP&RoP with India, flew all my available troops to Shurrupak (the beach head), and took Tokyo in 1830. As a result of the MPP, I found myself at war with the Germans and the Russians as well, but they were too small to bother. Signed an additional MPP with the Americans, who had been gracious with me from turn 1 (exactly the same as the previous games). Together we destroyed the Japanese, racing towards the last city to take the final honor (I won of course )

palace jump
My initial plan was to make Berlin my capital, but as Kyoto still had a factory, was not completely corrupt, and I hadn't got a leader from the fighting, I rushed some essential buildings in Kyoto and started building my palace the hard way. It was going to take 22 turns, but there was little I could do about it.

In the mean time, the Indians had been bashing the Germans in Berlin, and I had to rush my troops there to not lose the 5 wonders... last game I lost over 50 MAs there, now I only had some 15 MAs left from the Japanese war (which was still fully happening). But, when I finally had my troops stationed there (one transport worth of 5 MA, 1 MI and 2 RA), Berlin was reduced to size 5, and over half its troops were killed by the Indians. It was easy conquering it, I only lost one MA this time! What a difference... the year was 1842 when the last German city fell.

With my palace still under construction, I had quite some problems with city flips. Nara even flipped twice on me, and I also lost Izumo, and a freshly build city Sippar. In just a few years, I had seen more flips than in any other game I played... and even if I did not lose many troops, I was warned for the remainder of the game.

In 1872 I destroyed the Russians, while in Izumo a coal (or was it an iron?) appeared, enabling me to build the ironworks. Great, it was just across the sea from Kyoto, so little corruption, but the only problem was it was size 2, without any improvements (I bombed them away when capturing the city). More rushing then...

treason
Finally I had some time to build up my forces. Indian was getting too big, and what was more problematic, they were building loads of MAs (at a certain point they had some 60 of them, while I had little over 40 MIs). I was getting worried they would become too powerful. But then, when checking the diplo screen, I noticed a glitch in the American ambassador: one turn they were cautious towards me, while the turn before and after they were gracious. I still had a MPP with them, but was immediately alarmed. I started moving my transports closer to them, so I could invade them when needed. I nearly made it, but the turn before I could, they sneak attacked me. I lost 2 cities (which were easily retaken), and triggered the Indians and the Chinese into the fight. The Chinese enlisted the French, and all of a sudden everyone was bashing the Americans, which was a MPP partner to most of them just instants before.

In the middle of the war, I got a few good turns: 1918, I built my palace in Kyoto. 1920, I finally got my first leader (I must have gotten over 50 elite victories by then). 1922, I finally was able to trigger my GA, I lost over 15 bowmen on various targets before that. Those three events really launched my economy, and as Izumo build the military academy a few turns later, I was able to make armies at 3 turns apart (Izumo had 155 non-corrupt shields, without mobilization!)

Taking the American continent was a hard fight. They too had a few MAs, but what was worse: they had, and used, ICBMs and tacticals. When I took New York (for the third time; it flipped twice), it was hit by 5 nukes, even if I had star wars. I couldn't see the logic behind it, after the second nuke it had no improvements, no troops, and was only size 1, but still they hit it again and again. As a result, the Chinese nuked San Fransisco about 10 times, another strange move. But as my MAs were advancing on that city, it made it easy to capture it. I quickly made a mental note to keep the Chinese as friends, I hate nukes, and did not want to become the victim of their ICBMs. In 1934 I took the last American city, overcoming more then 7 hostile flips...

End game
Next were the Indians of course. They didn't want a MPP no more, but agreed to a RoP. Silly... I violated it in 1950, taking 11 cities in the first turn. After a few flips, and some very stupid mistakes (leaving cities undefended within reach of their cavalry), they were gone in 1958. I had to build up my forces again, and was planning on taking the French. At this point, I cheated a little: I planted a spy with the French, only to see they had some 250 MIs... I tried to get a spy passed the Chinese defenses, but was unsuccesful. So I reloaded, placed the spy in Beijing (I admit, not really okay), filled 13 transports with troops and armies, and invaded the Chinese. I finally had enough population to trigger domination in 1971.
Firsts
This game was very different from normal games, in many ways.
First of all the insane amount of flips, due to too less culture was something I really had to get used to. I guess over 15 cities flipped on me, which nearly made me curse the concept. (nearly, I still love it too much )

Further, the amount of troops to counter was just sick, I used a lot of combined arms to get some hold of those MI defended hill metropolisses. Normally you just roll over the AIs, not in this game you don't.

Missing my GA, only getting a very late leader, and missing out on essential productive wonders like Hoover also was something very different, normally these mean you can outproduce the AI, while in this game the AI was always in the advantage.

Getting MAs against you made a totally new approach in defense necessary: normally I just reinforce some choke point, and further add one or two MI to each city and be done with it. Now it was needed to plan your defenses more carefully, my home islands was for large parts of the game undefended as every unit was off fighting far away.
What was not different was the final tedium: up until the last 20 turns I found it still a challenge, but invading China was not needed for me, I knew I was going to win, and couldn't be bothered with those final turns. That was one of the reasons it took so long to finish.

And finally, this was the first time I couldn't keep a democracy in a game: in the middle of the American war my people revolted, and I changed to republic I missed one turn of my GA by this, but that wasn't too bad. I don't know if it was related, but I just had diminished my lux-rate from 40 to 20%. My people were still happy enough to keep most of my cities in WLTKD, but then they revolted... After that I took my lux rate back up to 30%, and again to 40% when my GA ended. It was the only way I could figure out to avoid all the flips, and keep a reasonably corrupt free empire under a republic.


I guess this was one of the best preparations I had on MP, and therefore I love this scenario. Thanks Vel for setting this up, if MT V is going to be only half as much fun as it looks to become, it will make staying in Emperor for a while surely worth it!

DeepO

(In attach the final save, for those interested)

[DeepO]

A few additional observations, and corrections. First of all, I didn't end in 1971, but in 1972 (the save is from '71). Further, my first game ended in 1858, not 1958 (It was late yesterday )

Some smaller things I noted when playing this game: As I did a lot of rushing in one turn, and especially large things, I used another technique as opposed to disbanding warriors to get the queue started. The same thing is possible in SMAC, and I thought even in CivII, and was still not corrected in CivIII. I consider it somewhat of an exploit, but used it anyway as it is just too easy.

When rushing e.g. a factory, you expect to pay double when no shields are present in the queue. So, you expect to pay 1920 gold instead of 960 gold. However, if you start by rushing a worker (as it is the cheapest thing available), you pay 80 instead of 40 gold, and have some shields in the box, the rest of the factory will be at normal 4 gold/shield rate. In total, you pay 80+920=1000 gold for a 1-turn factory.
Judge for yourself if you want to use it, I try to avoid it, but in this game I just needed the production quickly.

Shooting down jet fighters on air superiority was something else that sparked my attention: I finally understand why jets can bomb. They never hit anything, but that is not the point, when bombing a city that is protected by another jet or fighter, you have a large chance of shooting down the defending unit. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out in which cities the AI had fighters (or F-15s for the Americans), moving my jets, and bombing them until I shot something down. Most of the times I shot the F-15s instead of the other way around
Eventually I stopped, as I only had built jets before the wars broke out, after that I needed every MA I could. The AI built a lot of airforce in this game, I captured heaps of stealth bombers, without actually building one myself. But from time to time I lost these to jets too, more then the 5% intercept chance would suggest.

I didn't mobilize in this game, even if I had problems with production. I haven't seen many notes on how the others did this, but for me, I was too busy building up the large continent around my new palace, and in a mobilization I couldn't do that anymore. Later in the game, I had a bunch of quite productive cities there (army in 4 turns, MA in 2-3 turns), so eventually it paid off.

Pollution: as I built coal plants everywhere, and manufacturing plants when possible, my pollution was rather high due to the industrialisation, and not because of the population. Many cities built recycling centers early on, especially because I anticipated that republic meant that my (non-industrial) workers were lazy as hell. I built one mass transit thing, but it didn't gave very good results on comparison, so forgot about it for the other cities. In normal games I build neither, building one extra industrial worker per city is better then a recycling center + mass transit (in build time, and cost), and do about as good. At least I could say this time that that global warming was largely my fault, instead of having to curse the AIs for not cleaning up their mess

I finally got some understanding of the methodical pillaging/bombing of the AI. As so many of my cities flipped, I had to ensure that resources did not go to the wrong hands if things turned sour. So I pillaged all resources (especially oil, rubber and alu of course) as soon as I could reach it, and they stayed cleared until the whole Civ was conquered. Those initial troops were hard enough, I didn't need the AIs drafting additional MIs while I was slowly advancing. I had fun fighting off riders, knights, cavalry and longbowmen with MA, it gave part of the normal roll-over feeling normal games give

One last point which was very different in this game is that I expected to encounter atleast one SoD, but I haven't seen one. Maybe If I had attacked the French with their 250 MIs I would have seen it, but all other AIs attacked in smaller groups. Also, I found them relatively well thought out: when I had a RoP, they stationed troops on my territory, and as soon as war broke out, they did a good job of trying to attack at multiple points. Especially the Americans were good in it (the bastards), they took 2 cities in the middle of my territory, and pillaged quite some resources too. Not that it mattered, I was prepared, but if I hadn't seen the glitch in Abe's mood, they would have taken several cities more before I could have reacted.
Of course, once I took out their resources, the usual stupid invasion forces (4 riders next to 8 MAs anyone?) started to appear. But it was fun while it lasted.

DeepO

[Velociryx]

Kudos man! And a job well done indeed!

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

Thanks Vel

I tried to compare my result (1972) with others posted, and was surprised to see that although many people have commented, only a few actually posted their final result... I found 3 besides me, Aeson (1965), Vulture (nearly), and Txurce (1974). What happened to the other games? Did the final tedium also got to others? Or were others beaten by the clock?

Oh, BTW, I know why both New York and San Fransisco were hit multiple times by nukes when there was no obvious reason for it, and I consider it kind of a small bug. (I'm finally getting awake ) Both cities had wonders in them, which were not destroyed by the nukes (a good thing), but that made the AIs think they could nuke them some more, wasting nukes on targets were there was nothing left to destroy. This should be changed, if there ever is going to be another patch (mind you, this was a 1.21f game, it could have been changed already). I only noticed it now, as both times it was the geographically closest city which had wonders in them. I guess it will not happen when the first city has no wonder in it.

DeepO

[Harovan]

I'm actually in the 1910-ish, own 2 of the continents, have bridgeheads on 2 others and am even in tech (as there's nothing to research anymore, but future techs). I sold all universities and libraries, am a Monarchy with 100 gpt surplus and have a good, productive empire, while other countries fought wars almost continuously and are mostly Communists (except France and the OCC'ing Indians). Abe is dead.

I interrupted the game to play Theseus' AU-101, mainly because nobody was posting here anymore for quite a time and I thought, if nobody gives a damn anyway, why should I post?

I will finish the AU-101 game today, may be I'll continue the game. Although I'm going to have a 4-5 weeks break of civing, to test some other games (maybe I'll get a hang on EU2 after I failed the 1st time) and to have a vacation trip through Euroland (looks like A, I and F).

[vulture]

Originally posted by DeepO
Thanks Vel

I tried to compare my result (1972) with others posted, and was surprised to see that although many people have commented, only a few actually posted their final result... I found 3 besides me, Aeson (1965), Vulture (nearly), and Txurce (1974). What happened to the other games? Did the final tedium also got to others? Or were others beaten by the clock?

Actually it was jshelr who had the 'nearly' result. I managed a win in 2033 IIRC. I'd like to here stories from anyone who lost, since the idea of the mini-tourneys is to compare strategies, and we learn just as much from seeing what didn't work as well as what did. Games that were abandoned and re-started are also interesting - what didn't work first time around, and what made the difference in the second attempt.

My own suspicion is that MA armies were vital for anyone trying to win in a hurry, due to the number of well defended cities that had to be taken. It'd be good to compare the results of those who used lots of armies wit those who tried a more 'combined arms' type of approach. IIRC Aeson gave up on the combined arms and went for more armies in the game that he won (sorry if I've mis-remembered who it was).

[DeepO]

Oh, I'm terribly sorry to mix you guys up, I really enjoyed reading your posts on your game.

So we have 5 results so far:
1965 Aeson
1972 me
1974 Txurce
2033 vulture
nearly jshelr

We should note, however, that both Aeson and myself restarted to improve. Although it didn't matter much, I guess it will shave a few years of our result. But indeed, this is not that much of a competition, but more of learning from others. I really learned a lot by reading all the posts, so please, keep them coming!

As your comments on MA armies: I wish it was that what made life easy. But as I only got my first leader in 1920, after 100 years of war, I guess those radar artilleries was what made my war grind on on a steady pace. As a result I lost tons of single MAs, maybe so much as 400 or something. Once I got armies, taking hill-metropolisses sure became a lot easier!

DeepO

[Aeson]

Yes, my result was a second time through thing. This scenario might have been a bit better for comparison if the Military Academy and Heroic Epic were already built (or Leaders disallowed entirely). Too much hinged on the first Leader, and building that first Army.

[DeepO]

If the academy and HE were already built, I don't think many people would go for the combined arms approach... armies are very powerful in this game. But isn't this exactly one of the points that people can learn here? I guess that in MP, armies are key, and people will even have secret pacts were they train their vets on each other, up to the point were both have one GL...

DeepO

[vulture]

Originally posted by DeepO

As your comments on MA armies: I wish it was that what made life easy. But as I only got my first leader in 1920, after 100 years of war, I guess those radar artilleries was what made my war grind on on a steady pace. As a result I lost tons of single MAs, maybe so much as 400 or something. Once I got armies, taking hill-metropolisses sure became a lot easier!

DeepO

I was lucky enough to get a leader on my first or second elite victory :-) Perhaps this explains why I lost roughly 30 MA in the entire game, rather than 400 (!!!). Or maybe I was making more of an effort to conserve my forces (which I was, on the whole), hence the lower loss rate and much later end date. I think Aeson's point is correct though - given the low probabilty of getting a leader from a single battle, there is going to be a lot of variation in when the first leader is generated in different games, which can have a pretty big effect. I got lucky, but OTOH screwed up and lost a lot of time by getting seriously nuked. I never built anywhere near 400 MA in the whole game because I had to spend a lot of time rebuilding my infrastructure, manufacturing base, terrain improvements and population.

And, in retrospect, I made a stupid move putting my palace in the middle of China. I only ever had two cities with production that amounted to anything on that island, thanks to all the mountains and post-nuclear desert i nmy game. Moving it to somwehere in Germany or India would have increased my manufacturing base considerably I suspect.

[DeepO]

vulture, I didn't count, but 400 seems to be a bit of a low number even... I constantly built up my forces, and in between wars I had to have some breathing room so that I could have more MAs then the AIs had MIs. For both the Indians and the Chinese, I built up from 30 odd MAs (most of them elites) to well over 100 before attacking. For the Americans, it was close, but their force of MIs was bigger, hence the long war. I really wanted to conserve my forces, but even with stacks of 25 radars pounding on a city, loss rates were close to 2:1.

I don't think trying to conserve troops was what made your game slower, but the nukes surely did. But, it was also a good thing, I can't imagine you faced over 4 MIs in each and every city you took, or your losses would have been considerably larger. Moving your palace to China indeed doesn't look very good, but that depends on what government you had. Under a democracy, I was able to have reasonably corruption free cities were Japan used to be (with a WLTKD, courthouse and policestation my initial cities had less then half waste [EDIT: and my palace still back at the home island!]). This was of course also because I left China were it was, I kind of liked the largest continent more as a starting position. The Chinese continent looks like it will be as corrupt as your most Southern cities (it is about the same distance), and as I consider everything over half corruption a good city, you don't need a palace there

I tried to conserve my armies, but lost 3 of them as I just had to push them a bit to far (one was a 18 point MA, which vanished fighting a planes-MI without denting it, the equivalent of loosing a tank to a spearman). I finished with 9 armies, 3 of them built from leaders, the rest from the academy. Rushing Izumo from a village town to a kicker industrial center was one of the best things I did in this game, even if it took me over 7K in gold. In that respect, my GA came right on time, armies in 3 turns surely helped shift the balance faster. But I had to face the Americans without them, and only fought my last two wars with them, even if it was a bit of a management nightmare, radars are also fine. Just don't use 2 of them, but over 25

DeepO

[jshelr]

Hi guys

This thread is becoming sort of like a VFW meeting for survivors.

Having read your stories I developed the (self serving) hypothesis that nukes cleared the way even if they slowed down home production. Dislodging un-nuked MI from large healthy cities was a slow slog, even with lots of radars. I think you could win without nukes and without armies, but you could make very few mistakes and had to be hyper efficient. I thought Vulture's win was a great effort, particularly. Basically, I learned that armies are extremely valuable in the late game when you don't have a tech advantage.