AU 101: Crowding & War

[Theseus]

880 AD

Massive builder / research mode for 700-800 years, planning on an intercontinental attack on Egypt. I catch up on techs, and start bringing the Galleys home for upgrade. How upsetting is the picture below??!! Cleo declares war on me just for being big, nailed 4-5 of my returning galleys, and somehow sneaked 2 Swordsmen next to Izumo without me paying attention, and captured it!! She also tried to attack up north with a Warrior and a WC!! The gave me a reason to use Samurai, who I was worried would be underpowered by the time I could get a sufficient attack force to her territory.

[Theseus]

I'm now up to 1100AD. I've got 23 cities, leader in all the demographics I care about except literacy, and a >50% lead in the world ranking. I was able to build Magellan, Newton, and Bach, and I'm pretty sure I'll get Smith's and / or US. I've got a mixed attack force of Riflemen, Samurai, and Cav, almost ready to launch... Cleo is still the target, in never-to-end hatred for having had the balls to take one of my homeland cities. Just to make her life hard, I've entered into military alliances against Egypt with France, Persia, and Greece.

Mwahahaha!!!

[Theseus]

I'm switching to 1.29 BTW... just can;t wait.

[Arrian]

Oh, it's ON!

Ok, I built Kyoto at the start spot, and immediately roaded the dyes.

I built a barracks and punched out a few warriors. I consolidated three of them and took Salamanca. Niagara Falls fell to archers. Buh-bye Hiawatha.

I then turned my archers/spears/warriors on the English. I beat on them, took some techs, beat on them, took some techs, etc. Finally, I wiped them out with horsies/swords. Right at the end of it I got my 1 and only GL.

I rushed the Forbidden nearly dead-center in the continent, in a city I built on the river w/the gold hills. Big economy boost. I built the Colossus (NE of Kyoto) and the Great Library (same). Lost the Lighthouse.

I went republic and spend the next millenium or so building up. Finally, a suicide galley run made contact with the Egyptians and Greeks. BOOM! HUGE tech rush from the Library. Most of the way through the Middle Ages. Lost all MA wonders but Adam Smith's. Oh well. Greece was a freakin' POWERHOUSE wonderbuilder.

Trading brought me to tech parity at the beginning of the Industrial Age. Rome, incidentally, was toasted by Egypt (what a horrible starting spot!). Persia had been beaten on.

More building...factories and such, plus the ironworks... and researching. Huge tech trades (sold democracy and medicine for obscene cash/some tech). Upgraded horsies to Samurai, built riflemen while researching for ToE/Hoover. Nailed ToE & Hoover, lost Univ. Suffrage. Upgraded catapults and riflemen, loaded onto galleons.

Everyone ganged up on Persia, so I joined the fun. I took a city w/my Sams, triggering my GA (Hoover completed the next turn... heh, STRONG GA). Persia will die next turn.

1380AD: Democracy, 1 turn to refining. Slight tech lead (just sold Atomic Theory for commie/tons of cash).

Japan - 1641
Egypt - 1222
France - 1051
Greece - 955

I'm pretty much done with the "building" part. Next up: Motorized Transport, Mobilization, and Death, Destruction and Mayhem. I think I'm gonna bomb a TOWN, get down (LL Cool J. reference for those who think I'm nuts). I think I'll take on Egypt.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Well, I finished up just in time to install 1.29f.

I ended up letting the AI's have an Oil each, just to make thing interesting. The French never made it into the Modern Era though, and the Greeks just barely did before I took their last few cities. I also tried taking each city with Paratroopers or Marines (other than the 1 city with each of the other units), being supported by Bombers and Fighters. It worked pretty well, especially the coastal cities which fell easily to my Marines after bombarding all defenders down to 1hp. I made a couple armies of Marines hoping they could also do amphibious asaults, but it wasn't meant to be.

In taking Paris with Marines, I generated another Leader. Then moving my Transports left him treading water, there's a screenshot of it below. About 5 turns before finishing off the Greeks, my people revolted, even though almost all of them were happy. Other than that, nothing worthy of note happened. Finished in 1640 with a score of 5513.

Armed Forces at the end:

27 Marines (left from ~60)
3 Paratroopers (from ~30)
3 Tanks
42 Mech Inf
41 Modern Armor (only saw a bit of action)
7 Transports
10 Carriers
4 Destroyers
7 Battleships
3 Nuclear Subs
45 Bombers
13 Helicopters (lots of them got shot down)
27 Jet Fighters
4 Armies (1 Tank/MA, 2 Marines, 1 MA)

[Aeson]

Here's the final save, just before destroying the last Greek city.

[Arrian]

Aeson,

Impressive, as usual. Particularly your wonder building exploits.

I think I'll do it a bit more conventionally - hordes of Tanks backed by infantry and artillery.

The only question is who is the first target... Egypt or Greece. Each has its advantages. Egypt is closer and is all alone... any outside help will take some time to arrive. Greece has (I think) several Great Wonders I want and then I could, provided I get a leader, move my Palace to their continent. My military is "strong" compared to Egypt, "average" compared to Greece - this is with 1.21. Yet I don't think my military is strong at all... wait until I actually build one!

-Arrian

[W4r_Machine]

OK, here's what I did up until 10 AD or maybe much much, later I forgot.

I setled on the spot and put a road on the dye. Built a Warrior then a barracks. I then Pruduced 3 vet warriors for some exploration and stumbled upon the english. I besiege york and razed it. I was then counter atack by 4 or 5 reg warrior. I killed them all and in the process got one GL.

The Iroquois entered the scene shortly after I declared war on the english. By this time archers were available to me so I crank out 3 archers to take the I roquois city closest to my capital. This one had 2 pop so I get to keep it. Then, I set my eyes to the Iroquois city to the north(of my capital) which had Iron in it's borders and a horse just outside. That one I razed and put my own setler. By this time I made peace with the eglish and got all their tech and all their gold. They were left with 2 city. I now have 6 cities to the iroquois 7. I took oil spring and razed it due it's proximity to the capital. By the time I connected to the iron and horse. It was too late. The Irouois already has the MW and slaughtering my archers. I mass produced swordsman and stack them in groupe of 6. I set the other stack to cut off the horse supply just north west(Near Salmanaca) and I set the other stack north east where a city(coast) was connected to both horse and iron.

I manage cut both and guard it, but the MW kept coming and eventually kill off the defending swordsman. On their way though, they got attacked and lost a couple. I take two more Iroquios city and razed it just on the north east(near the english).

By the this time the english had grown to 5 cities so I renewed my war to them. The Iroquios sued for peace but I never took it. I razed all the english town(I cant defend them) and 1 pop. except for london which I never seem to take. I'm also defending from the Iroquios MW assault! My skirmish with the english produced 2 GL. One died on it's way home, he got ambushed by a MW. I got the second one after the other one died.

I'm in the process of taking another Iroquois city on the most northern part of the map, just above The Iroquois capital and a stack of swordsman to take the other city that is connected to the horses and iron.

I sent 6 swordsman to take the capital city of salmanca but the probability GOD has not blessed me. 2 regular spearman killed all 6 swordsman(vets) and a horsie.

My frontier cities are not producing much, like 20 turns to produced a swordsman so most of my assault troops are coming from my core cities which are furthest from the action. The transit are long, about 7 turns to the nearest Iroquois city. I only actually have one worker of my own and the rest are captured slaves, about 10 or 12 of them. The work are slow to say the least.

My treasury is small, about 400gpt and +3/turn. I've reduced my science to 0 to support more units and switched back to Despotism just for the sake of soppurting more troops. I used the surviving GL to make the FP smackdab in the middle of the map.

That's the 411 as of now. I haven't played much in the last couple of days

A side note: The greeks pretty much have all the wonders. I built the Pyramids but that was it.

[Aeson]

I was a bit suprised at how well Marines ended up working out, though the Paratroopers were all but worthless. The key of course was my Bombers and shore bombardments with Battleships though, and having the AI without Computers. If the AI ever get MI's, there's no other alternative really to MA's for attacking.

As for wonder building, the key is to just time pre-builds as well as possible, along with beelining for certain techs. If you can finish Sun Tzu and Sistene before the AI's get their hands on Invention, Astronomy, and/or Music Theory, the rest are easy. The problem comes with spillover from those early two into later wonders. In the middle ages, I don't think any of the AI came within 20 turns of finishing a wonder. I did have a 3 or 4 tech lead minimum until finally researching Chivalry, Military Tradition, and the Printing Press, which allowed the AI to catch up a bit.

In my game, Egypt was a couple techs slower than the other two AI, so made the best target. Greece and France (are the Persians still alive in your game?) could be caused to go to war with each other and really open up some opportunities though.

[Arrian]

You made contact much earlier than I did, and I was just too far behind in tech. The Sistine was completed just as I entered the middle ages. Sun Tzu, Leo's, Copernicus... they just cascaded. I never had a shot. My leader came late, so the FP wasn't up and running long enough to properly develop my empire such that I could do a lot of prebuilds.

Adam Smith was a palace prebuild which was actually an attempt at Bach, but then I decided to go for AS over Bach. Money, baby.

In my game Egypt, France and Greece are equal in tech (as I mentioned, Persia has one city I'm about to take). I'm milking them all for gpt tech deals (IIRC, France paid 108gpt for Atomic Theory, plus communism and military tradition).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

The AI civs in my game are more mixed... when I went intercontintal, Rome was hanging on with I think 5 cities, and Caesar and Cleo had split the island to the south of my continent. France, Greece and Persia had split their main continent, and had patchworked the islands to the east.

I went for Egypt as promised, in two branches: 1) The city at the northmost tip with the luxuries (don;t you just love it when the Harbor survives the capture, and 2) a plains landing on the Horses (pillaged), which scared me so it included 8 Rifleman.

BTW, I still really like mixed attack forces of Cavs and Samurai for Japan... and in some Riflemen, and it's just unstoppable.

I've had the fewest GLs I remember since maybe January. Did you see what W4r_Machine pulled off? GL from Warriors!!! What year was that?

[W4r_Machine]

Originally posted by Theseus

I've had the fewest GLs I remember since maybe January. Did you see what W4r_Machine pulled off? GL from Warriors!!! What year was that?

I got my warrior GL sometime arround 2700 bc, and I used it to rush the Pyramids.

Anywho, my game is took off in another direction. The greeks are the superpower and ROme is dead along with my neighboors. It took me well into the AD's to get rid of them, and as usual I'm lagging in techs.

I'm beefing up my navy to take on the Egyptians but I don't think I will finnish this--seeing that everyone are done. I kinda wan't to install the new patch


One Q: How do you take multiple screen caps?

Bottom line for me, you can make Emperor easier for yourself if you go APE on your neighboor and never make peace if you can hold your ground. I never went as agressive in my games as I did for this game. I usually wait to have 4 cities arround before I go loco.

[Aeson]

I just hit the PrtScn key, alt-tab (or use the windows key if no other programs are open) to get to Paint, paste it in and save it. Then go back to Civ until the next time I want to take a screenshot.

Then when I'm done playing, I use a graphics editing program (GIMP now, though I prefer PSP) to crop, combine, and save the images in .jpg format.

[Harovan]

It's weekend and I have finally got time to play the game. I have already installed 1.29f, so my results aren't entirely comparable, but since this is a university and not a competition, I think it should be ok.

I went 1 tile NE with my settler and founded Kyoto 3950BC. My worker hooked up the dyes, my capital had 2 forests with game and was very productive even without tile improvement. First I built barracks, then 3 vet warriors, 2 of which I sent exploring. They met the English and Iroquois soon. 3000BC I started the 1st war (England), and 2900BC the second (Iroquois), by killing the 1st AI settler shuttles with my warriors, thus making 4 free slaves. I built some more warriors, but I could not take a city, only autorazed 2 cities with them. Guess, no gold star for me. Most of the conquest of my home continent I did with archers and spearmen, by pruning both AIs as soon as they founded their 2nd or 3rd city. Later, I mixed a couple of chariots in, but I didn't take a city with them. When I took the 2nd last English city, an elite archer made me a leader, which I used for a FP in the center of the continent, near the 3 gold resources. The last Iroquois city was taken by 2 swordsmen (my only 2 in the entire game), and the last English by 4 horsemen. 50AD both AIs were gone.

In 10AD, I started to launch suicide galley tries from the 3 corners of the triangle. I had BAD luck with them, a lot sunk in sea and ocean and others were sunk by barbarians. But nevertheless, I soon (250AD) found the island to the south and met the Greeks there, who have the Lighthouse. A few hundred years later, I had contact to everyone and traded world maps. The Persians were already dead, killed by the Greeks, and the Romans were killed by the Egyptians. So, only 4 civs are left.

The other civs had a lead of 5 techs. I could trade it down. The Greeks still have 2 techs lead (Chivalry and Education), but the French and Egyptians are 1 tech behind (Invention). Right now, I'm building up my infrastructure. As soon as I get Navigation, I will visit Egypt with Samurai.

It's 600AD, I'm the first in the powergraph with 1062, then Greece with 988, Egypt 776 and France 683.

[W4r_Machine]

Originally posted by Aeson
I just hit the PrtScn key, alt-tab (or use the windows key if no other programs are open) to get to Paint, paste it in and save it. Then go back to Civ until the next time I want to take a screenshot.

Then when I'm done playing, I use a graphics editing program (GIMP now, though I prefer PSP) to crop, combine, and save the images in .jpg format.

OIC, I thought you have some sort of screen capture program. I have photoshop and when it's open it sucks way too much resource and slows the game down to a halt.

I think Firaxis should have a separate folder for screen caps like in Enemy Engage: Comanche vs. Hokum. All you have to do is press [print scrn] and it automatically stores it in the Screen Cap folder. You can store/take upto 1000 images in that folder.