AU 101: Crowding & War

[Dominae]

Nice thread revival!

[Arrian]

An oldie but a goodie.

If you've got screenshots & such to do a more complete AAR, Cort, please drop 'em on us.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Part 1 - Ancient Times

OK, here's how the Ancient Era went, with an attempt at attaching a map to show how it ended. The rest will follow once I've deciphered and typed-up my notes.

Btw - is it possible to include graphics within the text rather than just the end?

Opening

Unlike everyone else I didn't road the silks from the off, but game/forest to the north, as my playstyle usually means researching hard and prioritising trade roads early on. I wouldn't need the silk just yet, but I wanted the income asap, and obviously wanted to work the game tile. Nor did I start with barracks and warriors, but with a warrior-warrior-settler, planning on a Ralph-style archer rush from 4 cities.

Japan's hand was forced early when the English declared war after I declined to tribute them. 15 turns later I got Writing and 50g for peace - killing 5 warriors and 1 archer, losing 1 warrior and 2 archers, and we pillaged 1 tile each. I sense a smarter AI - keeping to the high ground, using stacks, sacrificing less and pillaging more with warriors than before.

1150BC - Waiting outside York for the peace treaty to expire with 4 arch + 2 spear. At home there are five cities, two with barracks, one by horses and one on the iron. They have temples to get at the food tiles, and will be linked by roads in a few turns.

1000BC - Capture City with Archers
Took York, losing 1 archer. Gave Iroqs 20g + 1gpt to keep them 'on-message'. Next turn - the iron disappears one turn before the road gets there - downside of building on a resource! The nearest iron is the other side of London, which has five spearmen in it when opening the embassy. That is not a city about to fall to anyone - and did civ 3.0 defend in such depth so early, or is it just a consequence of early war? I ask this of ye seasoned warmongers...

800BC - Production:
Kyoto, Osaka - vet horsies
Tokyo - vet spearman
Edo - workers (on flood plains)
Satsuma - catapult (pre-build - researching maths)

775BC - after healing & reinforcing, 4 archers, 2 spears and a settler start the march across hills SE of London towards the iron. Hastings is also on that peninsula. The plan is to build a city, defend it against inevitable nme (enemy) attention, then take Hastings.

Canterbury, north of London is on a hill and could need 6 horsies to be sure-ish. The ratio of 2 horse-cities to 1 spear might looks spear-heavy, but they were very useful blocking nme spear movements..

590BC - the iron expedition is getting held up. They have 3-4 archers shadowing my convoy. If I come off the high ground they'll attack - which I could survive but at the price of my plan, so I'll try to out-manoeuvre them...

Meanwhile, the 1st catapult delivers its second hit to an enemy spearman en route to reinforcing Canterbury. Elite horsie finishes off. Good catapult! Also, the ratio of 2 horse-cities to 1 spear might look spear-heavy, but they were very useful blocking nme spear movements, and would be great for vet-garisonning all those cities I'll be taking...

550BC - autorazed Canterbury. It got to size 2, but only to poprush a spear. The six horsemen were overkill, it only took two.

430BC - Stack of 4 english archers park outside York, with another behind them. I have 8 horsemen, 2 catapults, and no almost income. Their archers die, the horsies heal, and head for the cultured Nottingham to the northwest of London. Meanwhile, the Dance of the London Iron continues - with me unwilling to plant a much-needed 6th city, whilst tying up six units. The payoff is that this english archer stack is neutralized too, allowing my horses a free-er reign (rein?).

350BC - Capture City with Horsemen
Nottingham captured (has culture) with Horsie stack - got 5 workers It has iron nearby.
Made peace for philosophy, mapmaking, 210g, Coventry and 3 workers. They were left with London and Hastings, both size 1. I finally founded Nara next to the London iron.

By now the Iroqs had 10 cities, including Allegheny in the centre of the continent, and on all that gold. Nice spot for an FP. I'd signed a ROP with them to assist my units around London and Nottingham and thought I could maybe use that to position boats outside of their boundaries off the coast to drop resource-denial-squads on ROP-expiry. I've usually had good relations with the Iroquois in previous games, so I had little experience of the kind of thing that was going to happen...

170BC - 10 turns left of ROP with Iroqs. Built a worker-colony on Nottingham's iron, and upgraded 10 vet warriors to swordsmen with the money I'd saved researching construction @ 40 turns (15 turns to go).

110BC - Tet Offensive planned.
11 sword, 10 horse, 4 arch, 6 cat. Building wealth to stay afloat - this is the maximum sustainable army without taking more cities.

Japan formulates a bold plan to strike across the whole Iroquois empire - a 31-unit 'Tet Offensive' to disrupt & confuse the AI and to prevent a river of Golden Age-fuelled Mounted Warriors funnelling into my armies then tearing Japan to shreds.

Tonanwanda, coastal, 3 squares from the capital Salamanca and with horses was to recieve a pillage squad of two swordsmen dropped by boat. Objective - pillage the horses and then try the city.
Centralia, coastal, on iron was also to get a pillage squad of two swordsmen from a boat. Objective - pillage the road links to the city.
Niagra Falls - closest to Japan and founded early on all those grapes - 6 horsemen + 2 swordsmen, who will proceed to Grand River
Oil Springs - NE of Salamanca with silk - 4 horsemen
St Regis - furthest north - 4 archers from Nottingham
Cattaragus - on hills E of Salamanca with 5 swordsmen and 6 catapults who'll then proceed to Allegheny

The last turn of the ROP is 10AD

30AD - In one turn, I moved the 2 galleys out of the (expanded) Iroquois border and into the sea, revoked the expired ROP and declared war. This might have been cheesy or might have been clever, I'm not sure ... whatever - I moved the galleys back to the coast and unloaded the swordsmen. Those landing on hills were safe near Centralia, and subsequently cut off the Iron but those on the critical plains-horses tile near Salamanca got immediately trashed by MW. Golden Ages in ancient times may not be the best, but they still helped the Iroqs get their MW's flowing.

50AD - St Regis falls to archers, and witnessed a Iroq combo stack of 2MW, spear & warrior sitting on a mountain by Oil Springs and guarding it effectively. Japan's 4 horseman scheduled to vist Oil Springs balk and suddenly remember dental appointments...
In the South, Niagra Falls was taken, having been defended by 3 spears and a sword - better then 2 spears right?

much smiting later: (detailed historical records tragically lost in post-war looting)

420AD - Capture City with Swordsmen
Although swordsmen had been used in supporting, defensive and pillaging roles elsewhere, they had been diluted by the plan, and the stack-of 5 got held up by stiff resistance on the way to Cattaragus. Bashing enemy units is one thing, but depleting a stack below it's ability to take its objectives (in this case, a hilled city or two) was avoided. The game required taking a city with swords, so I wasn't going to blow the stack in attrition-battles. Eventually the sword-cat stack withdrew East from Cattaragus and took the secondary objective Allegheny on the hills in the gold instead. This took some cat-whipping - the first turn of bombardment knocked out the barracks, and later turns, though hits were rare, did eventually deplete the four defenders - and luring one out with a wounded unit helped too.

The campaign went fastest in the South, sweeping along the coast taking four cities and then, with reinforcements, pressed north for Oil Springs. Spearmen were being continuously produced to garrison the new holdings.Generally the 'Tet Offensive' did succeed in confusing the enemy - which didn't really commit itself to any front, and tended to dither in the middle.

Other lessons : Sword pairs are OK pillaging on hills, but not on the flat - esp against MW. I eventually blew my second sword pair coming off the hills near onto their Silks - doh! - as if I hadn't learned the lesson already. Also, four horses aiming at a city near the core probably won't be able to take that city, but the feint could be enough to divert the enemy from your main thrust elsewhere. Be ready to run away, but not too far.

With seven out of ten Iroquois cities taken, and with them having finally researched currency, I cut them a deal which gave them an research-extension in the game in return for Code of Laws, Currency, 100g and Centralia - with a luxury.

Both rivals now have 2 cities. Salamanca is size 8, and probably has capacity for another tech before its eventual normalisation into Japan. It'll probably research Republic. Only Polytheism remains of the mandatory ancient techs, and I don't fancy Rep or Mon with this size army and no infrastructure.

Army at end-of-war : 9 sword, 11 horse, 6 cat, 3 arch, 36 spear. Total : 73, supported 72. Nice - now I can research Polytheism and move into the Middle ages!

(continued ...)

[Cort Haus]

Part 2 - Middle Age Nation Building.

590AD - Building infrastructure in core cities - aqueducts, granaries, marketplaces (phew), colliseums, libraries. Next ring are getting courthouses, with wealth on the periphery. Even warmongers have to build sometimes, right? Especially if there's no-one much left to fight and the others, wherever they are, are probably half-an era ahead. I'm usually building universities by now, not libraries - and I'm usually well on the pace of a pangea tech race where I know where everyone is, what they're doing and where they're probably going.

Instead I'm proceeding slowly towards feudalism, with no idea where the others are geographically or technologically. While I've been building units and destroying my research partners, have they been ramping up their economies and swapping new techs every few turns? I've heard of these wonders they keep building - the nearest I'll probably get is if London or Salamanca get the Great Library they're attempting.

At first I'd thought of Astronomy, or even Navigation, as being required to meet the others, but what of these suicide galleys I've heard of? My coastal cities are poor producers, but it's got to be done.

The other problem is the high corruption in most cities of my large, despotic empire with a capital on the southern tip. With me edging towards feudalism, it'll be wait-for-the-Iroq's-to-get-republic. Or better - build an FP. Time to plan another war with the English.

650AD - Joy! Attacked England, and got a Great Leader on the first turn.

670AD - French build Great Library. So much for London's raison d'etre - taken. Also, Egypt builds Hanging Gardens. At least it wasn't the Sistine, so maybe they're not that far ahead. FP build with GL in Allegheny. The graphic below (upper left) shows the imediate effect of this - of course the fuller benefits are felt over time.

690AD - Took Hastings, English gone - Offensive army : 8 Sw, 8 Hrs, 6 Cat

800AD - More joy! The second galley wasn't suicidal. It survived two turns in the ocean and discovered Egypt! They've destroyed Rome and own their continent. Somehow France also appeared on my dip screen.

860AD - Attacked Iroqs & took Cattagarus - leaving Salamanca for knights (Chivalry in 7 turns).

890AD - Made peace with Iroqs for Republic and dramatic economy boost. (see lower graphic)

970AD - By now I have all contact and maps (see graphic upper right inc powergraph). Unlike most AU101 games that were reported, the Persians bossed their continent, rather than getting stuffed. More Immortal stacks perhaps in PTW? They've taken bites out of both the Greeks and French. Heavy warring on both continents has slowed the AI's down, luckily.

Decision : do I research Printing Press to trade it catch up a bit in tech, or slipstream Invention for a stab at Leo's? Still don't know how far behind I am - can only see the next level (educ, invention), but at least they've not built Tzu and Sistine yet. I have Tzu build going in Kyoto, more in hope than expectation.

980AD - Capture City with Samurai (Knight-era unit)
Upgraded horses to Samurai (but not the two elites) and Attacked Iroquois (with 12 turns on the peace treaty remaining). Japan's Golden Age commences, and we get another Great Leader! So Invention it is. Salamanca taken. The next city, and plenty more, I suspect will be taken with cavalry.
Elsewhere Egypt declare war on Persia.

1010 - Spent 250g to inspect rival Tzu builds, and thanks to the GA I'll beat Persia by one turn and Egypt by three turns. The GL can wait for Leo's.

1050 - Rushed Leo's with Great Leader.

1070 - Sun Tzu's completed by hand. Both military wonders, when I expected none. Finishing off Hiawatha was perfectly timed!

1150 - GA over - now level on tech and ahead on Bach. I was able to sell tech to Persia because they were at war with Egypt, their previous preferred supplier.

1285 - Bach and Magnetism completed. (Navigation skipped) I can now build Galleons and Frigates.

1305 - Metallurgy. Military Tradition is in sight, but I have Wall Street on the stove, which'd be a handy Smith's pre-build, so Economics first.

1345 - Got MT, researching ToG with a prebuild in the mega-gold-FP city. Samurai upgraded to cavalry. A fleet of Galleons is assembling with the cav, old elites, and cannon.

Egypt is a good trading partner and is the strongest civ - and certainly the toughest to attack. Greece is weak and very looking rather vunerable to Cavalry attack in their eastern island with a weak economy and two Hoplites per city. North of there, the French also have 3 weak cities. That leaves 3 or 4 each on their mainland for France and Greece to be finished off, which in turn gives a solid foothold on the Persian's continent - which when taken should easily account for two-thirds of the planet. Hence, starting from the weakest point of the weakest civ, the story of the future appears to have written itself. A small whining sensation in the back of my mind says something about getting all wonders, but that seems messy and not the destiny that Japan sees ahead.

1355 - Egypt discovers ToG, Japan trades for it and enters the Industrial Age.

[Cort Haus]

Part 3 - Industrial Dominance

1365 - 6 Galleons of units unload in Eastern Greece, Greece has an entire Knight on the island!


1370 - Capture City with Cavalry
Took Mycenae with it's harbour on the first turn, then Knossus with both harbour and marketplace intact then next, and Heraklion on the third turn.

1385 - My deals with France expire in 5 turns. They have 3 cities on this island, 3 on their mainland, and one on the little island to the north. A galleon is dispatched with two cav and two muskets from Japan towards the icy island - looks a dead cert for oil later. Reinforcements of 4 muskets and 4 cav are sent to the newly occupied territories.

I decide to snuggle up to Persia and Egypt whilst launching these aggressions, and gift them 5gpt each. Greece takes peace, and I gift them a lux. They go from furious to merely annoyed.

1405 - Build Smiths, but Persians get Newton. Switch to Universal Suffrage.

1410 - Attack French, take 3 cities on this island by 1415. (see map)

1430 - Armies regroup onto 4 galleons heading for main French coast.

1435 - Discover Electricity.

1460 - French down to Paris - get 3rd GL - army.

1465 - Replaceable Parts.

1470 - 1st cannon shot on Paris reduces it from 7 to 6.

1475 - Take Paris with Sistine Chapel. French eliminated. (see map)

1495 - Attack Greeks.

1515 - Sent 15 Cavalry against Athens, and killed only 2 Hoplites. Cav hang around licking their wounds until the artillery arrive. 1st shot takes barracks, 2nd reduces to 7, 3rd reduces to 6. Here's to the power of bombard. Slow and unreliable it may be, especially pre-artillery, but knocking out barracks and reducing to below 6 is, in my experience, the only way to crack the tough nuts. The other point here is that the Greeks have a unit available to them in 4000BC which, in sufficent quantity, a little luck and perhaps a hill, is capable of holding out against anything short of a Tank that is unsupported by strong bombards.

1520 - Took Athens.

1530 - Finished Greeks, Persia & Egypt about to get Rep Parts.

Thus ended the Cavalry Wars of 1370-1530. When the time comes for the Persians to play at home to the Japanese, we'll be wearing Tanks

1600 - borders filled out for a nicer-looking map - see below

The military buildup for the showdown with Persia would take over 200 years whie enjoying a substantial tech lead. Before and during that time I followed my usual path through the industrial era, (Steam, Ind, Elec, RP) this time skipping Nationalism. Nationalism's less important when you have no rivals on your home continent, and of course there's nothing quite like Replaceable Parts. The best defensive unit and the best bombard you're likely to need if you're either a warmonger or diplowinner, and workers on speed without the diversions and delays of democracy. In the end you only need Nationalism for the Cops and Spooks that follow it (and you don't need those if you're smallish and peacefull).

Then its boring Medicine before the yummy Scientific Method, for which a pre-build is waiting to get ToE (you all know this) to give Atomic Theory & Electronics, a decisive tech lead, Hoover Dam, Sufficient Power, and the victory more or less of your choice (why am I typing this?). If the ToE prebuild is slow then research Atomic Theory first, and get the very pricey Radio (now worth the price in PTW, and the AI's love it - if they can afford it) with the wonder.

Then through the 'Oil Route' in the middle, finally choosing whether to get Tanks or Bombers first. PTW has beefed up Flight with the airstrip, and this is actually present in AU101, (like the radar) even though the Civil Defence (that must make things harder in late conquest) and Stock Exchange are unavailable.

Back from my standard Industrial tech-order to AU101 - I chose Flight to get airports and bombers all set up before the tanks arrived - not to mention a couple of airstrips north and south of Persia for the tanks to 'fly in'. Meanwhile I built Infantry & Artillery and shipped them and buckets of workers via the second continent to the third via the now substantial network of transports (no chaining, promise!). Destroyers guarded these and took up positions off the Persian Coast. I felt like Tommy Franks. Finally I was cranking out dozens of Tanks, which soon took up residency around the 'defences' I was building north and south of Persia. As the military juggernaught went over 350 units (keeping the old cav for anti-flip garrisons), and with only two not-very-rich civs left, money was not in abundance so I decided to sell Persia one more tech before attacking them. They should have been grateful, having their gpt debt cancelled after only 8-10 turns... **

(continued...)


** Note : Contrary to an earlier claim - this would actually be my second (though definitely the last) treaty-busting declaration - the other was the extremely necessary finishing off the Persians with Samurai - which set up for my Middle Age ramp-up. How about an AU conquest.domination game where you're not allowed to declare war at all?

[Cort Haus]

Part 4 - Modern Endgame

1752 - Capture City with Tanks

In Modern Era with 50+ tanks, 30 Arty, 20 Bombers, 25 Cav, 10 Destroyers, 6 Armies, 6 Fighters, 140 Inf plus some 40 workers and some crumbs totalling 386 units. Persia has 30 Cav and 85 Inf. Attacked Persia.

I wanted to contain them within Maginot lines north and south, seeing where and if they hurl their cav against it. The southern border was rather long, so rather than building all along it I left a gap then bombarded their side on the first turn of the war, pillaging it so that the best they could do was charge their cav through onto my killing fields - and it worked - they ignored it completely. I thought this was pretty neat - saving a lot of infantry and workers, but less neat was an oversight which left an unintended but embarrassing gap on the western end of the northern wall, through which poured 15 cav, 25-30 infantry and some loose change and who occupied 3 hills outside Paris - with the cav adjacent to the city and the infantry behind it.

Although my forces were split on two fronts, and with many units in armies and pillage-raiders within Persa, I had enough bombers and arty at hand to whittle down the cav then finish them with tanks. They'd used the rest of their cav on attacks elsewhere - including non-army pillage teams and especially against the airport on the northern border. The large infantry stack remained, so I surrounded it with tanks, infantry and fortresses to the north and placed lighter forces (inf + tank + cav) to the south (see graphic below - the Persian stack has the light-green disk). The airport had about 6 inf and 10 tanks in it, as well as 6-8 bombers.

On their turn they attacked a lighter stack to break out to the south and eventually made it but only about 5 of their infantry survived, and that was about it for the Persian army. Japanese bombers and armies covering explorers worked away at pillaging their extensive collection of resources (wheras in PTW armies can pillage themselves), as their newly-built attack waves degenerated from cavalry to infantry to immortals to archers.

Meanwhile, while the Persian forces broke themselves against my ok-not-too-perfect-but-got-the-job-done-eh defences, Japanese tank stacks with bomber and arty support munched through their cities from the south, finally freeing up the long defensive lines so that the inf could move up to defend captured cities. A lot of units were tied up quelling resistance and I was a bit worried about flipping despite 2:1 culture. I didn't want to raze. More of my tanks and infantry poured each turn through the airstrip until computers were discovered and the home cities could take a breather from tanks and build nice, quiet, research labs.

Early in the war came another leader. Yes! a Palace jump to this continent will give another core, while the home continent has a perfect FP and will hardly miss the old palace at all. Trouble is, I'm using the Palace as a pre-build for SETI, and anyway, I haven't taken the best city-site for a palace on this continent. So poor old Tojo sat there for turn after turn, during which it became harder to find a unit which was not elite to use - so frequent and numerous were the promotions.

Eventually computers were discovered and I got a good palace site, and I had the thrill of building a palace in the centre of Persia a turn or two before Domination Victory arrived in
1772, (map below) but not before getting another leader immediately after rushing the palace.

So that's it (I need a break now to play some Civ!) - my first AU course fully documented. I'm sorry about not attacking Cleo too but knowing how long I'd spent writing it all up I wanted to bring the game to a close. I had lots of fun, learned a lot, and hope my contribution to the AU has been worth it. What now? AU102? Or a recent one like the Celts so that I don't feel like 'so last year'? Or a 5CC? Or how about a big map on that whizzy 2.4GHz laptop I bought my girlfriend? So many civs, so little time ....

[badams52]

Re: AU101 on PTW

Originally posted by Cort Haus
So, I finally play AU101, and I'll post a full report of my game soon, (if anyone's still interested) but I just want to mention what happens on PTW:

Airstrips, outposts and radars are there, but not the units or buildings of PTW. I wonder if the startgame can be 'upgraded'?

Another difference is that the AI cities are, it seems, better defended in PTW than Civ 3.0, and it fights a bit better (more stacks, less dribbles - and archer/spear combos).

Glad to see you going back to the older AU courses, and thanks for the report.

Up through 104 they're all .sav files so I don't think upgrading to PTW would be possible, unless someone's written a utility to do so.

I think the scenarios (.bic files) are upgradable to PTW (.bix), but I wouldn't know how to do it so 104-201 could be upgraded. All the others have PTW scenarios that you can use.

Interesting to know what happens when you have a vanilla civ savegame loaded in ptw.

[Konquest02]

You can load the *.bic in the editor and then save it at a *.bix (at least I think so...)

As for the sav loaded in ptw, I think it just plays like vanilla Civ3... Not sure of this though...

[Arrian]

Good recap, Cort!

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Arrian
Good recap, Cort!

-Arrian

Cheers, Arrian - there's something about the process of writing these things down which both makes a game truly memorable and crystalises understanding of things. Documenting mistakes helps prevent repetition, recording success helps recall the best practice, and lets face it, a game of Civ can make a pretty decent story

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
there's something about the process of writing these things down which both makes a game truly memorable and crystalises understanding of things. Documenting mistakes helps prevent repetition, recording success helps recall the best practice, and lets face it, a game of Civ can make a pretty decent story

The above should be the standard plug for AU.

Nice one Cort Haus; I might just try it out myself.


Dominae

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae

Originally posted by Cort Haus

there's something about the process of writing these things down which both makes a game truly memorable and crystalises understanding of things. Documenting mistakes helps prevent repetition, recording success helps recall the best practice, and lets face it, a game of Civ can make a pretty decent story

The above should be the standard plug for AU.

Dominae

Amen to that

Catt

[badams52]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Cheers, Arrian - there's something about the process of writing these things down which both makes a game truly memorable and crystalises understanding of things. Documenting mistakes helps prevent repetition, recording success helps recall the best practice, and lets face it, a game of Civ can make a pretty decent story

Words like this shouldn't be wasted here! Truly, cort you are a man who understands the usefullness behind AU.

Is there a place we can quote cort that makes it more available for others to see?

[Konquest02]

You can put it in AU history 101, sa a nice description of AU in your first post...

[Cort Haus]

Aw, guys, thanks for the comments . Maybe I could work that quote into a sig ...