AU 105: The Power of Gold: Spoilers

[Theseus]

Man, I'm having fun.

By 1772AD, Egypt is again a democracy, I'm at peace with the world, and every city on the Persian continent is at 5 pop or less, and has a Temple, Cathedral, Courthouse, and Police Station, and is up to level 2 (i.e., 21 tiles). Several have Harbors or Airports, so max luxuries. This is down from 20+ pop cities and huge resistance in 1760AD.

I'm an exportin' fool:

[Theseus]

The 1772 map:

[Theseus]

Done... 3451 in 1852AD.

Went space race... even though I had built the UN, I declined to take the chance on a vote.

This was a lot of fun; definitely had that one-more-turn feeling, even through the space race.

I stopped military aggression after securing the Persian continent. Interestingly, at one point I sold Superconductor to India for over 1000 gold and 640 gpt... I was pretty sure this would bankrupt Gandhi, so for once I entered into MPPs with the Aztecs and Americans as a protective measure, and when India (inevitably) on the next turn attacked, I also bought a military alliance with the Iroquois. All of which basically distracted the AI civs from the space race, although India had 6 out of 10 parts built, and was working on the other 3, when I launched.

Back to the key of the game, I think I used the GA to pretty good effect; I've never had such a sharp increase in power before:

[Jaybe]

(I didn't realize I would get to Syn Fibers so quickly, and filled up the Armies with Tanks)

Theseus,
I NEVER fill my Armies until I am about to use them. If I am doing a trans-ocean invasion, I often don't fill the Army units until after I have landed (except to secure the beach).

Pentagon requirements for number of Armies are not dependent on having Armies with units in them.

(Sorry for the nitpick.)

[Theseus]

No, you're right, I clearly should have waited until the attack was imminent.

And even then, I broke my own mixed unit rules!!

[nbarclay]

The rest of my game went pretty much as expected. I got a bit dirty toward the end, buying alliances with AI civs and then turning on my allies shortly after the war was over. First I allied with America against the Iroquois in the hope that America would capture an Iroquois city behind the American and Aztec lines. (They did.) Then I allied with the Aztecs and Indians against America and, during the war, moved my palace to an American city. (That actually cost me a significant amount of gold through the rest of the game, especially since I never got Nationalism much less Communism, but it created long-term potential for essentially all of my cities to be worth something.) Finally, I allied with India against the Aztecs.

The Aztecs actually came up with a couple roving stacks of swordsmen and pikemen, which distracted me somewhat from my offensive. I'm not sure they actually killed anything, but injuries incurred taking them out took units out of action until they could heal. Then finally, just as I got ready for a sustained push that would have finished the Aztecs in three turns or so, I got a domination victory.

As I'd hoped, I never saw a single rifle unit, although musketmen were out in force. India and the Aztecs made it into the industrial era several turns before the game was over, and even got Medicine from me in a tech-for-luxuries deal, but the secrets of Nationalism remained elusive. (By the way, my decision not to research Nationalism in order to get Communism was fueled largely by a desire to ensure that whatever AI researched Nationalism would have to pay first-researcher prices for it. I don't know whether one of my opponents might have gotten Nationalism by the end of the game had I not taken that precaution, but it seemed like a good insurance policy.)

The game ended in 1360 with a score of 4805. I probably couldn't have pulled it off playing with the mod, or if I hadn't had the luck to get a free settler early, but I always enjoy dominating the world with cavalry nonetheless.

A couple more tidbits: (1) The Iroquois got three early wonders and the Aztecs one, but after that, I built every single wonder - eight of them in Thebes alone. (2) As seems typical this game, an AI snatched the Colossus away from me remarkably early - 1225 BC, about five or six turns before Thebes would have finished it. (3) By the end of the game, there were only five mandatory industrial techs I hadn't researched. I could have won just a little more quickly had I wanted to at all costs, but researching and improving my cities took precedence over maximizing cavalry production and using gold to rush temples.

Nathan

[Theseus]

WOW, very aggressive! The only wars I fought in the eastern hemisphere were bombardment exercises.

I think your game points out something for the newer players... never forget that whatever your status in a given game, it's usually possible to make a "big push," even intercontinental, with Cavs and then with Tanks.

Nathan, could you highlight your invasions a little? In addition to the usage of alliances, what were the primary objectives, landing approaches, combined arms composition, etc.?

BTW, whether to end a game, or to "use up" my Cavs, I will often stretch myself to the limit in such wars of conquest.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Nathan, could you highlight your invasions a little? In addition to the usage of alliances, what were the primary objectives, landing approaches, combined arms composition, etc.?

BTW, whether to end a game, or to "use up" my Cavs, I will often stretch myself to the limit in such wars of conquest.

"Combined arms approaches"? That's enough to get me laughing, literally. Cavalry are so fast that nothing they could possibly combine with could even dream of keeping up with my offensives, especially without a rail network. If I wanted to attack riflemen with cavalry, I might at least think about a different technique. But when the best an enemy has is musketmen, I'm quite happy with a force of essentially pure cavalry.

As for "primary objectives," they were (1) capture luxuries as quickly as possible to minimize disruption to happiness. (2) If I don't capture a harbor in my initial invasion, try to get one as soon as I can. (That actually ended up being a lot more problematical than I expected; the Iroquois didn't seem to have much in the way of harbors.) And (3) Defeat the enemy as quickly as possible.

My initial intercontinental invasion force consisted of something like eighteen cavalry units, several of them elites (and a couple even "elite plus leader") from the Greek and Persian wars, with two infantry units for cover against enemy counterattacks. (I eventually had a total of four infantry on the continent before deciding that any more would be pointless.) I landed just north of the spices by Cattaraugus, which also put me within striking distance of Oil Springs and, after Cattaraugus fell, of St. Regis as well. (Sorry I can't show the actual landing, but my closest save is from when Persia fell a few turns before.)

I took all three cities the turn after the landing, but the Iroquois managed to get a surprisingly large offensive force - more than half a dozen units, some landed by sea - into my newly conquered territory in response. Their counterattack was actually almost large enough to cause some real problems, especially given the number of units wounded in the initial assault, but only almost. About three turns later, a second five-galleon wave of forces - mostly cavalry - landed in Cattaraugus and the Iroquois didn't have a chance. From there, the only real limit on how quickly I could finish off the Iroquois was movement rate. (That second wave stripped the home continent bare of forces, so from then on, reinforcements didn't do much more than just keep up with casualties.)

As I said in my previous post, America took an Iroquois city I couldn't have gotten to without going through American or Aztec territory. But that was all they took, although I suspect that American cavalry softened up a city or two for me. (There was actually a horribly wounded American cavalry unit sitting right outside the last Iroquois city when I took it.)

Here's a map of what later became the landing zone.

[nbarclay]

I normally play at 1600x1200 resolution (on a 21" monitor), which lets me show a lot of area in a screenshot if I'm willing to sacrifice detail. I've labeled the map below to show the city names better (red lines) and to show my initial invasion path (blue lines). Note that I'm still working from a saved game from prior to my invasion of the Eastern continent; at the time of the actual fighting, the Iroquois had been completely defeated.

After the Iroquois conquest, I had to decide whether I wanted to choose the Aztecs or the Americans as my next victim. The Aztecs' luxuries were closer to the border, and it looked sort of like the Aztecs had been researching faster. But I ultimately wanted my palace in American lands, and attacking America first maximized the likelihood of getting a leader at a reasonable time to make the move. That tipped the balance in favor of attacking America.

I originally decided on a two-pronged approach, positioning about half my forces in Niagra Falls to hit Seattle and the other half in Tonawanda to hit Philadelphia. The plan didn't quite work out as expected, though, because when my Niagra Falls force attempted to strike, it found an Aztec pike unit in the way. Fortunately, the Tonawanda force was able to capture both initial objectives. Interestingly, Seattle had several wounded units in it when I struck; apparently I healed up from the Iroquois war more quickly than the Americans did. I got my last great leader of the game in the attack on Philadelphia (or it might possibly have been San Francisco) and built my new palace in Seattle the following turn.

From there, my eastern force moved north to capture San Francisco and then west to capture Houston (barely having enough units left to do it without waiting for troops to heal, since I'd had to raid lots of its strength to take Seattle) before rejoining the main strike group. The main, western force, rejoined after the initial delay, hit New York, then Boston, and then Washington. I suffered minor losses to cavalry counterattacks, but America didn't have many cavalry to counterattack with. Once Washington fell, the rest was anticlimactic cleanup.

The Aztecs and Indians didn't capture any American territory at all, which was pretty much as I'd hoped (given the greedy mood I was in at the time). The Aztecs did do some fighting around Mauch Chunk, but I was the one who took the city. (From a strictly military viewpoint, I had no need for alliances in the American and Aztec wars, but the alliances were useful for cutting off my victims' tech and luxury trading.)

[Theseus]

Well done.

I understand why your initial landing against the Iroquois was where it was, but, man, I hate landing on open ground versus a hill or mountain.

As far as I'm concerned, 1 Infantry in a landing stack of Cavs counts as combined arms.

I'm going to reiterate: a butt-load of any strong attacking unit, whether Swords, Knights, Cavs, or Tanks, goes a looooong way.

[nbarclay]

The map in this post is from a save two turns into the Aztec war.

After the American war, I took only a bare minimum of time to rest and reposition troops before attacking the Aztecs. The invasion was complicated by the Aztecs' having two cities away from their core and even having about three pikeunits moving through my conquered American territory headed for their core. So I couldn't concentrate all my forces to attack the Aztec core. My alliance with India was purely for the purpose of denying the Aztecs all opportunity to trade; India was too far away to make any real difference militarily.

My initial operations were mostly successful, capturing the two remote cities (not shown) and Allegheny and Tlaxcala in the Aztec core. But my offensive action stalled quickly. On the northern front, I didn't have quite enough forces to take Tzintzuntzen, and my northern cavalry then got too busy dealing with the two Aztec offensive stacks to resume offensive operations for a few turns. My southern front similarly bogged down, with my first two strikes at Teotihuacan failing and another forced to retreat before entering attack range. Eventually, though, my northern force dealt with its attackers and captured its targets and my southern force got enough reinforcements (and had enough wounded units heal) to capture its target as well. The Aztec capital fell almost immediately after, and my force levels had built up to critical mass. Distance was the only defense the Aztecs had left that could slow me down. But just as that happened, the game ended due to domination.

By the way, war weariness was just starting to kick in by the end of the Aztec war, in spite of my being a republic rather than a democracy. (I hadn't researched Democracy because I'd hoped the AIs would waste their time on it, and while one of them had in fact gotten to the point of researching Printing Press, none had discovered Democracy as of the time the game ended.)

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
I understand why your initial landing against the Iroquois was where it was, but, man, I hate landing on open ground versus a hill or mountain.

As far as I'm concerned, 1 Infantry in a landing stack of Cavs counts as combined arms.

Actually, I don't think the Iroquois attacked my invading stack at all when it first landed. Most of their offensive forces were toward the Aztec/American end of their nation. In any case, I sort of think I remember one of my advisors' indicating that the Iroquois' most powerful offensive units were longbowmen, which Infantry can typically turn into dog meat in short order. (Their problem wasn't a lack of tech, but rather a lack of resources.) Certainly, I never saw anything more powerful than longbowmen and mounted warriors among the forces that tried to counterattack against me.

Using a couple infantry to cover an invasion is about as minimalist a "combined arms" concept as one could ask for. I suppose it technically qualifies, but it certianly doesn't fit the picture the term usually conjures in my mind.

Nathan Barclay

[Harovan]

Here's the report from my 6:30pm-4:30am nonstop AU 105 session:

I played the version with the AU mod and because I didn't play for quite a while, I went Monarch, to have a nice "warm up" game.

I - Early wars: The starting location is very nice and makes a 10-turn settler factory possible. I didn't find an early Settler, but that didn't hurt me. I built only 2 warriors for exploration and then switched my capital to Settlers. Very soon I had built 7 good cities. When the early resources became visible, I saw, that I lack Horses, while the Romans have some. I had a couple of veteran Warriors hanging around, upgraded them to Swordsmen, took Rome and razed some other Roman cities and made peace for 4 techs and 3 cities! Now the Romans had only 1 city left, complete in the jungle and unable to build a settler. I waited for the peace treaty to expire, and finished them off. After building some more jungle cities, about half of the continent was mine.

II - Build up: After I got gunpowder and saw, that I'm lacking Saltpeter, I understood, that alexman wanted to tease us with a scarce resources game. For some reason, I didn't want to attack neither Greece nor anyone else, so at this point I decided to play a peaceful builder game. The Iroquois sneak attacked me by landing a Knight and a Longbowman. No big deal. I bribed Abe with a tech and allied with him against Hiawatha. I took only one Iroquois city, an outpost on my continent. After the alliance expired, I made peace, and my former ally got finished by the Iroquois. I didn't build a single Saltpeter unit in the whole game.

I succeeded to sneak 4 more cities on the Persian continent. Then I built lots of workers and concentrated on road building and jungle cleaning. No leader for an FP, so I built it the hard way in a 1-shield city, which later under Republic gave 2 and finally even 3 shields. I built rougly 100 turns. Until it was ready, I barely succeeded to catch up in tech. Now my economy got a big boost and I quickly got a tech lead. I was the first entering the Industrial age.

III - Winning the tech race: After Steam Power I saw, that I can build the Iron Works in Thebes. I had an almost complete Bank there, switched to IW and built it in a few turns. This time I had researched Industrialization, and I quickly added a factory. This resulted in a rougly 100-shield city, which was able to build wonders quickly, and I built the Universal suffrage in just a few turns. Now I beelined for Scientific Method and Electronics and built the ToE and Hoover. The latter was the final winner, because now I had, what this game was about: A Golden Age, triggered by a wonder and with the Ironworks ready! (where is my Gold Star? )

Anyway, here's a picture:

[Harovan]

IV - Winning the game: During my Golden Age my tech lead grew from 1-2 techs to 3, and my gold reserves from roughly 1,000 to about 10,000. We are rich, rich, rich, Sire. The other civs meanwhile ganged up against the Iroquois, who were the leaders by landmass (after consuming America). But none of them went communist, so their research remained intact. Of course, I had no Oil. No big deal, I used the fact, that the Aztecs had plenty, but no Refining yet, so I bought oil for 1 gpt and used it for a decent navy, mainly for exploration. After the deal expired, Monte was insulted even when I offered 100 gpt, so I cancelled the deal. I discovered a one-tile island to the north, tundra with oil, and about 30-40 barbarians. It took several turns of a transport full with Marines, to take it. Now I had Oil, and built Tanks and Air force as well. The (peaceful built) Military Academy gave me 6 armies (2 Tank, 2 Infantry, 2 empty).

After I hit the Modern ages and discovered Fission and Rocketry, I saw, that I lack Uranium and Aluminium as well. Yea, as expected. No big deal. I had enough tech lead to trade for the resources and go for the Spaceship, but my relations to all AI civs were very good (all polite), so I thought, the UN would allow a quicker victory. I built the UN in my IW city and won in the very first election. Diplomatic victory 1695AD with 3236 points:

[Harovan]

About the AI game:

Overall, the AIs did very well, but something must have been happened with the navies. In the standard game, the AIs build ships eagerly. Not here. Far from a few galleys, I didn't see a single AI vessel. It was me, who discovered the whole map, with Destroyers. That must be a bug in the mod! Anyone who had the same in his game?