AU 105: The Power of Gold: Spoilers

[Theseus]

As a public service message (without really being a spoiler, but rather a compliment and teaser):

WTF??!!

alexman, if you weren't getting married and going on your honeymoon, I'd tell you that you are a devious, cruel, sadistic, all around SOB!!!

YOU TOTALLY MESSED UP THE MASTER PLAN!!

Arrgghh.

(But thank you for the small blessings... wait'll you see what I've got cooking).

Well done, sir.

Good AI civs from the AU Mod, too. Good game.

[alexman]

Thanks Theseus, I'm glad to see that MY master plan to mess up YOUR master plan is working!

I also started playing, but because of my knowledge of the map and my lack of time, I decided to OCC on Emperor.

[Theseus]

Arrgghh again.

[nbarclay]

Theseus, when you post a teaser, you don't kid around! I definitely feel teased!

I decided to play on Monarch level in case Alexman decided to make the scenario a nasty one, and I stuck to the standard rules because I'm still just on my third 1.29f game. It's somewhere around 1240 AD and my cavalry just finished demolishing the Persians (aside from a one-tile island).

In the early game, I built two warriors and then a granary in Thebes. Unfortunately, my "settler pump" strategy didn't work as well as I'd hoped because Rome was squarely in my path of expansion. But Egyptian archers won the day in a series of three brief wars, and Rome was no more.

The timing of my golden age was dictated by my effort to dominate the wonder-building race. I already had a few other wonders when I completed the Sistine Chapel, and I'd long since decided that the three Iroquois wonders and one Aztec wonder already in existence were enough if I had anything to say about it. (One interesting side effect of my massive wonder building is that I've had three of the top five cities for practically the whole game.)

As things turned out, my golden age worked wonderfully. It put me on a four-turn research pace, and I focused my production on the universities and banks I'd just learned how to build to keep me there. That was a somewhat odd strategy since at the same time, a force of knights upgraded from war chariots and longbowmen upgraded from my old archers was attacking Greece. (Guess what wonder I'd completed four turns before Sistine.) But I figured getting to cavalry sooner was worth letting my attack stall after capturing only a few cities. (Those Greek hoplites are nasty!)

I didn't attack again until I had a significant force of cavalry, but when I did, I chewed through the Greek defenders with little effort. Greece's posession of its southern island drew out the battle a bit, but landings using a rush-built galleon (since I hadn't thought to preposition other ships in the area) finished the job around 1080.

Then as soon as I got my forces repositioned, I launched an invasion of Persia. (The fact that one of my cities actually controlled two tiles across the water on Persia's continent was a big help in giving me the first strike.) I only had about twenty-one cavalry units and a single elite knight unit to use in the invasion, and I was too busy building factories to build much in the way of reinforcements. But that didn't matter, since even Persia's musketmen had little success in actually killing my troops. I did get a bit of a shock when I got Persia down to two island cities and they refused to surrender their one-tile island to me. I ended up having to rush-build another galleon to take their capital island in a timely manner (only fair since they wouldn't give me the other one). But it looks like Persia gets to live through the rest of the game.

One of my galleys sacrificed itself around 130 AD to give me contact with the far continent (after one of the toughest searches I've ever faced), but I've guarded contact information jealously all game. I had a close call a few turns ago when an Iroquois galley almost met a Persian one, but a rush-built ironclad sunk Persia's hopes of foreign contact quite literally. Why did I care so much? Because Persia has banking and the overseas civs didn't.

The Iroquois, Aztecs, and Americans are still three techs away from the Industrial age (even assuming they don't take any more detours), and I now have enough factories and railroads to churn out cavalry like crazy. I have five galleons a couple turns or so away from being ready to load up and head for Iroquois territory, so with any luck at all, I'll be able to finish the game without having to face whatever nasty surprises Alexman might have lined up for the latter part of the game. (Not that I'd heard Theseus's warning at the time I decided on this strategy.)

Nathan

[alexman]

Well played, Nathan. I won't say anything about late-game surprises , but you can't beat the boost from a peacetime Medieval Golden Age. Early enough to make a difference, late enough so you can take full advantage of it.

My OCC GA came when I completed the Great Wall, one turn after Rome declared war. That was enough to raise the size-12 city's production to over 30 shields per turn. One swordsman per turn in 270 B.C. is quite poweful! 20 turns later, after my aliance with Alex expired and I had already razed two of their cities, Rome came begging for peace.

[Theseus]

Great game, Nathan... you've been much more aggressive than I, with all of my wars thus far restricted to Rome (long gone... made them respawn in the jungle!) and Greece (eviscerated, but still around).

Actually, I left some of Greece remaining on purpose:

1. I was getting overstretched, but had taken Athens and Sparta.

2. I got a final GL from defending Athens (from a Cav, no less!), and built a new Palace in Sparta. I wanted to see if it would work for CF... and it did!

3. I had a need for extortion.

Not attacking off-continent is dangerous, I know, given the success of some of the other AI civs.

I'm focused, however, and having the mack daddy GA of all time, at which point I will teach Persia a thing or two, and then cripple the rest (at least that's the plan).

Given that I'm playing the Mod version, I want to check out some of the later tweaks. I g-ddamn missed Longevity!

[vulture]

Well, my game is finished, so here's the AAR. If you haven't reached the modern age you might prefer not to read, as there are a few minor spoilers for the late game.

Standard bic, Monarch level.

However evil Alexman may be, at least he gave us a beautiful start position for Thebes. Built where we started, start off building warriors are researching alphabet at min science. Worker wanders off to improve the land NW of the capital. I figure that our neighbours are going to be south of us most probably, so I want to build a road that way for my armies ASAP, but improving a few tiles for Thebes obviously takes priotity. I produce 3 warriors before starting on a settler.

3250 BC, see a red border, which given the culturally linked start positions is a dead cert. to be the Romans. Also find my first (and only) goody hut - which gives me a map of the region amounting to a whole 1 square that I hadn't already explored. Bah. 3200 BC I connect furs to Thebes, make contact with the Romans, and start a road south to Rome. Get two techs and a worker for two techs and some cash. Now I've got Rome's worker they're pretty much out of the game Current defence of Rome is 1 archer and 1 warrior. I plan an early strike.

My second city is built between the two forests of fur near Rome, and both cities are now building archers . Cleo doesn't like Romans...

The road to Rome is finished in 2590 BC. The old saying that all roads lead to Rome is true, if only for a while. Renegotiate peace with Rome and extort 80 gold. Rome has the alphabet. Cleo makes a risky decision to break the peace treaty immediately after signing it. The Romans will certainly respawn, further away (nearer any other civs on our land mass) and with more units than currently, but on the other hand we don't want to be hemmed in here. So two archers and two warrios test the 'all roads...' proposition, and find that they indeed get to Rome. Not wishing to be thought barbarians, they knock on the gate before pillaging the city. Just in time, as there was a settler about to leave the city. Ah well, we can always put them to some use in the fields.

Ceasar runs away, but manages to convince some gullible tribes in the jungles to follow him. Foolishly the give him all their gold and form armies for him. Sensibly, he makes peace with us for all that gold and iron working. His new subjects suspect they've been fleeced.

I imagine most people whacked Rome pretty early, and like me were pleased to discover that they did it before Rome managed to build an legions, since it was sitting on top of an iron-laden hill. In retrospect my archers were quite lucky to take out the spearman defending the city.

Unfortunately word of my treachery spread far and wide when the Romans met the Greeks. But can we take out the Greeks as well as the Romans before the rest of the world hears about it? Anyway, after a brief interlude to stock up on archers, we attack the two Roman cities in the jungle. The decision not to buld war chariots was the right one, given how much jungle there is here. They would have been entirely useless, except for later upgrades.

Meanwhile Thebes has started building the pyramids. Normally I'd go for the Colossus, but decided to see how far I could get with the pyramids, and possibly use it as a great library pre-build. As it happens, the Colossus is built in 1225 BC, which is something of surprise given how the AIs usually ignore it to death. We meet Persia in 1100 BC, waving at each other across the straights of Alexandria. Decide to sell them contact with the other civs, despite the bad reputation that I'm spreading around. A few years later the reputation of the Egyptians gets worse when we extort a total of 100 gold from Greece and Persia in peace re-negotiations, and then start a third war with Rome to finish them off. Cleo is rumored to be upset that no-one likes her.

Somewhere in the middle of this, we finish the pyramids and launch our golden age. I decided to go for the earlyish golden age this time because I had two other wonders under construction and wanted to speed up my library building and research. Persia struck a cruel blow by grabbing the lighthouse the next turn in a wonder-cascade, leaving us with the just library under construction, which we eventually got. During the golden age we finished researching currency, and start building marketplaces. Also, the first harbour was built and a luxury trade with Persia was established.

The golden age finished in 250 BC. In 220 BC we finished researching the republic, and changed government. Thanks to the marketplaces and libraries built in the GA, we were able to research tech faster than in despotism while still having a better income per turn. So that was the main benefit of my early GA - it enabled me to get enough infrastructure in place to let me change to Republic as soon as I researched it, which isn't always the case. We quickly researched construction and jumped straight into the medieval era.

Ah, those were glorious years. The advtanage of being in a Republic, combined the with tech lead from the GA meant that we were a few techs ahead and gaining on the immediate competition. This enabled us to get Sistine, Sun Tzu and Leos in fairly rapid sucession. Most of these wonders were being build in Thebes, which was acquiring culture at a good rate.

Expansion has slowed down after the Romans were wiped out, since the payoffs for populating the jungle were pretty small, and most of our recent resources had gone into infrastructure in existing cities. We also had a very small military (prompting Xerxes to ask for tribute a few times, but we told him where to go, and he went).

Decided to attacke Greece when I finished Leonardos. I had plenty of cash, and had been waiting to upgrade old units until I got the wonder. So a lot of horsemen suddenly became knights, and off we went. The first war was pretty short, and only gained us three cities, but a lot of gold per turn for the peace treaty. After twenty turns we started up again, pausingly only briefly to bat the Persians over the head when they landed a single immortal in Egypt for a sneak attack. The fools had been in an alliance with us at the time against Greece (well, I formed an alliance once they landed in my territory, since I knew a sneak attack was imminent, and at least I could get them to distract Greece for a while as well). Followed up 10 turns later by a single longbowman. Scary

Upon the Persian betrayal, we made peace with Greece for even more gpt. Predictably enough, at the end of 20 turns there was going to be another war...

1230 AD, an Iroquois galley appears off the Egytian coast. Luckily we are the first one to see it, so we get to make a killing on trading around the new contacts. No chance now of my bad reputation remaining a secret. We get some new luxuries and some new techs (magnetism and physics). Egyptian research had gone the way of bee-lining for military tradition and avoiding education 'cos we had the GL. After the GL went obsolete, we went for Adam Smiths rather than the naval techs. Net result was that Egypt was more advanced, but the others had some new techs. Got both of their techs without giving away any of mine

For the late medieval wonders, we managed to get Bach's and Adam Smith's, missed out on Magellan by 3 turns, got Newtons, and then missed Shakespeare's by 1 turn. Thebes was a cultural power house, but I was still annoyed to miss Shakespeare's there. The tech race was getting a bit close, and we didn't have a FP that would double our output, so that was one of the motivations for the third Greek war. Poor Cleo was having dreams every night about some great hero who would build her a summer palace in Athens. A couple of heroic types who would conquer Athens first would also have been nice. So the cavalry invasion of Greece began (again).

Around this time we hit the industrial age, just in time for the failed attempt to build Shakespeare's to turn in to the iron works. Alexman is obviously not entirely evil, since he set us up with two ironworks cities, and Thebes was already a production monster. With the iron works, Thebes had 65 production, pre-industrialisation.

By 1415 Greece was destroyed, and despite many elite victories, no leader had emerged. The forbidden palace was being built the hard way in Athens. We had another stroke of luck here - the one city on the southen island that we captured was the one with oil, and was our only source of oil. Before too long, 10 infantry were stationed there. Universal Suffrage, TOE and Hoover Dam followed in rapid succession as we began to stretch the tech lead again despite the lack of FP. Upon the discover of refining (and the realisation that we were very fortunate to have any oil at all) we noticed the small island up north, 1 tile, and it had oil. Alexman was very evil with the oil. But this little island had one other notable feature - a barbarian camp which had had two uprisings and no-where to go. Faced with a source of oil defended by 16 conscript horsemen and two warriors, we detoured in the tech race to get marines. Two transports loaded up with marines and one settler then engaged in the great barbarian hunting season of 1550-1555. Eventually a city was founded there, and a new source of oil acquired, much to Cleo's relief.

In 1500 the great Aztec war began, with everyone aside from Egypt fighting the Aztecs. We preferred to remain aloof and collect our 450 gpt from various deals, and sit with our science at 100% and still make a profit. But eventually, when the Aztecs refused to sell us their spices for any price, we decided that something had to be done. Those 15 marines came out of retirement and cruised over to see what Teotihuacan looked like. It looked like a mess frankly, so in 1725 we moved in and tidied the place up a bit. And built an airport to airlift a lot of tanks in to the country. The Aztecs were beginning to collapse at this point.

1752 saw the worlds first tank action, as our armoured division stormed another Aztec town. 1754 saw the opening of the UN. The rest of the world was wisely impressed with what they saw of Egyptian progress, and voted Cleo the head of the UN, despite her abysmal record of being an untrustworthy swine. We can only assume that they understood the point of the tank demonstration. Oh, and the only other candidate, Xerxes, had been even more of a SOB to everyone.

So, a diplomatic win in 1754, netting 3284 points. Thebes was quite an impressive city at the time with 154 shield per turn (with factory, iron works, hoover dam), 79 culture per turn and 11,280 culture amassed in total. It would have hit 20,000 long before the end date. Meanwhile, Athens only had another 29 turns to go to finish the FP...

But the point of this game is the GA. Although the tech lead I gained had petered out by the start of the industrial era, the GA boost did enable me to get nearly all the middle ages wonders, mostly in the same city. And it set me up nicely for the transition to a republic. Having seen the tech rate of the other continent, I'd guess that I wouldn't have got all three early medieval wonders without the GA when it happened. A later trigger would have probably meant I missed out on Sun Tzu or Leos.

Tired. Going to bed. Maybe more thinking tomorrow. Ug.

[Theseus]

vulture, gotta read your post later...

HAHAHA, the desert gods (SE on the home continent) have blessed me!! "We have discovered a new source of Oil!!"

Master Plan back ON!

[nbarclay]

I'd been wondering whether that one-tile island stuffed full of barbarians might have some, ah, special purpose. Of course if Alexman had been truly evil, he would have reset things so oil couldn't disappear and reappear, thereby preventing the luck of the draw from upsetting his dastardly scheme.

By the way, when I posted earlier, I'd forgotten about a stroke of excellent fortune I got early. While Thebes was working on its granary, my warriors encountered a band of nomads who were impressed enough with the novel idea of "cities" that they decided to join my fledgling "nation". The lack of space for early growth prevented the extra settler from providing the kind of long-term exponential advantage it would have under other conditions, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Nathan

[Theseus]

Yeah, 24 hours of non-oil fear. Plans for Marines in Galleons!!

Thank you desert gods!

[vulture]

Sorry for the long, rambling post before. Here are some marginally more coherent thoughts on the game.

Anyone who didn't beat up the Romans early on will probably be wondering why the hell they are doing so badly, assuming Ceasar left them any towns at all once his legions got going. As has been said many times, when you start next to the Romans, kill them before they get iron working. That's why I was willing to take the penalty for breaking a peace treaty with them, when I had the chance to capture their only town early in the game.

This scenario is quite obviously set up so that you have to go to war quite often to have a chance. And the Egyptian UU is pretty much useless, given the terrain. Once you beat Rome, you still have to live with a pretty small area (apart from sticking towns in all that jungle) unless you are willing to start invading Persia or Greece. And although Alexman was nice enough to give us iron, horses and coal in our starting area, that's pretty much as far as his generosity went. My first war against Greece was to get hold of wines and saltpetre (both in border towns). Rubber could be found in the jungles, which wasn't too bad. Oil? HAH! At least the northern 1 tile island had barbarians on it, so that no-one could use it before marines. I was lucky to have captured the one source of oil on the southern island, which was good since our continent had none whatsoever. Uranium was also in ex-Greek territory. Don't know about aluminium, as I never got as far as researching rocketry. I'd guess that at best, that was in Greek territory too. So if you wanted resources, you had to fight for them.

Wonders: what made all the AI go for the colossus rather than the pyramids? Normally getting the pyramids is next to impossible, while getting the colossus is pretty easy. Not this time. Didn't waste time trying for any ancient wonders after the pyramids apart from the library and the lighthouse. Aside from the other ones not being much use, it is sometimes helpful to gauge where other civs are in the tech race by what wonders are being completed. My GA set me up nicely to grab all the early medieval wonders. I was aiming for a backup plan of a 20,000 culture in one city win, so I gambled on a few of them to try and build them in Thebes. Made an attempt to get Shakespeare's for that purpose, but when I missed it by 1 turn, it became the iron works instead. Greece would also have had a nice iron works city if I hadn't captured it earlier. From the resource distribution, Greece was set up to be a bit of a nightmare. Ancient era, they have the hoplites, so you don't want to tangle with them. And they have all the resources that you don't, so if you leave them alone until the industrial era, they become a fairly big problem, and with some good production cities to boot. So crippling them in the medieval window of opportunity seems to have been advisable.

No great leaders was a pain. Never finishing the forbidden palace was a pain, since it took me until the early industrial era to really start running away from the AIs in the tech race. I compensated as best I could, and sold techs for a lot of gold per turn, so that I could run at 100% science and still collect 100 gold every turn to rush improvements. Never bothered with a huge military buildup, since it was obvious to me that I could win by spaceship far earlier than that, and probably win culturally too. But I saw the opening for a diplomatic win, and drove a bus through it, winning fairly early, although not as early as I could have due to never getting down to the 4 turns/tech stage due to lack of FP.

The AI were pretty evenly balanced (aside from the resource distribution). The other continent stayed completely peaceful until the Aztec was. I started all the wars on my continent. My breaking a peace treaty with the Romans may have helped in the long run; Xerxes obviously figured I was an untrustworthy swine, so he was quite prepared to backstab me. When I saw it coming, I set up a trade for a lot of gpt, and an alliance, so when he succumbed to the inevitable and attacked, his reputation was shot to hell. So because I was bad, he was worse, and we were the only candidates for the UN vote. Greece was the biggest AI power until I attacked them, and after they were gone, Persia took over.

It will be interesting to see how other games went. I suspect that I was quite lucky with a lot of my combat results, and also with innocently capturing resource cities before I knew where the resources were. Given the number of bloodthirsty warmongers here, most games will probably be similar. I guess most builders are going to have had a really bad time of it.

EDIT: additional GA thoughts. A later GA would have bee a mistake for me I think. It might have helped overrun Greece more easily and build a pile of universities, but at the expense of more wonders. Since by the end of the medieval era I knew I wasn't going for one of the military victories, and GA then would have produced nothing that I didn't aleady have. I got all the industrial wonders without any trouble, didn't need any more military, was extending a science lead and could already afford to run at 90% science (or higher). The Ga then might have sped things up, but wouldn't have affected the results in the slightest. Instead, by having a despotic GA just at the end of the ancient era, I gained probably two wonders that would marginal (I'm pretty sure I would have got the Sistine anyway). It may not have been overly impressive in sheilds/gold garnered, but it was enough at the right time to let me switch government possibly 10-20 turns earlier than I would have been able to afford to otherwise. Which is a lot in a close wonder race.

[alexman]

Good game, vulture!

You're right that this game is not builder-friendly if you have a bad rep. Even I had to be somewhat of a warmongerer in my OCC game!

Having said that, I think the value of trade is underestimated in these forums. There were more oil sources than there were civs in this map (and in most generated maps, for that matter). I traded for horses, saltpeter, and rubber in my game, mostly with the Greeks and the Indians.

But I guess the game was not that "standard" after all. Sorry, I couldn't resist!

I won the game by culture in 1810, but I had a blast beating up on the Romans and then the Persians. The Greeks certainly loved me for it, because by the end they were a green monster.

[vulture]

Originally posted by alexman

You're right that this game is not builder-friendly if you have a bad rep. Even I had to be somewhat of a warmongerer in my OCC game!

Having said that, I think the value of trade is underestimated in these forums. There were more oil sources than there were civs in this map (and in most generated maps, for that matter). I traded for horses, saltpeter, and rubber in my game, mostly with the Greeks and the Indians.

The problem with trade is that you are dependent upon the AI connecting up its excess resources (which is a shaky proposition sometimes) and also you are in danger of losing a resource when you most need it (when the civ you were trading with declares war on you - although not too much of a risk if you have been nice to everyone). Plus capturing a resource by war has the double advantage in that, not only do you not give money/luxuries to another civ you also beat them down to make them less of a threat. It's better for you and worse for everyone else, which makes it rather desirable for some victory goals.

IIRC India had a virtual monpoly on oil, aside from a few scattered around on islands. I don't think they ever connected up more than one in my game, although to be fair they had barely got as far as combustion before the end, so they never needed it.

[Konquest02]

I had a most frustating time with this game.

At first, I expanded towards SE because of our map position, but fell on Rome. I immediately switched to swordmen production to wipe them out of this world. I stacked 12 swordmen outside Rome and then attacked. Even though the romans had legions, I got lucky rolls fron the RNG and won pretty easily. I had a more difficult time with some spearmen. I took Rome and Cumae and razed some other cities around. I left Rome with one city in the jungle then made peace. I got 5 techs (gosh I was trailing behind!!!), their map, contact with the Greeks and all their gold. No gpt though... After 20 turns, I decided to finish with them. Meanwhile I had settled in the open so I had no fear of respawning.

I wiped them but then, my computer crashed. (Which happens fairly often... I know... format c:\ !!) Then, I got to sleep. The next day, I had this thought about the starting location. So I loaded the scenario and made the screen shot. But I forgot to turn off the autosave!!!! When I moved my worker around, I accidently overwrited my only saved game!!! So I had to start from the beginning.

That time, I was not as lucky. I got a settler from the goody hut (which is pretty lucky), but when time came to attack Rome, I lost miserably to a couple of spearmen before taking Rome with my entire 10 swordmen. I abandonned the city (fear of flipping back) and founded the new Rome on the ashes of the old one. But I could not expand anymore southward... So I got MapMaking from the Romans in the peace treaty and expanded on the east island, towards the persians.

Thebes is now accumulating a lot of culture, built Sistine, but I want my GA to be triggered by Hoover and therefore, get to tanks much faster than the others. Just after I built the Chapel, university started (2 days ago) and have not played since. I have a couple of screenshots to be posted later.

--Kon--

[Theseus]

Kon, my report might help and give you hope.

I gotta go to bed, and will do my AAR either tomorrow or Friday, but I am tremendously self-satisfied with where I'm leaving off for the night...

I determined to use the GA for a massive, late game military build-up... I triggered it with Hoover, and got to Motor Trans a little short of halfway through.

Holy shields, Batman! A full infrastructure + GA + mobilization + IW + WLTKD + democracy ROCKS!! I think I maxed at 16 cities producing more than 50 shields per turn (meaning, a Tank every 2 turns or less).

The reason I'm so self-satisfied is that I've got the invasion of Persia queued up for the next turn, with 4 major landing zones (including rubber and aluminum denial), and huge amounts of bombardment support (JFs, Bombers, and CMs, not to mention the naval fleet) on two... suffice it to say that, among my total military force (353 units, including only 2 Workers), the attack includes 85 MA... and Xerxes has a grand total of 6 Tanks.

How do you say "buh-bye" in Persian?