AU 105: The Power of Gold: Spoilers

[Killerdaffy]

2430BC: I don't believe it! The "Lucky Bastards" generated a GL in their first fight as Elites!!! But what now? The FP is not yet available, the Pyramids (my usual choice) would trigger an immediate GA and the Colossus I can build without Ramses' help. An army it is, I guess.

2390BC: Forget it, I'm not militaristic and can't even use my chariots if I want to hold off the GA. I built the Colossus, and I'll make Thebes into a Super Science City.

1910BC: Oh ****, the first Legion coming out of Rome. Where did they get iron that quickly?!? (Edit: I totally forgot about the Iron at that point, only rediscovered it later.)

1650BC: Finally captured Rome, made peace for Iron Working immediately afterwards. The Iron in Theben is a nice touch, should there be some coal as well??

190BC: Looks like I'm lucky today: Another Elite fight (my third overall) gives me my second leader BC... Here comes my FP!

150BC: Wow, the Romans made contact with everybody else... I make peace for nearly all contacts. (Edit: Turns out later that they had met the Iroquois, who got the Lighthouse 7 turns before me. They manage to sneak three cities into the jungle)

190AD: Doh!!! Built the Hanging Gardens, not paying attention. (I had changed from the abortive Lighthouse...) Triggered GA, not the worst timing, though, just before Medieval and in Republic.

[Killerdaffy]

540AD: Attack on Greece with about 30 War Chariots and 5 Horseman being converted into Knights. I opted for rolling conversion since I didn't have enough money to do it all at once and didn't want to give the time to Greece to expand any further. The missed Lighthouse hurts - I have three Iroquois cities on my continent and can't even sail back to attack them.

730AD: The knights cut through the Greek troops like a hot sword through butter. Alex is toast, the peace treaty left him three cities, all on the southern island (I got three cities there in the peace treaty). I'm going after Persia now, even though my knights wont like his musketmen. I hope I can cut off his saltpeter before he builds to many of them.

790AD: Those Persians sure had advanced technology - already some musketmen on the scene. But without iron or saltpeter that wont last long. HEHEHE!

[Killerdaffy]

950AD: 3 Leaders in 2 turns. JS Cathedral, Army (Heroic Epic built immediately from pre-build), Smith's Trading Company. The one before went to move my palace to Athens. The others were Colossus and FP. And another one, same turn. I'm running out of wonders to build...

960AD: Ended the Persian Wars with 5!! Leaders (one in reserve) and took all his resources.

1020AD: The Iroquois are about to sneak attack me with a single Longbow. Of course all my troops are off fighting in Persia... Well, if they want war, they can have it.

[Killerdaffy]

1160AD Killed Caesar because my troops were waiting for transport to the big continent. No foreign cities on my continent left.

1285AD: Three wonders in one turn: Ironworks in Theben, Universal Suffrage (by GL) and Newton's. I'm at war with everybody and doing good. War weariness is building up, though, even in Republic.

1295AD: Bye, bye Xerxes - and got another GL in the process. No. 10 so far. Colossus, FP, Palace Jump, JSC, Army, Smith, Magellan??, Army, Universal Suffrage, Army

1340AD: I took most of the second continent, killed the Americans on the way. My landing strategy wasn't really a strategy at all. I just put all my cavalry into galleons and landed them in packs of four all over the place, preferably on hills or mountains. It's not as deadly as a coordinated assoult but my troops were spread out all over two continents after the Persian war and the Iro sneak attack and it would have taken too long to get all of them together. It worked pretty well since there was no real resistance (I captured all remaining saltpeter within the first two turns). Only India was lucky to have two or three cavalries, which was enough to repel two two-galleon attack waves. Otherwise I would have played for conquest.

[Killerdaffy]

1355AD: Killed the Iroquois and took Technochtilan in the same turn. Losses are mounting, though since Montezuma finally discovered Nationalism. I'm researching Electricity and trying for domination victory, since I don't care for taking India with cavalry and tanks would still take quite a while. Also made peace with the Aztechs, since I need some rebuilding and infrastructure before killing them.

1360AD: Domination Victory... Quicker than I thought, actually... 4715 points, not bad, even though conquest would probably have given a bit more.

Analysis: My game was actually quite similar to nbarclay's. I got lucky with the two early leaders but otherwise nothing special.

The GA was unintended but a perfect timing: The resulting 30 war chariots converted to knights totally blew Alexander away and I never went to peace afterwards. The cheap knight pre-built is a HUGE bonus for Egypt in a GA, since nearly every city can build a chariot every turn or two. And once I started rolling and had all saltpeter (except for the Indian one) the game was essentially over. On wonders I lost the Pyramids, Oracle, Lighthouse, Sun Tzu, Copernicus (all captured later) and Shakespear's (because I was too lazy to build it) so that was pretty decent as well.

The game was the most fun af all AU games so far, even though I don't really know what made it so different. Thanks to alexman for his master plan!!

[Theseus]

Well done! You and Nathan have been by far the most aggressive with Knight / Cav warfare... it's really unstoppable if you totally commit. Great GL generation, too.

I agree, this one was much fun.

[Keeper of Hell]

I lost. Basically, I took a little bit (Veii and Rome) of the Romans as soon as I got Knights, then went stagnant. Later, the top-ranked Greeks declared on Rome, took basically all of their territory left over except for Cumae, which I grabbed, and Lugdunum, which was a one-tile island. I managed to get a pretty good tech lead going, got to Motorized Transportation before anyone else had Electronics or Mass Production, but was thwarted by the complete lack of oil. Rome was stuck in the middle ages, so there was no way they were getting any oil. (I checked under Lugdunum- nothing.) One oil was locked up on a one-tile tundra island with a barbarian encampment on top. Something apparently got screwed up, though, because there still should have been at least one sources for every civ. None of the other civs had a spare oil, so I was unable to build Transports in order to take my Marines and grab the island oil. Your standard Catch-22: No extra oil, no way to get oil without a unit that requires (you guessed it) oil. After I fended off pathetic cavalry/infantry assualts by the mediocre Persians and the mighty Greeks, I realized there was no way I was going to get anywhere without oil and quit. *Very* frustrating.

Edit: It occurs to me that I ought to at least mention the GA. Complete accident- I had completed the Oracle towards the beginning, intending to perhaps construct the Hanging Gardens later on and trigger a production frenzy of Knights, but the Iroquois grabbed it before I even had the tech. Then, for a long while, I completely forgot about it, until I constructed Hoover Dam in Thebes and suddenly triggered the GA- at the worst possible time. I was on a complete plateau, no way to expand without Tanks, no real need for increased production, as I only had about 10 cities. It made absolutely no impact on the outcome of the game.

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Theseus
Well done! You and Nathan have been by far the most aggressive with Knight / Cav warfare... it's really unstoppable if you totally commit. Great GL generation, too.

Thanks! Yeah, I got lucky on the GLs, especially compared to e.g. vulture.

This was actually the first time ever that I used large amounts of unit pre-builds - specifically the War Chariots. This strategy would be another reason to play Egypt, since they don't have to hold off from researching Horse Riding to do it. Any civ civ can do it for a horsemen/cavalry conversion, though, by disconnecting their iron (if you don't have too many and don't need it urgently to build something else).

[CorpusScorpius]

I am a long time reader (infrequent poster) but , I decided to play AU 105 OCC (regent) to see if I could come close to Catt's accomplishment . Cleo did win a cultural victory, However my score is an Exceptional display of the need to practice a heck of alot more . I dont recall hitting a golden age & I was unable to build IW due to my iron source petering out before Feudalism . I decided to play the game out to see if I could salvage a victory . Oh yeah , in the late 1960's early 70's, cultural victory was achieved ......drum roll please...... my final score was in the 400's.

[vmxa1]

Well 400 is better than being eliminated, so congrats.
KillerDaffy, thanks for the story, well done.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Keeper of Hell
None of the other civs had a spare oil, so I was unable to build Transports in order to take my Marines and grab the island oil.

You should have used galleons. Granted, you can't fit as many units in each one, but three or four of them could have fit enough marines to do the job (at least eventually). And the galleons could be upgraded to transports for later invasions.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Well done! You and Nathan have been by far the most aggressive with Knight / Cav warfare... it's really unstoppable if you totally commit. Great GL generation, too.

Actually, I was nowhere near totally committed to cavalry production. Basically, what I did, I did with "spare" production when cities didn't have anything better to build. I was actually far enough ahead in tech that I could afford to do that. (The fact that I was playing standard rules instead of using the mod almost certainly helped, but on the other hand, I had nowhere near Killerdaffy's luck with leaders.)

The good part regarding my lack of total commitment to cavalry production was that especially once the Hoover Dam went into operation, my factories gave me an excellent production rate. And believe it or not, at the time my cavalry acheived domination, I was within about 12-15 turns of being able to build tanks! Using my golden age to build banks and universities left me in a position of being able to play builder and warmonger at the same time.

Nathan

P.S. When's the next game?

[Keeper of Hell]

Originally posted by nbarclay


You should have used galleons. Granted, you can't fit as many units in each one, but three or four of them could have fit enough marines to do the job (at least eventually). And the galleons could be upgraded to transports for later invasions.

Nathan

Marines can only do amphibious assaults when they're attacking from Transports (the unit that becomes available with Mass Production and requires oil), or at least that's what it says in the Civilopedia. I never actually checked it myself- can they attack from ship to shore regardless of vessel? On another note, I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times defenders for very few shields) being on the same continent. Greece declared war on me very early and got Rome to sign a military alliance, which completely stunted my growth as I had no chance of making any cities beyond a very small radius of my original core.

Edit: Just tested amphibious assault, and whaddya know, it worked! Galleons away, then. Time to show those Greeks what Egpytian Tanks are made of... oil.

[BillChin]

> I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece
> and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times
> defenders for very few shields) being on the same
> continent.

I used my standard Swordsmen Conquest opening. (Basic outline is to build four cities, bunches of warriors, then hook up iron, upgrade and attack). With the great starting location, a very early granary, a city built on top of the gold hill for extra research, I am able to launch my attack around 1200 B. C.

Rome never had a realistic chance against 10 attacking swordsmen so early (on Emperor level or below). On Deity, they might have withstood the charge.

Greece was a bit harder as they expand large, but they are my third war. Greece declares war on me after I had invaded and crushed Persia. Once Knights come on line, with a Golden Age filling my sails, I upgrade enough units to Knights to crush the Greeks. A knight blitz, if executed well, will win virtually every start on Emperor and below.
- Bill

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Keeper of Hell


On another note, I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times defenders for very few shields) being on the same continent. Greece declared war on me very early and got Rome to sign a military alliance, which completely stunted my growth as I had no chance of making any cities beyond a very small radius of my original core.

Rome: Well, I tried a *really* stupid assault with one archer, after that one failed I just killed all their expeditionary forces that came my way. When I had 3 or 4 archers I attacked Rome, only to be counterattacked by a Legion. I was shocked but it was Caesar's only one and he never recovered from the fall of Rome.

I didn't start doing anything about the Greeks until I had a road all the way through the jungle so my reinforcements could get through. And then it was just a matter of running over them with the ~35 knights that I had after the conversion of my GA produced War Chariots. That kind of ruined his day, I guess He even gave me half of the cities on the southern island in the peace treaty so I didn't have to make a forced landing.

As to "totally committed": Building 30 War Chariots (20 shields) in a GA isn't all that hard and I hardly lost anything vs. the Greeks, so I never really had to replace anything. Same for the cavalry vs. musket/spearmen later. The only time I took serious losses was vs. the Persian muskets. So my infrastructure was quite ok, even late in the game. The technical superiority / resource denial just carried the day.