Spoiler Thread for AU 203

[BRC]

Post your AU 203: The Power of Communism stories and spoilers here.

[Bluefrog]

D'oh! Sucks to be Rome. Did you mean to give them such a crappy start?

Or was it meant to see how the AI would react to starting in a desert? If so, it doesn't appear to have done so well.

[BRC]

D'oh! Sucks to be Rome. Did you mean to give them such a crappy start?

Oh no! Not Rome!!

I'm kidding. They were placed there on purpose, and they are serving it.

P.S. Your picture does not show.

[Bluefrog]

Hm. Apparently this page (like many others) doesn't cache geocities pics correctly. The url is http://www.geocities.com/robdalajara/rome.jpg

[EntroPi]

Hmm... I think a solution is to rename the file extension to .txt. This works on other forums... so it should work here too.

[Action]

Since you can't fight the AI you need to lock down enough territory to grow in.

Luckily this map is well suited to do so. Use chokepoints.

EDIT: yeah I know i need to finish off the chokepoints, but you get my drift.

[ZargonX]

Started up the game tonight, and had a most interesting thing happen that I haven't seen before. China was being overtly aggressive (moving units into my territory, etc.), when they demanded tribute of 30 gold and a ter. map. I handed over the items, at which point Mao thanked me. Not 2 seconds after the diplomacy window closed, China declared war on me by attacking one of my cities. Has this ever happened to anyone else?

[jshelr]

I really like the idea for this game.

Not being able to attack calls for a complete rethink of strategy. Germany played this game in the AU mod on Emperor.

I’m open to discussion for sure, but it seemed best to try for high culture, despite being a nonreligious civ, and to finagle to get the Great Library. Bismark managed to reach those two goals and to place cities out as far as the gem lux mountains to the Southwest and just short of the big bed of furs to the Southeast. You can see these positions on the screenshots posted above.

We are cheerfully paying all extortion demands and giving some gifts from time to time while enjoying the respect that comes with having the highest culture reading.

Somewhat on the risky side, we are going to minimize military and go for an extreme builder strategy hoping to be ready to out research everyone on discovery of education. We will try to pick up a happiness wonder along the way.

Thanks for setting up a fun idea. This was the best approach I've seen yet to yanking us out of the early rush strategy.

[jshelr]

The chokepoint strat below the fur bed is an interesting idea. If you can pull it off without Russia eventually attacking, it will be great. Play nice with Russia however you can. As you point out, you need a city on that site asap. Fair warning: someone can galley around you and grab the furs and it could be soon. The upside is that the furs closer to the capital are not going to be worth much for trading if you don't also own this big bed. Good luck.

As for being attacked after paying, that is odd. I don't recall that happening to me.

[BRC]

The chokepoint strat below the fur bed is an interesting idea.

I tried to give you guys a little help with luxuries. If you can expand to the furs and gems, they will definitely help you out. Was anyone not able to expand to there, or were they able to expand further?

[jshelr]

I was busy with the GL and fell short of the furs which did not look as high priority as the tech since there are furs close to home. Getting to the gem mountains will not be difficult for everybody. The furs decision may reflect my normal tendency not to worry about fringe lux since the human player normally gets them via conquest in time for overseas trade. Not so in this game.

[ducki]

I got a settler down by the SW furs, so that chokepoint is taken care of.

I got confused playing Germany and didn't bother with tech-trades as early as I should have.

I've got the SW chokepoint and cities placed vertically from the capitol to the southern sea.

Making nothing but settlers and spearmen from Berlin after the granary(goodie I think, or Russia trade) and barracks was built and just trying to claim as much land as possible.

Hopefully I can push hard enough on the AI to get to fight a few wars without falling behind tech-wise, after the expansion is over.

This is fun!

[jshelr]

bug report: I was unable to build FP in some of my cities (not due to FP being underway elsewhere). This cleared up after 20 turns or so. Any ideas what was going on.

Strat did not work well. AI research was relatively brisk. After GL went obsolete, I was not ready to compete for tech yet. So, we are grubbing along buying tech until the pop is built up some more.

[trickey]

EDIT: Damn, how do i attach a picture, it always says it is too big.

[Bluefrog]

Well, the game is going well (Monarch), but is nearing critical mass...and I'm not near Communism yet.

I was able to pop a settler from my first goodie hut (heck, I only had 2 or 3 huts total) and get things rolling. I was able to expand to those choke points listed above...a little more south on the eastern side of things, actually. I gambled big, forsaking all other techs for Literature. I avoided nearly all tech trades, building up my cash and hoping beyond hope to nab the GLib. Gambit paid off, and it netted me 11 techs the first turn, knocking me to the next era.

Anywho, it seems that there have been two Killer AIs spawned from this game, and I'm in the middle. Wars broke out around me, and due to my central location, I had foreign troops marching over my soil quite often. The English were the first to dieby the Chinese. Russia fell under the might of Xerxes. Rome, who had been hanging on to its only city the whole game (it really would have been nice to see the AI move its initial settler to frtile ground), bought into a military alliance it shouldn't have, and was summarily squashed byt he Persians.

The Aztecs, surprisingly, haven't been part of any wars, and are hopelessly behind in techs. We recently came into contact with the Babs, and while healthy, they aren't near the threat to me as the growing Persians and Chinese are. For a while, they were at war with each other, but due to the long stretch of my land they had to cross, no real damages were taken on either side. I was able to claim some of the land left by Russia, though.

Now, the tech push is coming, and I'm not sure how I'm going to fare. I've managed to avoid war so far, but with these two aggressive civs on each side, I'm not sure how much longer. Might be time to musketize those chokepoints, as it were, heh.

I'm having a ton of fun with this!