AU 206: Gallic Glory - Stories and Strategy Tips

[badams52]

Second try (now that I have warriors)

Okay, of course I tried again this time with the necessary warriors. My exploration with warriors was pretty much the same but now I got to use 3 warrior scouts instead of just 2 archer scouts.

BTW am I the only one ralphing here, or trying a close proximation of it? I use my version which has less camp cities than the true ralphing technique and I build the permanent cities 2nd and 3rd instead of maybe 7th and 8th.

I found the Chinese first, then Indians and like the rest of you, started building cities north west to the Chinese, the less prosperous south east would have to wait. My zero tech eventually got me to the point of trading tech with the Chinese and Indians netting me writing and finding out no one else knew of the other civs. very interesing. Soon after my scouts found the Persians...more tech trading and bartering including selling contact. Hey, they're going to find each other eventually since were all on the same continent, so I might as well get something for my troubles.

Kept exploring and found the Romans before everyone else who are way behind in tech (were the Romans or Indians even trying to find each other). So again I tech bargained, map-bargained and contact bargained to net much more gold and almost gave the Romans my map to prevent others from getting stuff from the Romans with their maps and traded the map all around so everyone knew everything else. Gotta stop AI trading

Built up some warriors, found out that the closest iron source (unsettled yet) was near Shanghai and beelined a settler towards the resource. Xinjian was build just before my settler got to his destined spot (1 or 2 tiles NW) so I plopped him where I could. And started building warriors.

My troops were stationed near the Chinese borders, and was hoping for a Jaguar Warrior (GS) buyout to rush the Chinese with overwhelming force. Had just upgraded 8 (at 640 gold!!!) preparing to rush the close Chinese cities when Persia comes calling asking for tribute. I tell him to blow your demand out your ear and boom, WAR.

I'm thinking, "Are you nuts??? I just upgraded 8 warriors to GS and I'm gonna whip your a$$." And procede to autoraze the 3 cities Persia settled southernly. Darn autoraze, hurting my rep with the other civs. My 8 GS are heading to central Persia where they will soon be a memory while I try and back fill some of the open land with settlers.

I figure I can either keep China and India around so that I can aquire Chivalry from them easily, or take out China before riders and take the most premium land from them. Right now, China's enjoying my wines, but soon will be fleeing from my steel, uh, iron.

[badams52]

Jawa: tough break. Hope to see you have better luck next attempt.

Olaf: 2 tough games. I'm surprised your city flipped as well seeing that Shanghai flipped to you earlier.

[Dominae]

Re: Second try (now that I have warriors)

Originally posted by badams52
And procede to autoraze the 3 cities Persia settled southernly. Darn autoraze, hurting my rep with the other civs.

Does autoraze hurt your rep.?

[Chemical Ollie]

A couple of adaptive moves helped me stay in the game for a little longer:

1: I didn't know the 1.29 game was on standard rules (as opposed to AU rules) so I had built archers to defend every city. I had found out long ago that the expected auto- bombard against attackers never occured, but I still kept them. I upgraded all of them to longbows and sent them to the front.

2: The razing of Persepolis opened a no-mans-land road to the Persian Iron. Instead of pillaging it, (which I already had done once, but they had reclaimed it), I placed a city on top of it (I named it IRONY) Now I had Iron again and could upgrade all my horsies to knights. The Persian homeland was finally mine! I got their saltpeter city and a few techs in the peace treaty. And I got a great leader (the 2nd) to rebuild my forbidden palace, this time on the Indian border.

So far so good. I switched to republic and started to build the civilian improvements of my cities, a thing that had been neglected during the long war. I traded lux and tech with most of the others and started to upgrade to musketmen and cavallery.

BANG! - Rome attacked like a flash from a blue sky! On the first turn, they pillaged my only saltpeter so that I couldn't build more cavallery. I persuaded India to join my side, as they were between me and Rome, but that only meant that India was signing their own death penalty. The mid-industrial Romans rolled over the middle age Indians like they were not even there. Then it was my turn. I got America to sign a MPP but that was of little help as they were on another continent. When my old friends China joined Rome's side and started to capture cities in my unprotected north, I decided the game was finally over.

I need to be humble enough to choose monarch level on these tournaments. Emperor is just a too big piece to swallow.

It is perhaps a little cheaty to replay the game on a lower level after playing this far, but as I love the Gallic swordsman, I think I will do it.

[Chemical Ollie]

In a strategic situation like this, you don't want to be in war with China and Rome at the same time, especially when they are both half an age ahead of you in tech. I was. Goodnight...

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Is it possible that you're trading away all the ivory that's currently hooked up?

Edit: In case anyone doesn't realize it, if you lose a supply of something due to a culture flip, military loss, etc., you have to honor your trade deals as best you can even if it means doing without yourself. (At least that was how it worked last I noticed.)

You are probably right, but it's too late to check it, as China has captured the city from me.

[Chemical Ollie]

The Gallic Swordsman is AWESOME! I hardly lost a single one when attacking archers, spearmen, immortals, longbows, horsemen or swordsmen in any terrain. I only attacked legions in open ground, so they were no match either. Knights, pikemen and muskets caused some losses when attacking them on tiles with defensive bonus, but I never lost on open ground. I even got lucky quite often when attacking musketmen in size 12 cities!

My conclusion from this first (emulated) PTW game is that nothing can stop a stack of 30 Gallic swordsmen until the emerge of riflemen. Especially if the stack contains 1-3 GS armies as nutcrackers. (Unless the city containing the stack flips, which happened to me).

The GS and the Berserk are reasons enough to buy PTW, even if my principles are against it. Why should Infogrames deserve my money after letting me wait this long? I have placed my preorder on PTW from a local computer retailer. The next info on release is Mar 07! Or I could perhaps download it from a P2P net...

[Chemical Ollie]

I play this a 3rd time, this time on monarch level. Ralph is quickly working his way to knighthood in this game. Built warrior-warrior-barracks-archer-settler in the capitol, sent a warrior south and the archer north. Stumbled upon a Chinese warrior/settler combo, attacked it and won. 2 workers for free ! Then I lost some archers to Chinese and barbarian warriors until I attacked the 2nd Chinese city with 2 archers and won with the 1st. The peace deal was more or less the end of China.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre

It is perhaps a little cheaty to replay the game on a lower level after playing this far, but as I love the Gallic swordsman, I think I will do it.

Since AU is far more about learning than about competition, I see nothing at all wrong with replaying.

[Chemical Ollie]

Monarch game: this is the way to treat China!

Muahahahahaha!

Now I have 40+ Gallic Swordsmen and only one direction to go (south)!

[Chemical Ollie]

40 + Gals rules!

This has just begun - And pikemen will hardly stop me, now that I have 2 GS armies!

[badams52]

Re: Re: Second try (now that I have warriors)

Originally posted by Dominae

Does autoraze hurt your rep.?

According to bamspeedy's AI Attitute article from the CFC site:

I'm sure (but not positive), that auto-razing would have the same effect as choosing the option to raze. Firaxis has stated that you get a rep-hit for the auto-razes, and this is probably why some people can't figure out why everyone is mad at them (because of all those auto-razes early in the game)

Razing apparently hurts +1 for each razed city to every civ and +12 to the civ who owned the city. Hard to make other civs like you after you raze enough cities, eh?

[Dominae]

So it's actually better for your reputation to capture cities with high population, population which you can then lure into the country for endless years of servitude as manual workers, or (worse) whip into a production frenzy so that they complete a project faster?

Sigh.

Auto-razing cities should not hurt your rep, because waiting for the city to get to size 2 beforey you conquer it (so as not to take a rep hit) is just dumb.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae
Auto-razing cities should not hurt your rep, because waiting for the city to get to size 2 beforey you conquer it (so as not to take a rep hit) is just dumb.

What's even dumber is having the player take a rep hit for auto-razing when the only reason the city was auto-razed in the first place was that the AI pop rushed an extra defender. The whole auto-razing system only exists in the first place because capturing cities practically the moment they were settled proved to be too much of an exploit. Shutting down the exploit was reasonable, but penalizing players with a reputation hit for razes that they (1) got no slaves out of and (2) never wanted in the first place is ridiculous.

[badams52]

Originally posted by Dominae
Auto-razing cities should not hurt your rep, because waiting for the city to get to size 2 beforey you conquer it (so as not to take a rep hit) is just dumb.

Yep.