AU 206: Gallic Glory - Stories and Strategy Tips

[badams52]

Persia, China...who's next??

Now where was I? Oh yeah, Persia had just declared war on me so I opened up a can of whoop a$$ and destroyed them as fast as my Jaguar Warr-...uh...Gallic Swordsmen would conquer their cities. Once I got them down to 1 coastal in the midst of jungle city, I called 'em up on the phone, uh, I mean I sent an advisor to their last city and said I'll give you peace for your map and the knowledge of construction, they agreed, and we won't hear much from the Persians for a while.

[badams52]

Then I went into a quick peace mode before Rome dialed us up and said, give us literature or give us death. We said, "death." Since India was between us, we spent a tech and gold to have India enter an alliance with us to destroy...uh...get destroyed by the Romans while we sat on our haunches and watched. We kept a close watch and saw that China was settling the isle to the west and getting close to hooking up their closest iron.

Meanwhile, word got around that America grabbed the GL, France the Great Lighthouse (GL ) and Russia nabbed the Oracle. We ponder for a moment wondering where these societies might be then forget about it and tell China, "okay, you've settled enough cities, time for me to take back the land I loaned ya."

We quickly take China's cities off their hands, veteran GS vs. regular spearmen = no contest and we now own the Pyramids After releiving China from ruling our cities, we sue for peace and just look at the deal they give us leaving China with just one city on the island they settled for us

And finally near the end of the war one of our 10+ elites finally breaks through and creates our first leader. Though feudalism = sun tzu's was just a few turn away from being known, and though our Palace and FP are very, very close together, I don't see a great new spot for the palace so it was GS Army time

Meanwhile, Rome is still fighting India! We had hoped that India would have signed a peace deal with Rome after we nulled our alliance, but Rome just kept coming. I guess it's time to use our newly created Gallic army and take some territory from the Indians before it's all gone.


And if you look closely, you can see how close our suicide galley was to finding another continent!

And it's only 410 AD!

[Catt]

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

RE:Attitude Hits and Auto-Razing

I'm not convinced that there is any attitude or reputation hit associated with an auto-raze (other than any hit related to warfare in general). I've never seen a Firaxis statement that auto-razing causes a disproportionate hit, and I see nothing in Bamspeedy's tests to indicate that there is a "razing hit" (though I'd love the link to Bamspeedy's view that Firaxis said a hit comes about on an auto-raze). The only Firaxis comment on "razing" ingeneral that I have seen is that using the "abandon city" command is equivalent to razing an enemy city if the abandoned city had more foreign nationals than native citizens. I'd love to be corrected, though!

Catt

[badams52]

Well Catt,

If I had PTW, I'd test it for you. Maybe someone else here who has debug would be willing to give it a test.

[Jawa Jocky]

Critical Errors of the Celtic People

They tried to REX w/o granaries. Growth was too slow and all of the cities where small. The Iron city was going to be a settler pump, but they needed to have one a lot earlier.

They committed the Celts to GS upgrades then built an expensive veteran warrior army. They should have built a bunch of archers instead. When upgrading became available they had little gold saved.

They left the Southern flank exposed. They invited the Persians to come over.

[nbarclay]

My plans for an Arrian Deception proved not to be necessary after all. Just as I was preparing to launch a war on Persia in violation of treaty, Persia decided to move into my lands and declare war rather than leave. Xerxes' brand-new pikemen proved to be insufficient defense against my thirty-eight Gallic swordsmen, and he is now living in exile on an island he shares with some Roman cities and some cities I acquired through peace negotiations with India and Persia. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a leader from that conflict.

By the time that war ended, my peace treaty with India was approaching expiration. India's three cities on the mainland fell in short order, getting me my third leader and my forbidden palace (rushed in an Indian city a little southeast of my capital). Eventually, I'm planning to move my palace to the other continent. Ghandi is now living in exile on another island, with Rome as his neighbor.

In the meantime, the Celtic Galley Corps was hard at work trying to find other lands. I lost about four galleys doing it, but I finally got through to France in 420 AD. The tech levels on the two continents were extremely similar, but with Rome in Monarchy and America and Russia in Republic (and me owning the Great Library), I now have a one-tech lead on Rome without having done any of my own research in centuries. That leaves me with over 1600 gold for future upgrades in spite of having rushed a small number of courthouses.

Here's a current map as of 460 AD. Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case in zoom mode, not all of the city names are showing.

Edit: Rome has one city on my side of the chokepoint connecting Roman lands with the rest of the continent. Everything north of that on the continent is mine.

Nathan

[Catt]

Originally posted by Catt
I'm not convinced that there is any attitude or reputation hit associated with an auto-raze (other than any hit related to warfare in general). I've never seen a Firaxis statement that auto-razing causes a disproportionate hit, and I see nothing in Bamspeedy's tests to indicate that there is a "razing hit" (though I'd love the link to Bamspeedy's view that Firaxis said a hit comes about on an auto-raze).

Originally posted by badams52
If I had PTW, I'd test it for you. Maybe someone else here who has debug would be willing to give it a test.

I tested it myself this morning. One very brief test, so I can't call it conclusive.

Sure looks to me like auto-razing results in an attitude hit just as if you affirmatively decided to raze. I tested this by comparing enemy and netural civ attitudes in three diffeent circumstances: (1) 5-turn war with an autoraze; (2) 5-turn war with a city capture (no raze); and (3) 5-turn war with a deliberate raze (not an auto-raze). The auto-raze and deliberate raze games resulted in more or less identical attitude adjustments. The capture game resulted in significantly less attitude deterioration in the enemy (and the slight [-1] improvement in neutral civ attitude). Absent compelling evidence that reputation is treated differently (i.e., difference in degree of rep hit if deliberate raze or auto-raze), I'd guess auto-razing is treated just like razing for purposes of reputation as well (assuming that there is actually a discrete reputation effect wrt razing).

Firaxis has been pretty good, not great, about how reputation and attitude are handled -- i.e., for the most part, effects on player attitudinal and reputational standing are largely within control of the player. Not in this case and that is At least the attitude hit among all but the "razee" civs is very minor . . . still The player really shouldn't be so disadvantaged by a "feature" that requires an auto-raze without player input.

Catt

[badams52]

Actually, now that I think of it, taking a rep hit for autoraze isn't that bad, though it's not very logical. Let me explain.

Usually you autoraze a city during the early expansion and early war phase of the game. It is quite notable that you will get a huge advantage later in the game if you conquer early. So having less than happy rival civs is fair retribution for your early conquering days. Besides, there's always the Arrian deception

Though my guess is, when the patch came out that made auroraze happen, they didn' t have a way in the code to distinguish between autoraze and raze, thus a rep hit.

[Catt]

Originally posted by badams52
Actually, now that I think of it, taking a rep hit for autoraze isn't that bad, though it's not very logical. Let me explain.

Usually you autoraze a city during the early expansion and early war phase of the game. It is quite notable that you will get a huge advantage later in the game if you conquer early. So having less than happy rival civs is fair retribution for your early conquering days. Besides, there's always the Arrian deception

Except that worrying about attitude (as opposed to rep) should be so very far down one's worry list, that I can't imagine foregoing early conquest where it makes sense out of fear for one's attitude standing. The implementation simply means attitude should be pushed still farther down the list of worries, making it darn near irrelevant (at least to those who haven't already concluded that it is irrelevant ).

Though my guess is, when the patch came out that made auroraze happen, they didn' t have a way in the code to distinguish between autoraze and raze, thus a rep hit.

I'd go with that guess as well. When I wrote my post, I couldn't remember for certain whether or not "auto-raze" had been implemented in a patch -- I thought it had bt wasn't certain. I would have added to my rant against this implementation had I been certain that it only came into play somewhere along the line of patching.

First there was no auto-raze; then there was auto-raze if size 1 and no border expansion; now (PTW - can't remember about v1.29) there is auto-raze if size 1 and no culture at all (regardless of border expansion has occured). Either all these changes regarding auto-razing are coming about by accident ( ), or the Firaxis team mst be convinced that they are addressing game balance issues somehow.

Catt

[Artifex]

I forgot ..does razing a city hurt your reputation in the world? If so do you all raze or not?

[Chemical Ollie]

Gallic Swordsmen frenzy! At the end of the war, I had 3 armies with 4 GS each.

[nbarclay]

I'm not sure I've ever deliberately razed a city. But my reasons are at least as much along the lines of, "I'm conquering these people so I can build up their cities as part of my empire, not so I can destroy their cities," as they are a matter of any cold, cynical calculation of which will serve my purposes better in the game. (Although I do like the idea of taking over cities with population and non-cultural improvements intact so I don't have to worry about building settlers and then building up the cities myself.)

[Chemical Ollie]

Monarch level is more beatable.

Rome declared war. I made an alliance and RoP with India to keep the busy while finishing off the last of Persia. Persepolis held Pyramids and Lighthouse, which proved to be useful later.

I sent a SOD with 2 Gallic Swordsmen armies plus 20 more of them through Indian territory to attack Rome. I came just in time to see the Romans capture an Indian city, which of course became mine in the next turn, and stayed mine for the rest of the game.

After sending replacement troops, I mopped up and blocked Rome behind their chokepoint. Just to make sure, I built a city on each side of the chokepoint to secure my bridghead. They were now willing to make peace.

Time to install republic and start building some peaceful city improvements after ages of war. I also sent a galley over the ocean. With the Lighthouse captured from Persia, it sailed right into Paris. I was about half an age behind the others in tech and had nothing to trade (except contact with Rome, which I wanted to keep for myself). I choosed to set my own research pattern strait to military tradition. Chemistry was the nutcracker that made them want to give me other tech and nice GPT deals.

Instead of researching physics asap, I started to save gold to upgrade all my troops and rush improvents. India made a very ill-timed move and declared war right after my unit upgrades were complete. They were toast in perhaps 10 turns. Gallic Swordsmen were still useful aginst their war elephants, even if cavallery of course were better. Rome joined the Indian side, so now I have a chance to make the whole continent mine.



I hold everything down to the chokepoint connecting Rome, and I just pillaged Rome's only horse tile.

[Arrian]

*yawn* Hey all.

Without doing the testing Catt has done, I'm almost positive that autoraze lowers the AI's attitude toward you. I agree that's a bit off, and would be pleased if it were fixed somehow.

I didn't end up playing any civ this weekend. Lots of skiing and driving. Soooo sleeeepy.

I hope to complete the conquest of mainland Rome tonight, and make the switch to republic.

-Arrian

[Nor Me]

Not much to say really. I decided archer rushing was unnecessarily risky when I could REX . I should probably have archer rushed China but at that stage did not know that there was no land bridge connecting them to Persia. I researched pottery, did a bit of trading and waited for a 40-turn Iron Working. I was a bit worried about the vulnerability of the nearest source of iron.
Once I'd secured that, it was just a question of upgrading some warriors and attacking. Like almost everyone else I did not Ralph. Like badams52, I used a more pragmatic OCP+camp. I don't think I ever had more than half camps so I had the same density as most 3-tilers.