AU 206: Gallic Glory - Stories and Strategy Tips

[Arrian]

Game, Set, Match

I bided my time, and eventually the Franco-American MPP lapsed.

The Franco-Gallic MPP, however, was in full effect when my forces landed. I had built a city inbetween a couple of American (Russian, formerly) cities to grab silks, and of course the Amis sent in their Knights... and found themselves at war with the only other civs on the planet.

I made two major landings - one of which netted me another luxury (furs) and the other gave me the foothold I wanted to march on Washington.

As I was bringing my forces into position around Washington in 1610AD, I was informed that I had won, via domination, score 5671! ARG! NO! RELOAD!

Back to 1605. Everthing I could muster was thrown at Washington, and *damn* it was bloody. The final longbowman defender fell to a 1hp Cavalry (the Cav started the battle at 1hp, mind you) and Washington was mine. The Sistine and the final luxury, Gems, were under my control. Now THAT's more like it.

According to the replay, I generated 8 Great Leaders. If Memory serves, 2 were from archers, 1 from a knight, and the rest from Gallics. Gallics do indeed rock

I've attached the 1605AD save (zipped), having just taken Washington. The win comes at end of turn.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by badams52

I sit corrected. I just thought all wonders only affected your continent. I think Sistene's is the only exception.

Only one of the reasons why I love that Wonder.

-Arrian

[Chemical Ollie]

Let's see if Abe will ask me to leave?

[Chemical Ollie]

By the way, playing Rammstein on high volume in 5+1 surround speakers plus a couple of beers inside the shirt add an extra touch to playing on the dark side.

[Chemical Ollie]

Harder than I thought, but anything goes with overwhelming numbers. The recent American discovery of tanks and airplanes makes this even more challenging. I will not support my Gallic Swordsmen with a single modern unit, except using the battleships to keep the oceans "tidy".

A thought enters my mind - Abe just got a message saying: Massive barbarian uprising close to Chicago!

[Arrian]

That's pretty funny, Olaf. How many GS's did you lose taking Chicago?

-Arrian

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Arrian


That's pretty funny, Olaf. How many GS's did you lose taking Chicago?

-Arrian

It really hurts me to tell you! Perhaps 50.. But even harder is the numbers required to keep it. OK I lost perhaps 50 to raze Buffalo too, but now I have a tough time to stay on the American continent. The production of GS is harder than expected. Most towns needs 2-3 turns to produce one, even in modern ages with factories and Hoover. I thought it would take 1. I had to switch to monarchy to avoid war weariness and I also had to mobilize to increase production rate. This is a close call.

Tanks in the open are easy meat, they need only 2-3 GS to end, but each infantry in a city needs at least 10 GS, which makes this really challenging.

[Chemical Ollie]

AAARRGGHHHH!!!!


OK, now I did this unit testing for you all. Conclusion: don't use Gallic Swordsmen in mid-industrial ages or later...

[Chemical Ollie]

What really ended my quest was the emerge of American bombers. They destroyed every improvement I built in Chicago. When I lost the airport, the invasion was doomed, thanks to the American navy that sunk all my transports after the war started. Heavy losses plus the lost ability to send in reinforcements made me feel like Hitler in February 1945.

[Chemical Ollie]

Edit: Drunk post ...

[BigDork]

Originally posted by Arrian
Good luck, BigD, hang in there. Hell, restart and try a new approach. Doesn't matter, it's not a competition.

Excellent idea Arrian...

So I took Arrian's advice and decided to restart. I feel I've learned a lot by struggling through the ancient age and decided to see just how much I learned.

The game started pretty good. By luck one of my scouting warriors happened upon an Indian settler making his way to a new site. Well this was too good a chance to pass up. So I took him out real quick. In my first try I had had a problem where I had a pretty weak military and the other civs were trying and succeeding in bullying me around. Well this time I didn't take any crap. I had already built up a few archers by the time I went to war with India so I rushed them just as fast as they could go down to Delhi. I quickly took Delhi just about the time I got iron hooked up. And what was better is where India got respawned at. They are west of Rome. And what's better is that the iron deposit is in their territory. Meaning Rome doesn't have any iron. This is proving to be invaluable right now and in the near future.

Anyway, I started to build up some GS. Then China did something stupid like try to march a settler across my territory or something. Well I had about 5 or 6 GS so I decided that an early war to teach them a lesson would be a good idea. I managed to auto-raze two cities and capture Beijing. After Beijing fell I went for peace and got a tech and a few workers from the Chinese. Also by this time I had a pretty good worker force going. One of the things that really irked me my last game was the amount of undeveloped tiles I had that were being used by my cities. Well with all the slaves I had captured and the workers I had made I did a nice job finding a good balance.

Well after my quick war with China I started to build up my military some more. Then Xerxes goes and starts making demands. Umm...okay. More than anyone I wanted to punish Persia for last game. They were way too powerful. So I decided to teach them a lesson. In the first Gaelic-Persian war I managed to push them back to the choke point and hold them there. Again, I auto-razed a few cities along the way. Pushing them back I then went for peace and got a pretty good deal from them.

I just kept building up my military. Lots of GS. Not as many as some of you but a lot by my standards. Near the end of the ancient age me and the Persians were at it again. They had landed some settlers by boat on the other side of the choke-point and I really didn't like that. I let it go for a while but they kept expanding and I wasn't having any of that. By now I had kinda slacked off on building GS and was building horsemen in several cities(getting ready for chivalry). But I still had plenty of GS laying around to get the job done. Oh yeah, another reason we went to war was the Persians had just completed the Great Library and Hanging Garden in their capitol. Well I signed a RoP and positioned my GS and few remaining archers in good places. Yeah I know I killed my rep but it was worth it. First turn I had their capitol, pillaged their iron and taken two other cities. But I was afraid of Persepolis flipping back so I ended up having most of my offensive units garrisoned there. That kinda bogged down my war. So I went on the defense for a turn or two and went to peace.

Now the whole time Rome was down in their area building up. But thanks to a strategically placed warrior I managed to keep them bottled in. And also thanks to the Indians I don't have to worry about legions coming for me. Actually I'm surprised that Rome hasn't totally obliviated the Indians by now. Rome has only been in one war. And it was with the Chinese. Since I had blocked off the choke-point all they did was land 1 spearman. Not the AI's best showing. If it had been a human player, India would be dead, Rome would have iron and my 1 warrior would have been dead before 500BC.

Back to the story. Well the race was on. It was me vs. Persia in a race for Sun Tzu. Well, Persia was winning. I decided to let them finish it for me and then go back to war to capture it. Didn't hapen. They had some units in my territory and when I politely(I'm always polite) asked them to leave they declared war on my. Grrrr.... Oh well, their loss. Within 3 turns Persia was no more. But wait, what's this? The SoB's had 1 settler in a galley. Well I go for peace anyway. Whatever. They finally settled on the island to the SW of our start position. Oh well. In the end I managed to build Sun Tzu and finally got a leader. I rushed Leo's Workshop with that leader. Thought about making a army but decided against it. Not sure if it was a good idea or not.

Now it was the Chinese turn. The whole time I was fighting Persia they were attempting to settle new cities in the south. Well I was blocking the settlers with slaves and being a general pain in the @$$ for them. And when my war with Persia was over it was go time. I managed to hit 3 Chinese settlers the first turn of the war. China too feel swiftly. But not to my GS. To my knights. Making all those horsies definatly helped. While it was expensive to upgrade(80gp. I had no idea!). The GS were still part of my offensive however. All that are left are elite and since China has yet to learn the ways of feudalism it worked out nicely. And unlike Persia, China didn't have a settler in reserve. No more China.

And that's where I am. I've been bouncing from civ to civ kicking butt where ever I go. But I've only managed to get 1 leader so far. I always have very poor luck when it comes to leaders. But I'll survive. I probably should have just built Leo's and made an army. Rome is in 2nd place and they just got invention. I have been in monarcy ever since I first got it. I just made the switch to Republic while I build up some. I'm repositioning my forces to hit Rome. Without iron they are just asking to be taken out. Or at least severly reduced in size.

The biggest mistake I made was after I got the GL I slowed down my research thinking to let the AI's do the research for me. Bad idea. Rome was the only one to even be close to me and I was about 3 techs infront of them for a while. I did manage to get Republic however. But now I'm back to researching as quickly as possible. And I have a crap load of money so I guess it's okay. I stil haven't made contact with the other continent. Whoever was captaining your galleys sure knew what they were doing because mine just sink like a rock. The RNG has been a total bit.. this game. I'm getting very little luck. The worst had to be losing an elite GS to a regular warrior. That hurt.

It's time to move my palace but I don't know where. I'm thinking of Delhi or the surrounding area. Unfortuatly my FP was built 1 city north of my capitol. When Persia got the GL it was either switch to my FP or lose a whole lot of shields. Not the ideal place but oh well. If I abandoned that city would I get to build the FP again?

Anyway, the screenshot shows my army as it stands now. I'm currently building up more knights for the push on Rome but doubt I'll need too many more. China hurt me a little before they finally kicked the bucket. I probably lost about 10 units. A lot more than I was expecting considering it was knights and GS vs. spearmen. And I was only attacking a few cities. But I'll live. Thanks Arrian for the wonderful idea

BigD

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Well I noticed that Rome has some spice and since we won't be at war for a little while I figured why not. But Caesar had to get greedy. He'd have to be offering me a hella lot more than that before I'd even consider giving him iron. My biggest advantage over Rome is that they have no iron. Whatever Julius, keep dreaming.

BigD

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

I have been playing some more and oh is it fun.
Well, I decided to build up some and let Rome live in peace for a while. But they just wouldn't go along with it. I gave them plenty of room but the ungrateful bastards decided to drop off a settler on my part of the continent. No way this is gonna happen.

[BigDork]

So I continued to build up my forces. I wanted to be sure that I'd hurt Rome when the time came for war. I wasn't necessarily gonna wipe them off the planet. Just take 4 or 5 cities including some spice and their only source of hores. Here's my SoD. A few more knights trickled in but this is what I used to attack.

[BigDork]

Well look who decided to show up. The American's galley captains must be a whole lot better than mine. I managed to get a few techs out of the Americans and French. I had to trade my contacts, something I usually don't do right away, but I got a lot of great deals so I feel it was worth it. No Arrian deception stuff for me. I wouldn't hav been able to pull it off anyway. Way too much to kill and Magnatism isn't that far off.

The Americans and French have pretty much wiped out the Russians. The Russians have 2 cities left. One on the nw tip of their continent and then their capitol on on island east of the continent. Having finally met everyone I check out the score. I'm #1!