AU207: Big Planet - Strategy, Spoilers and Comments

[badams52]

Originally posted by BigDork
Well I just couldn't stay away from Civ3 forever. badams, I just don't know how you do it.

Alcohol, women, drugs, and lot's of 'em

but uninstalling and selling my copy helped, and actually, even reading through the exciting slugfests doesn't engender that feeling of, "gotta play civ" anymore. maybe I'm cured.

Next thing I know there's two warriors standing next to my undefended GL city.

I hate when that happens. Sometimes for me it warrants a reload. I always keep units in my cities, and not having any in one means I had a mental lapse.

[Arrian]

Next thing I know there's two warriors standing next to my undefended GL city.
...
I hate when that happens.

And people wonder why I have so many musketmen (now infantry)? I long ago learned that if I neglected the defense of my coastal cities, the AI would take advantage.

-Arrian

[BigDork]

Originally posted by Arrian
My suggestion would probably be to hit Germany with Zulu or American assistance.

-Arrian

Arrian...

Small problem with that. America is no more and Zulu have 3 cities left.

BigD

[BigDork]

Originally posted by Arrian
And people wonder why I have so many musketmen (now infantry)? I long ago learned that if I neglected the defense of my coastal cities, the AI would take advantage.

-Arrian

Well I did have lots of Numidians running around but I had to pull them to a different area for what I thought was gonna be a Zulu invasion. Also it looked like the Babys were gonna try something. I just got kinda paranoid and so I didn't have the defense in the area. I remedied that afterwards.

But in all honesty I should have payed more attention to the galley as it sailed through my waters. I should have told it to leave or have Temujin declare war on me. At least if I knew we were at war I would have already had units headed to intercept. Oh well, live and learn.

BigD

[vulture]

Will You please all leave me alone!

As of 930 AD, the glorious French empire had taken all of the land south of Berlin in the war with Germany, dividing it up into north and south germany with the Mongols. At this point the tech race stood as follows: France and Mongolia were the only civs with banking, Japan was the only civ with astronomy and America was the only civ with military tradition. No-one seemed to be trading. In 970 AD our scientists discovered democracy, which we could trade for pretty much anything. So we did, and upgraded our huge army of 14 knights to cavalry, and started down the path to economics.

990 AD saw the completion of JS Bach's cathedral, which enabled us to hike taxes for the first time since the ancient era (luxuries slider back down to 0). This gave us fewer cities in 'we love the saint' day, but no cities in disorder. Progress continued well with the discovery of economics in 1030 AD, and the switching of a palace pre-build to Adam Smiths, although still a long way to go.

This year also showed the value of good military intelligence. We'd posted medieval infantry on hills in no-mans land overlooking Mongolian germany as scouts, and saw a stack of 12 Samurai arrive at the southern Mongolian border. Without the scouts we wouldn't have seen them till they were standing on a hill next to one of our cities. Armed with this knowledge, we had two options. One was to get defenses to the area and wait for them to declare war, then get everyone in on the fun, or to aggressively declare war now, get America and Mongolia involved, and get the Japanese forces wiped out crossing those countries. Since of all these civs Japan moved last, I figured that the Mongolian hordes would turn up pretty quickly and make short work of them. So I declared war, bribed America, Mongolia and the Zulus into alliances, and studiously failed to send any cavalry forwards to attack the Samurai. Instead I put my two obsolete medieval infantry scouts on the hills, and kept the cavalry in reserve to counterattack (having first made sure that the samurai were incapable of reaching any of my towns this turn).

Much to my surprise, the Samurai managed to capture Berlin - obviously the Mongols were too far away for an immediate strike. Our medieval infantry on their suicide mission did well, killing two samurai and injuring two more before falling. And that was all we saw of the great Japanese offensive. Our cavalry cleaned up the surviving samurai, the mongols retook Berlin before I could grab it, and there after the Japanese lost pretty much one city every turn to the Americans, Zulu or Mongols, while I sat back and played cards, and watched the three Japanese galleys sail down the east coast, around the cape, and back up the west coast, to eventually dump two units on the west coast to march on my undefended capitol. This is why I was keeping a southern force of cavalry around. As it happens, events conspired to leave a single musketman on 2 hp, so I sent in a musketeer to try and trigger my golden age. And it worked, giving me one of the latest golden ages I've had. The 20 turns were up at this point, so alliances were cancelled and we made peace with Japan.

EDIT: I ought to point out that I'm getting ahead of myself here,. The golden age started in 1220 AD - the next section describes things happening alongside the war with Japan.

[vulture]

Brave New World

Meanwhile we were near to getting Navigation, and had sent two caravels to sail as far east as they could in zulu waters, ready to make a break across the equator the moment we got navigation. Another plan that worked to perfection. Our brave sailors made landfall next to Uskadar, an Ottoman town. Much trading of contacts and maps was done (which showed that America was probably one turn away from making contact themselves).

Analysing the situation showed that the Arabs, Koreans and Ottomans looked like the big cheeses, with Egypt close behind. India, England and Carthage were all small and backwards, and the Celts were extinct already. We also saw that Seoul was only 4 turn from finishing Adam Smith's, while we were 14 turns away. We started researching theory of gravity at 100% science (and still making a profit) so we could switch to Newton's university instead.

1170 AD saw 4 civs get theory of gravity at the same time, and, more surprisingly, tiny Carthage declared war on the large Korean empire. Carthage didn't last long, and disappeared at about the same time as the Mongols finished off Japan. This left the Mongols with their large homeland area, and a long curve running all the way around America, about 2 cities wide, of ex-Japanese and German cities.

1190, yet another good year for France. The forbidden palace was completed in Toronto (we renamed Nuremburg...). On the down-side, the Mongols built Newton's - must have got a leader finishing off Japan. Our research of Magnetism was going well, and we were looking forward to the new age (and hopefully getting Magnetism first). When four civs all got free artistry at the same time it was obvious that they'd all researched the same thing once again, leaving us in the clear with magnetism.

[vulture]

The Children of the Industrial Revolution

1220 AD was the dawn of the industrial age. It was the dawn of the French golden age. It was the dawn of trade with the new world. It was the dawn of a Japan-free planet. It was the dawn of more shameless tech-whoring. Bordeaux wines were particularly fine that year. In many ways, it was a good year.

Our brave, golden age scientists, started mucking around with exploding boilers to develop steam power, which was succesfull in a remarkably quick time. The boffins were also pleased to announce that we had at least four good coal deposists within our territory. Our workers immediately set to work on a railroad to run from the Mongolian border towns (and the forbidden palace) throught the capitol and over to the zulu border. A branch line was installed to run south from the capitol to allow access to the southern towns of old, unlamented babylon. Due to hordes of captured workers, and the industrious French people, this was completed in a very short time (4 turns I think).

Many other civs had meanwhile entered the industrial age too (and the Vikings had made it to the medieval era), but only one of the (Korea) was scientific, and so they had a monopoly on nationalism. We sold them steam power, but weren't interested in buying nationalism just yet. As it happens, the sheep once again all researched the same thing - nationalism; that perennial AI favourite. The lone Zulu town on the subcontinent decided to give in to the inevitable, and finally flipped to me. And I really noticed the difference...

In 1285, the Mongols demanded tribute from me for the third time. I'm a world power dammit! I meekly gave in once again, since my 'innocent' military buildup wasn't ready yet (and my capitol was churning our a cavalry every 2 turns, which was nice). It was only a territory map and 37 gold anyway. 1305 AD was the year we decided we were ready for revenge upon the Mongols. We signed MPPs and ROPs with the Americans and Zulu, declared war, and then got the Americans in on an alliance. Why an alliance and an MPP? I didn't want to take the whole brunt of the Mongol counterattack myself, so wanted to divide it up with America (hence the alliance), and didn't want America backing out of the war early (hence the MPP to get them back into it if they did wimp out). Perhaps we should have waited for greater forces, but we wanted to get the Mongols in the window of opportunity while we had cavalry against musketmen.

The opening shots of the war went well, with three Mongol towns falling in the first turn, and a fourth (Bonn) the turn after. These were the important towns, since the provided a buffer for my forbidden palace (as well as producitve cities), and cut the Mongol empire in half. The eastern empire was their native land (now reduced back to their original cities). The western empire was their captured Japanese and German towns, now cut off from luxuries, resources and their capitol. So, lots of corruption and disorder, and very little productivity from them.

As might be expected, the eastern front was pretty static - France only had one town bordering Mongol lands (and we'd cut the road connection), which was loaded up with riflemen and cannons, while my cavalry pushed west to take the isolated western empire. America held their own against the Mongol attack along their border. Between France, America and the Zulus, the western empire fell, divded nicely into our three little empires. Not much sign was seen of Mongol counterattacks, until quite late in the war, when New Orleans (just north of my German towns - should have brought my screenshots in ) fell to the Mongols. We siezed the opportunity, and used Amercian roads to get there and capture the town. As a gesture of good will we gave the American slave captured there back to the Americans, but we kept the town. America lost another town, but recaptured it pretty soon.

The fight for Bonn also gave us our first great leader, who was moved to the captiol to wait to build the Theory of Evolution (which we were closing in on by this point in the war).

About halfway through the war we started seeing Mongol riflemen defending towns, and so once we had a good swathe of territory captured (9 towns in 7 turns) and the western empire fell, we just dug in and cleaned up any Mongol cavalry that wandered into town. The war ended after the usual 20 turns with 10 new French towns, all of which were quickly becoming productive.

[vulture]

Will the peace last this time

By the end of the golden age, we were taking 700 gold per turn from other civs (588 of that from Korea). Thanks to building the ToE we had a four tech lead (we would have had more if we hadn't sold steam power and medicine to everyone). I have no idea what happened to the AI research here, but they pretty much researched nothing in the time that I got to scientific method. After getting up to electronics with the ToE, I detoured to Industrialisation (instead of replacable parts) so that my prebuild - which had been for ToE, could be changed to the Suffrage. We got that wonder too, and no way is anyone going to beat me to Hoovers, so we've nabbed all the Industrial wonders and a tech lead despite being in a war with the biggest military around, and despite the other continent not being at war at all (I'd always thought that their tech-failure in the industrial era was due to all those MPP wars, but the other continent stayed at peace the whole time and still did terribly at research).

Near the end of the war we got a second leader. Since we had all the wonders up until the modern era sown up already, he formed an army, which two cavalry joined immediately, and went to trash a few injured Mongol cavalry.

I had a brief panic when a Mongol 3-cavalry army arrived next to my worker/cavalry stack building a road through the hills to New Orleans, but in a glorious moment of RNG luck, one cavalry destroyed the whole army, losing only 2 hp in the process.

Now, as we research the corporation, we are getting 1000 gold per turn from other civs, compared to about 1600 from our own empire. This lets us run at 100% science, while raking in plenty of cash to rush universities and libraries (no point doing banks since we have 0% on taxes). There really isn't any way to lose from this point. The tech leaders are giving me all their money. The big bad military of the Mongols has been pruned - they've gone from being the largest civ to being middle of the pack, and now we have infantry to defend our towns. Most civs are still polite towards me, which is a nice change (do commercial civs get some kind of bonus on this?) I haven't even changed out of republic yet - at first there were wonders to build, then there was the golden age, and the war, and now I already have enough workers to finish railroading everything in about 10 turns, and hods of cash, so why waste 8 turns in anarchy?

I may get around to wrapping the game up , or I may just leave it here where I know I've won, depending on available time in the near future. Will try and get a few more screenshots up though.

[vulture]

Post-(most-of)-Game Thoughts

I mostly play on large and huge maps as it happens, so my thoughts are less to do with the differences between this and a standard map than other people's might be.

A) This game seemed easier (in terms of keeping up to date in techs) than most other huge games I've played on Emperor. Perhaps this was due to it beeing an AU game, so I was being more careful and taking notes, which made me more aware of the opportunities available. As a rule, on huge maps, the window of opportunity for tech trading can be quite small. If you don't make contact with other leaders for a few turns, you can suddenly find that they've all acquired all your techs and a few others, and you are out of the trading loop. This is a bad thing. Regular contact is a must, so you don;t get left out.

B) If you hit Babylon and take the sub-continent, it is going to be very hard to lose this game. Once you have both chokepoints, the threat you face from being invaded is pretty small. I assume that having the Vikings on an island nearby was done with the idea of having to live with a raider scourge along the coastline (or possibly it was random), but in my game, when I'm mid-industrial, they still haven't got as far as magnetism or navigation. By the time they can reach me with boats, they'll be attacking mech infantry with those lovel beserkers.

C) I'd hate to play this game with non-industrious workers. Although there are some good city sites around there aren't very many that can be used before they're well developed by workers, especially with needing roads through mountains and jungle clearing.

D) The AI did some curious things in the research stakes. America bee-lined for cavalry, which was the first time I've ever seen or heard of that happening. And it was an intelligent thing to do given the number of wars America was getting involved in. In the late medieval era there were five or six AI civs more or less up to date in technology (that's not something you'll see in a normal map game), but I was able to get into a tech lead because for several techs in a row they all researched the same thing at the same time. Evidence that the AI doesn't do collaborative research. No idea where their research went in the early industrial era. Perhaps the combination of my golden age, lots of libraries and universities coming on linem the forbidden palace being built, and being commercial, all combined to give me a far greater research ability than I realised (compared to 'normal'). I suppose it is not unknown to have to go to 10-15 turn research at the start of the industrial era, while I jumped in straight away with 4-6 turns for all the techs, almost 3 times as fast as the AI.

E) Diplomacy important. I managed to keep a kind of balance of power on my continent, and stayed out of affairs on the other continent (huge worlds are too big to take an interest in everything). As of the time of writing, Babylon, Germany and Japan are gone from our home continent (and the Celts and Carthage from the other), and while the Mongols were the biggest civ after swallowing much of Germany and Japan, I've managed to trim them back so that the continent now has me as the superpower, and Mongols, America and the Zulu pretty much equal in population, territory and power (but the Zulu are a way behind in technology). I'm safe from all three of them - the Zulu I could conquer in 4 turns on my own, and for America and the Mongols, I have enough cash and techs to bribe the other into an alliance. I don't see them achieving anything against me, and I'll step in to keep a balance of power between them. This is the way to deal with them IMHO. Unless you are going the Arrian route of course...

F) More warfare always helps. I was playing pretty peacefully, tending to stick to short wars (or 20 turn ones when in an alliance). I could have declared war on Germany much earlier, and I could have taken any number of opportunities to take out the Zulu while they still had Impi as their best defenders, but I declined. Even in my big war with the Mongols I was only fighting 'professional' war - most of my cities were building improvements, and only the core which already had everything useful were producing fighting units (but 8 cities producing cavalry every 3 turns was enough for my purposes). If I'd gone for more of an all out war, I could have made progress into the Mongol heartland, but instead chose to take the easy cities and then hold them viciously. So despite having a territory three times larger than most civs, I've been pretty peaceful. If I'd been more warlike, my map would look more like Arrian's (although I suspect he does it far more efficiently than I do - I don't have the heart of a true warmonger).

[Arrian]

There I am, happily building hospitals & police stations and such, and a Arabic ironclad/caravel team sails down to my Scandanavian territories and drops off musketmen & a medieval inf.

You have no idea how annoyed I was. I had just put together a large strike force of Cavalry, Infantry & some artillery and "gotoed" it to the west coast of the other continent (aimed at the Celts only coastal city). So now the Arabs are gonna hit me, and they have MPPs with the Zulu, Koreans and French. I wanted to fight the CELTS, not the Arabs! The Celts, while a bit larger in land area, were technologically weaker and had access to all 3 luxuries I lacked! The Arabs have 1.

Oh, I was annoyed. So I signed MPPs with the Zulu, Koreans and French and allowed the Arabs to hit me, thus getting all those civs on my side, not theirs. My Celtic task force had to be re-routed (which took 11 turns, sailing around France to get to the other side of the continent, where the Arabs are).

And now they will pay. I have already captured 1 city, which I moved 1 tile over by rushing a settler & then adandoning it, and am poised to drop off another landing force next to Baghdad. Mecca will then be squarely between my two forces (either of which really ought to be able to take it).

It is 1680AD. My culture is up to 86K. Four turns from now, I will have Motorized Transportation. At least I can be sure that I can give Grog his Tank before the game ends (the only civ that has a snowball's chance in hell of stopping the cultural win is Korea, and I don't think they've got enough).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

If I'd been more warlike, my map would look more like Arrian's (although I suspect he does it far more efficiently than I do - I don't have the heart of a true warmonger).

On Emperor, I may have elected to play as you did. On Monarch, I felt I could "shoot for the moon" and go for UP.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Wow, nice report vulture!

Originally posted by vulture This game seemed easier (in terms of keeping up to date in techs) than most other huge games I've played on Emperor.

...If you hit Babylon and take the sub-continent, it is going to be very hard to lose this game. Once you have both chokepoints, the threat you face from being invaded is pretty small.

This was a mistake on my part. The game would have been a lot more difficult if many opponents could reach you easily with their units (without having to face break through those chokepoints). I was thinking that the "home" area (behind the chokepoints) would be easy to control, but going out would be much more difficult. This turned out to be true, but I underestimated how good a human player's economy can be compared to the AI's, and so the "going out" phased was more difficult but still rather unchallenging. And so this game could easily be beaten by the "build until no one can stop me" approach.

I assume that having the Vikings on an island nearby was done with the idea of having to live with a raider scourge along the coastline (or possibly it was random)...

Nah, the Vikings were put on that island because it was frigid, isolated and mostly barren, which seemed fitting (in my mind). It was sort of an Easter Egg, if you will. I also wanted to see how people would handle the invasion of a backward civ that could still muster quite an army due to years of isolation, and if the Incense was really worth it.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Here's another Easter Egg that I thought was funny because the Zulu start is just so picturesque:

[BigDork]

Originally posted by Dominae
Here's another Easter Egg that I thought was funny because the Zulu start is just so picturesque:

Dom...

Shoulda warned of the spoiler. Now I know I've got some uranium

BigD

[Arrian]

You know what was REALLY irritating about that Arab sneak attack?

I almost stopped it. I had a short period of time where I didn't have anything I needed to build in my coastal cities, so I punched out ~8 privateers. These struck out into the high seas in search of AI ships to sink.

They did, in fact, sink several AI ships (mostly French). But despite being in the right general area, they missed the Arab ships coming my way. Ships passing in the night...

And yes, you can kill an ironclad with privateers. You just need 2-3 per. The French one I nailed only took 2.

-Arrian