Iron Civer _Coliseum C_ Thread II

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by Andydog
please can you resend.. possibly for the last time..

Andy- no! Don't do anything drastic, your child needs you!


Since this game is so far along and there are extenuating circumstances, I've placed Andydog on freeze time as of midnight GMT of the 31st. Unfortunately that means the last of his time expired five-and-a-half hours ago.

It sounded like his outlook was bleak anyway. I sent him a direct email yesterday with no response. What do you think about being declared the victor right now Moonbars? Or should I play the turn for him?

[Andydog]

So sorry chaps, RL has been extremely demanding lately and I haven't had a chance to give Civ my attention until now.

Anyway, there seems nothing much left for the hapless Portuguese to do, to combat the massive French onslaught. I hereby concede this game.

My biggest mistake was not calling a restart. Portuguese – seafaring expansionist – on a tiny pangea with a shoddy start position did me no favours at all. I started by sending 2 scouts out to hunt huts and got bugger all really except maps and a bit of cash. Sabrewolf on the other hand, who played the Russians, was lucky enough (perhaps unlucky in hind sight) to pop at city from a hut directly south of my start position. This, plus his good start position, plus his early SGL (which he used to rush the pyramids) made him the number 1 threat to our world.

England, played by Mickeyj, had a reasonable start position but had jungle to contend with. France had the second best start position behind Russia. Anyway, Russia got far too powerful too early on and we all sensed war coming. It was an incident over an unescorted setter of Moonbars that finally sparked the first spat, fairly early on in the ancient era. One or Sabre’s units had come across a merry band of French settlers that were unprotected by troops, and so Russia understandably used the situation to extract a future tech from the French. France were pissed off about this, so Mike and I used the situation to form an ‘anti-Russia’ alliance between the three of us.

Portugal were keen for this alliance as we managed to negotiate the future control of Russia’s lovely lands (the NE of the continent). This land not only had a source of iron, but also floodplains and hills (as opposed to the ironless tundra and plains in my primary core). It didn’t have horses unfortunately, and these ended up being far beyond the reach of the Portuguese. So Russia declared war on France for not providing the future tech as agreed, we then all declared war on Russia, and so Russia decided to kill themselves off and disband all their cities rather than fight.

It was in Russia’s start position that Portugal built our FP. We settled on that spot as soon as the war ended before any other of our secondary-NE-core-cities were founded, rushed a courthouse, and began producing the FP while we started to settle this second core.

While all this was going on, England and France were quietly also building up their corners of the world. We had all agreed to split the continent approximately into 3 however it was becoming apparent that France were pushing the limits of this agreement, and then they overtly broke it by settling north into my secondary core. France also had Ivory and had completed the SoZ, so they had become the new number one threat. Portugal and England signed a MPP.

It was at this point that I made my second biggest mistake – agreeing to trim the French back a bit instead of simply out researching them with the English. England and Portugal had a large amount of pikes to see off those menacing looking ACs, however as you can tell from the battle reports, the ACs cut through our pikes with very few losses indeed. (Ban this ridiculously overpowered wonder I say!!!!).

Anyway, during this second war, Portugal rose to become the number one producer in the world, despite all our crappy land, thanks to the FP and the second core up and running. When it became clear we could not fight off this tide of invincible ACs, Portugal managed to negotiate a 60 turn peace treaty while a French AC army finished off the English.

Portugal used this peace treaty to build the Lighthouse, thus triggering our GA. We then knocked out the Workshop, upgraded all our pikes, and produced nothing else but muskets, cannons, longbows, and med infs (we had no horses). We found a slight glimmer of hope for victory during this period, as the power graph went from 80-20 in favour of France to 60-40 in their favour. France had beelined for Military Tradition, so we knew that Cavs were waiting for us. Our GA finished just as our peace treaty finished, so we moved a massive stack of cannons, muskets, longbows and med infs onto a hill outside a French horse town, and proceeded to once again get decimated by the French, this time with Cavs instead of Ancient Cavs.

And that’s my story.

I’ve enjoyed this game and its challenges. My heartiest congratulations go to Moonbars, I wish him well in the final.

My special thanks goes to Rommel for a very successful and well run tournament.

[Moonbars]

what an interesting read..

France AAR:

We popped a goody hut early on, giving us the City of Orleans, right by some gems. Our start was good, and we managed to get some good hut pops. Sadly, however, Russia also had some good pops, built the pyramids and was entered into the Republic. We knew we would have to destroy Russia, but were under the believe we had a peace treaty with them that guaranteed "friendship during the early game". When a Russian warrior made an un-announced detour through French territory, and then attempted to blackmail the undefended city they encountered, we knew the colour of Sabrewolf's friendship. So we told him we'd let him have literacy if he spared the city. We lied, and switched production to Horses and cats.

When the war came, Sabre had evidently also been building up his military, he moved a pile of spears and swords onto the plain near our city of Rheims - This was his mistake, as that city was home to our entire military. We wiped out his army and he gave up.

The rest of the game was interesting, we were somewhat amazed at the terms of the peace deal, Portugal and England didn't demand equal access to resources, just equal access to luxuries. We assumed there would hence be a tech race leading to France's defeat, but again this didn't really happen, although they did lead the technology race for the rest of the game. I had started building the SoZ as it become clear I wouldn't be needing any horsies to finish sabre, I decided to build up my settlers and commercial, and let Andy and Mike push the Russian Wolf back. When pace was declared I had a pre-build of the SoZ on the go, and 4 settlers ready to grab land.

The peace ended, Mike attacked with a big stack that oddly lacked the FP to really hit any of my fortified hill cities, and I just wore it down and captured his catapults. Andy never came into the fray. I pulled a very lucky victory over a pile of Dog Pikes + Cats - I had to finish the stack's 2 redlined defenders with pikes.. think I lost 2, but I captured a lot of trebs and took Andy out of the picture for the coming Mike Elimination.

My Elite AC's generated a MGL = Elite AC Army = No more mike

Peace with the dog, I agreed this simply as my GA was coming and I wanted to try an idea I'd had about rush-buying armies with gold. Worked well. Rest of the game went as Andy said.

It's interesting how differently we both summed up the situations at various times in the game.

I WAS lucky with a few of my battles, but it's that extra HP on the AC that won me the game.


To The Finals, my thanks to the defeated three on a very tense and exciting game.. my best online fun in a long time!

[Aqualung71]

Congrats Moonbars....sounds like a very intriguing game you guys had there.

See you in the final

[Andydog]

Originally posted by Moonbars
When a Russian warrior made an un-announced detour through French territory, and then attempted to blackmail the undefended city they encountered, we knew the colour of Sabrewolf's friendship.

I'd forgotten it was an undefended city, and not an undefended settler that sparked the first spat.

we were somewhat amazed at the terms of the peace deal, Portugal and England didn't demand equal access to resources, just equal access to luxuries.

Interesting. England had iron and 2 horses, I had iron and no horses. I agreed to this because I was going to get England's second heard of horses. Unfortunately, they never got around to hooking the 2nd horses up!!!

At that point it the priority was to even out land distribution and luxs, since we didn't forsee any problems with strategic resources.

[bongo]

You should have demanded their first horse then, would have given them some incentive to connect the second