Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Two

[Arrian]

Tactics

Vel -

Interesting tactical approach, and different than mine. Here's my reasoning:

I would rather come with a bunch of mobile troops. They speed your attack, have better survivability, and are better at pillaging. Now, usually I grind up the AI's mobile force early (obviously, if the AI has a bunch of horse units, I either 1) don't hit him or 2) adjust my tactics to kill those units). It's first part of their army that can arrive on the scene, because of it's speed. Also, the AI doesn't use its mobile units well, particularly on defense. If I do lose a MW or two, so be it. I would rather have 18 MW's than 9 MW/9 SM. The advantages of mobility cannot be overstated, in my opinion. Of course, I do end up (grudgingly) building a few grunts to accompany my mobile force, and they end up garrisoning cities. Often, a beat up MW will garrison a city while it heals, and the rest of the force continues onward. The AI counterattack is a one time thing. Weather the storm, and you've won - just KEEP the momentum. This is why I love MW's and other mobile troops. You knock the enemy back on his heels and KEEP HIM THERE.

Say I want to attack an AI city (this is early, keep in mind, I do NOT fight this way later on) and I have 6 MW's. They all go to the best defensive square next to the target city. If the AI attacks the stack (again, ancient era), it usually only hits once, with an archer or something. One MW retreats. Next turn, 5 MW's attack and take the city. Clearly, your strategy will work better against certain civs (in particular 2-move UU civs) than mine, and I have used forces like you describe before against the Zulu.

EDIT: I just realized that I was getting a little too civ-specific. Clearly, when I play the Babs (or any non-iroquois civ), swordsmen are a much larger component of my army. However, even then, if I have horses, I will build more horsemen than swordsmen.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Continuation of the Civ-Analysis Article

Aztec (Religious/Militarist)
Starting Tech: Ceremonial Burial/Warrior Code
Special Unit: Jaguar Warrior (1/1/2): Warrior with an extra movement point that you can build from turn one. Same stats as Chariots…cheaper (50% cheaper!), and you don’t have to research any techs to train them!

The Goods:
The Aztecs represent the first of a handful of “Triple Threat” Civs in the group we’ll be discussing, and let me start by saying that all of the “Triple Threat” Civs should be considered extremely dangerous customers! In the case of the Aztec, they fall into this category because the extra movement point of their special unit gives them the rapid exploration capabilities of Expansionistic Civs (more chances to get to goody huts than the norm, and a potential tech lead (or at the very least, higher morale Jaguars) because of it! This, combined with the fact that their special unit has the weakest overall stats in the entire game, makes them very heavily focused on the early game. And what an early game menace they are!!!

Like all religious civs, you’re definitely a cultural contender, and cheap temples means you can easily control the population and make heavier use of early game pop-rushing techniques than many of your rivals. Use that to your advantage! Also, quelling discontent in conquered cities is generally easy for you, again, thanks to those cheap temples. Likewise, your militaristic trait plays VERY well with your aggressive early game style, as your Jaguars (the ONLY 2 movement unit available at game start) will have a very high survival rate, netting you an elite core in no time, which will see you generating a good many leaders (effectively giving you the ability to instantly relocate your palace or build the FP, and if you get multiple leaders, you can have your pick of Ancient Era Wonders!) If you’re not an aggressive player, odds are good that you will not use this Civ to its fullest early game potential, and by extension, you’ll have a tougher time moving into the later ages when much of what makes your Civ unique is gone, and many of your early game strengths have faded.

Strategies From One End of the Spectrum to the Other

General: No matter how you slice it, you’re going to have to be aggressive in the early game as the Aztecs if you want to excel. Even if you have the heart of a pure, die-hard builder, get over it long enough to take out or severely weaken your nearest neighbors, and then build to your heart’s content!

Fortunately, early-game swarming is what these guys do better than anyone! Played properly, it is entirely possible that you can wind up with the whole continent to yourself, having simply overrun every bit of opposition on your continent, and doing so with a minimum set of cities.

Here’s how it works: Expand in standard fashion, using whatever basic expansion scheme you prefer.

Use your speedy Jaguars to scout the area (again, putting you in the position of making much more informed city placement decisions in the same vein as the Expansionistic Civs), and when you find a rival Civ, immediately set all your cities to cranking out Jaguars. When you get a fistful of them (eight or ten….certainly no more than twelve needed), swarm the poor, unsuspecting fool. You’ll have him begging for mercy in no time, and if you’re in a generous mood (and your rival has been sufficiently “pruned,” by all means, let him live. If not…finish him off and lay claim to all the land he would have taken from you…then move on with your (now mostly elite) force and keep scouting.

Repeat till you’re either alone on the continent or in the dominant position, and you can ride those early game successes to victory!


Pure Builder
Again, and with the Aztecs I can’t emphasize this enough…do not try to build peacefully if you have not yet “tamed” your rival civs on your continent! You OWN the early game! Get out there and kick some serious butt! And, when you’re finished, win the captured populace over by way of your speedily constructed temples (which will also bump up that culture, inoculating your Empire against the Cultural effects of surviving neighbors and boosting your score in that category!).

Tech-wise: Your Civ does not lend itself to the rapid discovery of either horses or iron, but then, you don’t need either! With luck, and on anything less than a huge map, you won’t have any continental rivals after the ancient era in any case, so don’t bother to research iron working or the wheel….simply trade for it whenever it’s convenient to do so, and focus on the “second tier” of ancient era techs (those that your starting techs are pre-requisites for). Alternately, if you have a juicy, culturally rich Wonder in mind, beeline for whatever techs lie along that path. All the early game combats you’ll see, you’ve got an outstanding shot at getting a couple of leaders, and if so, any project you put you desire is yours! Your main goal is to get out of the ancient era with all speed, utterly dominating your starting landmass in the process, then, settle in to build to your heart’s content!



Momentum
Your early game won’t be terribly different from the Builder’s game in the sense that the Aztecs NEED to be aggressive early if they want to remain viable into the mid and late game. However, you’ll part ways with your Builderesque cousins once your continent is tamed. They’ll be content to settle in and do the cultural thing….BAH! You want to reach out and touch people, so your tech choices will be largely dependent on the type of map you’re playing. If you’re on an “uber continent” (the favorite of many Aztec players), and if you didn’t get it before, you want to bulk up on weapons techs now, with an eye toward replacing your Jaguar force (which is, after a couple of quick conquests, verging on obsolescence). After that, keep an eye out for any tech that might have a wonder attached to it, and if there’s water around, grab the Great Lighthouse with a spare Great Leader, get Map Making, and hit the high seas! If you’re fast enough (and if the “other continent” is close enough, you just might be able to terrorize one last Civ with your trusty Jaguars, and if not, then at least you’ll have early contact and can use that to potentially widen your tech lead and keep an eye out for a potentially weak member of the heard. Even if you can’t take them with Jaguars, attention to keeping your army up to date, and the fact that you’re probably the largest Civ as you leave the ancient era should see you in a position to dictate terms to your rivals across the sea.

Tech-Wise: Iron Working if you don’t have it already, Map Making, and of course, the requisite tech for any wonder you have your eye on. Monarchy is probably better for you than republic unless your neighbors across the sea are too entrenched, in which case, you’d be better served research wise by Republic….at least until you spot a weak herd-member to cull…and of course, being a Religious Civ, you can instantly switch to a war footing (including a different government form) and get to it!

Drawbacks: The Ancient Game is yours to command, but once you move out of the game’s first era, you’ll be “just like everyone else,” meaning that your late game performance is very much tied to how dominant you were in the ancient world. Sit on your hands, and don’t let your Jaguars do what they’re best at, and you’ll struggle. Also, such a fantastic Ancient Era unit just BEGS to be used immediately, but doing so will give you a (largely useless) Golden Age. Eat it and move on. Nothing to be done about it if you want to get the most mileage out of your awesome unit!

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

On barracks placement, it matters pre-railroad. After that, goto will do ya just fine. I've only gotten Sun Tzu's once (via conquest), and it is really nice and all, but I'm ok w/o it.

Inca - Solid reasoning behind ancient warfare. Especially on the upper levels when keeping up or leading in tech peacefully is much more difficult.

I think I may play as either the Germans or Japanese tonight... as warfare appears to be more important on Monarch than on Regent, but I've gotta still have either religious or scientific. Persia also comes to mind.

The problem w/the Iroquois is that you had better get A LOT out of that ancient warfare, because you're gonna blow your golden age early.

-Arrian

[Gadmund]

Hey,

Vel and Arrian, thanks for all of the great advice! Things are really going well. Of course I do have some questions...

A. In my most recent game (also using your advice), I have over taken lots of cities culturally and expanded the heck out of the area. My prob is that the cities that I'm using to building all of my settlers and workers are really getting huge but the expansion coming to an end! How do I control the over pop in my big cities?

B. The taxes issue... I'm must me missing something. I'm in f1, and I can see the slider bars for my science budget and entertainment, but I don't see anything about the taxes? I'm looking into the manuel for this as well but I don't see how I can control my taxes.

I really appreciate any and all help with these issues.

P.S. an FYI, my most recent game that I'm in has me (finally) out expanding the AIs and on the verge of completly absorbing the English culturally! I found them out early and blocked them to the north. Things are getting better with my techs as well. Just having loads of fun.

Thanks,
Gadmund

[gnomos]

Well, I've got to say that up until now I've been a "purist", probably more because I never heard of ICS, and the esthetics of spreading cities appeals to me (I hate going into the city map, and seeing squares being used by adjacent cities). But I have to say, your early government is "despotism". Who ever heard of a benevolent despot, who spared the whip and carefully planned city layouts and paid a lot of attention to culture and social engineering???

I think after I finish the game I'm playing I'll try Vel's city pairing idea. I think I'll lay out cities like this:

0....0....0....0....0
...X....X....X....X...
0....0....0....0....0

where the X cities are my training camps. I'll expand on diagonals, dropping cities every other tile or so, to build a lot of cities fast. Later when I change govs I'll absorb them back into my larger cities to clean up the map (plus you can't irrigate your city square any more I don't think, in civ2 when you got farmland the city square became farmland). I'll selectively rush buildings in the 0 cities, and rush barracks and units in the X cities, and see how that goes.

On another note, I was vaguely aware that workers counted towards your military units, but it hadn't occured to me that they would be considered a deterrant to being attacked. Should I even suggest that you build nothing BUT workers? Keep churning them out, never build a military unit at all, and all the AI civs will phear you! Well, keep a few real troopsp around for barbarians, who like to kill workers. But the AI civs don't behave this way, I've seen their exploring warriors walk right past cities of mine that had no troops in them at all. The first time I saw this I thought "eep!" but after many turns of this I've gotten comfortable with it, I think it's because at this point my empire is so huge (174 cities, over 500 units, I eliminated the babs yest, took 29 cities in 2 turns) that nobody is willing to mess with me. Heh, I'm not one to quit a game once I'm dominant, I like to milk it to the very end.

They definitely need a fix to corruption, the way it is now makes no sense at all. I'm a democracy, and courthouses have little or no effect that I can see. Most of my cities generate 1 shield and 1 commerce, I'm lumberjacking to build improvements so I can make the populace happy for more points. Civ si about empire building, and that's what I like to do. It's silly that it takes 100 turns to build a marketplace in a size 12 city in a democracy. There needs to be a cap on corruption, I'd say 50% for dem, 60% for republic, 70% for monarcy, 90% for despotism. Not sure about communism, haven't used that one. I've been thinking about giving it a try to see what it's effects are on my empire, but I don't want to wade through 5 turns of anarchy to find out. Courthouses and police stations should affect both corruption and shield wastage (we do sue people for incompetence or negligence that results in monetary damage after all). Courthouses and police stations should vary their effectiveness based on different govs. I'd say police are enhanced in despotism, monarcy or communism, where they are less fettered by the populace. Courthouses become more effective in republics and democracies, and perhaps don't work at all under despotism. So basically, the game should calculate the amount of loss in a city due to corruption/wasteage, then reduce that based on courthouse/police stations before coming up with a final number. Perhaps culture should have some effect too, although there is good culture and bad culture......

[Velociryx]

Arrian: I think your approach is a pretty sound one, but I think the reason you're getting beaten using it is two-fold.

IMO, If you're going to hit a Civ with all (or nearly all) mounted troops (sucky defense), you gotta literally swarm across the border....the longer the battle grinds on, the worse for you, cos that's more chances for the AI to make attrition attacks....I mean, take two or three cities in the same turn and end the fight right then and there.

Do that (at least double, and prolly close to triple the army size you mentioned in one of your other posts), and you'll have them begging for mercy before they even get a chance to respond. Once you make peace, even if most of your horse troops are torn up from combat, it won't matter and they can heal up in the newly captured towns or anyplace else.

Alternately, if you don't wanna make it too dicey, combine the three strike forces into two, take bigger groups and hit two towns in the same turn, with your victorious armies converging on the third target from different directions. As I understand it though, you were attempting a "one at a time" conquest with an all mobile force. That can get you in trouble because when the declaration is made, the AI knows where to send reinforcements. By hitting multiple targets at once, if he doesn't surrender on the spot, he'll be much more disorganized in his pursuit of your units, and you'll suffer fewer attrition attacks.

-=Vel=-

[pchang]

Persians

When playing Persians, I end up with early golden ages. The first thing I research is iron working. I then try to place cities to monopolize all the iron I can get and start building immortals. Anybody on the same continent as me gets quickly reduced to vassal status (or extinct). The only thing that stops me is the ocean. It is very difficult to build an invasion fleet with galleys. I use my first leader to build an army and then start working on that heroic epic.

When building my early army I first rush build barracks in all my cities. When I start my first invasion force I usually only have 3 or 4 cities. The difference between 3HP and 4HP when attacking fortified spearmen (and esp. hoplites) is huge (even w/ immortals). I don't build barracks beyond that.

I don't care if garrison troops are regulars but any attack troops must be vets. Since it takes a while to build up invasion forces, it doesn't matter too much if it takes them an extra few turns (on roads built by captured workers) to mass at the front.

Because Persians are scientific, I start rushing libraries as soon as I get the tech. This usually puts me in a budget deficit because I am maintaining barracks, temple, library (sometimes harbor) in my core cities and at least temple and library every else. This is where the vassals become crucial. Thanks to a little extortion, their protection payments keep my bank account above zero (if I can't get per turn payments, I get one time payments and watch my total continue to shrink).

[Aeson]

Gadmund -

Taxes are the % leftover after Research and Luxury rates have been set. If you have 10% Research and 0% Luxury, that means the tax rate will be 90%.

[[ID]KuZGuN]

2 Cents

There you go this is my saved game. I think those people who had 10000 scores might have cheated. I started playing militaristic from the start but somewhere around 1000 AD I had to stop and concentrate on my culture and tech to be competitive.
Although an early expansion helps, it's not impossible, but real hard to finish on this map before 1AD. You need to be real lucky and good for that or you might be cheating.

[Velociryx]

Emperor....

....is toast. At least with the Aztecs.

I have a whole new respect for those fearless little Jaguar Warriors...sheesh...talk about a bunch of wailing Banshees! My "army" was laughable at first glance! 19 Jaguars and 5 Swordsmen, but those little guys outta be called Tigers instead of Jags....I mean they just utterly ROCK! I can see a strong case for building a few, or at least keeping some around for the whole game! They're dirt cheap, can attack and win against horsies in the ancient era, seldom die laying in a siege of a city (cos they always retreat), and again, because of the price, you can just swamp your opponent with them. Doesn't matter that each one only nicks or dings the defenders....since the battle isn't "resolved" you don't have to worry about the bad guys getting morale boosts, and if you send enough (sometimes, "enough" is a dozen or more against one city), you WILL take them down!

Additionally, they make great pillage and disruption troops....they're idea for penetrating deep into enemy territory to harass workers, rip up roads and other time consuming terraforming, and make a grand nuisance of themselves in general. And the AI just loves chasing after them!

Battles with the Aztecs are....not quite like what you see with any other faction. You can literally explode into enemy territory in every direction....ding them from a zillion ways at once and laugh as your rival tries desperately to gain some sense of control inside his own borders.

And, if a force moves to threaten you....here come the Jags....scampering back to intercept and delay while your muscle-troops push toward your true objectives....and, as I said....you get enough of those little guys together and you can totally overrun a city.

I only played to 520 BC, but by then I'd seen enough. America started with prolly twice my force, and by the end of our little war, they'd gotten completely embarrassed by the Jags...losing most of the relief force they attempted to send down to the two cities I overran via constant harrassment attacks from what is my new favorite UU in the whole game! Forget the MW (a great unit, mind you, but still!)....Forget the plodding immortals. Give me a fistful of Jags any day of the week! Those guys are amazing, and the Aztecs have to rank up there as one of my all-time favorite factions after seeing them in action.

So...after getting to technological pairity by causing trouble for America, we turned our dauntless warriors toward the "sick man" of the continent, the sleepy Iroquois, who had iron but no horses. I say HAD Iron, cos we made pinpoint strikes and stripped them of the two cities they had near sources of iron. The poor Persians are completely without, and the Americans have but one source remaining....soon as our treaty with them is up, we shall relieve them of it, and then be in an utterly dominant position on the continent....all thanks to the little 10-shield cost guys with the colorful headdress.

And, I should add that it appears the ideas we've been discussing here of late work equally well on Emperor. In fact, in this game, I only built five cities all told, so I could have spaced them out in a more "Purist" fashion if I had chosen to do so (which means, Arri my friend, that you won't have to resort to city-packing after all!) Just gotta live with some rush-built troops to get a decent standing army and you should be all set (however, I still think I prefer having a numeric superiority in cities prior to committing to an attack, even if I peacefully disband and reabsorb some of them later)....I dunno....just my overly cautious nature where that is concerned I guess.

Also came up with a couple of new concepts during this game....or at least, new to me.

First....I kept my research at 50% and taxes at 50%. Each time I finished researching, I'd pick whatever was cheapest to research next. I know, I know....if it's cheaper, it means that lots of other civs have it and I should just trade for it, but....

In the early game, I have found that I don't have the financial base to pay for EVERYTHING, and I'd rather get SOME use from my research, so....I let my rivals pay the steep cost of first discovery with their heinous research bonus, and I go for the easy stuff, paying for what I can, as I can. (and then of course, after an ancient era war, you get to technological pairity anyways).

Another thing I did was NEVER even attempted to buy or trade techs with the AI (Edit for clarification: The Persians, who were on the far side of the Americans from me, were my "tech trading partners." But I never did make any trade deals with the Americans/Iroquois, and only traded techs from the Persians that neither the American/Iroquois had.) Since I knew I was gonna go to war in the early game anyway, I just saved my money. This gave me the resources to dash ahead with my cultural improvements after I had gotten my army ramped up and on the prowl, and of course, once I won my first victory over a rival Civ, the money problems....well....were no longer problems to say the least.

With only five native cities (and 5 captures), and two VERY brief periods of war, I've been able to pretty much keep pace with research (the Americans only had three techs to give me, and the Iroquois were actually a tech behind me when I stopped!).

It could be argued that at least some of this success was purely based on the Civ I chose to play, and I wouldn't dispute that for a second! But....I think the concepts can be adapted to any faction, playing to their own native strengths.

Anyway....first test of these ideas on Emperor was a resounding, complete success!

-=Vel=-
PS: Oh...did I say that the Aztecs ROCK!?

[vmxa1]

The reason I try not to make any more swordsmen than I must is that they can not be upgrade. I agree with Vel that they make good early garrisons or escorts. In some cases I have been forced to make extras as an attack looked imminet and that was my best unit at the time. One point that was mention in passing is that barracks near the war are a big boost as they can heal in one turn. This is the only thing that saved the city many time. The defenders are down to yellow or red at teh end of the fight and next day are ready fore another round.

[Velociryx]

More testing, and now I'm sure of it. On the higher levels, when the AI is out-teching you, there IS another alternative to making the rounds and whoring your often slim tech lead around.

You can simply follow the pack for a time, researching the absolute cheapest techs available, selectively trade here and there to fill in the gaps, and, for game-critical techs, slam your science to max (after trading yourself up to the absolute bleeding edge during those times), and squeeze out a temporary tech lead.

This has two effects that I have observed:

First, it slows the pace of the tech-race down a little, which, IMO, is a good thing. Most of the Monarch/Emperor games I've played, we left the ancient era while still back in BC because of all the tech-whoring.

The second effect (more details below), seems to be a much more "active" game diplomatically (which almost seems counter-intuitive, I know!)

This latest game (and the test before it I ran), puts things back on a more "normalized" time frame....don't know if it's because the AI is LESS willing to trade if the human player is not involved or no, but rather than seeing all the Civs more or less at tech-pairity, you get more differentiation....the more research-minded civs begin to take a definite lead over the more warlike ones, which TOTALLY shifts the balance of power in the game.

What I was able to to was create a "trading block" of research-oriented Civs, and collectively, we're engineering the slow and steady destruction of the war-mongers among us. I suspect that sooner or later, one of them will make an outrageous demand for tech to try to regain continental pairity, at which point one of the trading block will either cave in, or we'll see a middle-ages continent-wide war.

As it stands, the primaries on this game (Emperor/Large/12/Greeks) are me, Egypt, and (somewhat surprisingly), the Aztecs, and the poor boys of the continent are the Americans and Romans.

I'm not sure all the implications of this just yet, but it certainly feels like a much more diplomatically active game. That's one of the gripes I've been having with all the constant tech trading in my games lately. Because everybody was pretty much at the same tech level constantly, all the factions got....I dunno...sorta paralyzed. Nobody had a real, solid advantage (even a short term one), so most of the games were peace-fests. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when you want to stir the pot in a situation like that, sometimes it's not so easily done.

As it is currently, there are clear tech leaders and tech laggards, and it has fundamentally altered the flavor of the game.

Not sure what it all means yet, but I'll be fiddling with it more tomorrow....for the moment, I'm off to bed.

-=Vel=-

[Libertarian]

Vegas Aggie

I'm not sure whether Vel saw the results of the test he asked for, but I just wanted to let you know that my results (I'm counting my dozen or more games as "tests") agree with yours.

For whoever is interested in the straight dope on workers, Vegas is right.

[cousLee]

great thread!

I like to maximize workers, and something to keep in mind. There are odd turn numbers. Playing the Egyptians and lumberjacking: 3 regulars and foriegn will harvest and replant. If you use 4 regulars, you are losing potential. 7 foriegns will also do the trick (if you have a lot of them). Only thing you have to make sure of, is you use 2 regulars for the chopping, and 1 reg + 1 foriegn for the planting. This will free up an extra worker for every two lumberjack crews. It allows for either less workers to support, or more crews. I like to have one crew per town to supplement with the 10 shields. If you set it up right, and start with a forest, you can LJ and still work to forest in the city window. Since the game does tend to cycle through the workers in order, mm is minimal. Once I was done with all normal work up to railroads (in the current game). I used goto to put every worker I had in on on of two tiles. then used the wait option to get the cycle to the begining of the worker sequence. Then it was only a matter of goto, chop/goto, chop to set up the clearing part of the team, then send one of each to plant. On subsequent turns, they when in proper order when cycling (reg,reg,reg,for). I like to build. I have almost every imp in every city, and am kicking culture butt, and lead in the tech. If I need to clean up pollution, I simply divert a harvest crew to do the job and spacebar any not needed. I have come across that the worker order has gotten screwed up diverting them, so I have to watch and make sure the one foriegn don't try and chop tress, but it simply a matter of using the "w" key. And it don't matter if the foregin does the plant before the 3rd regular. it can be adjusted based on how many free workers you have available. 2 regs and 3 foreign work just as well, or most any combo. Just keep in mind it's 4 turns to cut, 3 turns to plant. (currently under demo).

If this is something obvious that everyone knows, then sorry for the clutter.

Trapping the AI navies:
I control a section of water between my continent and a large island. At one end, there is a 1 coast tile choke point, at the other, the area can be choked off with 3 ships. I left one end open, and cruised around outside the trap with a privateer. the AI can see that unit, even from all the way around the globe, and hunts them with a vengence. I know they can, as I have watched them B-line for the privateer using other ships as spotters. I captain the privateer into the trap, and wait for the AI horde to come a running, which they do. I then pull the bait into a city with trap access, (to protect it) and seal off the AI ship that have entered into the trap. They of course want out, so I can open one end of the trap and they all move towards the opening, and close it again just before they can exit. Pull the privateer out of the base at the other end, and they B-line for the bait again. rinse, repeat. I was able to effectively trap the majority of the AI ships using this. When they got to the one end that was being closed, and when I pulled out the bait ship, I could open the other end, and suck some more ships into this trap. When all was said and done, I had about 20-25 AI ships from every civ in there. With the use of MPPs, I would have been able to kick-start a world war and watch the AIs massacre each other. The "doors" of the trap were compromised of stacked ironclads, and the AI would pick of the weaker ships of the other civs (I am sure of it). I didn't start that war, tho it was set up for it. The persians and the brits were MPPed, and myself and the other 4 civs are MPPed. Could have been nasty indeed. But even without warring, it took the competition (mostly) off the main seas, and allowed for oceanic superiority. Some might call that a cheezy tactic, but I look at it this way, if the AI can see my privateer from 20-30 tiles away and come running after it at every oppertuniy, I can use this to make him pay upkeep for a bunch of obsoleting units for a 1000 years. The Americans also had access to this trap area, and contributed a large number of ships to the pile. Should a war actually do break out, My many artty on stand by will have a blast (har har) shooting these fish in a barrel. But since this has gone on during a 2,000 peace fest, I used privateers to eliminate most of them. Battles would generally go, one turn I lose 2, they lose, next turn they lose two, I lose one. Since privateers are cheap and my bait cities will either produce privateers or wealth, it was not a debilitating cost on my end. and over the long term, one for one with privateers VS man-o-wars, frigates, and other masted ships was not too bad (imho). It took away from the monotony of working my lumberjack crews. And to boot, I had all the AI gracious. I would pull up the diplomacy and make the rounds about every 5-6 turns, ask them what they would offer for my world map, and accept whatever they gave. Usually, they gave token crap (5 gold, WM, TM, ect) but it kept them thrilled while I picked apart their navies. When the barrel got empty, all I would have to do is open the door, and here they would come en-masse. Probably cause they were chomping at the bit to get in on the action from the other side of the trap door. The most that came through at one time was around 8 vessels, and since one blocked the door from being shut, I had to wait an extra turn to re-close it, and 5 or 6 more came through on the end-turn cycle. It was actually fun to watch all these peacefull ships trying to dodge eachother moving around looking for the occasional appearance of the disappearing privateer. If the privateer got left in the trap after a battle, I would stack it with one ironclad. Most of the time, the AI only took bombard shots at them, but would occasionaly attack trying to sink the clad to get to the pirate. they almost never attacked if I stacked 2 ironclads. Since I didn't mind losing an ironclad or two (as I had many) to have a chance at getting an elite one, i usually didn't oreo the bait ship I think I lost a total of 4 clads, got 2 elietes, and sank who knows how many masts. All during gracious peace. If this was smac, I would have landmarked it the "bermuda triangle". I also ended up with 2 eliete privateers. Call it what you will, but it sure was fun.

[uh Clem]

PS: Oh...did I say that the Aztecs ROCK!?

The Aztecs are the only Civ that's given me bad dreams. Literally. There's something about watching those little guys running at you by the dozens...hundreds...thousands...

*shudders*