A Strategic Choice

[Arrian]

Oh, to explain Grog, we have to go back to Civ1. There was a silly cheat program that gave you the power to do just about anything (have tanks in 4000bc, for instance). You installed the program and loaded Civ1 through it. When it loaded up, there were several different loading screens. One of them was a simple black screen with white type that read: grog want tank... (back to black) Grog Want Tank... (back to black) GROG WANT TANK... - game loaded.

A friend got it from a friend and we messed with it for a bit, but quickly got bored with it. Shortly thereafter I became seriously addicted to MOO1, and then CivII.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Back to the game.

For the curious, this whole situation developed because I found myself with a good starting spot, but hemmed in on all sides by several civs and a large jungle, and I was dealing with a huge continent with 6 AIs (tech was gonna move, several civs with ancient UUs, the rest with medieval ones). Those six AIs are the Aztecs, French, Romans, Mongols, Arabs, and Egyptians. My response to the situation was an archer rush - something I rarely do, actually. I lined up 5 vet archers, a vet spearman and a vet warrior and marched on Tenochticlan. I took it, and dispached 2 archers and the vet spear to join up with 3 more archers & spear to hit their hill city where I generated the leader. That's way more archers than I normally build, since "normal" is zero. I made peace for the city down south, which is why it's undefended.... sorry, you're gonna lose about 100gold to a barb horseman shortly, nothin' you can do.

I chose to rush the Pyramids, and then set about grabbing more land and cutting down that friggin' jungle. Oh, and beelining for republic while building the GL. I succeded in nabbing a good chunk of land, hooking up some luxuries, and building the city where I intended to built the FP. My golden age allowed marketplaces, cathedrals & colosseums in the core cities (Tenochticlan, by the way, with a courthouse and WLTKD, qualifies as "core" and will be even better once the FP is done), and lesser improvements in heretofore totally useless towns.

When I finally forced myself to save and quit last night, I was 10 turns or so from the FP (using a courthouse + 1 entertainer for WLTKD to squeeze 6 shields or so out of the city). I had gained another luxury (bringing me up to 5) by jumping in on a war against Rome, and the Civ gods smiled upon me with a second leader as I slugged it out with swordsmen against legionaries (until I captured their iron city), archers and horsemen. I saved that game before using the leader to rush Sun Tzu, and then played on. I suppose I could use it for an army, but insta-Sun Tzu was hard to pass up.

My next target is probably France. They are very small & weak, and Paris isn't really all that far from me. I gained two nearly useless Roman towns in the peace deal that are right up in the mountains next to France, which would allow me to dump a bunch of Medieval Infantry and/or Knights on them out of the blue. Paris has the Colossus and Great Lighthouse.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
My response to the situation was an archer rush - something I rarely do, actually. I lined up 5 vet archers, a vet spearman and a vet warrior and marched on Tenochticlan. I took it, and dispached 2 archers and the vet spear to join up with 3 more archers & spear to hit their hill city where I generated the leader. That's way more archers than I normally build, since "normal" is zero.

Very nice choice of Archer rush in this case.

I'm almost up to 1000AD (out of school, just exams to study for!), so I'll post my further comments shortly.

By the way, how did you get so much money!?! A 1k treasury in the BC years is pretty sweet, especially considering you were hardly behind in tech.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Dominae,

Wow, you threw down some playing time! I just found out that they are letting us out of work... NOW! At 1:37pm! That rocks. Today was our office "holiday luncheon" and they typically just tell the people that go to the lunch to just go home at the end of it. I forgot all about it, didn't go to the lunch, and was thus VERY happily surprised when informed I could leave. SWEET! Hours and hours of civ time, with no annoyance of the girlfriend!

Regarding my 1000gold in 1025bc:

I'm pretty central on the continent, and I managed to make contact with, and trade start techs with, most civs before they met each other. I have been even or ahead in tech most of the way, and have sold tech whenever civs (like France) had some available cash. 50 gold here, 50 gold there, you know. I got writing & established embassies relatively early and discovered that many of them still hadn't made contact with one another. So I sold contacts all around for some more money. My original cities are all on rivers, you will notice, and one is set up to have 2 gold mountains (though I don't think it was using them in 1025bc). Finally, it's a big continent and I've been hitting barb encampments pretty regularly.

-Arrian

[BRC]

Hours and hours of civ time, with no annoyance of the girlfriend!

I need more of this too.

Regarding my 1000gold in 1025bc

I often end up with this at the end of the Ancient Ages, but you still got a little bit to go, correct? Were any upgrades performed?
Are you saving for a horseman upgrade?

Arrian, could you post a screenshot of the grid showing your Palace and your FP city on the same screen? Whenever you get time. I would appreciate it. Thanks.

[vmxa1]

Arrain, did you get a cure for Moo1? I probably need it, Civ3 got me over Civ2. Moo2, did not cure me, it just gave another game to squeeze in the mix.

[Dominae]

Due to some heavy procrastination I was able to play the "alternate universe" game up until around 1000AD this afternoon. I'll comment on a few things, then I'll focus on the whether or not FP is the right decision.

This turned out to be a UP game for me; Arrian, you must have a knack for finding awesome maps! Before using the Great Leader, I focused on some major REXing to get as much land as possible. I went mainly South so as to keep the Egyptians nice and small. My strategy for placing the FP was for my second core to support a military campgaign against Egypt. The setup was ideal: Egypt was the second-best civ next to me, but it wasn't strong enough to put up a good defense, and all the other civs didn't have any more room to expand. I tried some resource-denial with the leftover Archers, but eventually I had to bring the Horsemen in for support. Upon reaching the Medieval age a couple of techs ahead of the competition, I realised I was the only Scientific civ! I darted to Chivalry and the Egyptians defense started crumbling.

I finished them off around 850AD, just around the time I built Copernicus' and entered a Golden age. The GA took me to 1060AD, and I used it to build up mucho infrastructure and Sipahi. I stopped the turn after I got to the Industrial age.

I honestly think the FP is the way to go in this game. With such a big continent, war is unavoidable, so getting two productive cores up and running ASAP is awesome. I imagine the Pyramids would be better for a builder approach. Due to the fertility of the terrain and the abundance and variety of Luxuries, getting all cities up to size 12 without unhappiness should be easy. As for the Army route, it's also viable, since there are so many targets to train your units on. But, overall I think the FP route is best. I'm eager to see what you guys made of your "universes".

Here's a screenshot of the FP placement:

[Dominae]

Here's a screen of the turn I stopped playing (Ankara is the FP city):

[Dominae]

BRC, I don't know if you're still reading this thread, but I thought I'd show what my personal play "style" is at the moment. A lot of things we've discussed in other threads are present in this game. Compare the earlier save (670AD; just before my warmongering days are coming to and end), to the final save (1090AD; just after my Golden Age, as I'm preparing for some more warmongering!). Notice the lack of infrastructure early on.


Dominae

[Theseus]

Dominae, sorry!! (that was a ridiculous example of the power of scotch!) I know better.

Quebecois, OK??!!

I'm firing up the game now... I'll take a break when Arrian sends me the PBEM.

[Dominae]

Heh heh, that's ok Theseus; now I know what you meant!

"Les filles du Québec sont très jolies!"

I hope don't offend any French-Canadian women by saying this (...somehow I doubt they read this forum!).


Dominae

[BRC]

BRC, I don't know if you're still reading this thread, but I thought I'd show what my personal play "style" is at the moment

Wow. That looked a lot different than my games look. I can't believe that you didn't even have a temple in Istanbul!!! That blows my mind. The lack of defense in the core cities. You live dangerously.

Thanks for posting that. I've never really seen how others play. How were the wars? Have you lost any cities? I see your culture ended up surpassing theirs later. I am amazed at how our playstyles differ. How's that Great Wall working out for you??

I would appreciate if you could take a look at my latest game and give me some feedback. I'm very interested in this new approach to the game.

[Arrian]

You built the forbidden palace ONE TILE SW OF MINE! You built it a lot sooner, though. EDIT: typo due to exhaustion - one tile SE.

I don't have time to do screenshots now, but I will do some tomorrow night. I too have played through to 1000AD. I destroyed France with Knights and Med Inf, which was pathetically easy, and then did something I almost never do: I beelined for Mil Tradition. The Egyptians were the only really viable civ left... and only they researched their way to Education, which forced me to double back and research it myself just before getting MT. I then unleashed 50+ Sipahi on them. YEEEEEEEHAWWW! I destroyed their mainland empire in 7 turns. It was incredible. Leader #3 became Bach.

I now have to hunt down their last city, which is off on an island to the SW of the main continent... it's gonna take 6 turns for my (rushbuilt) caravels to get there.

The Arabs picked a fight with me, and I enlisted the Mongols to aid me. They were duking it out for a while, but it looked like the Arabs might be starting to win, so I sent a couple of stacks of Sipahi through Mongolia and have razed 2 size-12 Arab cities. I still have 12 turns left on the alliance, IIRC.

I am researching Banking. I think I maintained a much larger army than you did, and you had the FP up so much sooner, which is why you're so far ahead in tech. Still, I'm on a 4-turn pace now, and things are looking good. I just need to wipe out the Egyptians. My Rome is much weaker than yours (though I'm sure you could squash them like a bug).

You like the map? I was looking at it not too long ago, once I had cleared the jungle, and I stopped to just admire it. So many complex river systems. Luxuries galore. What a blast.

I wonder who the 8th civ is?

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Ha, so there is such a thing as optimal FP placement!

You're right in pointing out that I play with a rather small military. At the height of its glory(?) it was only some 25 Knights strong. I did lose quite a few to culture flips, though...guess I should follow my own advice more often and keep units outside of conquered cities.

The politics in my game were a little different. Mostly everyone hated me, but I managed to keep the war between myself and Egyptians private. I enlisted the Arabs for a short war with the Romans, and they kept at it long after I'd signed a treaty.

I kept away from the Military Tradition route for 2 reasons: first, the AI was focusing on Engineering and Invention, so I figured I could extort that "branch"; second, I wanted to delay my GA until I was prepared to start building (in other words, after the war with the Egyptians). I ended up triggering with Copernicus', but it was a glorious GA nontheless. I am now officially a fan of late GAs.

I also have a new-found appreciation for Bach's. It's the warmonger's dream, really: no infrastructure required, and forget about unhappiness (with a couple of Luxs, of course) until the Industrial era.

Regardless of the individual differences between our games, this should be a pretty easy Domination win for both of us. I like a challenge, but once in a while it's great to FEEL THE POWER!


Dominae


P.S: No idea about the 8th civ. It would be cool to win via Domination without having contacted all the civs...

[Dominae]

Originally posted by BRC
How were the wars? Have you lost any cities?

I was essentially involved in one big war with Egypt the entire chunk of game that I played. As I mentioned, at first I used Arrian's leftover Archers to attemp to deny Horses from the Egyptians, but it was a losing battle because they had two sources. After REXing was over, I focused on Horsemen until Chivalry came along. The war against Egypt was easy, but, as usual, there were about 4 flips during the campaign, causing me to lose around 10 Knights. It seemed as though half of the Egyptian defense was pure Culture.

The Romans declared war on me, just because that's what they do. I diverted some of my forces to that border for a while, then got the Romans to play with the Arabs instead of me.

Originally posted by BRC
I see your culture ended up surpassing theirs later.

When I stopped playing I had all available cultural improvemens (edit: other than Cathedrals) in every productive city (with some exceptions). The way the AI is coded, it can't match that kind of Culture focus (Arrian's early Temples surely helped too). The only problem was that I needed Culture the most during my campaign with the Egyptians, not in any future steamrolling of the remaining civs. In any case, I think I've shown it's possible to be aggressive without cultural "backup"...it just makes things a bit trickier.

Originally posted by BRC
How's that Great Wall working out for you??

Really poorly; the Great Wall sucks. I was pre-building for either the Great Library, the Pyramids or the Hanging Gardens, when a cascade caused me to lose them all within one turn of amassing enough Shields! The only thing left to build was the Great Wall (at a loss of 148 Shields, mind you). I was thinking to myself: "This isn't so bad, the Great Wall provides Walls in all cities, maybe I could use this offensively...". Then I realised I was thinking in terms of the AU mod! In the unmodded game, the Great Wall doubles the effect of Walls! How bad is that!!?!

Originally posted by BRC
I would appreciate if you could take a look at my latest game and give me some feedback. I'm very interested in this new approach to the game.

Sure thing, I'll post some feedback shortly.


Dominae