Announcement

**Chuckman** · January 2, 2008, 02:39

I consider my win amazingly lucky. I thought I had no chance to win pretty deep into this game. But to the beginning.

I have to admit I "cheated" in this game in the sense that I paid attention to the message boards and got the idea that iron was not going to be readily available. I had these grand notions that I would explore and find some distant iron and plant a far city to allow all those fine Praetorians to do their things. I eventually woke up. Anyways.

I planted Rome immediately. Research would start Hunting for Scouts then Archery for Archers for defense. I then planned to research up to Iron Working so I could find the elusive iron. It would also allow me to clear the jungle I was finding about for when I planted cities. As research continued I of course explored. When I discovered I was on a western corner, I decided to to grab land toward the east as blocking positions and fill in behind later.

The couple of inland bodies of water were going to be a help. Cumae went in 2000BC 4 steps NE of Rome. Ravenna followed 7 steps E of Rome in 1400BC. Arretium went up third in 1000BC 7N-1NE of Rome. This may have been too aggressive as I started to feel the science percentage drop. So after Iron Working I started the research toward Code of Laws via Alphabet/Currency.

A Barbarian city Thracia popped up on the far west coast in 825BC that I would eventually have to deal with. I mainatined expansion while keeping tech at or above 50%. Arpenium was established SE of Rome on the coast next to the wine in 100BC. Ardea was built on the coast NNW of Rome in 760AD. It was a good site for a cottage city.

While this slow expansion was going on I did not open borders with anyone. This may have been another mistake. I didn't want anyone sneaking settlers through my lands until I had settled it all. But then I lost out on the trade. I was falling behind in tech with almost everyone except Stalin. In the interest of getting friendly with the neighbors I converted to Hinduism in 820AD at the request of Churchill. As Egypt and Russia were also Hindus I thought this a wise move. In 1000AD America built the Apostolic Palace. The religion was Buddhism. I had one Buddhist city which was to prove very unfortunate.

Ostia was founded in 1050AD west of Rome along the river just shy of the west coast and able to use the copper hills. Velitrae was built on the coast SSW of Rome in 1080AD. In 1150AD I did my first Civics sweep converting to Organized Religion, Serfdom, Vassalage and Hereditary Rule.

Bad things then started happening. A 1210AD Apostolic vote forced me into a war with Stalin. We had not a single battle. I made peace with Stalin at the earliest possible moment 1410AD. Even worse the Egyptians built the Sistine Chapel in 1230AD. This would lead to ongoing and increasing cultural problems with Egypt. I finally knocked out Thracia in 1320AD, razing it. I built Viroconium along the coast west of Velitrae in 1380AD and Tarentum on the far western tip in 1400AD. Expansion completed, I started opening borders wherever I could.

Another Apostolic vote forced me into another war with Stalin in 1555AD along with the Eastern Romans and America. Stalin wasn't going to stand for a 3 on 1 so his ran to Churchill for help. Thus began World War I as England and its vassal Egypt joined in. I was behind in tech. All production was converted to military. I began to race toward Rifling and I was a ways off. England focused on Ravenna. Egypt sent some harassing forces against Cumae and Arretium. The first English attack against Ravenna I held off with some losses. About this time I researched Gunpowder. I didn't have much in the way of money so I decided to build Musketmen and continue the research race to Rifling. A second smaller attack on Ravenna was held off. Things then started to unravel.

Augustus Ceasar made peace with the Central Powers in 1630AD. Then Stalin renounced England in 1665AD. I made peace with Russia in 1670AD. I kept trying to make peace with Churchill but he kept insisting I give him Ravenna. About this time America made peace with England. In 1710AD Egypt renounced Engalnd thus completing the breakup of the Central Powers. At this time a monster stack of English units showed up approaching Ravenna, about 30 units including 8 Grenadiers. There was no way I was going to hold off that stack. I pulled out of Ravenna and gave it to Churchill as an act of appeasement. Roman Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin announced that this act of appeasement would result in "Peace in our time."

Well not exactly. I was still at war with Egypt. I had gotten a Great Spy during the war and was using him to scout out the enemy. I saw an opportunity in attacking Memphis. I would relieve Cumae and Arretium of the ever increasing cultural pressure. I threw almost all my offensive might at Memphis. Egypt of course responded and sent more troops to defend. Once I had pounded down the defense percentage the situation didn't look promising. Engalnd had declared war on me again in 1790AD. I only had about 1.5 attacking units per defending unit. Should I press the attack or fall back to the defensive. After searching my attack stack, the best I could muster was a Musketman with a 15% chance to win. I almost gave up. I had come this far I figured I would throw one unit into the fray. That 15% Musketman amazingly won. I then moved a 20% Musketman into the action and he won also. I kept pressing the assault. I ended up losing 3 units but took Memphis. There was much cheering among the Roman citizens of Cumae and Arretium. The Home Depots stopped printing all their signs in the Roman alphabet and Egyptian heiroglyphics. Of course the rejoicing was short lived.

England captured Memphis in 1810AD. Bad, but the silver lining was no Egyptian cultural pressure. Until of course England gave Memphis back to Egypt in 1818AD. Now the battleground became Cumae. I finally got Rifling. All my cities started building Riflemen and funnelling them to Cumae. England kept sending stacks of Redcoats. This went on for close to a century. I luckily had settled three Great Generals in Rome so I was able to pump out a triple diamond (city defense) Rifleman every three turns. I had reached a stalemate with England, but couldn't get Churchill to make peace. Not without surrendering Cumae. I wasn't going to make that mistake a second time. Egypt was marching toward a cultural victory. I was way behind in tech. I had no idea how I could even dream of winning this one. Then it happened.

A deus ex machina moment.

America offers a Permanent Alliance 1904AD.

I of course jumped at it without a second thought. It was very odd as I had been looking for help during the 1800s and nobody wanted to touch me with a 10 foot pole. As you can imagine this changed everything. Augustus Cesar even joined in the action attacking England in 1916AD. War weariness and a desire to address centuries neglected infrastructure sent me to the negotiating table in 1928AD resulting in peace. Churchill and Augustus made peace in 1931.

I did my next civics sweep in 1937 bringing in Free Market, Emancipation, Free Speech and Representation. I kept Organized Religion to aid the massive building projects. Egypt rejoined England in 1953AD. Another out of the blue event happened in 1954AD when Stalin offered to be my vassal. I accepted. I built my first World Wonder in 1961AD when Rome completed the Eiffel Tower. In 1964 Lincoln completed Rock and Roll. Augustus Ceasar completed the Apollo Program in 1967. Stalin beat us out to Hollywood in 1972AD. Ostia completed Christo Redentor in 1973AD. Egypt completed the Apollo Program in 1979AD. They then renounced England in 1981AD. Augustus Ceasar won the race to the Three Gorges Dam by one turn in 1982AD. That was the same year that Stalin beat us to the United Nations. He also got elected Secretary General as everyone else voted for him. England and Egypt signed a defensive pact in 1983AD. England completed the Apollo Program in 1987AD. Then in 1990AD we won a diplomatic victory when Augustus Ceasar voted for us giving up 408 votes when we need 406.

At the end Rome was three turns away from completing the Apollo Program.

Egypt was closest to a cultural victory: Thebes 123219, Memphis 29228 and Heliopolis 24146. The cultural pressure was bad. Arretium was down to only 4 Roman squares and Cumae was down to 9.

This was a game that shows if you stay with it long enough miracles can happen.

**RobWorham** · January 2, 2008, 05:00

Sounded like a blast!!!!

**Nugog** · January 2, 2008, 15:15

Originally posted by RobWorham
Sounded like a blast!!!!

Excellent write up - thanks Chuckman.

**Nugog** · January 2, 2008, 15:17

For those who want to take another look at the game (or find out what it would have been like with Iron - via worldbuilder) - here is the unlocked save.

DOWNLOAD

**jbp26** · January 3, 2008, 16:27

i played this game but not to the end. this was a situation where i really wish i could have just started over.

playing as rome on a big map like this, i quickly decided on going for the domination route. i haven't used praetorians in a long time and i knew i could take huge gains once i started cranking them out. i expanded aggresively at first, and blocked off the english and the egyptians from getting into my territory, then backfilled from there. i didn't bother with wonders, really just settlers, workers, and military. i wanted to take out the english quickly because fighting against a protective civ without using catapults is just too quickly, but churchill somehow always had way more strength then me. in retrospect i should have archer rushed him just to keep him pinned. alas.

egypt was a much softer target with wealthy cities, so i rushed in and conquered them. it brought me a lot of income but not as much as i had hoped, due to the rather extreme distance from my capital. i spent hundreds of turns fighting with the english and eventually conquered them aronud the early 1800s. not having access to iron despite having all that territory severly delayed my conquest.

after that i assessed my options. i had basically completed neglected buidling wonders at all in favor of military, so cultural was out. my relations were pretty bad, so diplomatic wasn't happening. i was fairly close to domination, but my opponents were one huge civ with everyone else as his vassal. i wasn't going to win that war. so my only option was slogging through a space race, which also wasn't a guarantee by any means; despite my territory, i was a tech or two behind the leader. this sounded massively unappealing, and i knew i wouldn't place in the tournament, so i just quit.

what made the game so hard is that rome is a terrible civ now. imperialistic is by far the worst trait; the bonus it confers on faster settlers is so trivial i didn't even notice it. i felt like i was playing with a handicap of only one trait. secondly, the unique building i just not good. and of course, the obvious problem, no iron! that was just cruel.

ah well, better luck next time.

**MikeH** · January 4, 2008, 04:49

I didn't finish either. I guessed there might be no iron, teched to it to make sure, but neglected my scouting and didn't find it until it was already mined by someone else. I forget who now. I then got a bit obsessed. In the end I didn't get iron until I had gunpowder. Which was a bloody stupid war to embark on really. Got it when I didn't need it. I was still alive at that point, and not completely out of the running after some crafty tech trading but my monitor died and I ran out of time.

Good premise though. I still enjoyed it. And once again, all the problems were caused by my own impetuousness and bad play.

**KMoore** · January 4, 2008, 11:10

Congrats to Chuckman on your perservance and to the rest who finished this difficult game.

My experience resembled jpb26's, expect that I gave up earlier. I focused on expansion early and my borders with Churchill ended up being around the lake to east of our starting position. As I surveyed the two neighbors, Egypt was a much more tempting target than England. It was weakly defended, had a holy / shrine city and some wonders, whereas Churchill was quite strong militarily. All three of us shared an early religion and Churchill was Friendly with me so I thought I would be able to get away with a war with Egypt, consolidate and then take Churchill later.

Churchill was proving to be very annoying. He planted a city very aggressively next to me, blocked my expansion at the lake and then declared war on me. He took one of my cities. I recaptured the city and then sued for peace so I could get on with Egypt.

I built up my forces a bit and then declared war on Egypt. It would have gone great. I took Cairo easily and was set to roll over the rest when Churchill declared war on me again.

Knowing I couldn't fight both at once, I went to peace with Egypt and focused on the war with England. He took one of my cities and we fought to a standstill for a while. He had more production capacity than me and was doing a surprisingly good job of managing the war.

I checked many times and Churchill would never speak to me to discuss peace. I saw he was about to get Longbowmen so I decided to throw the bulk of my forces at one of his cities in a gamble to end the war before he finished researching longbowmen. The battle went badly and left me in a very weak position with Churchill's offensive stack marching on my one and only strong production city.

Depressed, I saved the game thinking that things might look less bleak after a break. Twice I loaded the game back up and just didn't have the heart to continue playing.

I suppose I've never really been one to play out an apparent loss and couldn't motivate myself to do so in this game.

**RobWorham** · January 4, 2008, 23:39

Bad luck guys........

Out of interest, did you find the scenario of an iron-less Rome a "good' idea or a 'bad' idea?

Just for our future reference..........

**draethor** · January 4, 2008, 23:50

Will edit this later to post my writeup.

I expected (as it sounds others did here) that Iron wouldn't be available in this map. I noticed you guys like to get tricky with these kinds of things in previous games

I personally think that it's ok to do things like take away iron from the romans, just because it makes people play in unconventional ways. Certainly the argument could be made that in the vast majority of 'normal' games, iron would be present, but I like this tournament because it makes me play things with different expectations and from alternate points of view.

Of course, playing from a handicapped position (romans without iron, dutch without water, etc) can also be frustrating. I think throwing a game or two in like this can be interesting but I could see it annoying a lot of people if these sort of gimmicks were consistently used.

**KMoore** · January 5, 2008, 00:35

Rob - I probably found it a little frustrating. For me, part of the fun of the game is looking to use different Civ's unique strengths. It's one thing to get dealt a bad hand by the random map generator but somehow not quite the same to have the map engineered to render your best strengths useless.

Having said that, I like playing a variety of types of games and am certainly happy to face the ocassional situation like this. This isn't a complaint by any means, only responding to your question.

My primary feeling is appreciation that you take the time to put these together.

**draethor** · January 6, 2008, 18:10

When I saw the settings for this game, I didn't get my hopes up. I figured there wasn't going to be any iron, since you guys can be tricky. What tipped me off was the terra map on a previous game - starting mansa musa beside our start with an incredible starting city was just mean!

This was a pretty typical start for me, I expanded quickly and got stonehenge/oracle --> CoL jump for confucianism. I was pretty behind militarily, but Egypt was a soft target and had a double holy city with shrines up (and both religions spread throughout the world) so taking it out first was a no-brainer. I went from something like a deficit at 70% research to a big surplus at 80% research.

My previous games have all been soft wins, so I wanted to play more aggressively. Churchill was my gateway to the rest of the world, so I went for him next. This war was a huge pain in the butt, since he got redcoats halfway through. My attack mostly stalled until I got infantry/artillery.

At this time I thought a diplo win might be feasible since Lincoln was my good friend. However, I was about 10 votes (out of something like 500) short. Stalin declared on me, so I ended my war with churchill by vassalizing him, then killed stalin. In hindsight, this was a huge mistake - for the rest of the game churchill wouldn't vote for my diplo win, and the 3 or so cities he had left held enough votes for a victory.

I couldn't declare against augustus since he doubled my score on the power graph, so I did everything in my power to make churchill go to war against me so I could take his cities and win. I racked up a -10 relations hit with him because I kept demanding everything he had, but he wouldn't go to war.

I ended up getting lucky and a few towns expanded in population or something (I had tried to tech to biology somewhat quickly and converted a few towns to farms to try to grow population) so I ended up winning the diplo vote out of nowhere by like 2 votes. Pity I didn't just kill churchill though, or this diplo win would've been 100 turns earlier.

**MikeH** · January 7, 2008, 12:41

Originally posted by RobWorham
Bad luck guys........

Out of interest, did you find the scenario of an iron-less Rome a "good' idea or a 'bad' idea?

Just for our future reference..........

Well, I was kind of expecting that that would be the trick, but it didn't help me.

I did still enjoy it but it's probably the game I've enjoyed least, I think more to do with how badly I played it, but I do feel a bit better that I wasn't alone in finding it a tough game.

I may actually finish it at some point, just to see how well I'd have done.

Announcement

Intermediate Game 6 Discussion Thread

Intermediate Game 6 Discussion Thread

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment