Has anyone here lost a CTP2 game?

[dande]

Sooooo close, yet....


I was pumped because I almost lost a game. I've been "civ"ing for 10 years and haven't lost a game in a long long time. However, in my current CTP2 game (only my second) I was playing very hard, eight civs, normal map. I startred off with the lowsiest terrain I could have immagined. I was in last place for thousands of years years and really thought I was going to lose. Finally, I decided to make some stupidly aggressive moves into the AI's territory and slowly began to take cities.

Alas, I am now in first place and will win again...At least I had to think for a little while.

[Pintello]

Hi All,

I have been doing some playtesting for WesW's MedMod II. In the game before last, I was doing so badly that I had to quit because it was obvious that I would not be able to win. How did I know this, it was around 300AD and I had still only been able to build 1 city. Every time I got some units together, the Barbarians started attacking me and I had to go out and deal with them, but in the process I would loose most of my newly created units. I was having to deal with stacks of 4 or more barbarian units, so you can see how they could cause some damage to a civ that just had 1 city's worth of resources to deal with.

I think my main problem was how I was situated. I was on a continent shaped something like an X and I was at the middle. Every time an AI unit encountered a Barbarian ambush, the Barbarians would filter down to the center of the X, right where I was, because the AI civs were covering the ends of the X. I have never seen so many Barbarians in a game before.

By the time I had killed off enough Barbarians and gained enough slaves to make my city productive, all the AIs had 6 or more cities that were too well defended for me to take with one stack of 12 and it was very difficult to build more than that because of support problems. Also I couldn't go out and found a lot of cities because while I was playing tag with the Barbarians just to stay alive, the AIs were building cities where I would have normally done it in a more typical game. In short, I had nowhere to go and not enough resources to conquer anybody else.

Also by this point I was way, and I mean way, behind in the tech tree. In know for a fact that some of the AIs already had Pikemen, Knights, and Catapults and were deploying them, while the best I could turn out were Hoplites and Archers and know hope of getting anything better for quite a while to come. So, I had no where to go, not enough resources to conquer anybody else, and not enough sciense to match them even if I could.

So I quit and started a new game. This one is going better for me, but it is still 200 BC and I am still at the bottom of the power graph. Once Wes gets his Mod Mod II done, I recommend that everyone give it a try.

Timothy Pintello

[colorme]

Pintello,

You quit too early. I've played similar CTP2 games (without the Med mod) where I was way behind the AIs, and have always ended up ahead. Reason is of course that the AI will never try to take back a city you capture from it. There's only this stupid thing in the diplomacy interface that tells you that it is mad at you because of you 'recently captured it's city', but of course, it doesn't act on its unhappiness.

Bottomline - hang on and you will ALWAYS win. And therein lies the rub ...

[Chris B]

I don't think ive ever lost, besided to barbs on turn 3 or 4, but often when games realy start to go bad i errrr, quit ad start anew

[Pintello]

Hi Colorme,

The key to your statement is "without the Med Mod." If I had been playing without the Med Mod I would have never been in this situation in the first place. If I had been using the regular game I could have conquered six or seven AI cities easily and mayby a few barbarian ones as well. In know because I have been in a similar situation without the Med Mod and that is what I did.

I tried it this time and promptly got my attacking stack clobbered by an even stronger defensive stack. Back to making new units, oh wait, that will take me 50 or more turns to make a sufficient stack. Oh wait, the AI is back up to strength and has now sent a sufficiently large stack to take my capital. Game Over.

That is what happens with Wes's Med Mod. In Wes's Mod, the AI only attacks when it is sure it can win, unfortunatley in my situation, both me and the AI were sure it could win.

Timothy Pintello

[colorme]

Pintello,

Really? The AI actually sent a big stack to take out your capital?

Hmmm, perhaps I need to get the MedMod and try it myself. I had given up on CTP2.

Actually, I was in the beginnings of a Civ2 game and was enjoying it ... You've spoilt that mood now

[Stratesford]

I've lost to the ai... I know I'm pathetic