PolyCast Episode 29: "Can of Worms"

[DanQ]

If you thought PolyCast listeners couldn't be spoiled any more rotten, you would be mistaken. The start of another back-to-back-to-back week set of new episodes begins with "Can of Worms" (59m40s), the series' twenty-ninth episode.

The co-hosts are first-time guest Oscar "Elhoim" Velzi with regular panelists Daniel "DanQ" Quick and Wouter "Locutus" Snijders and returning guest co-hosts Kenneth "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland and Tony "GarretSidzaka" Kiehl. These four will return for next week's thirtieth episode of PolyCast, the official and regularly bi-weekly one-hour audio production of Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS).

In an effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice, ACS is the only known website to produce its own Civ podcast.

[DanQ]

Summary of Topics

NEWS (03m03s)
The Civilization: IV: Beyond the Sword version 3.13 patch has arrived and a wayward preview of Civilization: Revolution.

MODCAST (23m40s)
Should athesim be a religion in Civ.

SENATE (33m44s)
Do you conquer your enemies completely or in degrees and best practices for intercontinental warfare.

VAULT (SENATE) (49m55s)
A tri-Wonder discussion: those to bring back from Civ titles before IV, the most improved Wonder that first appeared in Civ before -- and now -- in IV and general rules of thumb for building Wonders period.

MAILBAG (52m57s)
A voicemail message from a repeat caller informs us of new options for running BtS on a Mac.

[Elhoim]

Woohoo! Glad is out!

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Elhoim
Woohoo! Glad is out!

[Will9]

Great episode, lots of humour."The people here, they didn't have any bones in the rest of your bodies, just skulls."

I would sometimes make a wall of units on my coast in Civ3 when that made a litteral wall, but in Civ4, I would prefer to just lose some improvements while I move my army to counterattack than just than to bankrupt myself. Also in Civ4 (especially in the later game), I will often have some Naval scouts and later air recon to prevent sneak attacks.

On overseas wars, I have a very good memory of one messup. I was playing a 3 2/2 contintent (one half because the Koreans(?) had their own island separated by coast from the one I was on and another half beause Egypt had their own in middle of nowhere.) fractal map. I had conquered my continent and had decided that I would win quickest if I attacked the closet full continent to me (I think it was Mehmed, Alexander, and Mao all with defensive pacts.) So I declared war and landed next to 2 Ottoman cities. My army was rather small in numbers, but was made up completly of infantry and artillary. Alex and Moa had armies mostly upgraded to Renaissance level and and Mehmed's army was about half upgraded to Renaissance level. When I landed on the coast, I got a hit by a wave of seige weapons and massive walls of men. I just managed to take the 2 cities. Each turn I just kept getting new waves of troops that got worse once Alexander showed up (I don't recall Mao ever doing much.) I was dropping in what units I could, but you can only drop unit in a city without an airposrt, so I could only get 2 units per turn. Luckily I just reasearch Indusrialism, so I was dropping tanks, but that was hardly helping. Mehmed and Alex just seemed to be able to create a new of horde of outdated armies each turn. Finaly I had gotten my fleet of transports back over and this full of tanks. I won by domination less than 15 turns.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by Will
Great episode, lots of humour."The people here, they didn't have any bones in the rest of your bodies, just skulls."

As for warfare - once you start - finish them! If you can't then you have miscalculated IMO - sue for peace and pray.......

Intercontinental Warfare has been nerfed to hell in BtS IMO - I don't want no stinking vassal colony - I want it all!



So I will invade - grab two cities as beach head - then raze, raze raze.

Or pillage them into the stoneage........

[Will9]

Originally posted by Nugog






As for warfare - once you start - finish them! If you can't then you have miscalculated IMO - sue for peace and pray.......

Intercontinental Warfare has been nerfed to hell in BtS IMO - I don't want no stinking vassal colony - I want it all!



So I will invade - grab two cities as beach head - then raze, raze raze.

Or pillage them into the stoneage........

QFT



On Berzerkers, they also get +10% when attacking cities and a free Combat I from Ragner's aggressive trait. This makes them excellent city raiders, even on pangea.

[DanQ]

On the humour quoted, as Wouter said in the episode itself: "OooooooooK".

Originally posted by Nugog
As for warfare - once you start - finish them! If you can't then you have miscalculated IMO - sue for peace and pray.......

Miscalculated that you didn't prepare well enough to see the war through, or that you shouldn't have gone to war in the first place? Based on what you've said I suspect the first...

Intercontinental Warfare has been nerfed to hell in BtS IMO - I don't want no stinking vassal colony - I want it all!

More like the (most) desirable end result has been nerfed, no, and not intercontinental warfare itself?

So I will invade - grab two cities as beach head - then raze, raze raze.

Beachheads, yes, but depending on the number of cities, spacing, their defensive strength and the like one city capture may be more optimal or even three for example.

Regardless, be as selective as you can of which cities you do keep for strategic value based on what's available to take and what you've got to take "with".

Or pillage them into the stoneage........

If I don't have enough to take the bulk of their in-land cities to raze (probably) or keep (possibly), that is what I typically do as well. This is particularly so if I've got some units relatively deep in unfriendly territory and wounded enough that I feel I can't pull out... or get peace that forces them out either because they're not within the enemy's cultural border or I can't get the enemy to talk to me.

Could be both of these "ors" too, of course...

Originally posted by Will
On Berzerkers, they also get +10% when attacking cities and a free Combat I from Ragner's aggressive trait.

Or Berzerkers combined with any other leader with the Aggressive trait as of BtS too; without it, the +10% you cite is still nice but of course the Combat promotion makes it even better.

This makes them excellent city raiders, even on pangea.

Yeah, until any faster unit comes into the equation and can be produced at a comparable scale.