Mods are the most touted means of altering the mechanics of the game to achieve a different play balance, but they are not the only possibility. Voluntary restrictions or themes adopted by a player can reshape the game in any number of ways without touching the code at all. Succession games themselves are one such example.

One of the greatest weaknesses of the AI programming comes in its inability to deal with the blitzkrieg, either offensively, or defensively. Certainly one of the strongest elements of the military game is the retreat option on fast units, which lets you sustain a campaign with minimal losses up until the AI's get hold of mech infantry. So it occurred to me to wonder, how would the game play if I voluntarily shunned all the fast units? What would the game demand of me if I tried to wage a conquest scenerio under this restriction?

I've already got such a game roaring along in single player, and it seems viable, so I'm ready to host a succession game for this Variant. I call it the Infantry Variant, and here are the rules:

* Conquest is the only enabled victory condition (and of course, Score, if no victory is won by 2050).

* Chariots, Horsemen, Knights, Cavalry, Tanks, and Modern Armor are forbidden. They may not be built at any time for any reason.

* Mechanized Infantry are allowed, but MAY NOT ATTACK. They cannot even attack noncombatants, such as workers. They may only defend.

* Unique Units with two movement, which are equivalent to otherwise legal units (Jaguar Warriors and Impi) are legal, if the applicable civs are chosen, but may not attack, as per the rules for mech infantry. Other fast UU's are forbidden, including War Chariots, Iro Mounteds, Riders, Samurai, Elephants, Cossacks, and Panzers.

* Scouts are legal for Expansionist Civs. Explorers are legal for all civs.

* All ships, airplanes and missiles are legal.

With conquest required for victory, this means waging a combined arms war against the entire world, with only single-move units, plus ships and planes. It should be challenging.

For this succession game, I have chosen the following settings:

Difficulty: Monarch
Civ: English
Map Size: Standard
Land Mass: Small
Land Form: Archipelago
Opponents: French, Romans, Chinese, Indians, Babylonians
Climate: Arid, Temperate
Mountains: Standard

Turn Length: 10 turns
Time Alloted: 24 hrs to acknowledge, 48 to play.

Reloading: Disallowed. Plan accordingly. (The Autosave in particular may not be used, because of the trade bug it induces, so save the game every so often -- more often, in the latter stages -- in case of crash/power-outage/etc).

I'm looking for three, perhaps four, seasoned players who have played and met with success on Monarch, perhaps even Emperor difficulty, and are willing to agree to all the rules posted. I intend for us to start isolated, or at most with one neighbor, and not to be starting on a river, but rather something a little more impoverished. The reason for this is that I am looking for something more than an endless whipping despotic swordsman factory on a small pangaea, but rather a campaign that will require a more comprehensive effort and most likely to last into the modern era, if not longer.

Once I have accepted a team, I will play an initial number of turns to get us started, and to ensure that the scenerio matches my criteria, then post the saved game and the ten turn rotation will begin.

So... is anybody interested in this challenge? :)


- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
Reloading: Disallowed. Plan accordingly. (The Autosave in particular may not be used, because of the trade bug it induces, so save the game every so often -- more often, in the latter stages -- in case of crash/power-outage/etc).
- Sirian

This game is beyond my abilities, so I am not interested in playing. However, what is the autosave bug? I seen the phrase said before, but have no idea what it is.

just curious... have you gotten rid of the forbidden units, or just forbidden them to be built?

i take it AI is allowed to use such fast units, or am i wrong?

LK: a bug in the current patch allows the AI's to conduct trades amongst themselves on the player's turn. I have been told that it is activated only through restoration from autosave. Doesn't make much sense to me, but my observations in-game do fit with this explanation.

Ex: the AI's are unrestricted (except by victory conditions). The nature of these handicaps being voluntary and self-imposed on the part of players, as compared to scripted or hard-coded, is what defines "Variant" vs "Mod". Mods are great, but Variants require no expertise with the editor or other utilities, and no time or effort spent on coding rules, merely the discipline to adhere voluntarily to set a of handicaps. Players not wanting to play under the conditions I've outlined should seek a different succession game. This one sets a specific challenge.


- Sirian

It seems I can hold more than 2 succession games going at once (at least most of the time), so if you can get more interest for this, I'd be game. Though, no offense intended, I'd just as soon not directly inherit your turn in this game, you've made it almost too easy for me in RBD2...except for the first turn where you left me hanging out to dry through no real fault of your own (95/100 games the Egyptians would have held for a few hundred more years before attacking, but it all turned out well in the end).

And though it seems a bit unlikely, if you get the requisite number of players w/o including me, I'll bow out, I know the score on variants already, someone else should get to learn how much more rewarding it can be when you make the game harder for yourself. Besides, Monarch's not really my bag, I'm still more of a Regent player, at least until I get a few more victories under my belt.

Sounds great, I'm in! Scary, I was just thinking, Variantism is just what this game needs to provide a big boost to variation without mods, and can avoid patterns that we repeat over and over. :love: The one you suggested sounds particularly good. Others that came to mind were: no whipping, civ-affinity-wonders required (ie game lost if as Egyptians you don't build/control Pyramids), artillery required in battle vs city, a 'parity' game where it's a goal that NO country get eliminated, an espionage focus game, wealth game with a cash goal, 'control ALL iron', etc... (This also is close to what I was hoping for in a game as suggested in the rbd japan thread, neat)

Charis

(PS Let me know if this replaced, or is in addition to, your planned large map builder game)

Sounds interesting, count me in. I'd prefer a total of at least 5 players as I don't want it to be constantly my turn (as I'm finding in the Russian Succession Game I'm in.) I also like the short turn length.

Originally posted by Zed-F
Sounds interesting, count me in. I'd prefer a total of at least 5 players as I don't want it to be constantly my turn (as I'm finding in the Russian Succession Game I'm in.) I also like the short turn length.

You mean Lee and I move too fast?:lol:

Whew! Finally got some nibbles on this idea. :fish: Heard nothing but crickets the first couple of days this was posted. :sleep:

But now all the nibbles are coming from the pool of players who've set up camp here from Variant land in the Diablo II arena, so I'm wondering if the locals think we're nuts :crazyeyes or what? Are they being shy? :o Or are none genuinely interested in this sort of experiment? :frog:

OK Charis, you know I'll always play anything with you (or Jaffa, Cy, and Skan).

:beer:

Zed, sure. Carbon on standby. For some odd reason, I thought this game would fill up quickly and I'd meet a lot of new players. Guess that's what I get for coming to the dance in a radical outfit and suggesting the DJ lay off the "Love Me Tender" in favor of some "Razor's Edge" or something. [party]

OK, if any of you out there found this idea appealing but hesitated, now's the time to get bold and give it a shot. I'm going to close the signups by tomorrow and start things rolling.


- Sirian

Heh, Brian, it's not so much you move too fast, it's more that there aren't enough people playing. :)

The game is underway. Here is the roster and turn order:

Sirian
Zed
Charis
Carbon Copy

Still room for one more, if someone expresses interest by the end of the first round. Anyone who believes they are up to the challenge is welcome to apply.

I played 50 turns to start (and make sure we had a valid scenerio). 10 turns per player from here on out.

We started in a dry location, with massive herds of cattle all around us, but on a landlocked hill. So I had no choice but to move a square to the coastline, and I chose for once to build ON a cattle, something I almost never do. Why? Because there were just so many cattle available, I thought the growth curve boost of the extra food would be worth it.

So just like that, we start with 4 surplus food per turn and grow in just five turns. I took the farmer's gambit and ignored military for the time being. No water, though, to irrigate, so all I could do was mine and build roads.

Our scout checked out the area and I found good sites for another couple of cities. After that, the land got icy to the north, and hot and dry to the south. We have one good fertile patch, and a lot of barren real estate, on our hands.

:love: So stark. Perfect! :love:

I researched writing right out of the gate, at 40 turns, running minimal science. Built a second city and started it on warriors, built a third city and started it on a warrior, then barracks. Our scout found the lone goody hut on our continent in the far south, and from it we learned Ceremonial Burial (A stroke of important fortune for our culture, as otherwise it would have been forever before we had any temples going). I continued to build more settlers with London, saw the the north looked secure from barb camps popping up (I think -- it looks like there's not enough room for them, but if one does show, we have a troop up there. I sent other troops south, and just in time to stop the charging barbarians from attacking our fourth city. Rushed a temple as I got the chance, and we now have SOME culture going.

After writing, I researched Bronze Working at max science, both to be able to build spearmen and to have a wonder we could use to prebuild for the Lighthouse, which it now appears is our only chance to get off this rock before Navigation comes along. Built our fifth (and final really strong looking) city near the end of my reign, and set it up to rushbuild a temple soon. I attacked and disbanded the barb camp, and have a warrior and our scout standing guard in the region to prevent more camps from organizing. (This may be a mistake, as we could milk those camps for gold for a while, but that is risky).

I've started us on the path to Mapmaking, but our commerce is so low (and the cost of temples now draining the treasury), that it seems impossible that we could shave off enough turns from the research to matter, so I think we'll have to go for it at min science and wait the full 40 turns. If we have a Colossus being prebuilt AND properly timed (we can't do it with a Palace, don't have Masonry) we can most likely be sure to get it.

Here is a look at our continent and my thoughts on city layout.

White Dot has the most potential, as with irrigation, those plains will yield shields as well as food, which none of the fishing villages will have. It also has the sea, so it could grow to size 12 even without rails.

Purple Dot has good potential but will be plagued by some corruption. The whale and game mean it can grow to size 12, too.

Yellow Dot is strictly a fishing village until rails come and allow the deserts to provide 2 food apiece, but even then its growth rate will be slow. On the other hand, it will be our only city on fresh water, the only one that won't need an aqueduct.

Green Dot has a fish and hills within range, so it will be a faster growing fishing village than most of the others, but it's got nothing else but desert and coastline.

Turquoise Dot is just a fishing village, but it does have a game there, and no overlap, so I rate it as definitely worth getting.

The four red dots represent possible locations for half-size, all-water fishing villages -- some might be able to make temporary use of overlapped lands to grow faster, then swap back to all ocean when the important cities need that land. (This is one situation where Cy's never-zoom-the-cities method would not work out). Whether or not we should build any or all of these red dots, remains to be seen. The corruption penalty for adding more cities may mean it's not worth doing until later in the game.

I recommend some priority on workers, and on getting irrigation going from our ONLY source of fresh water, that oasis in the south. (Might even name yellow dot "something Oasis"). Our growth in all cities south of London completely hinges on getting more food going -- and harbors are going to be a priority in a lot of locations, too. We've gotten off to a fast start, thanks to all those cattle, and the "top 8 list" reported us as the largest civ in the world, but we will need irrigation to keep growing.


- Sirian

Zed, I know you followed Charis in the last game, and he's following me in the builder game, and Carbon doesn't want to follow me this time, so I've bumped you up to second place. Your turns will be made slightly shorter thereby. ;)

You're up! Good luck on your reign. :viking:

- Sirian

10 turns this early in the game is quite short. :) That's fine by me though...

1750 BC (0): Nottingham is building a Spearman but it's at size 4 already & we have no luxuries yet... changed to settler.

1725 BC (1): London builds spearman, starts settler.

1700 BC (2): Canterbury whips temple. I might have actually been able to do this the previous turn, small whoops.

1675 BC (3): York builds worker, starts another. Barbarian spotted in SW of island, warrior from Canterbury moved to investigate, replacement for Canterbury moved from London. London production changed to spearman. Canterbury completes temple, starts spearman.

1650 BC (4): London completes spearman, starts another.

1625 BC (5): Warrior camped on hills on SW of island defeats barb raider, barely. Nottingham builds settler, which is sent to white dot. Nottingham starts spearman.

1600 BC (6): Warrior from Canterbury locates barb encampment. London grows to 4 and is about to go into unrest -- has it been whipped recently? An entertainer is hired; London's about to finish a spearman for local defense/martial law anyway.

1575 BC (7): London builds spearman, starts settler. Production arranged so settler will complete just before London grows again. York builds another worker, starts spearman. Canterbury warrior sacks barb encampment.

1550 BC (8): Hastings builds a worker, starts another.

1500 BC (10): Nottingham builds spearman, starts settler.

Notes:
- There are 5 workers near Canterbury; right now 3 are next to it building a road toward Hastings and 2 are intended to build a road south to the Oasis, but one of the Hastings road crew could be changed to join the Oasis team. We also have a worker near hastings making a road to the wheat square.

- Canterbury & York are currently building spearmen but this could be revisited if necessary, though there don't seem to be a lot of good choices yet. York is good for building workers; we don't want to lower its pop down too far though because there are at least a couple good squares in its radius now.

- We currently don't have any granaries under construction in any of our cities. That doesn't seem to be a big deal right now, and saves us the maintenance cost on them, but we will eventually want them to grow beyond size 6 at a reasonable pace.

Fairly straightforward on this turn (and likely next 4 ;p)

Captain Charinfantry, advisor to the wise and noble Zed, took over for
the King after his untimely demise, "just until they can elect a new king"
and ended up running a despotic era for many years. Herein lies his tale...

1500 BC (0) - "You're a warmonger!!!" "That's crazy! Just because I'm in
the army doesn't mean I'm a warmonger! I'll prove it! You see York
building that Spearman? There's nothing to defend against, so instead
let's build a settler, managing his timing properly, to build another
great city!" (A whipping barracks town, some would say his plan was. Some
even went so far as to quote him: "When we learn how to sail these
bloody seas, if I'm in power, you'll see seven boats plumb full of my
best infantry aboard 'em! Truth or rumor, we do not know...)

1475 BC (1) - "In fact, I'm such a cultural guy... I'm going to build a
great Wonder for our nation! The Colossus! Right in my hometown London!
"Warmonger? Ok fine, switch Canterbury to a Granary!" "Uh, sir, we
need more Settlers out of London first!" "Hrrmmm... we'll see"
"Switch Hasting to Settler while you're at it!"

1450 BC (2) - 1400 BC (4) - The Captain, bored of politics, goes back to
his war room and dreams of future battles.

1375 BC (5) - Coventry founded at white dot.

1350 BC (6) - Incense arrives at Hastings. "Who ordered this funny stuff?
It's not WEED is it?! I sure hope not, heads will roll!"

1325 BC (7) - Warwick founded at Purple dot.
1250 BC (10) - Switched Hastings from Settler to Granary, as it would
take too long to get to size 3.

Consider starting Colossus in London asap. Also consider whether you
want the units coming out of Coventry and Warwick to be warriors
or Spearmen.

Good luck Carbon,
Charis

Well, if nobody else is interested, I could go for some naval warfare :)

Jaffa, you're in. Carbon's up in both this game and the Builder game, and is following Charis in both, so unless he objects before you say "got it", I'm going to insert you in ahead of him and have you go next. Then I can still trail him, and he'll be as far removed from my turn as it gets. :)

Good luck to whichever of you grabs the game and runs with it.

One bit of advice: if the last unsettled corner of the south is kept an eye on with troops there to "display" every square, there will be no more barb camps. And no more threats. We should not build nonvet units, at least not spearmen or better, because every unit takes shields and costs maintenance, and it's better to organize things out to have one or two good cities cranking vet troops, one or two on wonders, one with a harbor making vet ships and the rest build catapults -- in between when each is not building infrastructure.

If our initial seafaring reveals a close neighbor we can REACH (doesn't look like it, but possible) without Lighthouse/Astronomy, then we can shift into war gear once we get iron. If there is one we can reach with the Lighthouse and we get it built, likewise, or we could also safely build and build and go for tech lead and more wonders (and better troops). If there are more lands in range that are unsettled, we could grab them. And if there is nothing in range until we can cross ocean, we are in for a long, long haul, and ought to keep our troops THIN to speed research once we get to Republic (which would take on some urgency).


- Sirian

Posted to say that I had it almost at the same time as you posted that Jaffa was ahead of me :crazyeyes . Should be good to stagger out my turns in various games, so go ahead of me, Jaffa.

Okay, I'll play today :)

Would have got this earlier, but I managed to log in and read during the 3-minute interval when Carbon's post said he was taking it, and when he edited it didn't get flagged as a new post, so I never checked it again. Ack!

Quiet years on the English island. I adjusted production a bit, stopping settler production since we seem to have covered everything except the low priority red dot sites. London started on Colossus (possibly for switch to Lighthouse when mapmaking arrives). Canterbury is on barracks, but I think a harbor would be better first.

Where is Forbidden Palace going? Somewhere on the island, or waiting for colonies?

Started irrigating northwards from the Great English Reservoir :)

I think it's too soon to tell, on the Forbidden Palace. There isn't a worthy spot on our island: the capital is centrally located and all the high production cities are right on top of it. It would be better to build the FP in an adjacent city than not to build it at all, but not by much. We may have a use for it in colonial lands or captured territory, later. Let's see what the sea offers, and answer this one later.

- Sirian

Playing tomorrow after work (10-6)...writeup to follow sometime tomorrow evening. Would have played tonight but LK8 has been waiting longer, and I just love building up city infrastructure and watching the gold per turn ticker climb from +100 to +200 over the course of 20 turns.

There wasn't much important that I did. We finished mapmaking 6 turns in, Romans finished the Pyramids on the same turn. I go for Literature next, still running the defecit. We gain the Colossus, start on the Lighthouse. The colossus kicks off a Golden Age. meh.

Nottingham switched production to galley after I get mapmaking, our first boat is beginning a counter-clockwise circumnavigation of our rock. Hastings and Canterbury are both started on Harbors, I whipped temples in Oxford and Warwick, they should be expanding in just a little bit.

Workers are continuing improvements in the Nottingham and London regions, while a second crew is bringing Irrigation to the desert and plains regions. They are now irrigating the plains cattle and working their way east to the area about Hastings. Oxford is either attached to the road net or is one or two turns away from being so.

Lit should be finished in the next 5 turns or so, I don't know if the Library is what we want to be going for (or if it will be able to be built when we do finish it...or if we'll actually get tech from it if we do build it). In hindsight while I'm writing this up, Code of Laws or Masonry or Iron Working would have been safer choices. Oh well, c'est la vie.

I'd really rather you had swapped to the Lighthouse from the placeholder, Carbon, not let it be built. :( We may still get the wonder we need most, but my gut says the odds are not good, since the cascade has not been broken. Still a bunch of turns left to go on it.

The worst thing that could happen to us is to remain isolated, with no contact, through half the game, because we miss out on trade and suffer for lack of intelligence on our rivals. I know I chose this isolated scenerio, but I did intend to work our way out of it as soon as possible. If there is a connection via sea squares to more land, we could make contact sooner (without having to send galleys on suicide missions), and possibly trade sooner, MUCH to our benefit (with all these incense lying around). Or... maybe not, but it would certainly improve our odds and give us the naval edge until the industrial age.

Competition for ancient wonders is simply brutal. If your game plan revolves around one, you have to aggressively move to grab it, and usually only get one shot at it.

Even if we can make contact and reach other lands without the Lighthouse, we would need it to be able to trade our goods, which could make quite a difference, as we might trade them for tech, cash, maps, or other resources. We'll see how it goes.

You did a great job on your turn in the Builders game. And it may be that we weren't going to get the Lighthouse anyway (we'll find out if someone else builds it in the next dozen turns or so), or that we may still yet get it. The AI's will have to come conquer us for the game to be lost, so even if this goes badly and our shields go down the drain, we'll work out of it.


There is good news from my turn. We've found land! Our galley spotted strong sea currents in the water off our southwest coast and sailed out to investigate, and spotted land! Our scouts are exploring this new island now, and settlers are due to be produced on the next turn to plant our flag over there. I do not yet know if this is inhabited territory, but it appears to be a small unclaimed island, capable of holding two cities.

There are more sea currents off the southeast coast, which most likely lead to more land. I set Nottingham to build a second galley after it completed its library.

Which is the other thing: I swapped our four "main" cities, near London, from Harbor to Library, and didn't whip any of them. I figured we may have to do a lot of our own research, and might as well cement our place as the dominant culture, too, for what that may or may not do for us down the line. I whipped temples in the colonies that didn't have them yet, then set all of them to harbors. Every last one of those towns will need the harbors just for food, but we should perhaps delay harbors on cities that don't need the food or aren't going to be building lots of ships early on, to save on the maintenance cost. Our five inner cities can do without them for a while, I think, until there is nothing left to build.

We have two iron. I should have researched Mysticism next, to give us a THIRD backup wonder in case Lighthouse is stolen from us. After Masonry comes in, I urge increase in science and research into Mysticism. If we do lose the Lighthouse, it would be nice to get something out of those shields. After Mysticism, we may want to get Math (to be able to build some catapults, going to need lots of artillery eventually and they do upgrade), and on to Construction, which we need soon to get out from under the size 6 limitation.

Considering that we do seem to be connected to more land via sea squares, if we turn out not to get the Lighthouse, we'll be stuck unable to trade our incense for another 1500 years, but at the moment it looks like we may make contact with somebody before AD arrives. Cross your fingers and pray that the AI's are building the Oracle and the Great Library, and not the Lighthouse.

Now that we have more expanding to do, and more things to build, we probably won't need to start building lots of swordsmen soon, but it might not hurt to build one veteran unit, just to have one (that intimidates the AI a little). Stay away from all the red dots for now (one of them between York and Nottingham turns out to be a dud anyway because of overlap with the on the point above nottingham). Grab the new island asap. Based on what I could see, here are the good city locations, which make use of all the land, and grab the fishing.

- Sirian

Turn Order is:

Sirian
Zed
Charis
Jaffa Tamarin
Carbon Copy

Good luck, Zed. You still have some Golden Age to work through, it should come to an end near the close of your reign.

- Sirian

Whoops!

I had read through the posting history prior to taking my turn, and I didn't really notice anything that said that the Colossus was a placeholder for the Lighthouse (I just looked through again and it was alluded to in the post of Sirian's first turn), and, to be honest, I was a bit fatigued and had forgotten that prebuilding with a palace was doubly impossible in London (not having masonry, and already having the palace in that town) so I figured that the Colossus was there for being built so I built it :spank:. Replaying my turn, I "only" blew 14 turns of production (19 till the Lighthouse if I switched like I was supposed to, 33 the way I did it, actually 31 but the colossus was 2 turns off)...and a Golden Age :mad:. If they cascade to the Lighthouse during Zed's turn, then we probably wouldn't have had a chance at it, anyhow (but since the player takes the first turn, we might have gotten the Colossus back on the next turn if it hadn't been eaten in the cascade already). If they get to it on Charis's turn, though, then it's entirely my fault.

Does the Lighthouse give trade routes over sea squares (i.e. is it just like discovering Astronomy in the Ancient era except for Copernicus)? I do know that it doesn't give trade routes over ocean squares even if it's narrow enough that we can cross them.

If it turns out that we're eventually ringed by ocean and not just sea, not even the Lighthouse could help us trade goods.

But still, my move was dumb :(

Fortune favors the bold. Well, ok, dunno if it favors the sleepy, but I'm thinking that i) our GA will get a lot extra shields faster towards great lighthouse, and ii) the AI seems to just love the Oracle no end. We may very well end up getting the lighthouse afterall.

Sea currents? I like that phrase. I've not looked much for patterns, but perhaps that does lead to shallow water, and new land, friend, or foe. :P

Those spots for cities look right, and that should be a helpful little island. On a similar naval little island game, I was able to position a warrior, worker, or catapult (some cheap unit) on all the coast squares and render it impervious to ground assault until Marines are available. (Maybe not best use of a dozen units, but it does give one peace of mind when surrounded by warmongers.)

good luck Zed
Charis

Ok, I'll try to grab the game tonight and get a quick batch of turns in.

Here's the scoop:

530 BC (1): Researched Masonry, started Mysticism. Science pumped by 10% to get it in 4 turns instead of 5... Settler completed at Canterbury, started another. Library completed at Hastings, starting Harbour.

490 BC (3): Nottingham builds Galley, starts Settler.

450 BC (5): Canterbury completes Settler, starts Scout. Mysticism discovered, we start Code of Laws. Science upped to 60%, we get it in 7 turns.

430 BC (6): Nottingham completes settler, starts Swordsman.

410 BC (7): Canterbury completes scout, starts Harbour. Dover founded & starts temple. New galley with scout and settler starts toward eastern sea current area.

390 BC (8): Golden Age ends. We are now running at a deficit while we research Code of Laws. Up to the next player to decide whether to rebalance the treasury after we finish.

370 BC (9): Brighton founded & starts temple.

350 BC (10): Nottingham completes swordsman, starts Harbour. Our eastern Galley with scout and settler crosses sea currents and finds land! Unfortunately it's occupied by a dark blue culture. Our western Galley spots sea currents to the west of Dover, has a scout but no settler aboard.

No whipping done this turn. Up to next player to decide if it's needed to complete Harbours etc. Great Lighthouse still a goodly ways from completion. No contact made yet with dark blue culture as we just wound up next to them on my last turn. We have a couple warriors ready in Newcastle to be ferried over to Dover and Brighton at some point.

350 BC (0) - Major Charisinfantry ascended to the throne of England,
and looked over a world map that was dark outside our own lands.
He was eager to see if the "Great Lighthouse" could be finished
on his shift... Other than that, everything seemed well under
control. He also notes we're right at 12 cities, which is (I think??)
the max number for this map size before corruption kicks in.
Our territory seems about right anyway, for now ;p No whipping should
be needed in our prime big citeis, but several harbors will see the
whip when they hit 39 shields remaining.

330 BC (1) - Our western scout hits what might be a large continent and
puts on his running shoes. In the east, we contact the Babylonians.
The Major desires his Warrior Code and Wheel, and we trade Writing
and 15 gold. This is followed with Horseback Riding and 80 Gold for
Literature. We remain "Map Making" ahead of him, which I refuse to
barter (with Lighthouse in progress.) The major scoffs the fool who
gives such awesome military knowledge for "liberal arts junk"!
(Yet some of his own advisors say he came out the fool on these deals!)

Hammurabi remains cautious. The Major wishes to make better 'friends',
and so immediately lands the settler on the ONE free land spot he can
see, thinking that his borders might be totally shut down before long.
If they are not, he is a bigger fool then we imagine and have nothing
to feature. This way we can (if we survive) build a harbor there and
start trade (cough, also a barracks and wall and INFANTRY!) The major's
advisors remind him, after the deal, that our law FORBIDS us from
riding horses. Oh bother, he says... He takes out his aggression by
downing a barbarian raider ship with his own.

310 BC (2) - Next up on research, Polytheism, as the Major thinks that
Monarchy will allow both economic and military victories. We build
Norwich next to Ur, and see a small island directly North. Over in
the West, we see it's NOT a large continent, but a medium thin island,
and see French borders (darn).

290 BC (3) - Between turns Joan d'Arc wishes to sell us Philosophy. I
tell her, while you're at it, why not sell us Mathematics too? The
sum is princely, 228 and 4/turn. (This is to placate the liberal art
majors he offended!) Our western galley, not to be bested, takes down
a pirate ship as well. Coventry whips its harbor. Nottingham and York
switch to settlers for the newly found islands.

270 BC (4) - India, out of nowhere, greets us between turns to trade
territory maps. Instead we try to offer Code of Laws for Contact with
Chinese and his map, but he declines. TWO pirate ships attack our
Western galley! We defend, going down to 1 hp, but survive and become
veteran! The Indians, French and Babs start the Great Library, and India
also starts the Oracle in Dehli. (Note if I had been planning GL I wouldn't
have traded Literature to babs, but I wasn't)

250 BC (5) - Hmmm, a tiny island above the French Island, but with wheat.
Very small... might make a nice military base.

230 BC (6) - 190 BC (8) ... zzzz....

170 BC (9) - The pirate ships come yet again, and our western galley is
now elite. (a pre man-o-war)

150 BC (10) - Well, well... we DO complete the Great Lighthouse. London
goes on to Great Library, but consider this a placeholder for now.
Shift to library or granary if you like. Joan's ambassador visits the
lighthouse and establishes an embassy. Just before he leaves office,
Major Charis barters Code of Laws to India for Territory map and an
introduction to the Chinese (not introducing the babs to him.)

Interesting! Wrong again - is ISN'T a thin island, that's just the
tip of a large continent with India in the south and France in the
middle. There's still land up North, but it's going fast! (Settlers
seen moving up there) We MIGHT be able to get a military base/harbor
on that continent too if we move quickly. It's ivory central up there
and some cattle even. The Chinese are polite and on par, and the French
are advanced (Polytheism and Construction known). Hammurabi is merely
cautious, so we talk. I offer Code of Laws and he will give 100 Gold
and his World Map. We accept and hope to make friends with this
backwards and isolate people. Looking at the map, the spot I founded
WAS the last square that could be settled peacefully on their land.
(He might be more polite if/when we get our scout off his land!)

If speed getting over to the west is of the essence, consider changing
Newcastle from Harbor to Galley. (And remember, the sea is now safe for
us, and us alone!!) There's a boat loaded with a settler in Hastings,
and a Swordsmen on the way down to join him. Rest boat one turn to
heal it to full strength.


Good luck in the new Nautical era! (Carbon Copy is up)
Charis

Good job, guys. It all worked out well, as the total lack of river commerce in our lands gives Colossus more value, and it lasts through the Industrial age. Call it the Sleepy Gambit. ;)

Jaffa is up next, though. Carbon is following Charis in RBD3, so when Jaffa joined this lineup and Carbon delayed his turn last time, I figured that was a good permanent arrangement.

Don't get too cozy with our rivals. If we could reach their lands without the Lighthouse, they can reach ours, even if they can't trade with one another. Trade should be high on the list of priorities, as we may as well sell incense to any with cash to buy.

The next round ought to be fun, now that we're done sitting idle in our desert lands, counting the dunes and the snow drifts, with no one else to plot wars against. :)

"Sea Currents" indeed. One has to have an eye for the way of the waters. :viking:


- Sirian

Duly noted. With all these extracontinental cities in our possession, where's the FP going to go?

Maybe I'm placing you guys in such tense situations (founding Baltimore in the builder game, actually building the colossus instead of the lighthouse) on purpose, just to test your skills.

Or maybe I need to get to bed earlier?

Glad to hear it all worked out in the end. :goodjob:

I haven't seen the newest map, but are there any choke points through which ships MUST travel if they are to land safely in shorewaters? If so, and we can fortify a few spare galleys on there, we could effectively shut them all off from our lands until they can scrounge together Astronomy (similar in application to what we did to the Iroquois in RBD2). If we FORCE them to end their turns in sea or ocean, it might make them think twice about visiting the brown hills and parched deserts of Great Britain.

That town Charis founded on the Bab continent is DOA. It's not even got possesions of the nine central tiles, much less the full 21, which is the main factor in culture flipping, Firaxis has revealed (the other being foreign nationals, which I at least knew -- heh, from experience, arrgh). :)

I believe we'd have done better to found a city on the island to the north, or found it sooner at least. We can get a foothold on anybody's continent any time we please by plunking down a couple stacks of troops and informing the locals that "England has arrived". That's probably not necessary with Babs, although whether or not we want to aggressively attack them while they remain isolated and somewhat backward is a vital question to ponder. I tend to lean away from early aggression unless I'm penned in or its foisted upon me, but I can be too much attached to the Powell Doctrine of bringing decisive force to the battlefield, which is tough to do early without hopelessly whipping cities into the dirt. (I had to do just that in my prototype game, to overcome of all civs, the Greeks and their hoplites, IN THE MOUNTAINS, what a task that was!) I tend not to want to gambit the course of my future on how a single stack of archers or swords or horsies do against a stack of fortified spears. I have seen it fail enough times now. My very first ancient war, with Japan vs China on that huge map (reported on my site), had its serious problems. My archer force kept them hemmed in but it took 100 turns to win the war, as logistics really hurt, and time taken to back off and heal up wounded survivors bought the enemy enough time to build reinforcements. It was just a rough situation. I prevailed in some part due to loopholes in game balance that were patched out. I also did no whipping, which goes to show how a war tends to go in that era WITHOUT any whipping: it can be pretty dicey.


I'd say save the FP until further notice. If we take out the babs early or early-ish (and they WOULD be the easiest target, thus should be the first target), we may put the FP on their land and bring a second continent online. Otherwise, we may want it on the north of the French lands, or somewhere else yet. I've not seen a good location as yet, though Dover is another potential. Still too early to see.


- Sirian

0) 150BC Pull up the Foreign Ministry window to see what's available, and accidentally establish an embassy in Delhi (interface gripe -- all these little popup windows should have a default of 'no action'). Oh well. Delhi is 31 turns from Great Library.

Convert entertainer in Hastings to tax collector.

Indians pay 60 gold for RoP (more than the embassy cost, so we came out ahead anyway :) ). French pay 40 gold. Decide to go ahead and establish the other embassies -- Chinese are 42 turns from Great Library, Babylon is 15 turns away. China gives us world map and 14 gold for RoP, Babylon is broke.

China is on the same continent with France and India, on a small SE promontory.

Put London on settler. I figure we might as well go after the ivory (and should do it with all haste, if so), so switch Newcastle to galley. Also send settler from ship in Hastings on a pointless excursion to Newcastle and back before realising there's already a settler waiting in Newcastle. Ooops.

Massive science investment (-12 gold/turn) will give us polytheism in 4 turns. French already have it, hopefully we can broker it to India and China.

1) 130BC India and China sign peace treaty. They were at war? Ummm, well, okay :)

3) 90BC The 'island' behind Jaipur may be quite extensive. We finish research into polytheism (and avoid unrest in Hastings by manipulating citizens from the domestic advisor screen, after our turn is officially over. Phew!)

4) 70BC Polytheism sold to Indians for world map + 50 gold + 2 gold/turn, and to Chinese for 15 gold + 3 gold/turn. The Chinese have built a harbor! Ooooh! Aren't they clever :) Sell them incense for 2 gold/turn. Indians have built Hyderabad on most of the elephants :(

5) 50BC Okay, so the island behind Jaipur isn't that big, after all.

6) 30BC Ivory Coast founded to take elephants from Hyderabad (we have the cow, so we should be able to outgrow them). Our elite galley finds new and apparently untouched land west of the Jaipur island :)

7) 10BC Leeds founded on island north of Babylon. Dover goes into unrest at size 3 -- convert excess citizen into a worker to help with improvements on that island.

8) 10AD French finish Great Library, start on Great Wall. Too bad for everybody else working on GL, I don't think they've got Construction yet :D

10) 50AD Lots of new land west of Jaipur / east of Babylon. No sign of the missing Civ yet. We have one galley with settler on the way, others will be ready to set out soon.

French have construction, but that seems to be the extent of their tech lead.

:sheep:

...and all the turns of the succession games end up on me, except in my own. :p

RBD3 & LK8 are already queued up in front of this one, if I manage to squeeze this in tomorrow (I won't be able to start playing my first game until after 10:00 pm), then bonus, if not, I am going to beg to switch or skip my turn. If whoever is behind me (Sirian? The guy up in my Emperor game, figures.) can fit a turn in tomorrow, go for it. If I am able to play the game and nobody posts a turn yet, I'll reconfirm having it and post at an ungodly early hour.

Carbon: this one might be back around to you by the time you finish the other two games, and I'd like to keep it moving. So I went ahead with it.

The first thing I did on the inherited turn was trade Joan our world map for Construction and some gold. Why? When we were so close to the research ourselves? Because London had 79 shields stored up. This was the only chance to grab another Wonder, and I'm a Wonder-ful kind of guy, as everybody knows. :lol:

I believe my decision was born out when this Hunny of an event :king: happened a couple turns later:

I snagged a couple of other goody huts as well, but we lost some island sites I thought we'd have a chance to grab, especially the one above Ivory Coast. (That one was out of reach before my turn started, the Chinese were almost there).

So when we got Monarchy, I flipped London from Great Wall (as useful as that might have been for defending our colonies) over to the Hanging Gardens. London is FAR behind on infrastructure, not even having a granary or library yet, much less aqueduct, but denying the AI's this cheap, useful wonder, along with potential grief saved on cascade, has to factor into its value. The Gardens offers a permanent 3 content faces in the city where it's built, acting as a second Cathedral for 300 shields, the temp continental benefit, the culture, and the stacking effect with other happiness items that can't be obtained any other way. It's a good buy at 300 shields.

With most of the islands near France now occupied, our ships and settler pairs had to wander pretty far, converging near the end of my turn at "Ireland" off the Babylonian coast. Two cities founded there, third settler in place and set to complete the Irish Triad, ensuring the entire island for our empire's use. This land is hopelessly far from civilization, but if/when we conquer the Babs and build Forbidden Palace over there, Ireland would come online as a useful colony. In any event, it's ours, for whatever that will be worth. The swordsman for Eire is over on the Chittagong island, having poked into a goody hut (got zippo), and looking around a bit, but he'll need a ride home soon.

Getting Monarchy (!) from a goody hut is quite a break. It gave us the Hanging Gardens, and I traded the tech to Joan a bit later for all her treasury (~500) and a French worker. She went into revolt and is now in Monarchy, which will aid her growth curve, but she simply had way too much cash and paid for the whole tech at 2nd-civ cost IN CASH. So I had to broker it, but nobody else could even come close to affording. Now if only we can keep Charis from spending the WHOLE reserve at the first chance ;) we'll be in good shape. :) On the up side, Joan is now so broke, she can't even afford a rite of passage. She must have been milking India and China for millenia on tech and other stuff.

Babs researched mapmaking on their own. I suggest keeping an eye on them, they will make contact within 20 turns max, likely sooner. The other civs have our world map now (as if they even needed it, they are all over the dang place) so keep an eye on when to sell someone contact with the Babs.

In addition to securing Ireland, picking up Monarchy and getting us on toward the Gardens, I did a LOT of heavy whipping in our coastal towns on the mainland, and beefed our military up a goodly bit, including getting ANY troops at all to the southwest island. I switched Charis's Gambit Town over to pumping warriors, because if they don't have a massive garrison they're going to flip. Might flip anyway, but it's worth a shot. DO NOT spend cash down there. Maybe whip a set of walls, though.

There are sea currents north of Leeds. I was too busy to investigate. Still no sight of Rome. Running out of places to look.

The final thing I did was outfit two settlers at the end to found two of the Red Dot locations. Seemed like a good time, and we're past "optimal number of cities" long since, so might as well.

I don't like our chances at Ivory Coast. I fear spending a lot of cash over there then losing it anyway. It's quite difficult to hold on to luxury colonies on another civ's mainland (check my report from Apolyton Tourney Two at my site, regarding cities on the Indian continent). In this case, I think we're just too far to support that location. I'd have grabbed the island instead, even though the ivory is desirable. What good does it do to found a city that is most likely to end up in enemy hands. (We'll see how it goes, our neighbors there are the Indians, who also have stuck their necks out to grab the ivory). The only way I could see ANY spending of cash on that city to be justified is if we have in place a garrison of about ten units, a third of them bombardment, and some walls, with a reasonable chance to hold out against a dozen archers or half a dozen knights.

Let Ireland build walls, then temples or workers. Don't rush anything over there after we're out of despotism. Those cities are hopelessly corrupt. Let em build it one shield at a time. Maybe rush a harbor in one location, but again, only if more troops have been sent and the island looks well enough secure.

I cancelled all our RoP's, as nobody was paying gpt. No one could afford a decent price, either, yet all stayed polite after cancelling. Next player has run of what to do there, give in for pennies or hold out for pounds.

Despotism looks better for us, for the moment, than Monarchy. I figure, finish the Gardens before a revolt, and try to go straight to Republic (which nobody has yet). We could conduct an ancient war against Babs, but it would take all our effort. Our military is strong, but widely scattered, and thin on a per-city basis. We frankly aren't anywhere close to having an invasion ready, so it may be better just to swap to Republic soonish and move on up the tech tree.

One more bit of bad news. Joan's Paris is size 12 already. With us still locked at size 6, and not so much as even started thinking about aqueducts. That's going to become a major problem for us unless we start working on it soon.


- Sirian

One of the best things we can do with the cash surplus is spend it on military upgrades. We now have plenty enough to hit shift-U with our spears and upgrade a whole mess at one time.

Got it, but don't think I'll get a chance to play today.

CC, if you want to take your turn now, go for it. If I don't hear from you by tomorrow, I'll go ahead and take my turn.

Ok, took 10 turns. Not too much happened, we got the Hanging Gardens and India built the Great Wall. Lots of cities started on Aqueducts. Didn't swap to Republic yet, will let the next player take care of that.

Only other item of note is, we discovered the Roman Empire! They're backward, being stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, but they have several cities, about as many as us on England proper (well maybe a couple less.) I sold them Polytheism, Monarchy, and Mathematics for their World map and their entire treasury, but I didn't give them contact with the rest of the world.

There's a boat with a settler headed to a desert island NE of Ireland with some hills and no less than 4(!) whales nearby. We can only get 3 of them on any city we found there, though, and it'll need a temple to get any. It'll also be corrupted out to heck like Ireland.

Good to see the forums back up!

Have I got the turn order wrong, or am I next? I'm up in rbd3 and am about to start that. Will play this turn next unless someone else hops in here and corrects me. Should have turn posted late late eve.

Charis

350 AD (0) - Whip temples in Leeds and Ivory Coast.

370 AD (2) - Feudalism arrives. A bit unsure what to research. I hate to
"dip back" to ancient times for Republic - perhaps go straight to
Democracy instead?? What wonders if any are we targeting? No one seems
to be working on ANYTHING right now, so we might try Leo's? Or save our
shields for Sistine? China seems willing to swap Republic for Monarchy,
if we toss in our map, a little gold and a RoP. Sounds fair.
We're not in the middle of anything really, so... let the revolution begin!
(Well... not before whipping Barracks in Norwich and Temple in Reading)

390 AD (4) - Settlers arrive in Scotland region above Ireland.

400 AD (5) - These settlers found "Waterford Whale Watch"

410 AD (6) - Gandhi wants to trade luxuries, but thinks we should
pay 5 gpt. I think not, doing fine withouth right now, sir.

420 AD (7) - 440 AD (9) - zzz

450 AD (10) - Republic forms, and the people rejoice! Hmm... but the
accountants don't! We can only go 20-30% science, looks like high time
to start marketplaces!

To do...
- Prolly better micromanagement available...
- No upgrades were done or military built
- Add "Wexford" city someday on island with Waterford.
- Improve our economics greatly

Good luck,
Charis

450AD Hmmm. We have many cities on size 6 and building aqueducts, which will go into unrest when they grow. Methinks we need more luxuries. We only have incense, so marketplaces aren't going to help. Best deal I can get is trading incense and monarchy for Indian furs (and the 10 gold they have in their treasury).

China pays 50 gold and 3 gold/turn for a incense. French pay 30 gold and 4 gold/turn.

Micromanage to improve production in core size 6 cities. Upgraded a couple of spearmen.

Indians are broke and have no iron or horses. China has no horses. French have no iron. Too bad for them :)

460AD China wants to trade world maps. We don't. Have we given anyone our world map? The people volunteer to tidy the royal gardens. How nice :)

Rest of turn. Finished a load of aqueducts, and started building up our military some. Sent reinforcements to Ivory Coast, and arranged for a harbor to bring ivory online. Found a new island west of the Romans, with an unused goody hut (still unused at end of my turn, as the galley crew refused to go ashore and visit the natives).

And then...

540AD The Babylons declare war on us, and attack Norwich. China declares war on India. Whooo!

:soldier:

Sounds like an interesting time to jump back into the infantry game. As I just finished my turns in 3 and 4 tonight and am not yet up in LK8 (but am on deck), I should probably get a chance to do this tomorrow, either during the morning/early afternoon or late evening.

Absolutely nothing.

At least naval-based early Medieval wars aren't. Moving pikes and catapults across the sea in galleys is not very fun, and not very effective. The details of the war: 10 turns, the Babs raze Norwich on the first turn, we raze a town the babs found by Leeds. I manage to land four pikes on Bab territory outside Akkad, and demand a peace treaty from Babylon, which they give me. They pay us 150g + 3g/turn to end what they started. Here's the turn-by-turn

560
-Babylon razes Norwich
-Nottingham finishes aqueduct, starts pike
-Ivory coast finishes harbor, starts worker
-Monotheism discovered, Theology started
-A Babylonian galley successfully defends against one of our own galleys

570
-Belfast riots, so people expand the palace? :confused:
-A veteran galley manages to sink the lucky babylonian galley from the last turn, becomes elite
-I load a pike and a catapult into a galley, hoping to quickly take Akkad

580
-zzz

590
-zzz

600
-The Chinese start Sun Tzu in Beijing. London started Sun Tzu prior to this, but I forgot to note when in my notes. Judging by the tiles they have improved, I think that London can outbuild China on this one and definitely can outbuild France.

610
-Babylon lands a settler pair near leeds where we wanted to build that settler. I wake up the swordsman to dispense some justice. Unlucky for Babylon that they only sent a warrior as the settler's escort

620
-Reading finishes granary, starts marketplace
-Babylon founds Erdu

630
-Erdu autorazed

640
-zzz

650
-French start Sistine Chapel
-Waterford Whale Watch starts temple
-I check to see if Hammurabi is in a talking mood after I drop four pikes right outside of Akkad. He would just LOVE to speak with us now. 150 gold + 3 gold per turn buys him some peace. As I'd already moved the galleys away, it will probably just be easier for the next ruler to disband them. If we want to improve Babylonian-English relations, we can trade them a straight Right of Passage along with a luxury swap.

This wasn't a very good turn, but I'm trying to work my way back into this game. We're set to found a city where Erdu was next turn, most of Ireland and the Dover island is stalled on population because if they grow anymore, they riot.

Inherited Turn: renewed/updated RoP agreements with all civs except Babylon. Deal with Babylon, two lux and 4gpt for Spices. Deal with India, Lux and some gpt for another Lux. Entertainers fired. York and Nottingham redirected to build harbors, some other cities set to build aqueducts.

Since we are committed to 20 turns of peace with the only target of short term interest, I gear up for infrastructure push and settle in to peaceful era.

660AD: Babylon demands we move our troops. Thanks for the free movement! RoP with Babylon arranged to allow our ships passage. New Norwich founded. Ivory Coast swapped to walls, as it surely will come under attack some day, and probably before it can be improved/grown to size 7.

670AD: Theology discovered, start Education. (Joanie's "little library thingie" shall be put out of action). Science pumped to 50% and we are running a deficit. City southwest of London swapped to Sistine Chapel. That may not be what it eventually builds (Magellan may be a higher priority), but it will build something. I notice that London has no granary? How did that happen? :) At least is has an aqueduct. :)

680AD: the seven pikes and one catapult on their way to Babylonian lands, or already there, are scattered in four directions. Two pikes and catapult head to Ireland, two pikes to Leeds island, two to Dover island, and one via "exploit the game mechanics" galley relay to the goody hut down on the uninhabited island. Trained one archer, who can be ugraded to longbow. Rivals beware! We have deadly forces now! :crazyeyes

690AD: rushed the courthouse in Dover. Workers trained in Leeds and on the mainland.

700AD: Babylon sends forth many galleys. I do the galley shuffle, moving galley from north down two squares, galley from south up two squares, wake pike in north galley, have him walk across much water to board south galley, then retreat each galley to safe waters. Ha! Who says you can't travel across five ocean tiles without navigation! ;)

710AD: Babylon galley passes Ireland, will make contact with India next turn. I broker contact with Babs to all but Rome, and Joanie doesn't like what Hammurabi tells her about us, as she drops from Gracious to Polite.

720-730: Reinforcements arrive at all our colonies. Pikemen search minor village, find it abandoned, everyone dead or something. Nothing useful to be found there. Bah.

740AD: Education. I go to sell to Joan and she already has it?? :eek: Start Astronomy and queue up Navigation as second tech. Rushed the courthouse on our southwest coast, at the oasis city. Decide to swap reading from harbor to aqueduct. It can grow to size 7, where it will get an extra shield inside the city square, and the food lost from delayed harbor will be made up by not sitting around doing nothing waiting on the aqueduct. York and Nottingham finish harbors, start cathedrals. Worker trained in Leeds. Forests being chopped down to speed courthouse construction.

750AD: China and France both have Feudalism, and India can pay full market value for it (albeit mostly in gpt). I decide to sell, which allows science now to continue at 50% with negligible deficit. Oasis City set to build granary at 2 per turn. Then it will need an aqueduct. It's got a long long way to go.

At least ten more turns of peace coming, and all the deals I made will last through at least the next player's turn, including all luxuries, etc. SunTzu due in 15 turns, and we should stick with it, if for no other reason than to deprive the AI's of it and end the cascade for India/China. They will not be able to get to Theology or Invention in time to cascade. France, on the other hand, will probably get Astronomy by then, and grab Cop as cascade from their attempt at SunTzu. So it goes. Magellan is the one we want to be sure to get, so either swap off Sistine to it, or swap one of those cathedrals to it later. Forget Cop. Sistine, Bach or Leo would ALL be more valuable to this infantry scenerio, and we don't have the production to build everything.

Once Ireland has its temples, two should crank workers while the other builds a harbor. One harbor and roads can get everyone happier.

I learned that Hanging Gardens is NOT landmass dependent. I thought it was (like Pyramid/Bach). Wow, that really increases its value on archipelago maps! I checked the civilopedia and sure enough, it says "all cities" not "cities on same continent". Learn something new every day. :)


- Sirian

Ok, willtake a turn tomorrow. Tonight is a No-Civ (tm) night! :)

I can't wait for you guys to kick some @$$! It should be quite interesting.

I've been following Sirian's succession games for a while and I was wondering...what is the address of your website you keep mentioning? It sounds like a good Civ resource.

Madhatter,

I can't wait for you guys to kick some @$$! It should be quite interesting

That's what the people wanna see!!

:goodjob: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :rocket: :spank:

I must say, the combat sequences in the rbd games to-date have been just a blast. Often prep, infrastructure, waiting, building, then POOF! Don't blink, the AI just got a major whooping! rbd1's (and rbd6) handling of the Persia, and the mighty Japanese landslide in 2. rbd3 and 5 are powderkegs waiting to explode when the AI pushes us the wrong way, they better watch out!

The link to Sirian's site is:
http://sirian.warpcore.org/civ3/greatlibrary.html

It's a (relatively) low volume, high quality source of analysis, tips and reports. Good stuff.

Thanks for your input :crazyeyes:
Charis

PS to Zed -- "No-Civ(TM) Night" ???!! :eek:
I'm feeling the after-effects of a 3:45 am night starting rbd7 ;p
(designed in part to avoid No-Civ nights!)

Well, in no particular order, I'm trying to (a) avoid Civ burnout, (b) keep wife from becoming too annoyed at the amount of time I spend on Civ 3, (c) get some long-delayed chores done, (d) watch a couple TV programs I normally like to try to watch on Wednesdays, and (e) maybe even catch up on some much-needed shut-eye!

It's *possible* I might get an opportunity to play a turn tonight, but I wouldn't hold my breath... :)

Zed: that's why it's 48 to play. Right? Enjoy your night off of gaming. I, too, will be catching some priority television tonight. :)

As for my website, Charis got it right. I have had it listed as my homepage in my forum profile here all along, though, so anybody might check there and arrive at their destination a few clicks later. :)

- Sirian

Why would you have a night off civ tonight when you're up on RBD4? Or am I not the only one who has forgotten the turn order of that game? :groucho:

Heh, so it's not quite 13 hours from Zed's turn posting to this one, so you've still got time to post your "got it" note and technically till Saturday morning to play it, but just don't forget about us like I forgot about you :crazyeyes

Hah! My turn on RBD4? Check down the page a bit, CC, and you will see that I posted my turn for that one this morning... I certainly *hope* it's not my turn again!

Though I could take the other half of my turn... nah! Got enough to do already. :)

The above comment was actually directed to Sirian. While the wording was murky, I did allude to the fact that you had posted the turn thirteen hours before the timestamp on mine, and I was specifically wondering why Sirian would be watching quality television when he could be watching Babylon use us for a doormat in RBD4? At least we're ahead of those pansy Germans.

-The Management

I was specifically wondering why Sirian would be watching quality television when he could be watching Babylon use us for a doormat in RBD4?

Hey, priorities ARE priorities, you know. :) Enterprise and West Wing first, get used as a doormat second. :p

750 (0): Changed Hastings (near London) from Courthouse to Cathedral. Belfast & Dublin workers rearranged so they don't grow to size 6 before temples completed. After temples we should build some workers to clear that jungle.

760 (1): Ivory Coast completes walls, starts Library -- maybe we can get Hyderabad to flip? Next leader can veto if appropriate.

770 (2): India wants an alliance against the Chinese? Not likely...

780 (3): India starts building Sun Tzu and signs a peace treaty with China. The people plant trees around our palace. York & Hastings grow to 10 & get entertainers. Need those Cathedrals...

790 (4): Warwick completes Aqueduct, starts Cathedral.

800 (5): Our southern galley spots new land east of China.

820 (7): Reading completes Aqueduct, starts Harbour. Island east of China turns out to be tiny, just a few squares. Nottingham grows to 10, gets an entertainer.

830 (8): We learn Astronomy, start Navigation.

850 (10): London grows to 12, gets an entertainer. We are 7 turns away from Navigation.

Charis, you're up.

Thanks, got it. Will post tomorrow afternoon.

Charis

850 AD (0) - The people cry out for colonization! Entertainment in
the capitol while working on a wonder?? That's either great confidence
or sheer folly, says the advisor. We're running +6 gpt and 0% lux.
We rearrange some citizen workers and go 10% lux to hasten SunTzu
and Sistine a bit. China has some wines, nothing to offer that we
would want to give him. I consider Communications with Romans and
about 120 gold, but then notice we're the ONLY contact for Rome.
This is due to the Great Lighthouse and will last for some time,
so we pass this time. I look for the settler built for that nice little
Iron island. There are no settlers, and none in progress. :eek:
There's also that small but very nicely located horse-whale island.

In fact there's not a single unit in production. We need 4 settlers
by my count, and this becomes the goal of the new administration.
New Castle, granary to settler. Oxford off aqeuduct. Reading off
Harbor. Happy Warwick off Cathedral. That's four. We have the "map"
lead due to the Lighthouse, let's use it! :hammer:

Ah the ships were sleeping, get into position men!

860 AD (1) - Hasting finishes Cathedral, starts a Pike to escort.
Warwick goes back to Marketplace (instead of Cathedral). Oxford
goes to Aqueduct (Library thought next). First settler ready to
launch. Strategy for the colonization of the Falklands Islands
(heretofore referred to as SFCoFI) is drawn up. What a long journey!
We push Navigation to it's very limits, burning the treasury in
the process :P (Darn, I'm getting a reputation for this, but it
will have at least 3 turns off settling the Islands.

870 AD (2) - Babylon wants to extend the peace treaty? Sure :P
(That reminds me, I need to do some testing how to get cash or some
compensation to have peace treaty going when we're stronger than another
country.) Need to micromanage a few gold pieces to stay positive at
end of 4 turns when Navigation arrives.

880 AD (3) - Bloody Babylonians don't want to extend our spice deal. They
eek out a better one. Their spices for our ivory, incense, territory
map (**NOT** World map) and 44 gold. Losing the spice would mean 24 gpt,
far worse. Hmm, everyone wants our ear this round. China wants a world
map trade. No way in heck I'm giving up our world map until all the secret
islands are founded with no land left!! He gets our territory map for
his world and some gold. Then Gandhi wants to trade his Engineering for
our Theology. Not while we're building Sistine's, thank you! Hmm... we
would however like Iron instead. In fact, so much he'll give not only
Engineering but World Map, his treasury and 15 gpt! Iron to them for 20 turns
is not a big concern, so Major Charis ok's the deal. Uh, Gandhi, do you
think you could make that 20 pts instead of 15? You can??? Wow, cool!
If for some reason he gets out of line later we'll take Hyderabad and

Reading complete Settler, starts Harbor. London finishes Sun Tzu next turn
and lends Canterbury a mined hill square for a turn. Leeds and Dublin
experience growing pains. They turn on the TV and feel better. Actually,
Dublin needs it Temple bought early for 24 gold to manage the sadness.

890 AD (4) - Sun Tzu completed in London, we start Copernicus and feel good
about chances. Well, until they announce France is now building Sistine
and Copernicus. One a cascade probably 8-\ At this point we're due for
Coper in 19 and Sistene in 22. (If switched would be Cop6, Sis28)

900 AD (5) - Hastings starts marketplace. Advisor things Dover a good spot
for the Forbidden Palace. Where ARE we going to build it anyway? Dover
Island? Ireland? Falklands? Home around York?

910 AD (6) - We're Infantry oriented, so for next research I go down Invention
line and leave Music Theory to the flute players. BTW, I got scared
when Civolopedia said "Caravels" could safely cross ocean squares with
Navigation. Turns out Galleys (what we got) can too! I upgrade two.
For extra upgrade cash, with Sun Tzu in hand, I sell the five Barracks on
the same continent (for 25gp total). (Magellan is a new Wonder available
now, btw, and Leo once we get Invention.) Waterford could REALLY use its
temple asap to actually watch whale. If you come up with about 130 gold,
consider buying it off. Oh, and every single tile on our main continent
now has a road on it.

920 AD (7) - Major Charis sees counting is not his strong suit. We need
four settlers for the Falklands, and one for Jamaica. That's five. Oxford
is interrupted and rush for a settler. Now that it's a caravel in dock,
there's room for one more :P

930 AD (8) - Joan appears, giving up on her dyes for our ivory trade. Can
we persuade her to continue? She won't take gpt, and we get "close" but
no cigar. Gah!! Leeds and Dublin expand, and happily so does Ivory Coast.
Hmm... loss of dyes not a big impact. Panama City is founded on site "A".

940 AD (9) - Jamaica, home of horses and whales, is founded. An island
unto themselves.

950 AD (10) - French are building Leo (and Sistine, and Copernicus, ow)
Final action is appropriate for the turn, Falkland West is founded. (B)

Note to next great leader:
... Caravel in west en route to C for whale/game/hill spot.
... Caravel in east en route to D for iron/fish/close borders spot.
... Galleys are en route to harbors to be upgraded, and to ferry over
some more troops. Would recommend bringing about 3 idle workers down
to work the land then join cites.
... Inventory is discovered next turn.
... On THIS turn, it's an option to switch Sistine to Copernicus, MAKING it
right then in Canterbury, 0 shield loss. OR Magellan's voyage. London
would switch to Sistine (due in 22) or Leo. This would make sense probably
only if you thought France would complete BOTH Sistine and Copernicus
in less than 16 turns. Input from others on our wonder goals would be
good :D
... Ireland is in need of some attention as well.
... New Norwich grows next turn, not sure they'll be happy without help.
... Several marketplaces are in production. We need more income.
... If you want luxuries and knock down the lux back to zero, talk to Joan.
See if she'll trade her dyes for our ivory with only cash. (Would still
avoid World Map giveaway for a few turns, but maybe I'm just paranoid,
or maybe they already know the location of the Falklands and can't get
across the ocean yet.) Or maybe Roman silks for outdated tech?
... When other folks get Navigation, shortly after sell contact to the Romans
to everyone. (and hope they dont mid-turn screw us) It should fetch a
high price.

Good luck, (Jaffa, then Carbon)
Charis

Below is the image, next post has save file.

Here's the save for Jaffa (and Carbon on deck) :crazyeyes:

-- Charis

Please :fish: get :fish: Magellan.

I don't think we need Magellan this instant though... odds are no-one is building it yet. We should be able to finish it at wherever is building Copernicus right now (London?). I would have thought that we wanted Sistine in preference to Sun Tzu since the latter only affects our island, but at least we should try to get it as fast as possible now. But Magellan taking priority over Cop I have no problem with.

We're going to lose something to the French. The reason to get SunTzu is less about the benefit for us, more about depriving our military opponents. This is a full blown conquest scenerio, remember. And you can't destroy a barracks in a town if SunTzu automagically replaces it, not to mention all the vet units instead of regulars.

At some point, war weariness WILL break us down and force us back into Monarchy, help from happiness wonders notwithstanding. War weariness has a lot to do with losing units in combat, and with how many times you attack the AI. In my other infantry game, despite police stations in every town, and Suffrage, before I even STARTED my industrial push, I'm at high weariness just two turns into the war after taking just a few cities. That's unheard of in blitz games with that much weariness reduction. I've sometimes been able to continue wars as long as 15 to 20 turns before seeing much, if any, weariness. That won't happen here.

France has some major shields built up and will surely get one, if not two wonders. For happiness, we can secure more sources of luxury with military might, or plan to do so. Monarchy also has up to three martial law units. Oscillating wars on and off and on and off can delay our governmental collapse, and we want to do that as much as possible, but in a variant scenerio you may have to think outside the box a bit, weigh the pros and cons not in light of typical situations, but what each brings to the table for our specific goals.

IMO, we cannot toy around with Magellan or we'll lose it. Joan could be half a tech away or less, she's already got Astronomy. The MOMENT she gets Navigation, she could cascade to it and rob us, if any of her current projects are stolen from her. And keep an eye on her finding Rome, she can do it now at any point, if her ships head that way. With the need for so much naval combat and transport use, it would be quite a setback to lose Magellan. I want Joan to build Cop and get rid of her stored shields. It's the wonder we can most afford to let go. We should get Magellan first, worry about everything else later. If we lose all the current projects, we can swap to placeholder and get something else (Bach, Smith). The AI won't, its cascade would end, unused shields mostly wasted.


- Sirian

I'll preface this with saying... I don't know WHICH to go for, I'm unsure. I am in full agreement with both to ditch goal of Copernicus. 'A' is switch cities getting Magellan's now, 'B' is keep where they are and hope for both in 13-16 turns.

Normally I skip Magellans and think it useless, but the following points come to mind:

- The choices for #turns to complete are (A) 0 and 22 or
(B)13 and 16. If French is slow, we'll snag Sistene in 22 about
as easy as 16, and if that fails on the way, we can switch to Copernicus if right away, or Leo if later. We might (?) even shave off a turn by giving London ALL the best squares. Right now it's competing with Coventry for one or two. If French is fast, we could lose both AND have nothing to switch to.

- The UU for English is the Man O'War, and to get most use out of it, Magellan is not bad.

- With the founding of both Falklands and Jamaica...

Every foe is withing striking distance of a undisputed English colony

Usually I'm having to worry more about the colonies than the invasion. In this game, we can stock pile an army on one of our islands, pick the time for war, then descend with a small fleet or shuttle them from the island.

Let me try to remember France's situation... they have built the Great Library, several other wonders, and are at technical parity with us. The Leo city JUST started. No saved shields there really.
Sistine and Copernicus started 6 turns ago, but that was on our getting Sun Tzu. I'm betting one of those (don't know which) has a lot of shields and will get the next wonder.

If we wait 13-16 turns to complete one, France might get another tech and cascade further. If we make one now they're building two, one only 6 turns in and one that will get a wonder.

I'm thinking as an Infantry specialty game, Leo is pretty rockin'. If we can finish Invention before they finish both Cop/Sistene, we'll get a wonder.

Keep in mind too that we *REALLY* only have one wonder capable city, London. The shield production elsewhere stinks. Coventry must have been on placeholder for ages to be a contender for a good one :p With just one big city, cascades are your worst enemy.

So my vote, swap production and take Magellan's now, and get Invention ASAP so London will be assured of it or Sistene.
(Just my two cents, I wouldn't be upset at another choice, but would view it as a bigger gambit and hold my breath ;) )

Charis

PS You're probably not following the Essex game, but for a funny screenshot of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, see the hapless spearman in the last post on this page:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14408&pagenumber=2

Alright, if the big danger is the cascade then let's make sure that stops by grabbing Magellan's and hope we can get Sistine or, more likely, Leo's. If the French get Sistine we can perhaps make them our target once we're ready to start going on the offensive. :sniper: It would certainly be handy to have it in our possession by the time we get to Sanitation...

Having said that, if we only have 1 wonder-capable city, we probably want to bypass Economics for now -- if we make it as hard for the AIs to start on Smith's as possible, and we may get a chance to come back to it later (i.e. after Leo's.)

Another problem will be how do we defend all these little colonies we've got springing up all over the place? I don't think we can afford to build or maintain more than a small force on every island, so a strong mobile navy (including privateers!) seems the only solution. Sort of like the problem the real Brits had during WWII... This just adds to Magellan's importance, but I never disagreed with that. :) Of course, it doesn't really hurt us if we do happen to lose any of those colonies since they're all corrupted out the wazoo anyway. :p

0) 950AD Wonder why we have a tax collector in Brighton, instead of working one of the coastal squares (giving 2 gold after corruption).

Switched Canterbury to Magellan's. Whatever's being built in London won't be finished on my turn, so left it on Copernicus for now.

Magellan's Voyage completed :)

Invention discovered. Start on Gunpowder.

Indians start building Leonardo's (presumably cascade switch from Magellan's).

1) 960AD French have made contact with Rome already. Drat. Suprisingly, they haven't gone and sold it to everyone else -- maybe because nobody else seems to want to pay much. Chinese pay 40 gold for contact with Romans. Romans pay 13 gold + 5 gpt for contact with Indians and Babylonians.

Renegotiate luxury deal with France. Instead of incense for 4 gold/turn, we give incense + ivory for dyes + 4 gold/turn. Get 9 gold to renew RoP.

Trade Engineering + renewed RoP + 20 gold for Roman silks, allowing us to drop entertainment tax to 0%.

Max shield production in London -- build mines on some of the irrigated plains.

Chinese start building Leonardo's.

4) 990AD Falkland East founded. Hmmm? Something I never noticed before -- fortified ships gain an extra 1 square vision radius.

5) 1000AD Penguin Rock founded. Ivory Coast loves the Queen! (And goes from 1 to 3 shields :) ).

7) 1020AD Pay India 20 gold to renew RoP and luxuries deal. Gunpowder learnt, start on Music Theory (to give Bach's as an alternative if we fail to get Sistine -- as seems likely).

8) 1030AD We have one saltpeter, underneath Oxford.

We are 9 turns from Leonardo's in London. Canterbury is on Sistine, probably a placeholder.

Canterbury needs to go back onto its coastal squares before it starves :)

:king:

Yay! We DO have saltpeter! (And Iron, and Horses, nice)

:lol:

I hope we get Leo, and nod, Sistine may very well poof (but Bach's will work)

Minor nit / point to next player...

The ship right next to Jamaica just arrived next to land, move the
pikeman and workers out *THIS* turn and get that horse hooked up and those ickie jungles cleared. By the time that's done the workers can join the city and take a rest ;p

Charis

Roger Wilco.

This is another case of "Carbon takes the day off and every turn reverts to him". If it weren't for Schnarrd's weekend off no doubt the one game I'm not up in (RBD 3) would be stuck on me, too. The order I plan to play is:

1. RBD4 (My game)
2. Infantry (since it drew the shortest straw the last time this happened)
3. LK8 (This game is in the bag, 24 hours aren't enough time to play three turns of combat with all the artillery, aerial bombardment, and troop forces that have been idly collecting for centuries. Our artillery in particular is beyond count, I've dispatched two dozen units at one point and right clicking the city still required scrolling. And we haven't built any new pieces for about 50 years :eek: )

?. RBD3 - probably will be deferred till the next day, assuming Schnarrd and Charis are prompt with their turns and I find the game turned to me tomorrow evening.

We got Leo, and in doing so cut off the cascades for Rome, China, and India. As soon as I built it, I switched London to Sistine and Canterbury to JS Bach, as London can build it cold faster than Canterbury can with a head start. Nineveh in Babylon is also working on Sistine, but they only started 4 turns before I finished it (cascade from Leo), plus it is only size 5. Orleans has been building Sistine for a while, though it's off in the jungle and also below size 7, so it could be an interesting race.

France completed Copernicus in Chartres.

Some various civic improvements. WWW now has a temple, and can properly watch whales

The world maps got around, as I had to either toss one in to get the Babylon spice deal renewed or pay a very large portion of our cash. However, we've settled all there is left, so they can all just gnash their teeth for all I care. We may want to re-work this deal, as we apparently have a LOT of luxuries. In fact, if we bother building market places (and we SHOULD), with the current lux spread, it creates TWELVE (12) Happy ( :) ) faces. If we can get enough content faces going so people aren't UN-happy, then we should be in perma-WLTQ. This should especially be done in Ireland when build queue/rush money allows.

Music Theory and Banking were discovered on my turn. Work started on Printing press.

The Indians are trying to steal our ivory. They planted Hyderabad right next to two of the elephants by Ivory coast, yet IC's superior culture leaves both in our hands. I currently have IC building a courthouse for a potential flip (it's about as far away from Dehli as IC is from London, or so I'm deluding, so if we have a courthouse in there, not only might we flip it, but Ivory coast might become more than a 1s/1g town).

I think that Ivory coast needs a greater military presence, and maybe some troops fortified on the jumbos to prevent culture creep from Hyderabad from claiming one or both of them. And if India gets some of those Ivories, those muskets could just blast Hyderabad off the peninsula and do the same to that other town they have there. I'm filling them into caravels as I'm building them, but the next chief might want to expedite the process, since at the current rate, we'll get to Ivory coast with a caravel full of muskets sometime around never.

Inherited Turn: observed that the lack of courthouses in cities immediately surrounding London has been sapping productivity for eons. I guess my successor continually vetoed all my courthouse projects. :) Well, this time, I can get two key ones built on my own turn, so I swap Nottingham and Incense Town to courthouse. I then vetoed all musket production. We're on the verge of democracy, in NO shape to start an offensive war with all but zero artillery on hand, and locked in a rather intricate mesh of codependency, economically, with the AI's.

OMG, London has NO INFRASTRUCTURE. Like... at all, even. No granary, no market, no catherdral, just a bunch of world wonders lying around. Heh. :) Well, that's not too bad, really, but time to swing the pendulum back in the other direction. I order up a market, then next a university. Need a cathedral, bank, granary (wow) and other goodies, too. London needs to stay off the wonder wagon for a couple of centuries at least, as we need it to be in shape for cranking troops before too awfully long.

We've got Leo, so I upgrade our lone archer to Longbow and upgrade the pike in Dover to Musket (the musket production was swapped to granary). It looks to me now like we honestly stand zero chance of being ready to attack Babylon until we have factories online, because if we try to do it sooner, we're just going to slow down the entire game. Since we have enough units to defend ourselves (well, could use more catapults, but that too can wait), it's time for a major infrastructure push. I think we also ought to skip Free Artistry and Economics (and of course, Military Tradition) to get to rails ASAP. If we lack for coal, we're going to have make acquiring some a most urgent priority.

I then decide to swap RoP and a luxury and some change to Rome for Chivalry. Might as well get that out of the way now.

1160AD: I find a couple of ships with muskets in them sitting in port. Not sure where the one in the south was supposed to go -- doesn't appear to be any urgent need anywhere -- so I park him. The one at York, I send to Ivory Coast.

1170AD: Dover finishes granary, starts aqueduct. I check our luxury deals and find several of them have "expired" and are just waiting to send half our civ into revolt between turns, so I opt to renegotiate them all. Ouch, much gpt now outgoing. I decide to make a pit stop in Ivory Coast for barracks, so the courthouse is swapped over and the barracks rushbuilt.

1180AD: Printing Press. Democracy next, due in 7 turns and that's running a deficit. Where did our power economy go? Heh. Oh yeah, with no courthouses in our big cities and no buildings at all in London, we haven't kept up with the times. Lots of focus settling all those colonies -- which is GOOD, that's land we shouldn't have to conquer, and we would have otherwise -- but now it's time to let colonies fend for themselves and build our core cities up. London finishes market, starts university.

1190AD: I decide that I've been a bonehead for leaving our ships parked and doing nothing, when we're in a time of peace. I send several of them on fog-busting missions. Micromanagement of cities takes place, I see we could speed our wonder, but London is wanting the same tiles to speed its university. I opt to let London have the tiles for now, but urge the wonder not be neglected forever.

1200AD: Reserve musket arrives in Ivory Coast, and I remember finally that I DID build the barracks there, so I upgrade all those pikes, too. We now have four vet muskets and a sword behind city walls. Let the AI's come if they dare. (I'd like to see some catapults hauled over there soonish, though).

1210AD: York completes University, starts courthouse. Sadly, it can't be finished on my turn, so must place its fate under the veto stamp of my successor. :) I also decide it's time to settle those other two red dots. I take our far northern city with the iron mine and swap it to settler (delaying courthouse, arrgh, but this is a priority, we want these four red dots ready to start drafting one unit per turn by the time we get into the industrial age and come ready to attack -- and two of these draft cities haven't even been founded yet!)

1220AD: Oh my goodness, what the heck is going on?? The AI's all have cash on hand and are swapping techs back and forth. I should have been keeping closer watch on them. My bad. Well, I'll salvage what I can out of it. I broker education and music theory to several civs, sucking up all their free cash and putting the poor Romans down to Dead Broke. Better us to get this dough than Joanie, that ho was just itching to make more deals, and snuck some in there while I wasn't watching. I was going to broker Printing Press to France but she already bought it off of India! :eek: After getting everyone but Joanie to give me their treasury and plenty of gpt, I decide I've done all I can and hold on to some of our more valuable techs. I don't think Joan can sell the last couple to a bunch of broke peoples, even at 3rd-civ rates.

1230AD: I use our cash windfall to upgrade all our troops. We've bitten the bullet on the mainland, although troops around in distant colonies with no barracks remain unimproved. Our treasury is now kaput, but we have like 50gpt coming in from tech sales, so it will recover soon. Red Dot founded above York. Our city on the far south of the continent is a GOOD candidate for building the settler to settle the other red dot once its aqueduct is completed (let larger cities keep working on infrastructure, and the small fry to take care of support tasks now).

1240AD: Brokered RoP's and map info, got more cash, upgraded even nonvet units. Click Next Turn, Democracy comes in and I opt for immediate revolt. The Loyal citizens of Hyderabad, admiring our democratic principles, military might, rich culture and abudant wealth, decide wisely to spare themselves a future @$$whoopin and voluntarily join our empire, bringing their ivory with them.

1250AD: I sell the Hyderabad Ivory back to India for an arm and a leg. :lol:

OH NO! We've drawn the dreaded 8 TURN anarchy. Sorry, Zed. Most of your turn is going to be fogbusting and clicking next turn. Oucher, 8 turns. Yikes and bugga-booga. :( Well, there's nothing for it, I suppose. Have to get unlucky sometimes. Tell ya what, since that's such a rip, you can play 20 if you like, and if you have the time and the wife doesn't veto. ;)


So here's my thought. We really ought to grab Newtons, and do so IN London, to go along with the colossus (yeah I know we passed on Cop, but that was to get something more urgent. Newton is the second chance, and I think we can get it without competition if we time it well enough). Canterbury will get Bach's, I believe, but worst case, if Sistine and Bach are both finished first (we're losing 8 turns of production on our end) swap it to placeholder until an otherwise undesirable pit stop at Economics can be undertaken. IF we can get five banks built, we can use Wall Street as placeholder for Newton in London, and have it nearly done as we beeline to Theory of Gravity. That would be my suggestion, but we may not pull it off. Canterbury is out of action for a while, so where would we build the fifth bank?

If Joanie builds up lots of cash on hand, do what you can to get hold of it, we do NOT want someone else researching something she doesn't have and her buy it off them.

WLTQD is helping productivity a lot in the colonies that have reached size 6, with harbors. Keep that up, it's working out well.

I urge no unit building. The AI's can't threaten us, we can't attack them for a while, so let's speed to better production and ships as quickly as we can.


- Sirian

Heh, I scroll up the screen and see that I've vetoed at least one Courthouse, not sure about the others... anyway I'm up next. Unfortunately I've got RBD4 going right now so I'll have to delay this one... or else <nextnextnext> through mine really fast and pass it to Charis. :)

Take your time. :) Good luck in 4.

Took 10 turns, didn't keep a turn log, as nothing much happened. :)

Swapped a couple of London's good squares to Canterbury & Reading in order to get Sistine/Bach's done faster. A lot of AIs are wonder-building. Renewed our spice deal with Babylon for a bunch more gpt, but otherwise didn't do much diplomacy. Next player might want to check and see if we can get any more of the AIs' gold since I had to give them some more to keep the spices.

Mrs. Zed has laid down the law! No more Civ on weeknights.

Well, really, it's more like "no staying up late on weeknights," but since the earliest I can even start playing is usually 9:00-9:30, that doesn't leave enough time to be reliably able to get a turn in. Hence, it looks like I will have to bow out. Good luck going forward!

Maybe I can join a new one if my turn is always on a weekend...

( EDIT-- "Got it", will be posted tomorrow, or perhaps tonight)

ouch!!!! :blush:

Well I sure hear you!!! Mrs C is not happy about Civ 3 making
me stay up later than normal (2:30am instead of 1am !!)

Sigh

If you feel like a weekend turn in either game, feel free to jump in with "got it!" and go :p

Charis

Looks like a time of preparation and careful waiting, production and ships,
not units. WTLKD doing well... try to get Newton.

Lt. Col. Charisinfantry looked out over the realm, and was not displeased with
what he way. The Falklands and Jamaica and Ireland were doing ok. Not super,
but fine. He was under restrictions not to fall in the ways of the weed smoking
blacksheep of the Charis clan, and not burn 'good money' on colonies that should
learn how to fend for themselves! We're not far from Chemistry, seeming to go
for Metallurgy. Econ and Free Artistry sort of cry for attention, and Newton is
a dream that will need Physics. The French are on Smiths', no idea how long.
Everyone is doing Bach's and Sistine (except us, just Sistine). York is
building a Courthose. Despite an ingrown drawing to ponder that, it stays
in place ;p Ivory Coast, now THERE is a spot for a courthouse!

1300 AD (0) - Oxford rushes Aqueduct (just 16 gold) as Newcastle must do for
its granary before the city grows in 6 turns. With current settings Belfast would
riot so we happy them up. The Lt.Col has a hard time understanding why in core
cities with 1 shield output per turn, stuck at no growth, why not more mines?

1305 AD (1) - Not much to do but produce. We crank up sci to get Chemisty
in 1 turn. After turn, India wants to talk...

1310 AD (2) - Metallurgy, Physics, Econ or Free Artistry. Do we detour to
Econ to get a slight pre-start. Doesn't seem worth getting Econ if there's
no intention of Wall Street. We go Physics the Theory of Gravity, and the
host of our UU, Magnetism.

1315 AD (3) - York starts a bank. Mao wants to renegotiate the suettler
limits (more lump sum less gpt)

1320 AD (4) - MMOW. Newcastle granary rushed just before it grows (20 gold)
1325 AD (5) - zzz

1330 AD (6) - Physics so quick? Wow. Gravity up next, about 5 turns. :P

1335 AD (7) - 1345 AD (9) - London preps for Newton's with Bach placeholder.

1350 AD (10) - Magnetism JUST now chosen (ie can change it). London switches
to Newton's. Hmm, just 14 turns.

Notes for the future...
- Jamaica will finish its Temple a tad late, due to grow just before
At end of next 10turn round, rush it's temple (should be <20 gold)
- London and Canterbury are looking solid for Newton's and Sistine
(tech lead on the former, shield lead on the latter)
- Our research rate is sizzling under democracy, we may see
the industrial age rather soon. Steam power baby! :P

Good luck,
Charis

Sounds good, solid turn, rolling along toward military production, and thank you for skipping useless wonder techs that, in this scenerio, we have no real use for. The sooner we get factories online and rails and conscription on hand, the sooner we can set about our business here, of going out and kicking some bootay.

One nit: rushing with just a few turns to go is the most wasteful. If a city is going to grow before a granary or happiness item (here's a novel idea!) slow down its food rate and SAVE THE CASH. Especially for a vanity colony like Jamaica, which serves mainly to prevent the AI's from settling there and forcing us to go conquer it later.

The time to rush (IMO) is on projects of real urgency, in cities that matter somehow (consolidation of hardwon war gains with some culture, key barracks in one safe base on enemy soil, courthouse that would improve a 1/1 city to 3+ shields and 4+ commerce, rushing settlers to grab gaps left by war) is early, or middle, not late, when you've already waited 90% of the way or more through slow production.

Keep in mind, every time you rush, the production on that turn is wasted. So if there's 2 turns to go, you're paying double to save 1 turn. Now what on earth would lead Charis to say that rushing a temple in a distant 1/1 colony out in the ocean, is worth ANY cash at all? "Only 20 gold"? :smoke: :smoke: :smoke:

That's precisely the kind of spending I've been fussing about. Not ONE DIME to those colonies, for anything other than urgent self-defense needs. It's worth it to us to hold on to the land, as that saves us the cost and effort of having to conquer it, but nothing more. Whatever it takes for them to fend for themselves, they should do. Jamaica could honestly skip the temple entirely, what does it need it for? It's never going to grow above size 6 unless we subsidize it, as it would need 180 turns to build its own harbor and aqueduct. What need does it have to spread its borders then? It's not in any danger of cultural pressure. All it has to do is sit there. It should honestly probably just be building wealth, once it has walls, at least then it would be bringing in 1gpt. The temple there is OK, but to PAY TWENTY GOLD to have it 3 or 4 turns sooner is just financial madness, in a situation where the city has less than zero rival pressure being placed on it. :) Now the Falklands, those have a reason to build temples, as there is enough land in the region to make it worth our while, scorewise, to spread our influence over the full landmass. BUT... not so important as to do anything other than wait 60 turns for them to build temples on their own. That's my assessment.


- Sirian

Lt. Col. Charisinfantry came before the regimental CO to discuss his request for funding in the base of Jamaica. General Barksburger roundly reminding him of the no-subsidy policy for our foreign bases, which must learn to be self sufficient. The Colonel realized the folly of his request, and mumbled various excuses... "Sir, if I didn't put in the request no one would have noticed and Jamaica would have surely revolted!" This was followed by "I didn't mean to ask for money per se, it was just a poor phrasing! What I meant to say was 'Be careful about Jamaica at the end of next turn, let him go low food for 3 rounds so that the temple is done before he grows'. He got a cold glare. Finally he broke down and admitted "I'm a recovering colony spend-o-holic!!!! What you MUST note is that just last month I would have shot a treasury of 2000 gold to rush temples in EVERY colony, or at the bare minimum rushed Jamaica right there and then at 200 gold without blinking! I've improved TENFOLD!"

This could not be argued, and the General game him a warm pat on the back... "You're learning, Colonel. And when you've internalized the true nature of fiscal responsibility in our foreign bases, you too will be a General!"

:crazyeyes:
Charis

Should have gone to see Brotherhood of the Wolf when I was scheduled to play in the French artillery game, but oh well. Good film. Aroooo!

Much micromanagement of cities, and not much else at all, really. Did nothing at all with our military. Here's the details:

0) 1350AD Found a sleeping worker in Liverpool. Send him down to London to improve the last irrigated plains square into a mine. We have just 4 workers on our mainland? With steampower coming soon, I think it's time to convert some of the food surplus in our size 12 cities to extra workers.

Convert the unhappy laborer from Ivory Coast to a tax collector, which *should* trigger WLTQ and improve production -- currently wasting 7 of 9 shields.

Same deal in Leeds, though I'm less sure this will be effective (currently only wasting 3 of 7 shields).

Dublin is at max pop pre-aqueduct and 1/1 production. There's no point working more squares than are needed for zero growth, so convert the other 3 citizens to tax collectors.

Ditto for 2 citizens in Belfast.

Scientist in New Norwich sent to work the mines (and deliver 2 extra science beakers :) ).

Various other cities at max size rearranged for improved production.

Diplomacy. All our treaties with India are expired. I don't think we're planning on invading them in the next 20 turns, so renegotiate. The RoP and luxuries swap is now acceptable as is (instead of us paying 3 gold/turn). Gandhi agrees to pay 60 gold + 6 gold/turn for the horses he was getting for just 1 gold/turn (!) Renew RoP with French for 4 gold/turn (up from 1 gold/turn). Ceasar wants astronomical prices for Roman silks (no deal), but is prepared to pay 6 gold/turn to renew RoP.

1) 1355AD WLTQ in Ivory Coast doubles shield output, Leeds gains one extra shield.

2) 1360AD Okay, I never looked at the F7 screen before, but I've seen it mentioned around here a couple of times, so pull it up. Heh. This makes it so much easier to decide not to put Hastings onto Bach's Cathedral like the auto-governor wanted me to :D

Indians start building Smith's.

4) 1370AD New mine outside London shaves 1 turn off Newton's. Workers hang around waiting to learn about rails.

Finish Magnetism, start on Metallurgy (4 turns at 80% science). Our Great Lighthouse stops working.

5) 1375AD Sistine Chapel built in Canterbury. Dover finishes aqueduct, starts colosseum.

AIs cascade to Bach's.

6) 1380AD Eire grows to size 6, and temporarily runs 2 tax collectors until it starves back down next turn. I don't think there's any point letting it grow until one of the Irish cities finishes a harbor.

Our caravel fleet is recalled to port to be upgraded to galleons.

Palace expands. London and Hastings love the Queen :)

8) 1390AD Ivory Coast gets courthouse, up to 5 shields/turn.

We research metallurgy, expand the palace, and get new designer clothes!

Frenchies start building Shakespeare's Theater.

:king:

Charis: Poor Phrasing? :lol: OK OK, much progress being made. :) Just need to improve that last little bit of "phrasing" soon. ;)

Jaffa: We got Sistine? In-Cred-Uh-Bull. Truly. That thing's been being built by the French for the last 8 billion years, and we got it anyway? :goodjob: Nice work with the WLTQD, probably the best way to squeeze a little wine out of those size 6 grapes. :) Better cathedrals will surely help a lot in managing weariness. Good diplomacy deals, good work.

- Sirian

Possibly they swapped their best cities to newer, "better" projects somewhere along the way, as more tech came online for them? I don't think that's common practice for them, but it's possible...

I figured that we were a lock for whichever of Bach or Sistine that we chose (and If Sirian hadn't vetoed my building of both of them, we probably could have gotten them both, but at a cost to infrastructure). France HAD been building it forever, but in a mostly unimproved size 5 town still half-surrounded by jungle. Even their lowered building costs could not help them versus a large, properly developed city, even one with such a sad shield output as Coventry.

I think that the AI just assigns wonders to the next available city with a free spot in their build queue without regard for which city could actually build it the fastest (else it would have gone into Paris, most likely), and much like RBD 3 France having a huge (20+ turn) head start on Leonardo, I still maintain that any one of Chicago, Washington, or Boston could have beaten it to Leonardo cold from the end of my turn. I'll have to reload that game and investigate Rheims to see if I am right to say that, but I'm fairly confident.

Well, I guess the target wonder now is Universal Suffrage if we're going to eventually take over somebody (Babylon?). What tech does that come with, Industrialization? I'll figure it out when I get around to playing if someone doesn't chime in.

Another question I want to ask is how high of a priority we are going to place on Sanitation and Hospitals relative to something like Replacable Parts or Electricity or even Refining. I'm just not familiar enough with the Industrial Age to make this call.

Sanitation is important for one main reason: you can't get Battlefield Medicine without five hospitals. London and our four core cities are targets for this. Maybe more as rails/factories come online and we see what develops in other cities.

For a conquest game, I'd suggest first to Industrialization, second to Rep Parts, third to Sanitation, with somewhere in there maybe (or maybe not) stopping to grab Nationalism. This brings rails online first, factories next (and those take a while to build), then hospitals, then police stations. Normall Electronics would be the next priority, but that's a wash here, we'll be building coal plants in our production cities, so it would probably be better to head for flight and mass production, delaying Theory of Evolution as long as we reasonably can (and hoping to get more out of it). The whole bottom of the tree, even including Scientific Method, plus all subsequent techs, are thus lower priority, because we have no use for hydro power or tanks, but a great interest in planes and stronger ships.

How long to wait before we start attacking, I'm not sure. If we can get to artillery/infantry before they get to Nationalism, we can use cash to upgrade some/all of our units and go right then, at least at Babylon. Infantry backed by some artillery will roll over muskets/pikes fairly well -- but improving our production is the first priority, and perhaps having to go secure some coal, our second. Resources are the wildcard here, and thus some of those vanity colonies may yet turn out to be Vital Strategic Centers. :)


- Sirian

Someone else can have the crown this weekend. It has become painfully obvious to me that any time spent towards playing Civ3 will be time not spent on a project due Monday at midnight which I desperately need to complete.

So, as a general heads-up, consider me on auto-skip if my turn comes up in Infantry, RBD 3, or RBD 4 prior to Tuesday. I'll post to the same effect in those threads, too.

OK, I got it.

Current roster order is:

Sirian
Charis
Jaffa
Carbon

With Zed "roaming" and able to post "got it" and jump in anywhere he's comfortable on weekends.

- Sirian

Inherited Turn: wow, didn't change a thing. :)

1410AD: Spotted cash burning holes in the pockets of every civ, brokered Democracy to those who didn't have it, got Economics and minor cash from India, got mojo gpt from China and Rome, chump change from Babs at last-civ cost. Sped research to get steam sooner.

1420AD: Saw Joanie had gotten Physics. She had cash. I offered her ToG, she said "Sure, take Free Artistry!" I said, "Uh, no thanks, how about all your treasury and 61gpt?" "You drive a hard bargain, but we'll take it." Research sped up again.

1425AD: India completes Bach.

1430AD: France completes Shakespeare from cascade. Those who don't have Economics (Rome, Babs, China) are shut out of the cascade, rest flop to Smith. We research Steam! THERE IS COAL IN IRELAND! Sirian spends 60 gold to shave 14 turns off of Dublin Harbor. Running science now at 90% and (despite 140+gpt income from brokering) a significant deficit.

1435AD: Coal comes online, rails started. No urgent need for military rails, so improve food in starving cities, shields everywhere else -- look to city benefit over connectivity, for the time being. (No rails through forests for a while).

1450AD: Science budget cut WAY way back... to 80%. Now running a minor surplus, and Industrialization still coming in three turns. After that, recommend increase back to 90% for electricity, MUST RACE AHEAD while this temp surplus is coming in, since we gave Joanie a whole tech to slow her down and speed us up.

The colonies can fend for themselves! I have started some workers in Falklands, which can be used to plant and chop down forests to speed production of that harbor. After that, build some walls? Or coastal forts/barracks. Can only harvest lumber once per tile, but you can plant new forests on grass/plains for the purpose of turning right around and harvesting it. This could work in Ireland, too.


The following cities are on FACTORY PLACEHOLDER:

London
York
Nottingham
Hastings
Canterbury
Coventry
Warwick
Oxford
Newcastle

The following cities are building something, NOT a placeholder:

Reading - Cathedral
Liverpool - Market
Birmingham - Temple
Norwich - Granary

All island colonies: fending for themselves. Some are on WLTQD to decrease corruption. None merit a factory, IMO.


Charis, you're up, but Zed you can jump in here if you have time, just post notice. Whoever says "got it" first, has it.

Defending our coal source a little better would be a good idea, maybe send our Men-O-War over there. We're not exactly gushing spare units to send, but maybe something can be arranged once the factories are rolling.


- Sirian

Ok, I'm going to try to get a turn in, since I know Charis is not playing this weekend from his posts in RBD5, and he still has a turn to go in that game before he gets here. I *may* not have time to finish it before Charis is ready; if so I'll post as much and Charis can take over.

Not much happened..

- We built a couple Factories and are working on more. London has completed both a Factory and a Coal Plant, and is now pumping out 75+ shields per turn. It's just started Smith's and will be done in 8 turns if left alone. :) When we get around to getting hospitals it will need a granary (1 turn) and maybe after the Hospital, a Harbour.

- One of our cities in the SW was going to take over 200 turns to build a factory at 1 shield per turn. :) About the only thing that city can do right now until we get rails down there is grow, so I vetoed that and built a Settler to found the half-city of Dry Gulch in the middle of the desert. A couple of our cities in the South could still use marketplaces for happiness.

- We researched Industrialization and Electronics, and have just started Replaceable Parts -- we could swap to something else if necessary. France, China, and India have all just reached the Industrial age. Fortunately none of them gets a free tech so we should be able to keep expanding our tech lead on them if we keep up our rapid research rate.

- Our rails in the northern grasslands are all complete. Our cities in the south are starved for shields, however; we need to get some rails down there and build some mines instead of all that irrigation.

There must have been some odd mistake in the ballot counting, for the
election of Colonel Charisinfantry made no sense to the analysts. This
was a time of building. He was happy to see railroads and the means to
move troops quickly, but it pained him that there was no one to conquer
on his continent. Factories are good things, he reminded himself...

1500 AD (0) - The one thing he notes is that we need railroads in a HUGE
way in the south to get shield production better than "miniscule." (We
could use a few more workers as well, which can poof after hospitals)

Madras finishes Smiths. (BAH!!!!) Darn, poor way to end 'just started it
and will be done in 8 turns'. London switches to Universal Suffrage, due in
10. That will likely be better for us anyway.

1510 AD (2) - York's Factory is done. Goes on Palace-wonder placeholder.
(Thinking ToE or Hoover)

1520 AD (4) - I note still no forbidden palace. Brighton overs one in 50 turns
but Ireland is probably best spot, (Belfast after Courthouse) or Falklands.
Ivory Coast also works. A look at the other civs shows we alone have Steam
(and what comes after it). No one has a tech we don't except the scientific
Babs with Nationalism.

1530 AD (6) - The chinese want to renegotiate their expiring wine and RoP
deal. Hmmm... can't make it acceptable? Oh? They lost their wines?
We sell them incense then for their treasury (150 gold) and 3 gpt.
The loss would make 3 of our top cities sad, so it's either 50 gpt for
10% lux or food shortage/slowed factories. We'll go short briefly.

1540 AD (8) - Replaceable Parts done, chose Medicine (both for city size
and to head to ToE and Hoover -- are we trying for Hoover?)

1550 AD (10) - Babylon and Rome sign an MPP (Poor choice for Rome)
Belfast finishes a courthouse. Now pushing 6 shields/turn the FP is
suggested. But at size 6 with lots of food, an aqueduct first seems best.

With a full ten cities now feeling sad or on entertainers, must push
lux up. That puts us from just surplus to a small (-38) deficit.
Treasury is comfty, over 1200.

The barracks in Dublin seemed odd, but we'll need one on that island
to do upgrades (even if no production needed). Besides, people who we've
fought with signing MPP makes me nervous :P We can now make Infantry,
so nationalism is useless unless resource dries up. (Well, we'll get it via
ToE if we don't buy it.) None were upgraded, but our next leader will want to
upgrade at least a few. Suffage will complete this turn. As far as ToE, we
could research Sanitation then start ToE. Buy Nationalism and research
Communism. Finish it just before ToE fires, then start Espionage. We would
get thus get Corporation and Atomic Power from the wonder. (Depending on
whether you want Hoover and how long to research that tech, York could
optionally finish the wonder instead of London.

* EDIT * Zed, our Rubber is in Reading on our continent,
Falkland East :hammer: and Leeds on our islands. India has rubber near china at Hangchow (china has none) and at Lahore, French have it at Tours, Romans have none (but extra saltpeter), and Bablyon has... none! :P And on the river for Hoovers, ack! Forgot it needs a river - we have none, just 'fresh water lake'. That's going to mean ToE with York's placeholder.

Good luck,
Charis

About Hoover -- it doesn't help us, we don't have a river on our main continent or near any of our other cities. We'd have to go to war to secure a likely spot.

FP in Ireland is marginal as well, but we really don't have anywhere good to put it. I'm not fond of the idea of putting it on an island with 3 or fewer cities on it since IIRC corruption is greatly worsened by crossing water. (If not, someone correct me -- in that instance Ireland is sufficiently close to Babylon that it might be worthwhile to build it there.) We could build it in Ivory Coast in anticipation of future conquests there, but that could be risky -- at least Ireland we can defend by sea. Our other option is to save it for when we take over France.

EDIT: AFAIK Rubber does not dry up. Where is ours?

Solid turn. One wonders why the Colonel plans a huge dam project when we have no major rivers anywhere on our continent, but at least he didn't rush libraries in all our colonies. ;)

Let's not bend our whole civ around min/maxing the benefits of Theory of Evolution. If York doesn't have a coal plant yet, it ought to get one, and the wonder can wait. Now that we have Rep Parts, the only things left for us to pursue are: planes, better ships, marines, the draft. A few carriers full of bombers would be quite nice, but we ought not to wait around for that.

It's time to get factories and coal plants online and start cranking the infantry and artillery and ironclads. The only worthy spot for a forbidden palace would be in Occupied Babylon after it's been taken over, and only after we have an army in the field. Nowhere is the army more useful than when eschewing blitz units. A triple stack of infantry does quite well assaulting cities. In fact, other than using one to rush an FP, any leaders we get SHOULD be dedicated forthwith to founding an army. We're going to want the military academy in London, probably, where it can crank out new armies fairly quickly.

- Sirian

I think Charis was thinking of letting Belfast build the FP straight up with no great leader, as with a courthouse it's pumping out a non-trivial number of shields. IF its effects would extend sufficiently into Babylon it might be worthwhile since it would probably be done prior to any time we could get it done in Babylon proper. But, that's a big if.

In a conquest scenerio, we ought to get some leaders out of the wars. There's no place large enough to justify an FP except the middle of Babylon, to affect the whole island. France's continent would be good too, but that would take too long. We're on the doorstep of beginning our offensive action. This thing should not last into the modern age, of if so, not far into it. The only thing going to help France and the others is their distance from our production center. Going to take a lot of galleons. :) But then, we have a goodly number already. Just need to get about sixteen units together, and start rolling over Babylon.

- Sirian

Counting the dots on a minimap pic earlier in the thread, it looks like the Babs only have 6-7 cities on their island -- not that much at all. In contrast, we have at least a dozen on our island, even if a couple are small. Our odds of getting more than one GL out of Babylon are remote, considering we're not a militaristic civ, unless we milk them heavily (which seems unlikely because of war weariness) -- after all we only got one out of India in RBD5 and there was a lot more fight there than I'd expect out of the Babs. We've already indicated the first GL will go to an army so I don't think it's likely we'll be getting an FP on Babylonian soil unless we build it directly. After all, if we only get our second leader after the Bab war is already over (as seems likely) and assuming we haven't already built our FP, then we will probably be fighting on the main continent and would benefit from a FP on that larger landmass more than we would from one in Babylonia.

It seems to me that there are 3 likely possibilites:
1) we slow-build an FP in Belfast. We get an earlier start but may lose some effectiveness due to distance and water separation from Babylon.
2) we slow-build an FP in Babylonia and try to squeeze in a couple more cities onto that landmass to maximize our benefit. Downside is we start on the FP later.
3) we rush-build an FP on the main continent.

It is possible, if unlikely, that we could get a second GL in Babylonia. If so, all bets are off. We would probably want to rush an FP there ASAP in that instance. Another thing we could do if we don't get a 2nd GL in Babylon but do get one elsewhere before we finish our FP is ship him back to Babylon to rush it -- this would give us a smaller benefit in terms of number of cities influenced but it would be relatively safer from enemy action. This doesn't necessarily strike me as the best option, however.

My guess is we'll wind up doing (2), but we don't have to make a decision now. We can continue prebuilding an FP in Belfast and see where the chips fall -- after all it's not like we're doing anything else important with Belfast right now. If we wind up building an FP elsewhere, we can swap it to a wonder (great or small) or another building (or even a ship!) if necessary.

EDIT: Note: once we capture Babylonia, Belfast and the rest of the Irish cities could very possibly relapse into 1/1-ness even with a courthouse. This would make finishing an FP there problematic if it's not already mostly done.

Already got RBD5 and RBD4 to play today, so this will likely wait for tomorrow.

Would it make any sense to make the FP in our main continent, then later move the palace when we've conquered a large area on another continent?

Charis

The thing with the Palace is that it gets progressively more expensive to build over time. In RBD3 for example, it's 1000(!) shields, and I doubt that the one in this game is much smaller, if any. For that scenario to be feasible, we'd STILL need a Great Leader to build it, unless we've got a few hundred turns to burn on it.

What I wonder is if refusing to add to the palace keeps its cost at the low initial values. It might be a strategic move to refrain from adding onto the palace if you plan on moving it.

Skip me this round. Didn't get time to play today, and I'm going to be away now until Monday.

Carbon's up.

Zed, seeing as the weekend is about to arrive, do you think you'll want to jump in here on the front end of it? IE, after Carbon's turn? Or would you rather wait until later in the weekend? Or is it catch as catch can?

- Sirian

I guess I have it, BUT...

...I don't think this will affect us during this turn I'm about to play, but should I hold out until we arrive at a patch/no-patch decision? This question should definitely be answered before we get into a serious war, esp. with the changes in infantry vs. fast unit combat dynamics.

In any case, I'm going to sit on this turn until Friday afternoon before I play, to give the Romeos romancing their wives/girlfriends tonight some opportunity to join the discussion :love2: . I for one still have the 1.16 patch file sitting around somewhere, so I think I'll play around with the new one tonight and repatch tomorrow if I have to for the SG.

I should be able to take a turn this weekend, but since I last took a turn just after you, Sirian, you ought to have the opportunity to go first. Assuming CC takes a turn tonight or tomorrow there should be enough time.

Someone's got to start the ball rolling. I vote we patch.

I installed 1.17 and played a testing Regent game. There was a goodie hut right next to my starting location...a settler! :eek: Thebes didn't even have to stop to build a settler, it just beelined for the Pyramids. I got another settler from a goodie hut some distance away from my base, pottery from another, two of them spawned barbarians, and one of them..."The xxx tribe gave you a skilled Army". ARMIES COME OUT OF GOODIE HUTS. :tank: :tank: :tank:

Too bad it was half way around the world while I was currently at war with my next door neighbor where I really could use an army. I loaded the elite warrior and popped another goody hut: barbarians. The army won, and now I can build the Heroic Epic, in 870 BC. Here's a snippet of the screen I took attached at the end.

I wonder if this sort of stuff is what we can expect all the time from 1.17f, or if this is simply an exceptional case. I might go for a culture win in Thebes, the Pyramids, the Colossus, and a pre-AD Heroic Epic should be a killer culture producer.

eep! I hope that's an exceptional case, it sounds overly unbalancing to me...

Not much later on in that game from that screen, I managed to snatch away Berlin from the Germans (incidentally, the closest German city to my civ, boy did they pick the wrong direction to expand!). For about ten or fifteen turns after finally establishing my hold over Berlin (some archers killed the unit that captured it the first time not soon after I took it, I took it for keeps 2 turns after that), the war couldn't get anywhere...until my army finally worked its way onto my road net.

I loaded up a regular and a vet swordsman, so combined with the warrior I had a 12 hp super-unit with 2 attack and 2 defense. And I mopped up most of the rest of Germany soon after that, producing a Great Leader (my first ever for Civ 3!!!) thanks in part no doubt to the Heroic Epic I built around 350 BC, and I used Ramses to rush the forbidden palace in Berlin. So after consolidation, I should be able to coast forward to any sort of victory I want except maybe diplo (including 1-city-culture, Thebes is producing 26 per turn at 270 AD). And all this is on the merit of two/three goodie huts (the settler I found on turn 1 and the army, and possibly the second settler from a hut I found in the south that allowed me to claim the bottleneck between my civ and China.

However, if I didn't capture Berlin to see how such things worked in the new patch, I probably would have razed it anyway, even with garrison flip-protection. The AI is still a whip-a-holic, and Berlin remembered a LOT of whips (86% of the complaints were whining about Germany's whipping, 13% were about me fighting a war against the people who whipped them, that makes TONS of sense), such that even with two content faces being produced from garrison, the one citizen was still rioting and had to be turned into a taxman until enough of the memories faded some 30 turns later (happiness can turn negative in the case of whipping and drafting, so you might need 2 or 3 or more content faces to keep a size 1 town from rioting if it's been mistreated).

So now, not only do we need to starve cities down to size 1 if we choose to capture rather than raze, but we have to build it back up with domestic workers or settlers, since a town that is starved down to 1 specialist can't grow. And content face generators like cathedrals and temples that might stave these things off have to be built 1 shield at a time since the already existing ones, if any existed before you took the city, are invalid for conquering civs. If anything, the new patch makes it LESS likely for me to capture rather than raze any city during Despotism or after Nationalism, so the only time you're really in the clear is during the Middle Ages.

Overall, 10 boring turns with a short spike of utter panic.

Turn 0- 1400: I attempt to mend our treasury by renegotiating our lux deals.

India: Price of Ivory rises to 23 gpt from 11 :goodjob:
-I also notice that they're paying us 20 gpt for Iron that THEY DO NOT NEED. They've got one already connected to their trade net, so don't mess with that iron deal!

France: Tack 3 gpt to the Ivory and Incense for dyes deal

Babylon: Cancel our Incense and Ivory for Spices deal and take our wares to Rome for silks and 18 gpt instead of 15. Though we're paying more, we won't experience an interruption of luxury service by declaring war on Babylon.

-I also notice that it's a very good thing we got to such a late start on our drafting cities, things could have been VERY ugly if we had drafted in them.

1405
-zzz

1410
-zzz...Oh, we made a Man-O-War. Oops, "Always build previously built unit" is still checked. I uncheck it.

1415
-Newton's built in London, GRANARY started
-Nottingham finishes its Manowar, starts a Bank. I send the 2 warships to patrol Babylon for lack of something better to do.

-I get too eager to renegotiate a deal and end up getting extorted by China over our rop + wines for Ivory deal. 10 gpt + 50g up front. :aargh3: at least I didn't give up tech to renew this deal, THAT's a vicious cycle.

1420
-Somebody finally finishes JS Bach: India

1425
-Palace expands for no apparent reason.

1430
-London finishes granary, starts harbor
-French complete Shakespeare's Theater

1435
-STEAM POWER!!! Okay, time to start laying rails...

why can I not lay rails?

Oh no! :eek: :eek: :eek: :hammer:)

Don't tell me we have NO COAL?

Control-Shift-M! Control-Shift-M! Where's the coal?!?!?

France and India have no fewer than FIVE coal sources between them, but I can't find more anywhere and there has to be at least six, where's the sixth???

Oh, it's by Belfast. WHEW! Okay, now why can't we make rails?

Oh, no harbor. Let's rush a harbor in Dublin, it's only 15 turns out.

Oh, I can't. I don't have the money. Mao hustled me good on that luxury deal. :spank:

I turn science down to zero for one turn, netting us 320+ gold, more than plenty to rush the harbor in Dublin. Rails will have to wait for another two turns, then

1440
-I rush the harbor in Dublin, science back to 70%

1445
-London finishes harbor, starts Bank
-Hastings finishes bank, starts colosseum as a factory placeholder
-Dublin finishes harbor, RAIL TIME!!!! :hammer:

-Aw, crud, England's not Industrious. 4 worker-turns for a flat stretch of rail? That sucks. I miss not being an Industrious civ.

Mainland England is going to need more workers if we're going to do this rail thing anytime before 2050, we're averaging about 2 tiles of rail laid per turn.

1450
-More rails

Okay, worldwide distribution of coal:

Basically, we have a coal next to Belfast, and the rest of the coal in the world belongs to France and India, because they stole all the good islands. Here's the breakdown:

France: 3 sources. 1 by Orleans on the mainland (the ONLY source of coal on that entire continent). 1 by Rouen, 1 by Amiens

India: 2 sources. Both on islands that do not belong to us, and both UNDER cities. Indus and Jaipur. Beyond that they have no coal.

Rome, Babylon, China: No coal at all, and not even really that close to any.

With the new patch, it's impossible for there to be fewer than 1 strategic resource per civ, but I'm not sure if that means that it'll never dry up, or if it means that should it dry up, it will always reappear SOMEWHERE.

Not sure what happened there, CC, but you are badly whacked up here. Charis's last save, the current save, has us with RUBBER in 1550AD. Your wires get crossed in the patch process? :)

:smoke: :smoke: :smoke:

You might want to go back, read through the reports again, and then pick up the CURRENT file and play your turn from there. :)

By the way, "Always Built Previously Built Unit" is a keeper option, it will get rechecked during any of my turns. Otherwise, the AI just selects from ITS idea of what to build next, and that's even worse. Either way, you can't just let cities run on automatic, you need to keep an eye on what you want them to build. At least with "Previous Unit" you at least know what was built there just now (it can be easy to lose track otherwise).


- Sirian

hrmph. It's been so long since I've been in this game, I've forgotten my context. I don't really have time to pick this one up again, so go ahead and skip me...again. :cry:

Ok, well in that case, I'll jump in. Sorry Sirian, I know you're up next, but I don't think I'll be able to play tomorrow. I'll endeavour to be quick... :)

Took a quick and quiet 10 turns.

- Research: We finished researching Medicine and are almost done Scientific Method. I don't think we'll be able to do much with ToE other than backfill skipped techs this time. All of the AIs just finished researching Steam Power in one big batch. :) They all have Nationalism & Steam Power from this age, and nothing else. We're missing Nationalism but could easily pick it up. They could have Espionage or Communism but it seems doubtful.

- Military: London finished up with Universal Suffrage (and a granary) and built a couple Privateers for fun (regular, no Harbour :) ) before starting on Infantry. Hastings is building Artillery. The Privateers were looking for Bab ships to sink but didn't find any. One got sunk by an Indian frigate. :( Our Navy is starting to get a bit out-numbered as far as military ships (not transports) go. Most of our cities are finished crucial buildings and could be swapped to military if desired, but some still have a ways to go.

- Diplomacy: I let the Bab Spices deal expire; there didn't seem to be much point in letting it continue if we're about to go to war with them anyway. It didn't seem to make much of an impact on happiness, some tax collectors changed to entertainers. We have a couple spare lux to trade as a result.

- Infrastructure: Rail completed just about everywhere. I skimmed some workers off maxed out cities so we now have lots on our main continent. As mentioned, city improvements are flowing along nicely. Mostly I built infrastructure this turn, but many of our cities esp. at the northern and southern tips of our island are still missing several important structures.

Inherited Turn: Somehow Reading went from "fishing village" to bona fide city. Since it now has a factory, and strong production, it seems likely that it will now permanently borrow at least some tiles from London. We'll see how that plays.

WOW! Look at Ireland. With Courthouses and WLTQD, they have actual shields?? That's amazing. Hmm, no wall street online yet, why is that? We have only four banks? And Canterbury doesn't even have a marketplace??? OK. One of my goals will be to get us started on Wall Street by the end of my turn.

Another goal is to take us into war. Enough of this peacenik growing stuff in a conquest scenerio, let's see some action! :soldier: :ar15:

Since we don't have an immediate need for a bankroll, I spend almost all of our cash on military upgrades. Hello Infantry, Hello Artillery.

With nothing else for our workers to do, I set them to lumberjacking then replanting our northern forests.

1605AD: We discover Scientific Method. York was on placeholder, and if running a food deficit, it can finish Theory of Evolution in just four turns. Having discovered in RBD4 that ToE now gives the techs you pick to research, rather than random techs you aren't researching, I halt all our research, drop science to zero (this will recover what I spent on upgrades) and plan to nab Atomic Theory and Electronics with the wonder, then resume normal research.

I trade incense and ivory to Rome for Nationalism. Poor Rome, they are going to get gipped when they activate their MPP with Babylon. Heh.

1610-20AD: Infrastructure work, mostly. I gathered our scattered galleons for the coming invasion of Babylon.

1625AD: York completes ToE. We received Atomic Theory and Electronics, so this definitely confirms this change in the patch. Even though we can't benefit highly from Electronics, it's the best value, and there is the chance that we can build Hoover on Babylonian land (they do have a river, don't they?) I start research on Sanitation at our best science rate (50%).

Some cities have been building troops. We now have three artillery and a number of spare infantry on our homeland, plus one ironclad and another in the works. Our galleons are in position to attack.

I cancel our RoP with Babylon.

1630AD: I skim some conscripts off a few of our homeland cities. We can't be doing much of that, but if I'm going to attack on my turn, I need more troops than we can currently spare.

England declares war on Babylon!

Our Men-of-War off our coast bombard a Babylonian Frigate (Man-of-War ships fire TWO shots per turn, so they are best used for bombardment. Pair them up with ironclads, use the Men-O-War to soften the target, then finish it with the ironclad -- artillery at sea!) and our ironclad finishes off the wounded ship.

Sixteen English units land on the hill overlooking Babylon itself. (You can load from our southeast city, move the ships five spaces and unload on the same turn).

Our Men-of-War at Ireland go looking for targets. The one in the north spots a carvel, attacks and loses. :(

1635AD: Our three artillery Bombard Babylon. It is reduced to size 6. With no enemy defenders wounded, I deem the opportunity not ripe and fortify all of our units.

Our other Man-o-War at Ireland sinks the wounded Bab caravel, and is damaged in the process. A Bab Ironclad comes up from Ninevah. Our Men bombard, reducing it to one hp, and our ironclad finishes it off.

Rome peeks two frigates into Irish waters. I use our Irish artillery unit to bombard one of them, stripping off two hps.

1640AD: Roman frigates retreat. Ha! :whipped:

Our artillery overlooking Babylon is once again ineffective, except that they did destroy the barracks and the granary. I find myself wishing that I had built a couple more artillery.

Barracks completed in Falklands, with lumberjacking help, pikes there upgraded to Infantry.

Another Bab Ironclad shows up, this time from the north. Our Men bombard, and also one of our two ironclads, wounding it twice, then our other ironclad finishes it off, but just barely! One hp left. Would have been sunk if not for the help from our Men.

1645AD: Babylon lands a musket and two longbows on Ireland! I draft a unit from our size 7 city there, then bombard the stack with our artillery unit, taking off one hp from the musket. Our vet sword attacks the musket AND WINS with one hp left. Our conscript infantry attack the first longbow, lose a hp on the first round, then take off three straight for a victory, but do no promote. :( Our vet infantry attacks the final longbow and wins, promoting to elite!!!

Our glorious Irish troops have won a great victory! [party]

Now for the big fight...

Our glorious artillery take two hps apeice off of two of the three vet riflemen fortified in Babylon. Let's roll!

Eight of our thirteen units are slain in the assault. :eek: Babylon remains standing! We have killed five riflemen, but one stubborn elite (promoted to elite during the attack) remains holding out with a single hp left. Arrgh! If only I had brought one more unit!

I pull garrisons from everywhere I have to to send four more infantry to Babylonian shores. London and other cities are left defenseless temporarily but due to build new units next turn.

1650AD: a Bab Frigate is harassing the shore off of Leeds. I send our Men and remaining healthy ironclad to deal with it. It is sunk but takes a hp off our ironclad, so now both ships need to dock for a brief span to repair. (Can't heal ships at sea).

Babylon city has produced a regular rifle, drafted another, and brought in another draftee from another city! They have four defenders now, counting the wounded elite! I attack anyway. Babylon MUST fall!

Artillery takes a hp off the regular rifle, and the WALLS of Babylon are brought down! (Yay! No wonder we took such a bloodbath).

We lose two more units (both vet infantry this time) attacking Babylon! In all of this attacking, none of our units have promoted, either -- except the one at Ireland). Two vet infantry perish in the attack, but we have captured Babylon, and with it, two cannon and two Bab workers. Our troops move into the city. I scrounge two more vet infantry from our homeland, in cities due to produce replacements next turn, to send to Babylon. I'm afraid we're going to have hole up there for a while, pay to rush the temple and park our whole stack of troops in the city AND NOT MOVE THEM to keep it from flipping back (even with starving it -- it was 5th on the top city list in terms of culture).

Further attacks will have to made with fresh troops from home, but the good news is that we captured their best, most well defended city with only ten casulaties. (Hey, this ain't another cav/tank blitz game, ya know. Ten casualties is par for the course, without enough artillery on hand to soften them up better, so adjust your thinking accordingly. Think STACKS, build more artillery -- we're going to want to go heavy on bombers and carriers too -- and plan to leave huge garrisons in the cities we capture.) With the draft rush exploit shut down, we're going to have do this the hard way. :)

The easy part is over. Now the conquest part begins. :scout:

As a final action, I checked the diplomatic screens, found that France and India both had Industrialization and Communism, but China did not have Industrial yet. I traded them Ivory, Map, 7 gold, and Industrialization for Communism. He called me a tightwad but took the deal.


Charis, I finally got that last bank built, so Wall Street is underway, and most of our cities are building infrastructure. We don't want to mobilize at this time, so you'll have to fight this war mostly with smoke and mirrors. Priority must go to holding on to what we have obtained (at some cost) rather than stretching our neck trying to take too much too quickly. This game is going to take a while, you know. Don't keep wounded ships at sea, bring them to port to repair, and keep our one strong stack of Men/Irons together, as they have sunk about five Bab ships with no losses that way.

York has 40 shields per turn and could crank artillery or ironclads every other turn (I have it set to build coastal fort first). Some cities building coal plants can be set to troop/fleet production soon, so you should be able to take some kind of offensive action by the end of your turn. Best of luck!


- Sirian

Got the save file...

I'll be playing this one after rbd5 (which has an earlier post date), but hope to finish both tonight.

* EDIT * Didn't finish both, rbd5 took forever, although it went
very smoothly. I'll get infantry done tomorrow night (Tues)

Looks like a fun one :P

Charis

1650 AD (0) - Ah, at war at last! Rome signs itself up to be the next
target but otherwise is not expected to be relevant. Two thoughts cross
my mind. Take the peace off, build up some, bring over offense, then let
next leader wipe out the Babylonians. Second thought is to press, press now
and wipe them out immediately. Sheesh, they only have 6 cities!

What do we have yet to build anyway? Well, we're due to start Sanitation
in 2. We have the jump on electronics but have *no* place to build
Hoover (gah!) We'll have to capture it from Paris someday :P The number
of military is rather small, given our plans, only 101 units and 32 of those
are workers! Several spots are building factories, and would like coal plants
after that. I wonder how quick Rome will sue after Babylon is wiped out.
Would like to Mobilize. It does **not** affect things currently in production,
so those mid-factory can finish them. The Babylonian war may be over before
they finish. If we do get locked into a longer war with Rome, cranking out a
ton of units isn't the worst way to end it. Looking closer at the build orders,
it's almost all structure. We'll get bonus shields for them whether they're
*actually* working on a military unit or not! Let's give it a whirl...

Friends... countrymen... mobilize for WAR! :hammer:
To make things better/worse, size 12 cities get a draft notice!

OK, pitfall one. Only those cities actually making a mil unit get the
bonus. (My bad, misread/misunderstood that). In any case, one... two...
three boatloads of conscripts are now in the waters set to land on Babylon
next turn! Our production will need to be artillery.

1655 AD (1) - Two more conscripts join the two made artillery and a fourth
boat is put in the water. Babylonian Colonels with binoculars are feeling
kind of sick right now.

1660 AD (2) - Sanitation comes in. York kicks into artillery/2-turn mode.
We feel some bizzare need to tune in to the radio.

Our supply of coal has run out! Simultaneously, throughout all our great
land, we get to the bottom of our coal mines and only then notice, duh,
there's no more left!! grrrrr! --chokes back rant about insane anti-
strategic design decisions-- There's some outside Ninevah we'll help
ourselves to shortly. France and India are just plain swimming in coal,
no one else has any. It did NOT respawn in our territory.

Ugh... when it rains it pours. War weariness strikes. Slow pounding
infantry and democracy do NOT mix 8-\ Up goes the lux rate.

At least our first conscript battle is a victory and promotion (thanks
to artillery softening)

1665 AD (3) - A surprise cav comes out of town after us, and impales
himself on a conscript infantry.

THIS PROVES THE SUPREMACY OF INFANTRY OVER CAVALRY!! :hammer:

Umm.... here come the Romans! About 4 ironclads and galleons steam toward
Panama city. They land with... a warrior (cough), a spear and a longbow.
I would be busting a gut laughing if our defenses there weren't so weak
that's actually a threat!

Double pollution hits London, but we clean it right up, waking up the
workers from their long siesta.

1670 AD (4) - Pike and Legion arrive at Panama on the next boat. Last turn
we rushed the barracks. With that one infantry may be able to hold up?!

A Roman ship is about to land upon Eire as well. Barracks orders replace
coastal fortress in the colonies. They're NOT bombarding.

Ninevah loses Harbor, Barracks and citizens in 3 shots :P
I feel a little frisky with a decent number of conscripts on hands, seeing
only a conscript defender. We lose two, kill two, and take the coal city!
(Alas, now must rebuild that harbor) Ur barracks are destroyed by ironclad,
and the next shot hurts one of several defenders.

1675 AD (5) - LMAO! The Roman warrior attacks first and makes our
defender infantry elite :lol: Then Roman ships all pull away, they're so
disgraced! I had moved one defender out of a city, and now see 3 chinese
ships. Better get him back and hope no sneak attack. Their capitol Ur
is bombarded to size 5, no wait, 4, this turn (yay!)

1680 AD (6) - Another cav shows up and goes after a worker I thought well
behind enemy lines. Hehe, we hit from range 2 with artillery, down to 1hp,
then mop up with a conscript infantry. Only a promotion would have been
sweeter.

1685 AD (7) - We trade ships with Rome, winning Man-o-War vs Galleon and losing
Ironclad vs MoW (on their turn). They land at Ireland with Pike, 2 warriors
and Spear. We mow them down with our (cough) Swordsmen and Infantry there.
On our turn the victorious Man-o-War says "Shall we make this a round robin??!"
She attacks the ironclad and flat out spanks it!! :spank: We ask Rome if he
has had enough of this silly folly (we're tired of the weariness).
He agrees. I think that last sinking earned me the 1 gpt acceptance :P

If the people are happier, their not much showing it. The peace with Rome
was none too soon - last landing we got hit by a lucky cav, and two units
of artillery were in danger. We got to divert a ship full headed for
Panama over to Babylon instead.

The Chinese ship sticks its nose right in the maw of Dover. Hardly an
undefended city. Walls, barracks, artillery due next turn... What are they
up to? I talk to Mao, and others, they have nothing to trade. Well,
almost - a worker from China.

Realizing how nasty a Babylon city flip would be, and a garrison too
small, I rush the temple there.

Hey, speaking of temples... peace with Rome automatically put us back
in a state of 'normalcy', not mobilized. (Not that I was minding)
This even though we're still at war (with Babs).

1690 AD (8) - The people build on to the palace. Rome and France sign an
MPP (France has chosen unwisely) - glad we just got peace there. The
Chinese ships all go past. They might want a piece of someone (eep, I
hope not Babylon)

Akkad's Library and Temple destroyed. We catch some conscript rifles in
the field near Ashur. Soften, then kill, once again.

Decide to rush Ninevah's harbor to get the Coal online to our civ again.
If it flips or coals runs out again... :nono:

1695 AD (9) - Ur is really standing up well to punishment, can't crack it
yet. Akkad otoh, it's cathedral crumbles, the University goes up in smoke,

1700 AD (10) - Minor scare, a cav charges Ninevah - our vet infantry there
holds him off and becomes elite (phew!) Ur harbor destroyed. It looks like
they have two defenders. Akkad continues to melt down, now size 4. Ouch!
There goes the colosseum! :hammer: Uruk harbor destroyed.
We take a stab at Ur! Doh, not two, three defenders. They're down to their
last guy, a conscript with 1 hp, and no barracks. We were short one attacker.
We get what we need in position to take it next turn.

AAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The most massive war
weariness I think I've ever seen!! 50%+ of people want to give peace
a chance! Nooooooo!!!! We're poised outside their last towns!!!! Nooo!!!

Sorry, just can't hand it off like this. Things MUST fall and they must
fall this next turn! General Charis kicks it into overdrive...

1705 AD (OT 1) - The French want to see us (oh sheesh, wth do you want??)
They want to trade their Corporation for our Sanitation. Seems fair, and
I could use a little good will here. Alas, let's do it on my turn :P
Oh??? You'll also give 6 gpt and 80 gold and your world map? Scrap the map
and make it 9 gpt. Mao gives his treasury of 60 and 16 gpt. India will give
their treasury of 19 and 14 gpt. Rome, still furious, gives their 130 gold
and a gpt. That helps our shabby econ a little. (Running 50% luxury isn't
helping) The focus goes straight to Ur... The artillery soften the last
defender. Our conscript takes aim...

He shoots... he Scores!!! [dance] And gets a promotion! :P

Bloodlust is running wild, but winding down. We take pots shots before the
upcoming peace. The harbor at Akkad is destroyed. It's citizens are hit.
The barracks of their new capitol at Ellipi are destroyed, as it the
temple! :hammer: Ouch! Then the marketplace! Aiy! Then the barracks of
Uruk, and citizens! Darn you howitzers! If you shot this well earlier the
cities would be ours already! (Almost forgot, on their turn, a cav, perhaps
their last, came against our conscript standing on their coal, and lost. Well,
it was in the mountains.)

Two cities left being pounded, 6 artillery about to hit their shores,
no 'increase' in weariness... the bloodlust can't be stopped! :hammer:

1710 AD (OT 2) - Longbowman pops up at Akkad and dies. Akkad then gets
pounded into the earth and its last conscript slain by the mighty
english infantry! It falls. Ellipi loses its colloseum. Ouch, and its bank.
Short one attacker again. Uruk has a 1 hp spear left 8-\

General Charis is dragged away screaming and crying "just one more turn,
two at most!!" He is locked up, the people can take no more. His bloodlust
is more than they can bear...

To the next leader... (Jaffa)
- First off, sorry for taking two extra turns. Take your normal ten and I'll
take 8 my next go around. I just didn't want to hand off in that much chaos,
which would be resolved in 1-2 rounds.

- Babylon is toast. You can demand peace, their last city, all gold, and some
workers (alas they have no tech). Or... you can be done with it and not fear
any flipping. The weariness is simply 'costly' right now, but it's not been
'increasing' since the last major 'jump'. If it were me I would finish them
off, but I've already done/said too much :P

- Ninevah is our only coal source now!

- War will be short either way, so adjust build orders and mobilize if you
do want to build at least a few more units.

- If all are wars are going to be like this, we probably should be in
Communism once our next war starts or is about to break out.

- Oh, we did finish Wall Street, have 1000 gold in the bank, and still have
a tech lead, although it's being squandered at the moment to press war.

Sirian, you asked/wished for a few more artillery, there are now dozens down
in Babylon, and 3 in Ireland.

Good luck
Charis

Woo! Some action happening now! :hammer: :scout:

I missed that I'd come up in this too. I'll get to it tonight/tomorrow.

Babylon down, four to go :)

I started moving our troops to Ivory Coast, as a useful jumping off point for an assault on France. Should we so choose :D

Babylon seems like a good spot to build the Forbidden Palace.

Got it. Should post later today hopefully.

Evened up the turns, took to 1780 AD.

- Research: We researched Steel and Combustion and traded lux and resources for Refining and Espionage. We're now on Mass Production. We have one source of Oil on Babylon, and none elsewhere that I spotted.

- Infrastructure: Several cities built Hospitals or Cathedrals and started on Infantry. London and York just started Battlefield Medicine & Intelligence Agency but these could be changed if necessary. We rushed a Granary in Babylon and started Forbidden Palace, which should be done fairly soon since we seem to have rush-built enough infrastructure to allow it to get up to size 12 quickly. It has a lot of hills in range so it will be a very good production city; unfortunately most of the rest of the island seems to be pretty crappy and starved for food -- lots of fishing towns nestled in among the mountains.

- Military: Spent most of my turn building up Infantry. We now have 2 defenders per city on our continent so we have a reserve if needed. We have transferred the bulk of our artillery to Hyderabad (near Ivory Coast); we also have a number of Infantry there, with more coming. We have a number of galleons for transfers from Dover to Hyderabad, and a similar number for transfers from our main continent to the other city on Dover's island (IIRC Brighton.) I also built some Ironclads to beef up our navy a bit, but we needed Infantry more & we should have Battleships soon so I didn't build more than a couple.
- Diplomacy: Renegotiated a couple treaties to try to get some more cash. Otherwise not too much happening. The AIs are trading amongst themselves immediately once they research a tech so they must have some fre gold.

- Looking forward: What I expect to have happen once we have sufficient force available at Hyderabad is we'll negotiate an MPP and ROP with India, then provoke France into declaring war on us. Even if they have an ROP and use it to sneak attack us the worst they can do is go after Ivory Coast and Hyderabad, which is right where our forces are concentrated anyway. Of course, we could try something else instead...

It happens every other week. I'd REALLY like to play some of this game, so if I could pass on this turn and pick up the first turn after Monday night (or if I manage to get it done early, ON Monday night), it would be much appreciated. The same goes for RBD 3, too. If I can get it earlier than Tuesday, I'll post.

Charis is offline for a couple of days, too, so no sense me rushing ahead. We'll just wait for you in this one.

- Sirian

EDIT: Charis is back? I thought he was going to be gone all weekend. Well, I'd like to keep things moving, so we'll get the ball rolling here again. "Got it." :)

Inherited Turn: Arrgh! We're locked into long term deals with everybody! Unless I betray our word (not gonna do it) there can be no war on this round. Bah. :)

Well, we can (and probably should) increase unit production during the war via mobilization. That's not always the best bet, but most of our cities here are coastal, and none are cranking 80 shields per turn even with full rails and power plants. This means that during extended peace time, with no threats on the horizon, the best thing to do is max infrastructure production. So... I tinker with this and I tinker with that, mostly police stations, some other bits and pieces, and I plan to do some worker modifications, turning some mines to irrigation to speed city growth, turning some irrigation to mines to speed production in cities that don't need growth at the moment.

Early turns: more of the same.

Middle turns: we research Combustion, I opt to squeeze as much out of Colossus as we can before it goes obsolete, so I set us on the path to get Marines, with Flight to be postponed until after that. (We'll pretty much need marines away, for the higher attack value, to be besieging cities defended by infantry.)

Late turns: Forbidden Palace completed, several other key buildings completed, empowering a variety of cities. Intelligence Agency got postponed, but it's due in plenty of time, well before our deals with France run out.

France is the target. I've entered us into MPP with India and Rome, and those should expire about ten turns after we can go after France, which SHOULD free us up for peace with France if we so desire (for a respite from weariness) long about the time they'll talk to us again.

Stay away from Computers! I found in my Infantry game, that mech inf were unnecessary and unwanted. Sure, we'd LOVE to have miniaturization on THIS map, but we can make do without.

It's 1800 already. We have, at most, 174 turns left in which to complete total world conquest -- or we shall lose. ("Winning" by histograph is a failure for this variant). 174 is plenty of time, but not so much that we can squander 20 here and 20 there.

Do not make deals with potential targets, just for some convenience. When France's luxury deal with us runs out, if it is renewed, that will delay us at least another 20 turns. Etc etc. We have already played this one conservatively. There isn't all that much for us to have to conquer, but our pace isn't exactly going to be flying along, either.

Charis, you're up, with Carbon slated to jump back in to make up his turn, some time after Monday night.


- Sirian

Can't we just keep insulting France in the diplomacy window and moving units through their territory to the point where they declare war on us? Then we would not be the one breaking agreements. Not sure if that works or just makes them really mad at us, but I was under the impression that it would. That's what I meant by provoke anyhow...

Nope. If we move units in, they demand WE move or WE declare war. The stain would fall on us. The only way to provoke them would be with planting spies (unlikely, Joanie's set to minimum aggression in her AI routine). We'll just have to wait it out.

Now if she had units on our lands and we demand she remove them, and she refused, that would be on her head. Making threats can sometimes provoke war, but I've never sat and made threat after threat after threat, and have no idea how much that would stain us (I think it wouldn't be good). We could attack somebody she's in MPP with, but she's not in any MPP's and we are economically tied (for the moment) to everyone else anyway.

Besides... you signed a Right of Passage with her. Right? We could park our troops anywhere, and she wouldn't say a thing. If we left them there when the RoP expired, the stain (and a bad one) would fall back on our heads again.


- Sirian

Yeah, I did that while I was trying to get better prices for stuff. I realized after I had tried to renegotiate the ROP with France that that it was a mistake, but by then it was too late. Sorry...

EDIT -- UGH! Skip me or swap, if anyone cares to.
RBD5 has gone from nothing to report, nothng to report,
to the mother of all bloodbaths. I've been at it for 5 hours
and am about 1/3 done I think :P
(After going to bed soon, I'll pick up tomorrow with the Vikings
to not that get a bad start, then finish 5, before thinking
about inf. Sorry, but I don't want to play a bad/rushed turn
in any of these here)

-------


Ok, got it...

This eve (gonna be a long one) :

RBD5
Infantry
RBD8

Or at least as far as I can get with each.
(Feast or famine strikes again :rolleyes: )

Charis

Okay, I'll pick this up today.

Edit: today being Monday, in case that wasn't clear.

Well, after Jaffa's done, it would be Carbon's turn again. If somebody gets lapped here, we're not givin em two turns. :)

I figured that RBD5 had exploded, since we hadn't heard from Charis. Go Musketeers! :shotgun:

War! With France! Ummm, wasn't I just doing that? :)

0) 1800AD Temporarily raised science tax to get mass production in 2 turns.

Diplomacy check. Changed nothing. Seven turns to war :hammer:

Hired some tax collectors in the Falklands, which aren't getting above 1/1 production even in WLTQ.

Reading builds a police station when it doesn't have a courthouse yet? Oh well. It doesn't need a courthouse now.

1) 1802AD Luxuries donation to Rome comes to an end. We sell spices to China for 100g+10gpt.

3) 1806AD Indians and Romans start building Hoover Dam.

4) 1808AD India and Rome sign an MPP. Intelligence Agency completed.

5) 1810AD French start on Hoover Dam.

6) 1812AD I remember that we can now plant spies. We put spies into France and China. India and Rome catch our agents.

Joan comes calling and cancels our luxury trade. Such impudence! This means WAR!! :)

7) 1814AD We send a polite note to Joan informing her we no longer want her gold.

8) 1816AD We send another polite note to Joan informing her that we are now at war.

Our fleet sinks 2 French ironclads.

I send an elite infantryman to attack a vet musketeer. The musketeer kills him :( I follow up with a conscript infantryman against the still undamaged musketeer. The conscript is victorious! And unharmed!

French cavalry kill a couple of our infantry. India and Rome declare war on France :)

We learn about flight!

9) 1818AD Our artillery bombards Avignon. Airports constructed in London, Hastings and Canterbury.

10) 1820AD We capture Avignon! Unfortunately, the French culture border keeps me from reinforcing it other than with troops immediately to hand, so it's not as secure as I'd like.

The French have an ironclad/transport pair advancing on Jamaica, which is defended by just one infantry. Ooops. I suspect we're going to lose Jamaica.

Good timing! Carbon's up, and also in RBD4, he's got some post-deadline celebratory wars vs France to handle. :)

The other shoe shall drop...sometime tomorrow.

I'm taking a break for the night on turn 5. I'm at an impasse right now. War weariness is breaking our backs, to the point where almost every city besides London is on break even/negative food for entertainers, and we're still two to three turns away from being able to weasel out of MPPs. Worse yet, I only managed to capture a net of one french city so far on my turn (I captured it, lost it when I forgot to pull healthy infantry from our other town, then retook it later). Do I:

1) Try to ride out the storm and hope the government doesn't collapse?

or

2) Revolt and put us in Monarchy (or even Communism?)

I'm leaning towards revolt into Monarchy, with maybe another for Communism if we gobble up enough of the French/Indian/Chinese continent.

Well, the bad news is out of the way, the good news commences:

-I got a Great Leader in the fighting. This is my second TONIGHT, where previously I had ONE total in the last two and a half months of playing Civ 3. I used him to make an Infantry army, and loaded the army with two elite infantry and a vet, for a 14 hp unit of DOOM. The Heroic Epic and Military Academy should be done by the end of my turn, barring a revolt.

-Jamaica SURVIVED. The transport was filled with:

-1 inf
-2 swords(!!)
-2 horsemen(!!!)
-3 cavalry

And our sole infantry swept the table and got promoted to elite.

I was going to stop at this point for the night, anyhow, so I figured I would poll you guys before I played the second half. I'm personally of the mind to revolt and continue to bring the fight to France, especially with the army in the field. Our other option is to hunker down and do nothing else on the offensive for the remaining turns on the MPP, then switch foes to India or China.

I eagerly anticipate your comments, or I'll just execute whatever half-baked plan floats through my empty skull.

Originally posted by Carbon_Copy
-Jamaica SURVIVED. The transport was filled with:

-1 inf
-2 swords(!!)
-2 horsemen(!!!)
-3 cavalry

And our sole infantry swept the table and got promoted to elite.

OMG, WoW!!! [party] I actually hit next turn after I saved the game to post, and saw all that lot coming, and thought for sure Jamaica was doomed. Give that man the Victoria Cross :D

We're going for a conquest victory, aren't we? Which means we'll likely be in war the rest of the game. I think we should revolt.

--
Jaffa

We've got enough tech, at this point, that we can afford to let go of democracy now. Go ahead and revolt.

Also, avoid Computers. I found it unnecessary and undesirable in my solo infantry game to bother with Computers. Marines, planes, ships, armies, and helicopters can do the trick. We want to build the Military Academy in London please!

If you go, switch to Monarchy.

As for victory conditions, we not only are going for Conquest, but we must. It's the only enabled victory option. :)


- Sirian

"I've got this bizarre recurring dream, doc. The year is 1820, and I have to fight the French."

"How often have you had this dream?"

"I've had it twice tonight already."

"Very interesting. Tell me about this dream."

1820:

Deja vu?

1822:

France fails to retake Avignon. France also lands their stack-o'-something-just-short-of-doom in Jamaica. Maybe if they had sent fewer units from TWO ERAS AGO, they might have taken it. The English Navy is dispatched to deal with the ironclad and transport that carried these units

1824:
-A Leader! What should I do with Edward? Make an infantry army, of course! I wait for one turn to allow my elites to heal before joining them to the army.

1826:

Nothing much happened in 1826. WLTQD ends worldwide.

1828:

-I load the two elites plus a veteran infantry into the army. Now all I need is an easy victory. Aha, France left me a longbow outside Avignon to play with. I bombard it to 1 hp first, then take it with my army. London switched to Military Academy, Hastings switched to Heroic Epic (and yes, I had it like that before you suggested, Sirian ;) ). Tientsin is captured, but I forget to reinforce beyond the infantry that took it :spank: 10% luxury tax instituted to offset war weariness.

1830:

-Motorized Transportation learned. England enters the Modern era and Queen Elizabeth turns into a librarian ;) . Rather than press ahead with Recycling or Fission, I backtrack to Amphibious War so we can build marines. Many cities riot and massive numbers of entertainers have to be hired worldwide to prevent governmental collapse. Then Tientsin gets retaken by the French :aargh3: . I rush the cathedral in Newcastle to prevent wholesale starvation due to there being more entertainers than laborers in this size 12 city.

1832:

I recapture Tientsin with the army and reinforce it this time. Half our artillery sets up shop outside Besancon and the other half outside Rheims. At this point I pause and post the poll above. After Sirian confirmed what I was suggesting we do, I went ahead and revolted. ...Enh, 6 turn anarchy, at least it wasn't the dreaded 8 turn beast.

1834:

Wholesale bombardment of Besancon and Rheims.

1836:

Rheims captured, the next city over is Paris!

1838:

I'm running out of bodies, so I load up a bunch of the second defenders on the English homeland and ship them to France. Mao asks me for an MPP. Since I don't know if we want to be fighting him or not during the next 20 turns, I decline and give him a free map instead. Gandhi doesn't want to renew our omnibus RoP/MPP/lux deal, so I let it expire and add his name back to the top of our "people to kill" list. Besancon captured, giving us more or less a monopoly on the world's dye supply, though two of the dyes are out of our city radii right now.

1840:

China and India sign an alliance vs. France. Orleans captured. Some preliminary bombardment of Paris begun.

Other fun facts:

France and India are Communist, Rome and China are still Democracies.

Capturing Marseilles will give us the entire eastern seaboard of France. India may beat us to it, though, with that obnoxious horse-riding thing that they do.

We are free to attack India without reputation penalty. Our MPP with Rome has apparently expired, but the Romans are still pleased with the deal they struck, so it's still in effect. If we want to fight China, we should cancel all our existing (but expired) deals with them first.

Rome has been landing troops in Amiens for several turns now, but apparently without luck since the city remains Frenchy pink.

We are in desperate need of more troops once we come out of anarchy in two turns. Once we're in the clear: MONARCHY.

Lot of pollution to clean up, not much you can do to combat it while under anarchy. The good news is that Nottingham is running out of land to pollute, so it can't get much worse than it is already in that neighborhood.

The turn orders are getting a little murky. It's not just the shuffling here, things across the board have been loosening up, and generally I'm OK with that. But I've looked back over the turn order for this one twice tonight and I'm lost. And this one is my game! :)

At what point does flexibility start degrading into disorder?

As might be typical of Murphy's law, a number of us sit around with no game to play several nights in a row, then all our turns in various games come due on the same night and we're swamped. Charis calls that the Feast or Famine. We've all experienced it! Any number of things can cause it. Sometimes a war quadruples the real-life time it takes to play ten turns, and that can come unexpectedly or with unforeseen pressures. This kind of bump in the smooth transfer from leader to leader is probably the most understandable. Someone gets the Feast, there are only so many hours to play, and so we have tried to designate some games as lower priority. RBD7 would sit idle for days on end while Charis or I were swamped, then we'd often knock out a turn or two each per day for a couple days while all our other games were sittin around doing nothing because someone else was swamped.

Are we playing too many games? Probably not. Maybe in some people's case, they're pushing it a little. Bottlenecks form. Then rush hour ends and those same people are sittin around bored. :) I don't think shooting for no bottlenecks is desirable, so on that front I think we are doing OK.

But with the turn swapping, floating, rotating, skipping, it's starting to become a whole extra game just to keep track of who is, was, or should be coming up next. I find myself missing the easy confidence of "I follow Player X, as soon as he posts it's my turn." That has evaporated, and I even got scolded for going out of turn once in RBD4 when I lost track. :( Now I'm starting to worry about having to post "got it" every time I come up, or else I might play ten turns and come back to the board to find someone else has jumped in there. (That happened to Cy once).

None of us wanted to see Zed excluded. His circumstances became more restricted, but he remains highly motivated to participate. Yet we went from "he'll take his turns in games X and Y if he comes due on the weekends" to "he'll jump in at any point on the weekend" to "he'll jump in at any point that he can, in any game". We've also slacked off on both posting "got it" within 24 hours, and posting results within 48, while bringing new people into the rotations. We're not yet at any crisis point, but I see some problems brewing, especially if entropy keeps marching on.

So what should we do? Any thoughts?

It occurred to me that problems resulting in people taking turns late, or being skipped, might be best resolved by making permanent changes to the turn order. Like... if Carbon gets skipped (as he did in this game) then can take a turn two players late, shouldn't we just move him to that slot and go from there? Ah, but wait! If we do that, everybody in the game gets shuffled around as to who they are following. It all LOOKS simple enough, but people sit around without realizing it's their turn, or they take a turn they shouldn't, or use the wrong save file, etc. So... maybe it's important after all to have a firm roster order and stick to it.

What about extending the time? If we allow up to 72 total hours, that cuts back on the need to skip people. Ah, but it also cuts the overall pace way back, too, and then we get more people sitting around twiddling thumbs and waiting, and would end up starting more games to fill the demand. That might only add to the bottlenecks, as what the world do you do if you come up in eight games at once??

Should we be more hard line about the 24/48 rules? About the turn order? About "play or pass"? I don't know. Every option comes with costs. I don't see a perfect solution. Some discussion might be in order.


In the mean time, I'm going to take charge here in this game and permanently reshuffle the turn order. Working backward on who took their turns most recently, we see: Carbon, Jaffa, Sirian, Zed, Charis.

CURRENT ROSTER:

Charis
Zed
Sirian
Jaffa
Carbon

We'll give Zed 72 hours for his turn, but no more turn swapping in this particular game. Play or pass. If his 72 fall within a time period where he thinks he can play his turn, or play and post a partial turn, then good. Up to 10, but less is OK. If not, we'll just have to skip him that round. Extra time is still some preferential treatment for his time constraints.

If anybody else wants to request extra time, now is your chance.


Charis: you're up. Good luck. :)


- Sirian

You raise some good points Sirian, and I've been thinking about those lately as well. Just figuring out what game I'm up or on-deck in has gotten very hard.

In mid-'feast' mode last week when was due up in this game I finally realized "you know, it's ok if you actually miss a turn once in a while!", and asked to be skipped. I had an early somewhere in there and could have hopped back in to turn it into a swap, but instead got caught up on sleep, not wanting to confuse the order.
If/when we had one or two games going on, 'swapping' wasn't a problem, but the more I read "I'll get to this tomorrow eve, maybe, cuz I have to play...", the more we need to gracefully accept skippings. Another option most are NOT taking is taking less than the full allotment of turns. If you can do 6 of 10 turns and either post or finish next eve, why not post? Keep the ball rolling.

So I have the following suggestions:
- Don't change the permanent order or I'll get horribly lost :P
(It's a done deal here in Infantry, I'll manage)
- If any longer or less confident than "tomorrow night for SURE",
pass.
- If it's going to be 24-48 hrs before you START your turn in a war-heavy game, that's also a warning sign. Plan less turns or skip.
- When a game gets war-heavy in modern or late industr. age, consider THEN increasing the 'play' time to 72 hrs (still keep 24hr to post got/bump) (rbd5 falls in this category when at war)
- When you post at the end, copy the 'roster' lines from the last post and show who is up:

Charis <<<<< up
Zed << on deck
Sirian
Jaffa
Carbon

This will avoid the "OMG I'm up" syndrome by seeing when you're on deck, and helps clarify.

For now "Got it" here, I only have a 1/2 turn left in 6 and can take this tonight.
Charis

PS I think the one I'm about to start will try a closed "grab the game" style, with a fixed enlarged roster, to see if that works for us.

EDIT -- PPS - Sirian, your comments on the utility/neccessity of Mech Inf was meant for "this game", right? I forgot they were special here, so I'll repost a few key rules to remember:

* Conquest is the only enabled victory condition (and of course, Score, if no victory is won by 2050).

* Cavalry, Tanks, and Modern Armor are forbidden. They may not be built at any time for any reason.

* Mechanized Infantry are allowed, but MAY NOT ATTACK. They cannot even attack noncombatants, such as workers. They may only defend. [ [ In other words, with later playtesting you've seen that even these are not 'necessary' and could have been banned ] ]

* All ships, airplanes and missiles are legal.

As an alternative to the current arrangements, where your time between turns in each game is essentially random and you're almost guaranteed to be playing in 'feast or famine' conditions, a possibility would be to organise games with one-week turn cycles, where each player gets allocated a specific day(*) on which to play. So for example I would always get RBD5 to play on Wednesday, with a deadline of posting before 6am Thursday, however many turns (with a max of 10) that I've managed to play by then. This would allow people with limited (but regular) availability to join in without having to delay or disrupt turn order, at all.

(*)Or other time-period. Could squeeze in extra turns, likely at weekends, if someone wants to commit to always playing before noon.

Just a thought :)

Edit: I notice I'm using 'turn' to mean two different things in the same paragraph. Oh well. That's English for you.

Edit edit: Actually no, they're not two different things. Both 'turns' -- the in-game turn, and the turn of each player in the game -- are the same concept, but measured at a different level of granularity. You could also talk about the 'turn' of each individual unit within the 'turn' of the player. Am I confusing anyone yet? :crazyeyes

--
Jaffa

Sorry if I've not been clear or otherwise been a bit confusing in my turn sequences. :confused:

My circumstances are, on weeknights I can usually get in about 1.5 hrs or so of gaming. I don't know if I'm on the slow end of turn-taking or not but that typically is not enough time for me to finish a turn. So, I typically have not been taking a turn in any but a very small game on a non-weekend. I made an exception for RBD4 last night because I thought it would end soon -- it didn't, and I caught heck for staying up late. :( (especially while I'm sick! :eek: ) I probably ought to have let it go to the next player but for all our wars I hadn't seen much of the action, and I wanted a piece of it before the game ended. :D

You're right that a more organized approach is perhaps desirable. Let's try it out your way & see what happens. If it doesn't seem to be working out we can modify or change it for the next game.

Biggest problem I see with designated time slots is the variable length of turns, due to a number of factors. Early game turns, even when taking extra, go by rather quickly. Late game turns can be slower with lots of worker action (though the new stack command helps that IMMENSELY, I can just move a whole rail-ready stack from here to there instantly) and especially combat can bloat a turn big time. What happens when a turn like Charis's in RBD5 comes along where it takes two whole evenings playing all evening just to finish? We could play less... and we could try the designated time slots in one game and see how it goes... but my hopes for it would not be high, unless the time slots are readjusted continally as the game goes along, and that kind of doesn't mesh with the underlying concept.

- Sirian

A fairly good turn in which Paris fell (but man, did that take a while, turn-wise)

Horses and Iron in India are giving us problems? Well... we're supplying
them and the deal has run out. Parliament Leader Charis revokes that deal.
India is likely next, let's let them run out of key supplies!

1840 AD (0) - Mao wants to expire the RoP when his turn comes around. Fine,
give us no reason NOT to attack you, have it your way!
The Chinese storm Marseilles with... uh... Swordsmen?

1842 AD (1) - Where are our huge stacks of infantry, he wonders...
Marseilles??? No, no, monseuir, I've set my sights much bigger. Paris!
Bombing run on the city of cheap wine takes out the barracks and citizens.
The non-so-glorious artillery here are far less accurate than in rbd5,
and miss many shots. Still, the police station is destroyed, along with
the temple and cathedral and *5* citizens.

1844 AD (2) - China seeks admission to 'the list', wanting to cancel our
agreement for Horses and lux. You don't want horses?? Fine, then we won't
have to face cav when we come after you! Go home Mao...
France runs a transport up near Ivory Coast. A chinese ironclad almost sinks
it, but no.

We enter a new (and perhaps final) form of Goverment, Monarchy.

King Charis??? Oh my, surely this goes to his head!

The shelling of Paris continues, Marketplace and Library are liberated.
Then go the Courthouse, Bank and University. Now size 14, not 25.
Er wait, Colloseum goes poof, then down to size 12.
Up at Ivory Coast we have a 'mini' neighborhood watch. If the xport takes
one extra turn to find a landing spot our battleship can engage.

1846 AD (3) - Mao cancels yet one more deal - he no want our spices. Ok, fine!
Paris counterattacks and kills an infantry in the process of retreating.
Gandhi barks at us having put a worker across the border. Then I see...
A FREAKIN' Indian Cav unit romping on the streets of Rheim??! (Uh, oops,
for a second I thought that was Reading - I was quite spooked!)

The French City of Lyons has completed the Hoover Dam! Super, now we have
a 'city' list and it goes on top!

The USS Charisavethequeen trashes the ironclad and sets sights on transport.

Paris is reduced to size five. It has probably a dozen defenders, but now
none more than 1 hp :P We land a transport of seven units on French soil.

1848 AD (4) - More French inf and rifles come out after US! We're just plain
way short on manpower (not firepower) down there.

The USS Charisavethequeen becomes elite vs a 'snack' of French ironclad.

Paris, home of the Great Lib and the Theatre of Shakespeare, is now size 1.

1850 AD (5) - Gandhi again demonstrates his *profound* lack of sense and
political acumen. He says "How about we give you our world map which you
already have and you share with us not only your map but the secrets
of producing tanks with which to attack you??!" We don't deign to counter,
as we let the swinging door bang his rump on the way out...

Marseilles Cathedral is burned down in anti-war protest.

1852 AD (6) - London produces Mil Academy *AND* Hastings produces the
Heroic Epic on the very same turn! :hammer:

Guess what? It works! A great leader as we defend Orleans, Boudicea!
He's gonna head home via Avigon for now. Last action for turn is decent,
the Battleship destroys Barracks at Marseilles.

1854 AD (7) - MBOP. (More Bombardment of Paris)

1856 AD (8) - Rome and France sign a Peace treaty. Rome no longer wants MPP
with us. We get the "known liar and cheat message." Bad news for him!!
Hmmm... if I go to propose deal, it immediately says acceptable without
putting more on the table? So I ask him to pay 50 to swing it. He takes it.

A little strafing of Marseilles reveals only one real defender. We finally
press an advantage. Our GL makes it back to Dry Gulch, our 'interior'
mainland city. Finally Paris is shellacked so bad all defenders are walking
wounded, and we press. We now kill, rather than just wound, defenders.

1858 AD (9) - Rome declares war once again on the French. Chinese Riders
land at the India-France zone near us, and France and India sign a peace
treaty. 8-\ We unlock the secrets of amphibious war, and start on advanced
flight. Be using the 'pop up' order dialog and arrow-shifting cities,
we actually get a marine THIS turn, and expect several more next turn!
Slight warming of the globe in Ireland.

Defenders are falling like flies at Paris, maybe next turn... oops, uh...

Paris is ours!!! :hammer: If not for the Bard and his theatre we would
raze it. As it stands, we look to garrison. Lyons, maker of the Hoover
Dam, is not only the new capitol, but our next target, along with puny Chartres.

1860 AD (10) - Rome seems to be going after Amiens.

Barracks at Chartres is destroyed by Bombers off our carrier. So is the
Temple, and the city is reduced to size 3 :P

Eep! A turn with no pollution on the homeland?!

To our next leader...
- The Army is healing up a round at the barracks in Orleans. The other forces
are getting into position in the mountains outside Lyon, with a huge artillery
stack due there in 3-4 rounds.
- Eight more units just landed on the big island, and 3 more marines due there
next turn. I never got a marine into position, but that'll help your
offense quite a bit.
- Gold slipped a little low... a few rounds of low science should get it back
up to 1000.
- Chartres has Copernicus. We can likely take the very next round, as long
as we shell it with artillery and bomber support. :hammer:
(If we don't, chances are good Chinese will take it right away)
- Check diplo, I didn't do much there

Good luck,
Charis

Got it.

Charis
Zed <<<<< up
Sirian << on deck
Jaffa
Carbon

I thought I would have time to take a turn here this weekend, but have since learned otherwise. Oops.

Please skip me this time around.

Inherited Turn: First order of business, find that leader and have him form an army.

Next order of business: Get myself another leader. ;)

Inherited Turn: LOTS O CHANGES. Every city with any meaningful infrastructure left to complete is put on infrastructure. For Ninevah and Ur, this means factories. For some cities, coal plants or hospitals, market, cathedral, courthouse.

I dial up Siezure and Mao and sell them all they will buy, getting paid IN CASH, a total of about 2k in proceeds. China is back in MPP with us, and these two will be happily contributing to the fall of the Indian empire at some not-too-distant point. The one thing I would not sell to Mao was Rubber. He can make do on cavs. :)

We mobilize for war!

Our leader is turned into an army, giving us two. We are SADLY lacking for units, however, so the army sits around on the English mainland, awaiting the next transport back to France. Another army due in London soon, that will give us three, and I will build the Pentagon somewhere on this turn.

We have need of more airports, so I set to build them. Everyone else is building troops now, mostly marines.

I draft a unit from Norwich and TWO from the one above Nottingham, these are put on local garrison, as we are lacking for units to impose effective martial law! (I plan to build some swords and longbows -- no snickering please -- to help with this duty, and free up stronger units for the front).

1862AD: I bombard Chartres and complete the assault set up by the previous King of England. A great leader (our third) emerges from the attack and I use him to rushbuild an airport at Orleans.

1864AD: The airlift operation of troops into France begins with three marine units. ALL arriving troops, by air and sea, are used to strengthen our woefully thin garrisons, to reduce chances of revolt.

1866AD: The bombardment of Lyons begins. Airlift continues.

1868AD: More bombardment, now 30+ units of artillery in position, poor Lyons is blasted back to the stone age. I move some marines into attack position. More airlift. I start our carrier group heading counterclockwise around the northern tip, they should arrive in position to attack French islands by the end of my turn.

1870AD: Airlift again. Lyons captured. Gems secured. Some WLTKD celebrations. I plant a spy in Rome. Tried India, too, but got caught. Ghandi dares not complain too loudly.

1872AD: Airlift into Orleans continues unrelentingly. We are STARTING to move out of "desperate" range on garrison strength and now heading up toward "way too thin". I hope to hand off a relatively stable occupation to the next leader, and can only hope that garrison strength in Paris remains over ten units (preferably much over), while garrisons in other core French cities keep in the 8 range. Those Froggies have much cultural memory.

1874AD: Pentagon completed in Babylon. Airlift to France set to include a unit from Babylon each turn hereafter. Oh yeah, airlift! I also build a settler and send him to France, in case next leader gets an itch to raze any Indian cities. :lol:

Our first transport arrives at Tientsen port. I note that Tientsen is now wholly English, it has been assimilated.

1876AD: Our first transport is in position, and I load one of our two empty armies just sitting around in Orleans with FOUR marines, and land them next to Rouen on the same turn, along with three artillery pieces. Another transport arrived at Tientsin, so I can now relay troops to the island on one turn, every turn. Carrier group rounds the north tip.

1878AD: Two battleships and three artillery bombard Rouen. The city is JUST out of range of land-based bombers. Our army of marines attacks, fighting an elite rifleman, losing 7 of 16 hps and winning the battle. I land four vet marines, one vet inf, and two more artillery in the same location. Our carrier-based bombers harass the city north of Rouen, knocking out its harbor.

1880AD: Rome capture Dijon! Poor Joanie. :lol:

Five artillery, two battleships, and four carrier-based bombers attack Rouen, softening up SIX units down to 1hp left, and there are still more defenders!!! Like... WOWZERS! :eek: The AI has an ACTUAL DEFENSE in a city!!!

(After I took some anti-hallucinogenic medications, to ensure I was not just seeing things, I set to attack). Our army took on a vet inf with 2 hp left, lost 5 of remaining 9 hps and won. Now has 4 of 16hps left, should not fight again until it has fully healed!

I then attacked with all five of our marines, two won, three died, one promoted. Our vet attacked and was promoted. Six dead French units on two turns and they still have defenders!!!

Rouen shall not fall on my watch. :( I land a third transport full of troops, that ought to be enough. Any more would pull away too many garrison units. We need to maintain heavy garrisons until Joanie is eliminated. (Should come on next player's watch).


There is a settler in Orleans and an empty army. Don't fill the army until you need to use it, as armies count as a single unit, and we need bodies en masse for the moment to hold down so many occupied culture-rich cities.

Norwich is set to draft again soon. I drafted twice out of there on my turn. At this point, the Build Same Unit order should be more useful than annoying even for those of you who hate it, since I have every city set to crank the unit types it can build the most efficiently, and we're mobilized and doing not much besides building lots of units.

I did get a spy into Delhi, also. Ghandi is stockpiling bombers, so I started stockpiling fighters, all located on our new border with India. London is cranking one marine per turn -- we have greater need at the moment for more units than another army. Babylon is cranking one infantry per turn, and there is only one airport on that island for the moment. An Irish city will also soon have its airport. Our troop count is climbing, so our budget is slowly straining. NO NEW TECHS discovered on my watch, such is the life of a Monarchy in the modern era.

Feel free to cancel our deals with India and mix it up with them any time after Joanie is history.

:hammer: :soldier: :scout:


- Sirian


Charis
Zed
Sirian
Jaffa <<<<<<< up
Carbon <<on deck

Played six turns, finished off France :) Leaving it to the next leader to take the war to India.

Mao signed a peace treaty with France in 1884. And he left his "army" (cavalry+longbow) parked on the only land square adjacent to Grenoble. I had to storm the city with marines off a transport. First time I've ever done that :)

Airlifting swordsmen and longbows just seems wrong.

India started on Manhattan Project in 1886.

An army of marines loses the ability for amphibious assaults. Bah.

Mao will get his later, but for now it's time to go after India. I cancelled our trade deals, so we can go to war next turn :hammer:

Carbon next, Charis on deck.

Expect the next installment tomorrow night.

Eh, my turn started out okay, but I really just hit a brick wall for a while. I was doing fine, except for the fact that I had my forces spread JUST too thinly to do anything with them that I wanted to. Nonetheless, the war machine marches on, this time to India.

1892-
I declare war on India. I then move our troops into good spots to be counter-attacked, and leave a worker stranded outside an Indian town. China and Rome are going to be going along with us for this ride.

1894-
MPP triggered, China/Rome declare war on India

1896-
New Delhi captured.

1898-
:soldier: just some fighting, almost take Bengal

1900-
-Rockety Discovered. Fission next, 8 turns @ whatever slow bleed science rate we're at.
-An army who took an ill-advised attack at a mecha dies on India's turn :aargh3:
-Kolhapur captured
-Bengal captured
-Birmingham oil patch dries up, to reappear under New Delhi

1902-
-India begins doing aerial bombardment of our outlying colonies, this, if nothing else, should put them into anarchy and another form of government soon.

-London starts up a new army to replace the one I killed off
-Ganges is THIS close to falling to marine assault. Unfortunately, I'll be unable to take it due to a lack of local marine life (bad, BAD, pun :spank: )

1904-
-China offers Fission for Advanced Flight...looks tempting, but I give Mao a world map instead.

1906-
-Fighting prematurely sets back any city-taking plans a few MORE turns. Our spy says that India is almost out of tanks, but has TONS of mechas (43 by the end of this 8 turn span).

1908-
-More fighting before we had an overwhelming force. If we can just take that Chinese city on the eastern coast, we can swing the gate shut on India for the mainland. Unfortunately, it has drafted a metric ton of conscript mechas, at least four and probably more. Soon enough, though, that stack of artillery will blow away all the population so it shouldn't be too hard to take. I suggest just razing that one and plopping down our settler in the same or a similar spot, they've got about 5 draftings during my turn and a shrinking list of city infrastructure.

I moved most of our transport fleet to the west side of France/India so we can field more Marine assaults. India currently has six or seven island cities, as well as nine or ten mainland cities left, and they just went communist on this turn.

On the south side of babylon, India sent a BB/carrier pair that I just blew away with our babylonian artillery stack. There's a destroyer in the vicinity that can probably score a victory somewhere in there.

Some paratroopers would be nice, just to have them.

Got it -- post to replace this one later...

Feast time, but infantry is "oldest"... Infantry, Vikings,
Essex then Enviro...

Charis

Grind, grind, grind.... this is becoming a manly man kind of game It's got that trench warfare infantry feel going :P

Well... thought the two-star, General Charis... at least we're now seeing
the toughest defenders we're going to see. Can't get much worse than this :P
Hey! Where did France go?!? :D (Further reading... Army of Marine's can't
assault?! WEED!)

1908 AD (0) - No paratroopers or helicopters? Have to make at least one of
each to play with :P Rouen near a small Indian island seems a great spot.
Well, except no oil and rubber there and war time, let's build harbor next.
We can top of Fission for 500, and do so. General Charis starts on...
Ecology (?!) "That's so we can silence them darn Wackos!!! I hear they're
really starting to make a stink, talking to foes like Egypt, Rome and France!"

1910 AD (1) - Lots of bombarding, shrinking cities and destroying barracks.
Destroyer sinks that battleship mentioned, carrier will glug glug next turn.

1912 AD (2) - Rome is kind enough to soften up a few Indian cities :P
India sues for peace but won't offer a single city! HA!!
We do see that fighting Mechas while being attacked by tanks kinda HURTS!

Five defenders in the ever-shrinking city of Hangchow. Their fighters
are eating our lunch. (Seems like one downside of handing game back and
forth, each time it's a surprise, no idea which cities have fighters, and
now many)

We retaliate against the tank that killed our partner, success!
We pillage Indian rubber. Our destroyer finishes off the pairs, sinking
their carrier. Marine takes out a mecha, then reverse in next battle.

1914 AD (3) - Uranium source near York peters out :( We have
2-3 other sources :P Essentially, no headway this turn 8-\
We could literally use double the artillery. If no progress on upcoming
turns, might have to "concentrate" and really narrow focus and ALL available
firepower one city at a time. Let's see...

1916 AD (4) - Midturn, another Indian rubber is pillaged. They have one
rubber source smack in middle of their heartland, and another near Dacca.
Mid turn our inf holds off and kills one tank, but is slain by another.
Another inf rebels a tank to 1hp.

Hangchow now size 1 (any city we're "at" is now under 7), and Jaipur
seems to have only two hurt defenders. Hangchow is defeated, but with
India in the area and only one defender that get there, we raze it!
Thus ends the Indian city presence on the Eastern seaboard!

1918 AD (5) - Mixed intraturn, we hold off a few more tanks, and lose a few
more inf in the field. We're virtually been repulsed from our siege at Tours.

We pillage an Indian Uranium.

1920 AD (6) - AGAIN, three turns now, 3 Roman cavs come up on shore and
get slaughtered, distracting India from us!

Finally WE shoot down an enemy interceptor :P Jaipur harbor is whacked.
The difference of sufficient artillery... a big stack pounded a mecha
on a hill to 1hp, and a marine killed it, becoming elite :P

That'll do for now, getting us to a nice even year :P
I believe Sirian is up next.

Ganges should fall soon (?), with a Marine army and naval bombardment vs
one inf and one rifle. Calcutta is probably next to fall unless India
can shift a lot of troops there, our army approaches.

Good luck!
Charis

Zed's up next, he's got up to 72 to play or pass.

Well, I know Friday's out, and RBD9 is coming up right away as well, so I guess it's pass.

I've been reading these succession game threads for three or four days now, eagerly awaiting my own brand new copy of Civ3, but I bet it'll be Friday before I get it (UPS Ground, shipped on Monday)

Oh, well. Now I know where to get some savefiles to play with ;-)

Mav! Hey, glad to see you in these parts. Any chance we can assimilate you into some upcoming games?? :D

- Sirian

(Got it).

Chances are extremely good, once I've got the game and gotten a feel for it. All I've managed to play with before is the Civ2 demo and lots of SMAC/X. So I may be a little behind the curve for a while, so I guess it depends on how much you guys want some screwups on my ten-turn sets :p :crazyeyes

If not messing up were a prerequisite to playing in a succession game...well, Sirian would be awfully lonely here by himself.

Just be aware of the :smoke: and [pimp]. That's your cue to know that you've messed up. If you want to avoid these the easy way, play the turn directly after Sirian's. If you want to learn how to avoid them the hard (but quick and thorough) way, play directly BEFORE Sirian and take the battery out of your smoke alarm (j/k Sirian...mostly ;) ).

Well, after reading through at least 5 complete RBD SG's and following a few more, I think I can see the basic differences between this and SMAC/X, and playing the Civ II Demo at least gives me a little preview of how the actual game works, so I should be good to go. Figure 2 or 3 SP games right out of the gate to get used to it, then I may dive in for some fun!
:smoke: :hammer: :tank: :ar15:

If not messing up were a prerequisite to playing in a succession game...well, Sirian would be awfully lonely here by himself.

I'd have to quit, too. Remember my "Egypt won't attack us on Carbon's turn" prediction at the start of RBD2? :o :smoke: Then there was not bringing enough to the first battle with Babylon in Infantry... Let's see, there was Cod Piece! :lol: And Louis the Mad... although both of those were caricature. My Oracle gambit in 10 failed. Just to name a few.

Ya know, I can't believe how far the old RBD1 "what kind of pungent weed was he smoking, irrigating the desert while our cattle herds go dry" remark has carried. It's become standard jargon for anything from failed gambit to absentminded error to strategic blunder. People have it in their signatures, on T-shirts and bumper stickers, and I fear it's going to show up as a restaurant chain soon! :eek: I suppose it fills a role for quick-and-light-hearted means of criticizing, though, and people seem to be having fun with it, so what the hey.


- Sirian

OMG! You've got to see this!

Soren's latest AI improvements are MAJOR stuff. I almost fell out of my chair when the AI -USED ARTILLERY OFFENSIVELY- to soften up a fortified infantry on a mountain and then destroy him with a tank!

And my jaw almost fell off when an AI mech passed up an unguarded worker to try and preserve itself!

Here's a screenshot showing an artillery attack pair, and in the top corner, the mech running for its life, ignoring the worker bait. (Ironically, this is one instance where it SHOULD have taken the worker, I didn't mean to leave him out there and would have missed him if destroyed, but that's beside the point. Just the fact that it now won't be baited around by its nose with worker bait exploit should vastly improve its overall performance. Nine out of ten times, it's a bad move for the AI to go for the workers when more dangerous military targets are all over the place).

- Sirian

Our fighter squadrons are 2-1 in aerial dogfight battles with enemy fighters in the first half of my turn. Here's a shot of our returning heroes after a grueling combat sortie over enemy territory, near the Indian Ocean.

Dogfights were a main feature of my turn. Only about a fourth of my attack sorties (sending jet fighters on bombing runs over cities with air cover) resulting in jet to jet combat. We won three and lost three. Two of our bombers were lost after a jet sortie failed to bait the enemy defenders and I mistakenly thought the airspace secure. India's been bombed nearly back to the stone age now. :) We should start seeing rifles and longbows soon. :)

When are we gonna get the full turn report and save file? Or did you just fly the planes around? ;)

I never quite got how air combat actually works, I figured that simply having all your fighters on "air superiority" would have been sufficient to prevent your bombers from being shot down (it obviously wasn't, but I thought that it was having at least *SOME* effect). I didn't realize you actually had to go BOMB with your fighters to shoot down the enemy interceptors.

Inherited Turn: only some minor micromanagement, and more troops sent out toward Calcutta, so I can try to attack in two turns.

1922AD: India attacks and obliterates all (ALL!) of our forward troops near Tours, smacks down a couple of the ones advancing on Calcutta, and sends troops into our territory! Their battleship sinks our unescorted transport near French Island. A mech and a tank get parked on a hill next to Kolhauper, conveniently blocking the rail line, while a tank rolls up to our workers building a road to the polluted cattle south of Chartres. I send more units toward Calcutta.

Our troops move into position to attack Calcutta. I use our settler to found Richmond at the forwardmost unclaimed spot on the Chinese border. I staff this city with several troops.

Our army on the island with Ganges (think that was the one) attacks and kills one defender. More defenders left, so the city stays in Indian hands.

I load a troop onto our lone helicopter, ferry him to a remote island and unload him. Ooh, hey, that's pretty useful! Airlift one unit to any city, without need for airport? AND the unit can unload on the same turn and take action? OK, copters just got upgraded on my strategic depth chart.

Our stack of artillery on French Island bombs the Indian battleship to one hp and our destroyer finishes him off! :hammer: The ship lost two hps though, so it has to dock for repair.

Ya know... in my other infantry game? My foes were closer and I attacked sooner. I was facing rifles, cav, some infantry, and minor logistics, and was backed by literally hundreds of draft-rushed exploit truops (expendables, massive garrisons, etc). THIS... is a bit more challenging. :D

1924AD: Indian sub sinks our Man-O-War. I didn't even see where that was, and have no idea where to go hunting that sub.

Our transport from French Island moves out all but one arty, one elite inf, and one marine. Rest are landed on Uranium island just west of Lyons.

Two enemy tanks attack Richmond! Whew, they almost killed an elite infantry! One tank destroyed, one retreated.

Calcutta bombarded with about 8 artillery, then we attack and capture the city (some losses, and our marine army heavily wounded).

I spot the AI doing its new Offensive Artillery routines and realize that we are going to be slowed down (maybe even in some trouble) unless I take action to secure Lyons better. I decide we need a fortification. I'll park a stack of infantry and a big stack of artillery and use them to shell anything in the area (and counterattack as I can), and when not shelling units, we'll shell Tours, just barely in range.

Capturing Calcutta puts us in range of that conscript mech and artillery pair and I bring over an artillery pair of my own! After shelling one hp off the mech, a marine attacks, wins! We capture the artillery unit, then I have to move in some infantry to protect the wounded marine.

In fact, I had to do that ALL OVER the place, as our artillery would shell the advancing units, then our marines would attack, and inevitably use hps if not whole units! And then I'd have to cover them, and even then we lost some of the covering infantry units! India was still quite strong at the start of my turn.

Captured Ganges, but our army needs rest! I use copters to ferry two infantry units to the city to boost the garrison. I'm also rotating out our marines on garrison on remote islands we have captured, replacing them with defensive infantry.

I send all our prop fighters to Orleans for upgrade.

I send jets and bombers to our empty carriers and move them into attack position at Indian islands.

I fill our new army unit with four infantry (we're taking a bloodbath on trying to advance individual units into enemy territory) then move over half a dozen marines and a bunch of artillery with them.

We're advancing on Delhi. :hammer: :scout:

I build our fort near Lyons, man it with the rest of our artillery, use most of the guns to bomb the Indian mech-arty pair stationed on the mountain, then attack with THREE marines (first two dying) to take out those units and take over the mountain. Two more vet inf moved in to cover. Last few infantry bombard Tours, where four Roman cav have been landed. Cav vs Mech? Yeah, good luck Caesar. :lol: All he's going to manage to do is promote some Indian mechs. :(

1926AD: Roman cavs all kick the bucket. India charges a mech onto a mountain below Chartres. OK THAT'S ENOUGH OF THAT. I vow to place garrison units onto all those darn mountains. In the mean time, two more marine units perish against a 1 hp mech on a mountain after I bomb it down to min health. :( Then we finally win, and I pull infantry from anywhere I can find them, leaving nothing but longbows on garrison in some towns. No more of that Indian mountain charge thing. I thought taking Calcutta would stop it, but they are determined to find some high ground (is that, too, another upgrade to the AI? Valuing definsive positions??? OMG, what's next, something approaching a semblance of strategic competency??? Knock me over with a feather. :) ).

After bombardment, our army on Uranium Island attacks and kills a regular mech (ouch, lost a lot o hps there) and our marines finish up, taking heavy losses. One survivor promotes to elite and we capture the city!

Our first Explorer unit decides to check out Chinese territory. I spot a conscript mech down there, so I take an artillery, reduce him to 1 hp, then a marine finishes the job. Hmm. Not only was India fortified on a bottleneck (with a fortification) but so is China, at the next bottleneck. Is this a hint of further strategic improvement? Or just dumb luck? More info needed.

1928AD: Tours bombed into stone age, our marines take over! I move a decent size garrison into the city. India charges a mech toward Richmond. I bomb it then kill it with a marine.

Our entire stack of prop fighters upgraded to jet.

Our Major Stack keeps marching on Delhi. Some artillery are now within two spaces and we start bombing, the city falls below size 17. Our first dogfight victory! Our jets shoot down enemy interceptors!

Copters land three marines on Indus island (just off Ireland, think that one is Indus).

Our bombers discover that Pune is a veritable fortress, and I give up hope of taking it out until we can land Army units there. No sense suiciding marines until we have a stack of a dozen or more in position, and fully backed by bombers! (Not going to happen on my turn, bigger fish to fry). Good news: Pune harbor wrecked.

1930AD: Indian tanks kill one of our infantry, but one tank fails to retreat vs another infantry in the red, dies, and our unit promotes to elite! He's in the Big Stack, too, so he will live.

An Indian tank kills our marine who killed that mech charging toward Richmond last turn. We bomb the tank and another marine kills this tank, in an endless tit for tat. Well enough of tat! ;) I move an elite inf in to cover the marine.

Delhi is shrinking, down to size 10 now, some from our arty, some from their starvation, drafting, and/or poprushing.

I move workers into the grassy patch next to Tours. We must have a road there! And of course I have to move in cover units, too.

Indus captured! Two marines lost, but only two defenders, one defeated by our third marine, one by that infantry somebody left there ( :love: Thank you thank you). India's running out of colonies!

1932AD: An Indian mech attacks our infantry cover for the workers trying to build a road to Tours, one infantry destroyed.

Do you realize that mech attack strength is higher than any defensive strength we have? You do realize that? Oh cool.

We bombard with arty from Lyons Fort on the river, reducing the mech to one hp. We attack with a marine, who dies, the mech is promoted. We bomb him back to one hp (takes five arty shots). We attack with another marine, who dies. We attack with a third marine, who also dies, and the mech promotes to elite. We bomb the elite mech with the last of our artillery in that stack, then pull more arty from garrisons around the island, all miss. Desperate now, we attack with a fourth marine, who knocks off one hp, then dies, and an Indian Great Leader is produced! All we have left in range is our two infantry garrisoned on the mountain. We attack with the first, he loses and dies. OK this is our LAST CHANCE now, or that great leader is going to run off and the last thing we need to see is an Indian ARMY of mechs!

Our seventh attacker (and remember, all but one of them going up against a unit with only ONE hp left!!!! !!!! !!!!) finally wins.

This has to be the most grueling single unit battle I've been in. We're winning this war, but India sure is inflicting a Heavy Toll on us!

Yay! Lots of good stuff happening :ar15: Go Sirian! :hammer:

1932AD (cont): Copters land some units on the Big Island, with three Indian cities. Also, our army from the Ganges attack has healed and our transport drops him off on the north corner of Big Island.

Our carriers start to bomb Big Island, and the cities there start to shrink, going from size 20ish to high teens, and going to be shrinking more and more and more. Wow, an elite mech in one of those towns, though, and so many conscript and regular mechs that they are buzzing around and India is using them on OFFENSE against the Roman city there.

OK, now for the big fight at Delhi. Our major mojo stack of arty bombs the daylights out of them, taking almost all their units down to one hp. Like just some conscript mechs not damaged, the rest all roughed up really bad.

OK, now the bad news. I attack with five of our six marine units in the big stack (there's the inf army for defense, and most of the singular inf units got left behind two tiles from the city to protect the arty stack). OK, result: a shutout pitched by India! All five of our marines lost a hp to defending artillery, then LOST attacking the mechs. Two conscript mechs have been promoted to regular and one regular to veteran. :eek:

OK, Delhi won't be going anywhere on my turn. I'll bomb the daylights out of its lands, cut off all its roads, and wait for London to produce more armies. No sense throwing away any more of the Stack now that there's no chance of winning, and with those defending artillery in place, we need ARMIES to attack with, not individual units. We'll simply have to bring a bigger stick to the next fight.

1934AD: A mech on Big Island attacks one of our marines on a hill and kills them. Our copters bring reinforcements, but only the westernmost 10% of the island is in range from our airfields in Ireland. There IS an airport in range, so paratroops could also drop in there without a copter, but I haven't been doing that. Our paratroops have been airlifted to India, then airdropped behind enemy lines.

Delhi's railnet obliterated, the city is now cut off. I decide I want to found a city between Delhi and Calcutta to take pressure off Calcutta and allow quicker reinforcement of the Stack when armies arrive (newly built, or done with other duties and transported in), plus give us one city of OUR OWN in the midst of the area as a safer place to store our artillery, and to finally cut off Indian access to pestering Richmond once and for all.

Airlifting units from Babylon (and some from England) over to Ireland, then using copters to ferry them to Big Island, has gotten us a goodly force over there. Nothing to take cities, but we can harass them, pillage the land, fight some in the field maybe, and get them started on the shrinking they do with draft/poprush once you have units in attack range. Oh yeah, that plus bombing them with two carriers.

Our Explorer unit proves to be immensely effective at pillaging! My goodness, it never dawned on me that it would ignore enemy cultural control!!! You can move one of these things five spaces deep deeeeep into enemy territory, then pillage with the last 1/6th of its movement. Sure, the unit is defenseless, but it costs only 20 shields, 1/3rd the cost of a cruise missile. Hmm, another "useless" unit (like the copter) just got promoted on my depth chart. I'm going to be building more of these! What's more, if paired with a strong defender or a stack, you can move one tile, pillage, then move back all on the same turn. NO RISK. Like... wow, a few of these babies could CLOSE OFF a border. Cross the border, pillage, and return safely to your own territory. This presuming you don't plan to go take over the nearby enemy cities, and thus want to preserve the road for your own use once the capture has been done. If you just wanted to slow down the enemy, though, this would work wonders! You've got to see it to believe, it's FAR better than I expected. Like... it's so good, I wonder if they'll patch it out once players realize just how good it really is -- or at least cause them to stop getting the road bonus when in enemy cultural territory (that might even be appropriate). My word, and if the AI started to use it, do you have any idea how annoying and dangerous it would be for them to be able to charge one of these things five spaces into your territory and pillage? You'd have to build and man forts at every tile along your borders to stop them! :lol: Just IMAGINE if they disconnected a luxury with two of these and your whole civ went into civil disorder! If they disconnected a strategic resource or two between turns, or caused you to default on a trade deal...

OK, enough of that revelation.

1936AD: Move settler into position south of Calcutta. Big ole stack of cover moves with it.

India seems to have run out of gas, just two tanks attack, one ends up retreating, the other ends up dead.

Plenty of gas left on Big Island, though. Mechs buzzing all over, and they kill another of our units, this time an infantry.

1938AD: EEK! :eek: :eek: :eek: Eek, even. :eek:

I had about seven units on garrison in Tours, we lost a few vet infantry, an elite marine, and a jet squadron. :cry:

1938AD (cont): Our battleship I sent on long lonnnnnng Goto (like Jaffa style "Lasts Forever" brand Goto orderings ;) ) has finally arrived off the southeast coast of India. (A nuclear sub and another B ship due in the area next turn!) We bombard their last remaining source of Rubber (well, besides the one at Tours, but it's not connected and I WILL reconquer Tours on my final turn, of that you may be certain!) Our B ship scores a hit! The rails are knocked out.

Well well well, OK now. I send our forwardmost explorer (parked with the Stack on the west side of Delhi) all the way south to that rubber... and it is disconnected!!!

:jump:

Fort Sirian founded south of Calcutta. I move a massive force of cover into place on the SW corner of our new cultural border and proceed to level all roads and rails in range, cutting Madras off from the rest of India.

Our newest army arrives finally from London (got held up a turn due to a snafu in the transport availability, oopsies) and I load four marines airlifted in last turn, and the new army marches toward Tours. Another, oh, DOZEN marines follow. (I'm Not Pleased with Tours.)

Delhi airport blasted into ruins.

I move copters with strong units to Indus, to reinforce our isolated army up on the north corner of Big Island. Did I mention I attacked Dacca? Yep, killed one mech over there last turn, but now a Swarm of them are approaching from the east, and I don't know if they plan to attack the army or reinforce the city. Neither looks good, need some more troops there. Copter is the only way I can do it on my turn (we sorely lack for transports in that region).

This was not a good turn for our airforce. :( We lost two jets and a bomber. And I haven't been building many planes, so there are no reinforcements and our carriers are no longer full capacity.

I lumberjacked a forest to speed one temple, plan to do it again for a different temple next turn. This was the first turn all this round where our workers didn't have important strategic jobs to be doing.

Did I mention that I drafted almost two dozen units from former French cities? Well I did, nearly half of them from Paris alone. Probably not much more blood to be squeezed out of that turnip, unless you get completely desperate. Why did I draft so much? I didn't use a single one of these units to attack with! Rather, they got added to cover stacks for insurance, or used to replace stronger units on garrison in the back lines, freeing up vets for the front, or they got piled into Calcutta or Tours. (We lost some in the revolt at Tours).

I've also been drafting at home, one from the north iron city, one from the city above Nottingham, several from Dry Gulch (it doesn't have enough food to feed size 7, unless it borrows from more important cities. :nono: So every time it grew to size 7, I drafted it again. Same with Norwich. I also drafted some in Ireland, but kept it sane there. Those cities MUST keep running WLTQD or their production will go into the drink.

1940AD: India attacks our army on Big Island... with a longbow! :lol: One of the units promotes! The mechs all piles into the city, though. That has got to be the first time ever I've seen reinforcements pile INto a city, as opposed to all piling out on some fool's errand! If Soren keeps tweaking this AI, he just might get it to cut back on the weed use to a reasonable point!

On the mainland, not a peep. Not a single Indian action. Out Of Gas, they are. They didn't even attack our exposed explorer!

Well, sure, OK, if they are going to let our explorer run around scot free, I'll head him on down to disconnect their oil! :lol: While I'm at it, I'll send our newly built explorers in to pillage some irrigations, and airdrop a vet inf with a copter to cover them!

Our copters at Indus airdrop reinforcements to our army on north tip of Big Island. India moved so many mechs out of the city on SE corner, there are only conscripts left there! :rolleyes: :smoke: I attack with a marine, who kills one conscript mech and promotes to elite. I move more troops into position, maybe we CAN actually take a city after all. (Up to next player whether to try, or wait for better odds).

Uh... oops. An Indian transport, guarded by a destroyer, is advancing on Ireland. Where'd he come from? (Forgot to mention, spotted him last turn, but our only fleet in range was a destroyer on ocean watch duty. And he lost 0-4, promoting the unharmed Indian vet destroyer to elite!)

I institute Charis-Style shore blockade on Ireland. Our lone arty knocks two hp off the destroyer escort, and I airlift in more than enough troops to defend the island if they do manage to land at any point.

Oh I also forgot to say that somewhere in there, India built the Manhatten Project. If by chance they manage to research space flight... better make sure they have no uranium and/or aluminum connected. :eek:


OK, so Tours. I might have considered razing those bastards, but I didn't do it. After retaking the city, I moved in a full dozen units for garrison. KEEP at least that many there until Madras falls. And if Tours flips again, no mercy. Burn it down.

Our Stack at Delhi... no rails left to bomb, so I bombed the city. It's down to size 1 now, and I keep bombing. Hmm... defenders reduced on hps again. OH WHAT THE HELL. Our marine army attacks and kills a mech! Our infantry army attacks and kills another mech. Our marines attack, several die, but another mech dies. OMG! Just a tank left on defense now!!!

Our... PARATROOPERS attack! One dies but the elite tank is reduced to 2 hps. Another dies... 1hp left on the tank. Our last paratrooper attacks...

With Tours fresh in my mind, I burn Delhi to the ground. "Admire This!" Ha.

Richmond stole control over China's last rubber source. Rome has no rubber either. Once India is finished, resistance should drop off a bit and the mop job begins. Still a lot of work ahead, though. India still has over three dozen mechs, and even without the ability to build any more (if we keep their rubber and/or oil offline) they will still put up a good fight.

Start planning long term, though. We don't need to finish off China at some point only to realize there's not a transport within a gazillion miles of Rome.

Who's up next? Jaffa, then Carbon?


- Sirian

Yay!!!! What a glorious turn!! :hammer: :hammer:

I'm glad to see this game has finally turned full-fledged into the type of game it was designed to be. With centuries and centuries of no combat and naval production if anything, it's finally a grunt, in the trenches, in your face battle. I'm also very glad you got to be at the helm for this particular turn, as it was your hope to see this lvl of action. (I'm likewise thrilled for the chances in rbd5 to enviscerate India early and Japan later)

There are other reaons this turn is "film at 11" worthy...

... seeing use for copters, ptroopers, and ... gasp... explorers!
... the choice to *NOT* build any mecha of our own made this all the more meaningful. This would not have been 1/10 the battle if we too had mech inf.
... strong special resource denial maneuvers
... I'm happy that there was an outcry for "We need an army over here!!"
... such overuse of smilies you needed multiple posts (I run into that sometimes ;P )
... even a neighborhood watch program :lol:

> Our... PARATROOPERS attack! One dies but the elite tank is
> reduced to 2 hps. Another dies... 1hp left on the tank. Our last
> paratrooper attacks...

:hammer: Glorious etc, glorious! :hammer:

BTW on Marines, Mav pointed out in an email that...
... they ignore walls
... they ignore large city bonuses (both are unless there is a
Coastal Fortress, which the AI never builds)
I figured, with good artillery backup, we don't attack a city until
it's size 6, and by next turn it's size 1. Then again, we're mostly using Marines as high attack-value land infantry.

> Our transport from French Island moves out all but one arty,
> one elite inf, and one marine. Rest are landed on Uranium
> island just west of Lyons.
A day after posting I looked over the 'end of turn' and saw that happen. Couldn't blink though! At the time I thought, "excellent, we have a destroyer right there in range, I hope he sees where it happens!" hehe The sub was about 3-4 squares east

Hmm, with Manhattan, doesn't matter what city it was built in eh? The genie is out of the bottle? Or would razing that city help?
I wonder if they'll try nuking us?! :nuke:

Charis

Should have time for both this and RBD5 over the weekend :)

I can't play till sunday, so no sense staying up late trying to get it played tonight, because it will just stay idle for a day or so unless Charis is feeling frisky and jumps ahead of me.

Charis: the main reason I broke the report into pieces was the screenshots. I suppose I could have uploaded them to my site and linked from there, but enh. So one attachment per post...

Definitely lot of firsts on this turn, though. :hammer:

- Sirian

I read that on these forums, but now that I have the game, I can't verify it...

:smoke:

0) 1940AD Went through cities and trained a load of tax collectors. Noted a tactical option unexploited by Sirian (!) and set Ivory Coast to building cruise missiles :)

Paris has apparently lost the shields it should be getting from the city square. It came up on the build options popup, with *zero* production. No waste, not in disorder, just no shields at all. Huh?

1) 1942AD Bomber out of Waterford does a run over Pune, and misses, so we don't get to attack this turn. Actually our bombardment this turn was singularly ineffective all over.

Lost a bomber over Dacca. Our airforce suffered a lot all through my turn, losing bombers, jet fighters and helicopters to Indian interceptors. Our only notable air triumph was when an interceptor got shot down by one of our helicopters (!) (Note: when this happens, the airdrop fails.)

Our explorers with infantry escort were captured by a longbowman. Ack!

2) 1944AD Bombardment by several bombers and two battleships fails to damage a conscript Indian mech. I send an elite marine in anyway, and he takes it out with 1hp remaining. Yay :)

Something screwed up here. Paris still hasn't got its city production back, and now Calcutta, which should be hopelessly corrupt, is getting (uncorrupted) two shields from its city square.

(At end of my turn, Paris seems back to normal -- probably fixed itself when it grew over size 12, and the game had to recalculate production).

3) 1946AD Our marines (and a paratrooper!) take out three Indian mechs.

We sink an Indian transport and battleship :)

On the big island, Indians capture Amiens from the Romans. Our marine army attacks an undamaged (regular) mech defender at Dacca, and wins. Yay! (Probably wasn't a wise move, but I was getting tired of seeing all our bombardment achieving absolutely nothing).

4) 1948AD One mech defender destroyed at Madras, but we don't have enough troops in position to take the city. Indians and Romans are right there, so will probably take it before our next turn. Drat.

We sink another Indian transport, then lose a battleship to the destroyer escort. Drat, again.

We capture Dacca and destroy two of those irritating interceptors. Hooray!

As expected, Romans capture Madras.

India attacks us with a war elephant! Whoo :)

5) 1950AD A marine attacks an Indian longbowman. And loses. Eeep!

Take out a few more Indian mechs (down to 20 remaining).

Rushbuild an airport in Dacca, and a few settlers in France.

6) 1951AD An Indian mech and settler try to sneak up the coast to the former site of Delhi. Our troops bombard the mech down to 1hp, and surround them.

A marine peeks into Karachi and sees that its top defender is a rifleman. Whooo :)

8) 1953AD We capture Karachi. Indian capital moves to Bangalore.

Yet again, bombardment by (now) several bombers completely misses the defenders in Pune. And India has an interceptor based there -- we lose one bomber.

An injured marine is attacked by an Indian mech. And wins!

9) 1954AD Our first cruise missile fired in anger fails to do anything useful :( We assault Bombay with two marine armies, and destroy the Manhattan Project. Oooooh :D

(Did the AI keep better defence up at Bombay because of the wonder there?)

10) 1955AD We're on a roll now (or maybe India is finally running out of steam). Capture Lahore this turn -- that's three mainland India cities captured in my final three turns, after taking eight turns to get Karachi.

India down to 10 mechs (most of which seem to be on the big island), one mainland city, three cities on the big island. And Pune. I was bombarding Pune with increasing numbers of bombers, and a couple of ships, all through my turns, and was getting maybe 1hp damage off one of the mech defenders. Without an army up there, it just wasn't worth attacking.

Pic: an Indian mech (to right) about to die :hammer:

Carbon, you're up. Charis on deck.

A gloriously grueling turn. :goodjob:

As for the airforce, just pretend all those planes are Meteors and use them to smash all those evil indian Oblivion Knights like you used to do during the EST. :lol:

Or... failing that, we'll try to keep you away from the flying machines in the future. ;)

And hey, I TOLD you guys that Pune was a damn fortress! :eek: Probably be the last Indian city left standing, unless Carbon makes a point to go obliterate it.

- Sirian

not sure when you'll see the writeup, this sounds like it could take a while.

Despite not having class, I have ZERO free time this week. I thought I could shoehorn this game in, but I thought wrong. Charis, good luck.

1955 AD (0) - So... what can we do to rid ourselves of our purple friends?
Just five cities left, Pune alone, three, and Bangalore alone.
Hmm, Rome has nuclear power and won't share eh? We'll see Caesar...

1956 AD (1) - Nothing eventful, lots of moving and setting up...
1957 AD (2) - Progress at Pune? Both mechas down to one, let's go Marines!
First one wins. Wow, second one, only 1 hp lost each case. A longbow
remains (plus the Jet Fighter that interepted the bomber) Down!

Pune is ours. :hammer:

One the three-city island, our brand new Jet intercepted an enemy plane.
Bangalore now under 6... Chittagong is showing an elite Mecha which took
no dmg this turn. Maybe next time... Switching production for a few more
bombers given these mechs...

1958 AD (3) - Rome doesn't want to extend its MPP or RoP. Fine, we don't want
you on MPP. (Or your RoP) We sell spices for gold. Punjab is rocked by
something in the fog, with mechs taking hvy dmg... Cavalry?
We're reminded that Caesar backstabbed our 'friends', the French. (He should
thank the heavens it's not the Big Brother game!!)

Chittagong takes good dmg this time, so in go the marines. One dies then
one wins vs Mech. Next one wins vs low hp mech, and we watch sink a
battleship, carrier, and jet plane :hammer:

Scary! On a helicopter marine airdrop outside of Punjab an interceptor comes
at us!! :eek: (If we lose I think he drops to the ground). Luckily, we
somehow win (Stinger missile?! :P )

A marine army in the field outside Bangalore takes out a stray mech.
Underneath a rifle is subjected to withering fire by our Infantry, and dies.

At Bangalore itself, the first shot of marine army popped the mech,
raising a unit within to elite and eliciting a cry of "Yeah!"
An infantry with him feels lucky, and pops a 1hp mech in one shot too.
Now just a rifle defending the city. We still have another marine army
there - another elite within promoted. Another rifle? Marine dies in
the attempt and sees there will be one more. Additional bombardments from
an arty-stack-of-doom shoes a longbow too. It will live one more round.

India is within about two turns of collapse. Looking next, Richmond is
the choke point at the boundary with China. We rush an airport there and
start moving over excess troops. Army can't be airlifted eh? It goes to
Newcastle to meet a Transport to go the 'old fashioned way' :P

1959 AD (4) - Let loose a cruise missile at Bangalore. First one ever...
Interesting graphic, and it waxed the rifleman. Two more marines, and

Bangalore falls! Capital moves to Punjab. (We may need more garrison on
that island now) Only Punjab and Amiens left for the Indians.

I leave the sacking of the last to Indian cities to a more worthy leader.
They're toast. :hammer:

- Army and transport are in Newcastle with two marines, two more due next
turn in Warwick and Hastings. Lock and load. Two battleships nearby to escort
to a forward deployment zone of your choice. There are TWO full marine armies
in Orleans too, needing a boat.

- Richmond is starting to look buff. If I were the Chinese, I would be
scared. Consider rushing the barracks after money is >1000, and getting
the three to six armies down to Richmond via boat, cancelling China
agreements, then attacking. With their navy and armies in the water,
more danger. (Or maybe you like Rome? Your call)

- We're at low sci after pushing to get ecology, and needing to get back to
1000 in the treasury for maximum interest quickly.

UP: Sirian ON deck: Jaffa Wild Card: Zed

Good luck,
Charis

Zed's not a wildcard any more in this particular game, I poleaxed that routine over here remember? :) In fact, Zed's UP now, and has until Saturday afternoon to play and post.

Good luck, Zed! You need to get in on some of this late action before it runs out, even if you can only play a few turns.

- Sirian

Ok, got it... we'll see if I can get any turns in. :) Hopefully we're all caught up on infrastructure now, right??? ;) I don't want to spend 2 hrs looking over all our cities at the beginning of my turn looking for veto candidates... :p

-------------------
Partial update 1: 1959 (0) - 1961 (2)

1959 (IT - 0): Zip. I deliberately leave everything alone & don't review for vetoes.

1960 (1): We take Punjab, though our army takes a beating taking the last hp off the sole defending Mech. We bomb Amiens and send a Marine in on an experimental attack but he fails and a mech inf promotes; we abort the assault and wait for more bombing. Our troops begin moving toward Richmond in preparation for an attack on China. We start moving paratroops to Ivory Coast in preparation for an airborne assault on the lone Chinese colony.

1961 (2): More bombing of Amiens and the 2 mech inf therein. We attack with marines against 1-hp mechs and this time are successful; our first marine wins without a scratch and promotes to elite, the other wins but takes damage and doesn't promote. India is eliminated! We sign an MPP with Rome in exchange for 20 turns of coal, cancel our treaties with China, and move our artillery and armies in. Rome has Nuclear Power but wants an arm and a leg for it.

More to come later...
------------------------------

> Zed, You need to get in on some of this late action before it runs out, even if you can only play a few turns.

True -- there is a lot happening and even four turns is an enjoyable game :P And heck, in that time frame, no veto or lack of veto is critical. I would suggest you take out the Indians, then handoff -- that would be the point where vetoes and re-gearing toward next foe will have to occur.

Charis

I just took a couple more turns -- every time I had a chance to play this something else seemed more pressing. :)

I started the war with China, after cancelling our treaties and dragging Rome into an MPP. We lost a couple Battleships in the China sea but gave better than we got. Nanking has fallen, and our artillery stack-o-doom is on the way to the main Chinese cities. So far we've met with light opposition. An airborne assault is underway at the northern Chinese colony but our bombers failed us last turn so it's stalled for the moment. I guess we can transport marines in by helicopter, which I didn't realize at first, so we just have paratroops for the most part up there right now.

* Captured Beijing.

* Prepared way to take former French colony first thing in coming war with Rome.

* Moved navy into position near Rome (and added more transports).

* China has three cities left, will probably take at least five more turns to finish them off. Make sure to leave enough garrison that nothing flips!


Next up: MONKEY CULT! :sheep: On deck: Carbon "MIA" Copy. :p

- Sirian

Got it :) (Or will have, when I get home).

:hammer:

Transports are waiting in Karachi :)

ROSTER:

Carbon Copy
Carbon Copy <<<< UP NOW!
Carbon Copy <<< ON DECK!
Carbon Copy
Carbon Copy
Carbon Copy


Hey CC, take your turn, bro. Don't skip out on us now, this is your last shot at some glory here! :)

You can leave some "Roman Meal" brand snacks for Charis if you like, though. :lol:


- Sirian

Roger, wilco....maybe. If I don't get to it tomorrow, then I won't get to it, have midterms on consecutive days this week.

So I'll just have to get to it! :hammer:

Man, I woke up this morning and it felt like a ton of bricks was on my chest. Since I called off work and skipped today's useless recitation, there was plenty of time to play today. :rolleyes:

There still is most of 1980 to play, the situation is: we captured Cumae and Pisae, razed Rome (we never really wanted those Pyramids, anyhow :p ), captured Madras on the Indian Continent, which netted us Smith's (and about 150 more gpt). Pisae has an airport and a barracks, while Cumae has a harbor (I think).

If I were Charis, I'd change the building orders for our bomber producing cities. We have PLENTY of them now. What we need are troops or battleships. The Roman Navy gave me fits for most of my turn, since I had nothing to hit them with once they were all bombarded down, and I lost most of our nuke subs.

The only bad news? Those Roman tanks that were sitting idle on one of our islands took control, captured Rouen and razed whatever other city there was. I have some transports in Tours that can be used to move Marines to that island, or if you want, you can airlift paras via Jaipur's airport. There are also abundant bombers to knock everything back down to 1 hp every turn until you can move troops.

Charis, you have five cities left. You might not be able to snatch them all on your turn, four of them are metros and they're all pretty far apart. The good news is that bombers from Cumae or Bristol can hit Veii, and from Pisae can hit whatever city is southwest of it. Most of our artillery stack of doom is now in Rome, too, as well as some workers and settlers to do whatever it is they do (There's two left or so, so don't be afraid to raze!). I put almost all our workers on shift-p pollution cleanup, and it's not quite working out as well as I had hoped on our homeland.

:sheep:

Will this be the end or not?!

Stay tuned :hammer:

(I don't know myself, but 'Infantry' is in the queue and I'm curious
to find out)

Charis

It's down to the last five cities!!! :hammer:

Our glorious infantry have spanned the globe to taste the thrill of
victory and impose the agony of defeat, especially on cavalry units :P

Brigadier General Charis immediately gets down to business...

1980 AD (0) - We rush the airport in Cumae for a mere 600 gold.
(Uh, sir, if you had looked, there was one in Pisae...)

We try to bomb Rouen to ruin. Lots and lots of troop movement...
Wake up those (two) helicopters and get them near Rouen. Airlift, etc.

1981 AD (1) - On their turn they get lucky and sink a carrier, but later
lose a battleship. They land some old units on Panama, we slaughter them.
Our mil advisor lists their remaining army as: 11 inf, 3 cav, 5 tank, 2 art,
2 rifles and a small handful of planes and ships.

1982 AD (2) - Veii slams our battleship with a cruise missile, but can't finish
it off. Tank from Rouen can't take Marine who flew in via helicopter to
take a hill. Hurt units that came OUTSIDE of the city to keep away my
paratroopers (wow) now go back in. The infantry there rally strong, defeating
four tanks and two inf's after bombardment, losing one marine and one inf.
Last battle is vs a cav there... kazaaam, got it! :hammer: Four left!


1983 AD (3) - Every unit hurt badly and barracks smashed at Antium.
The assault begins...

... and doesn't last long. Three marines later, we take it. There is a
*nuclear plant* intact. First AI-built one I've seen.

1984 AD (4) - They're not giving up, a sub sinks one of our destroyers,
a cav charges a paratrooper (and retreats) and two rifles come out to play.

Leicester is founded to help us get in their faces quicker :P
This allows the arty stack of doom to pound BOTH their remaining cities South
THIS turn :hammer: About a dozen bombers rebase on this mudflat from Ireland.

Veii's Factory was destroyed by bomber runs, followed by the Nuclear
Plant (that's gotta hurt!) Despite the massive structural damage from
dozens of bombardments, the defenders at Veii still stood healthy!
Finally, the Army of Marines get its chance to shine! It won, losing only
three hp. For the next inf defender, a Marine failed, an inf succeeded, a
a paratrooper took out the last rifle and on the last cav holding the
city... our last available ground unit, a paratrooper, finished the job!

Ironically, the only building left standing was the hospital (must have been
out of respect for the wounded). Down to two.

Fort Hammer is founded!!! :hammer: This is the death Knell. There are *TWO*
armies right next to EACH of the Roman cities, along with dozens of marines,
paratroopers and infantry. A lone Roman worker, totally oblivious to what is
going on, is on a hill overlooking the city, cleaning up some polution on
their gold mine. He takes a break from his labor, wipes his brow with his
handkerchief, and looks up...

:eek:

1985 AD (5) - It was the best of times (for us) it was the worst of times (Rome)

Neopolis starts off getting its Coal plant destroyed, and it goes downhill from
there. Our military advisor reports nine ground units for them. His last licks-
an interceptor shot down our bomber. Only 39 more where that came from :P

We start the final assault with the elite marines. No leaders, but they chew
'em up. Finally, two defenders left in their civ, and four armies against
them. Not good odds...

The Brigadier General calls over a good friend, Col. Hammer, to watch the
final battles.

Neopolis. Pompeii. Victory.

:hammer:

On the save file, hit 'return' for any notices, and you'll get the
"Conquest Victory" notice. 1986AD final Score: 3073. (Just over double India)

Thanks all for a GREAT game! Grats to Sirian for an excellent variant, both playable and fun (and we did it without Mech Inf even!)

Charis

The replay was interesting. We had the strongest expansion start. Ourselves
and Rome had opposite-corner-of-world islands to ourselves, while Babylon
had too small an island and France, China and India shared a medium-large one.
Had France been human, or had a big brother, it could have been the victor.
Our island colonization was good (but I'm biased). They were useful staging
points, but not pivotal. Early 1700's Babylon blue went poof real quick. Middle
1800's France was eaten. Early 1900's was India's turn. 1960s China was eaten
(yes it was THAT fast) and 1970's-80's, Rome.

History will remember us as... Elizabeth the Wise. (OW!!! Just short of
magnificent, but for the variant nature, an excellent show! :hammer: )

City rank: London (*7* wonders), Canterbury (Sistine, Magellan), York (ToE),
Hasting, Nottingham. We had 88 cities, Income 1340, Monarchy, 486 corruption.

-- Charis

Well done, guys. Great game! :goodjob: