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 obv