I have seen lots of Regent and Chieftan succession games floating around this forum, but finding a Monarch or higher game is extremely hard to find on this board. So this game I am starting specifically to provide the forum-goers here a chance to try out their skills in a striaghtforward Emperor difficulty succession game.

I've not yet started the map or played the first handful of turns, but here are the options I will use:

-Persians (nice ancient era unique unit, plus Scientific and Industrious are two of my favorite traits)

-Small Map size, max opponents (Will include Babylon and India AND also Aztecs and Germans, other civs will be random)

-Large pangea landmass, normal climate/temperature, 3 billion year old earth.

-No victory options disabled.

First off, let me stress, there is going to be no pressure on anyone, I'd be happy with a loss, provided the players here learn something from it, and there's always RBD 5 or 6 that can be played. So don't be shy, join up (RBDers don't bite...hard ;) )! I'd prefer somewhere between 4 and 6 players.

After I take the first 40, it will be 20 turns for the rest of the first round, and up to 10-15 for each subsequent turn (less can be played if one so desires). 24 hours to post that you have the game, 48 hours from the time you get the game to post the next turn or you're skipped, though an under 24-hour turnaround from one player to the next would be ideal.

First turn to be forthcoming tonight, assuming I generate some interest.

I'll join in :)

Count me in as well.

Are you still planning to set barbarians to raging?

If the map is full of AI empires we will probably have to go for an Ancient era war, which means an early golden age... no help for it I suppose.

I'll play. Small Pangaea with Persians? Does indeed sound like an ancient conquest game. Pray we don't start on top of the Aztecs, though, as they will run circles around us, literally, unless we can plop a whole stack of immortals on top of their capital as our first aggressive move.

The large landmass is a potential out, though. That much land, it will feel like a larger map than it is.

And... I can also sit out and give someone else my slot if there is a lot of interest.

Something I've been contemplating for single player is a tiny map game where I do NOT go for conquest, but have to win the space race, while all the victory conditions are enabled. On Emperor. I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, though, and only so many hours to play and write about it. :)


- Sirian

Okay, here's the tentative order:

1. Me (Carbon)
2. Zed
3. Sirian
4. Jaffa

I ordered this around so that nobody here is directly passing off to or directly receiving from someone that they've passed to or received from before. Also I noticed that Jaffa was on deck for Charis's Musketeer game ("Fetchez la vache!" *moo*), so he probably would appreciate being in the lower half of the order for this one.

Save file and writeup should be forthcoming tonight, I am still not quite started with the game since I saw Lord of the Rings for the first time today (wowza :eek: )

I'm not much up for writing in-character summaries. There was plenty of time for it when I was just playing RBD 2 and LK8 (and LK8 wasn't in-character), but now with Infantry, RBD3, RBD4, and LK8 going (and many of the other players in similar positions), writeups will just be the facts, ma'am.

I created a map with the aforementioned parameters. I forgot to specify what level of Barbarians, and I couldn't decide what to give us, so Barbarians are at Random.

Our starting location was in the Southeast corner of the map, though how much land is between us and the sea to the south or east has yet to be determined. It's all mountains and hills as far as I've been able to tell, which is good and bad. Bad, because settling in hills surrounded by mountains sucks, and good because our chances for iron deposits (required for Immortals) are going to be very good. I have only made contact with one other civ so far, the Indians. And only because they are almost sitting right on top of us. We might want to remedy that when we get some more developed squares and can pour out Immortals.

I don't much like the names of Persian towns, so when I founded cities, I just named them after small towns in the county where I live. Go ahead and do whatever for your turns.

Here's the summary:

4000
-Our Capital, Delphi, is founded. This could get confusing if we drew the Greeks as our wildcard opponent.
-Start research on Iron Working. Dropped science to 20% since we're the first ones to be researching it and it will take 40 turns no matter what.

3550
-Delphi's borders expand, allowing a grassland wheat to become available.

3450
-Make contact with the Indians. Only techs they have that we don't are ceremonial burial and alphabet, and they don't have masonry (and that's all they'll trade for in return for any of their techs)

2950
-Second city, Flora founded.

2710
-Years start counting by 40s instead of 50s, Flora finishes Warrior, starts another

2670
-EEK! :eek: Indian border appears just to the north of Delphi

2390
-Trade 87 gold to the Indians for Alphabet

2310
-Found Burlington to our south. I really wanted to settle to the east but there was an Indian warrior wandering in that area and I didn't have a military escort ready, so I went to grab more mountains. It overlaps Delphi a bit, but it's the only habitable square in its area, plus it's on both the coast and a river.

2270
-Barbs seen to the south. Burlington's gonna get pillaged, nothing i can do about it.

2190
-Burlington pillaged, -33 gold

2110
-Oops, played 40 and a half turns, the save file is prior to any unit movement.

Other notes:

-Flora's settler I was going to send north to the hills by the coast north of Flora to cut the Indians off. There's a warrior wandering in that area which could be used to garrison in that town, and one of my workers is already building a road in that direction.

-Due to the minimum science required to be spending something in research changing with Delphi's population, there were some times that there weren't any research bucks going toward Iron working and I didn't notice. So it's still 6 turns away.

-The other civs are going to have a HUGE tech lead on us. Just don't panic, buy techs from them or research them on the cheap, we'll catch up in the midieval time period.

-When we find Iron, it's Immortal Time :D. I have a road built up to the Delphi/Bombay border, immortals should make short work of that town if we should attack it.

-None of the three towns have any buildings, nor have any been whipped (the only costly thing that they were building were settlers, and those always had to wait for the city to grow to size 3 anyhow). Keep with the settler/military production until we are out of territory, then worry about culture.

For all you Monday morning quarterbacks, here's a save from turn 1.

I'd like to play if you're still accepting players

I had been hoping for a fifth to show up from somewhere. :)

The order hasn't been finalized, or even really discussed. I currently have Zed on deck, unless he's too busy right now, in which case the whole thing is up in the air. State your preference and I'll work you in.

I've got it, and should be able to play tonight.

I don't mind what position I take in the order ... probably the only thing that might make a difference is that being in Australia my timezone probably means when I'm playing is when you're asleep. :)

2110 BC (0): We seem to be heavy on settlers & light on military, will need to work on that. Not sure if we're going for a despotic whipping game or not, so far will assume not. Delphi changed to Spearman.

2070 BC (1): Flora completes settler, starts spearman. Warrior exploring west spots Babylonian spearman on mountain. Their military outnumbers us (unsurprisingly), they also have 3 cities, and they have Pottery, The Wheel, Warrior Code, Ceremonial Burial, and Iron Working, as well as a whack of gold already. Checked India, and they have a similar tech advantage.

2030 BC (2): Delphi grows to 3 & completes Spearman, but I want to move out the warrior to go exploring India. Raise luxuries to 10% to compensate, and start worker to get pop down before starting a barracks.

1990 BC (3): Persepolis founded on hills north of Flora, a bit of overlap, but gets borders sealed and is on the water. It will not grow quickly, however, since there's only plains about.

1950 BC (4): West scouting warrior spots ivory. East scouting warrior locates 2nd Indian city (Madras.) Delphi builds worker, starts barracks.

1910 BC (5): Burlington builds Warrior, starts Spearman. It's growing too slowly to really be useful right now, needs more good farmland. We discover Iron Working, start Writing. We already have Iron in our road net, under Persepolis, and there is more near Delphi!

1870 BC (6): Our western Warrior comes across an Aztec Jaguar warrior! Great. They have 3 cities, and all the same techs as the Babylonians and Indians. East exploring warrior spots cultural boundaries of Indian capital Delhi.

1830 BC (7): Barbarian warrior shows up south of Burlington. Western warrior spots Aztec cultural boundaries.

1790 BC (8): We expand the palace.

1750 BC (9): Aztecs are building Oracle. Burlington fights off barbarian warrior. Second barbarian warrior shows up south of Burlington. Persepolis builds a warrior. Babylonians now have 4 cities and are hemming us in on the west (closer than the Aztecs.)

That's all I have time for. Haven't whipped anything yet either. Delphi will need 20% luxuries soon. Our workers are currently trying to irrigate and road their way toward Flora and Persepolis. We're pretty well boxed in here... good thing we have Immortals. :)


Anyway, luck to the next player...

Okay, now that Zed has played, it's Sirian's turn. I don't really have much in the way of advice (and you'd probably know what to do better than I, anyhow).

With the new guy added, the order should go something like this:

Carbon
Zed
Sirian
Jaffa
OneInTen

Unless Jaffa and One want to switch turns.

This is an interesting situation. Jaffa, you've got your hands full consolidating our position. I was handed the keys to an empire with absolutely zero infrastructure, and I have changed that. In fact, I changed it so much, that I did not build a single new military unit on my entire turn. Keep that in mind.

Inherited Turn: Vetoed the Minimum Science Gambit in favor of break-even research on Writing, now down to 12 turns from 36. (We'll get absolutely slaughtered waiting 40 turns for anything on a small map on Emperor). Bought four techs (Pottery, Wheel, Code, Burial) from our most grumpy neighbor, Babylon, for 90 gold. Attitude improved from Annoyed to Cautious. (Once all the known civs have a tech, its research cost and purchase cost go down, and dang if we didn't NEED these techs in a bad way). Found out why the Indians moved so aggressively to settle Bombay: they have stolen our horse out from under our nose. (If ever we go to war with India, either take Bombay quickly or at least pillage that horse -- it's the only one in the region). Implemented Temple construction in every city.

Early turns: whipped the temple in Delphi (Any reason for this name choice, Carbon? I feel schizo wondering why my Persian capital is named after a Greek city. :) ). Continued the VERY solid plan of bringing irrigation out to Persepolis. (Nice going on that move). Whipped temples in the rest of the cities. Barbarians coming up from the south were allowed to attack Burlington to their heart's delight. Our warriors there have become veteran as a result.

Middle turns: Changed our largest two cities over to settler production. Continued explorations with our three roaming warrior parties. Two of them were soon turned to circle back and explore potential settlement areas, and to meet up with the settlers soon to be produced. Bought Mysticism from the Indians for 26 gold. Aztecs researched Writing, then brokered it, dropping the cost dramatically. We researched writing as a result, some thirty turns before my predecessor's arrangement would have had.

See, here's the thing: the min science gambit is only good in a few situations, since the latest patch when it was rebalanced, backing off the can't-fail option that it used to be. If you start isolated and must get to mapmaking in a hurry, it can work. If you want to get to monarchy or republic in a hurry, it can help on those two techs, especially on larger maps. But you ONLY want to run min science for cutting edge tech nobody has yet, or if you have absolutely dismal commerce and food (like the fourth Apolyton tournament scenerio). One other situation where it's good: just to gather up cash, if you are hopelessly behind, to buy obsolete techs faster than you could research them. Running high cash is a great way to catch up, but it doesn't work out for holding even or taking the lead. Occasionally, min science on the Invention line while all the AI's are busy on the Theology line can pay off handsomely, but not on small maps. Tech prices just run too low.

Late turns: whipped a granary at Burlington. This city could be used to whip barracks and immortals, or it could be used to crank out a bunch of workers (I didn't build any of those either). Built walls at Flora, building walls at Persepolis. Settler heading east encountered roaming barb warriors, so I plunked him down on the river, undefended, knowing that he would raid the new town on the next turn (the CharisGhandi Gambit). Decided this was a grand time to found embassies with Babylon and Azteca, dropping our treasury from 84 gold to 2. Next turn, Pasargadae raided, 1 gold stolen. Heh heh. :) The warrior in the area is still a couple turns away, and the town was raided a second time, at the lost of another gold. Susa founded in the south, near a spice. Worker dispatched to bring spices online soon. Whipped a granary at Delphi. Started road to Pasargadae.

Final turns: warrior attacks and clears barb camp near Pasargadae, barely surviving. A couple of barb horsies attack Burlington from the south (that's one threat I ignored my whole turn). Whipped a barracks in Delphi. (I know, I know, I'm the quintessential "don't whip your capital" advocate, but this is Emperor and there's a civ on our doorstep). Babylonians start the Pyramids, but their capital is size 1 and they have no wheat/cattle, so it will be a while for them. Still ten turns away from Literature. The AI civs now all have mapmaking, so I made eleventh hour trades with each of them. From the Indians, I got Math, territory map and change, from the Babs I got Horseback Riding, from the Aztecs I got Philosophy. Each for our world map, plus some change to the Aztecs. NINE techs acquired on my turn.


Analysis: I got us the jump on cultural development, mostly caught us up on tech, and left the door open for either war or peace. I staved off AI aggression mostly through trade deals and embassies, and staying out of their lands. All three are polite to us as I step down. The two new cities should rushbuild temples asap: support them with veteran military from main cities, rather than building their own. We need to explore and settle the south, lest the Indians grab past us and threaten Pasargadae with cultural pressure. On the other hand, we are already set to apply cultural pressure to Bombay, and COULD win it over, if we whip libraries at the three surrounding cities at the earliest reasonable chance. (Or maybe not whip at Delphi, if its shield rate is high enough on its own).

Our military situation may LOOK thin, but that's because I don't have another ten turns. Success on emperor for me has come in bending my empire to specific goals, leaning far in pressing toward those goals at the expense of other activity, then switching goals as appropriate, so that I bounce from extreme to extreme, rather than trying to keep everything rounded all the way through. As such, the situation is now ripe in the larger cities for barracks and VETERAN units. Regulars beat not having units, in a pinch, but they are vastly less effective in combat (they can spare two hits, vets can spare three, that makes vets 150% as effective, and are closer to elite and the chance for Leaders). So I have built infrastructure on these 20 turns, and set up for cranking vet units in the larger cities soon. Flora is set to whip its barracks next turn. Persepolis can complete its wall, then whip a barracks and start cranking spearmen. Burlington could be used for military, or for workers -- it has a granary. Our capital is totally primed to crank military quickly for the next thousand years. :)

We COULD try for the Pyramids, but we do not know what the two MIA civs are up to. None of the four we know about could beat us to them, but that unknown from the other two, plus the lack of backup on Colossus/Lighthouse and the low yield of the Great Library on small maps, leads me to think we'll be better off to crank up our military and prepare for war with India.

The Babs are stretched thin and their home is far from us. I do not fear them. Don't cave to their threats. We have walls going up on our border with them and two of our cities over there are built on hills. And we can build Immortals, so... if they come calling for free favors, send em packing. The Aztecs, on the other hand, should not be trifled with. We don't have horses available (yet) so that compounds the danger. They have simply endless jags running all over the place, many now elite from hunting down all kinds of barb camps. If our Aztec friends demand tribute, and its not too unreasonable, we might want to accomodate them a bit. In any case, I rushed us WAY ahead in the infrastructure department, and with technology compared to where we were, made some land grabs, and we now must catch up in the military arena.

Finally: if we get to Literature first, I recommend you broker the devil out of it, starting with Babs (want them to pay the most, unless they are broke at the time). Why? Well, I know I'm a hard advocate of not brokering away a tech lead. Tech LEAD, being the operative word there. This is not a lead yet. This is running behind but catching up. Broker it while its at its most valuable, with Mapmaking being the top priority on what to ask for. Take tech, maps, cash, gold-per-turn, in that order. Have to sell to everyone on the same turn, and don't do it between turns if they ask to talk.

Good luck, Jaffa.


- Sirian

Just a quick note - I'm going to be away tomorrow (Sunday for me) and with being at work Monday during the day, this means I can't play until about 48 hours from now. I was hoping Jaffa would have played by now and I could take my turn, but oh well, such is life.

So if this is a problem I don't mind if you skip me this turn. Hopefully though I can get to play on Monday and it'll all be fine. ;)

Whoever of Jaffa or One gets time to play first, post up and run for it, and that'll be the order for the rest of the rounds.

Sirian, the reason I named our capital Delphi was because that's the county seat of Carroll County, Indiana (and would thus be conferred the honor of the capital in my own little fantasy world), and to be honest, I've never played as Greece before, and had forgotten that it was a name the Greeks use until I was writing the post. I have lots of alternative names if the name collision is a big enough confusion for us (and will definitely do so if the wildcard opponent is Greece). Still apparently a bit of time left before the turn gets around to me, so feel free to weigh in. I still hate the names of Persian towns, though. Even just naming them the names of Greek towns throughout would be a vast improvement over the current roster, except for Persepolis, but that's because it's derived from, of all things, Greek.

At the same time that you guys venture into the world of Civ 3 Emperor difficulty, I myself have just completed and won my first Emperor game in Civ 2. Take it as an omen :).

Just wanted to drop in after lurking for a while and say hello, and good luck. I haven't played a succession game before but I would certainly be interested when the next one starts. I am currently playing one down from Emperor though (Monarch? but I always think of it as 'King' difficulty because of too much time spent playing Civ2!). Lots of old habits to unlearn.

Found my way here following a link from Sirian's Civ3 page. Really sorry to see the D2 page finish but was delighted to see you have started a Civ3 page instead!

I have played more Civ2 than anything but am getting into Civ3 now. So far my favourite Civ is the Egyptians, just love that combination of religous and fast workers. In fact I almost think those fast workers are too powerful.

Anyway, keep up the posting, it makes for great reading and good luck on Emperor difficulty!

Now, must get back to finish off the Romans with my War Chariots before they discover Iron working!

- Jon

0) 1250BC Hmmm. We have unconnected iron near Delphi. Where's our iron coming from? Okay, it's underneath Persepolis. There's unclaimed iron in hills near Madras which I think we should grab before the Indians get it, so switch to settler production in Delphi. We are broke. Very well, let's make us even broker. Can get literature in 9 turns at -2/turn instead of 10 at -1/turn.

1) 1225BC Whip barracks from Flora, start spearman. Unrest in Delphi (already? Damn!) Persepolis finishes walls, starts catapult.

3) 1175BC Indians are building the Pyramids. They also have a settler going east from Bombay.

5) 1125BC Delphi finishes its settler, starts on spearman.

6) 1100BC Somebody discovered literature before us :(

7) 1075BC Aztecs are only local Civ without literature. They won't give us any tech for it. Bah. Sell it to them for 43 gold. Start researching construction. Spices from Susa are distributed throughout the land :)

8) 1050BC Our roving warrior reaches the end of the world!

9) 1025BC Arbela founded to steal iron from the Indians.

10) 1000BC Road to Pasargadae completed.

11) 975BC First catapult completed.

12) 950BC Aztec galley sighted north of Persepolis. Burlington attacked by barbarian horseman (again).

13) 925BC Babylon comes calling and demands 20 gold and territory map as a peace offering. Piffle. Seeing how weak our military still is, I agree to their terms. Also send along the address of a good barber. Man, that guy is ugly. Aztecs finish building Oracle, start on Pyramids.

14) 900BC Indian troops trample all over our territory around Arbela.

18) 800BC Everybody discovers Construction. Drat. Seeing as how we have the entire world supply of iron, and nothing else tradeable, I give iron to Indians for Mapmaking, Currency and 29 gold. Burlington finishes barracks, starts harbor.

Arbela can whip its temple in 2 turns.

Settler from Delphi can grab dyes from Babylon (west) or India (east), or head into unexplored territory (or you can change production to something else :) )

If Babylon complains about our warrior near Lagash, it's their fault! They put the town on top of him!

[dance]

The game's been posted for 24h, and no word so far from OneInTen. I know he was going to be mostly unavailable this weekend, so I'll give until tomorrow morning (15 hours from the time on this post) to post "got it" or "skip me" before I take my turn.

OK I got it, at work at the moment though and can't play right now, but will play and post as soon as I get the chance.

Executive Summary - Founded 2 more towns, built lots of immortals, Babylon and Aztecs declare war on each other.

Turn By Turn:

(0) 750 BC: * Babylon predictably complains about troop buildup.
* Delphi finishes settler, begins library (placeholder for immortals)
* Persepolis finishes catapult, begins settler

(1) 730 BC: * Started settler towards westward dyes - I figure we're going to take out the indians in the medium term anyway, so we should be more worried about establishing our other borders

(2) 710 BC: * Second iron connected, immortal production can begin :D

(3) 690 BC: * Whip temple at arbela

(4) 670 BC: * Aztecs want our territory map and 13 gold for their territory map, we refuse
* Arbela finishes temple, starts on worker (in retrospect maybe not the best strategy, but it wasn't much chop as a town and I thought the worker could improve it)
* Discover code of laws, start on ploytheism, drop science to 70% (losing -2 still though :()
* Change Delphi to immortals

(5) 650 BC: * Delphi completes immortals, starts on more
* Change Flora from spearmen to immortals

(6) 630 BC: * Antioch formed near dyes, the escorting spearman becomes the garrison

(7) 610 BC: a lot goes on but nothing happens

(8) 590 BC: * Flora completes immortals, starts more

(9) 570 BC: * Start clearing forest around dyes at antioch

(10) 550 BC: * Arbela completes worker, starts on immortals
* Germany completes pyramids in Berlin

(11) 530 BC: * Persepolis completes settler, starts immortals
* Pasagrade completes temple, starts settler

(12) 510 BC: *Start settle towards east of our map
* Connected up the dyes

(13) 490 BC: * Delphi completes immortals, starts immortals

(14) 470 BC: * Polytheism is at one turn - but by backing right off and taking 2 turns, we change a -3 deficit to a +7 profit, so I take it, our bank is close to empty

(15) 450 BC: * Babylon declares war on Aztecs! What a nice stroke of luck, hopefully they keep each other nice and busy and leave us alone
* Flora finishes immortals, starts more
* Get polytheism, start monarchy (19 turns at -2 gold per turn, hmm)
* Get monotheism as our free end of era tech, this puts us in a tech lead!
* France completes great library in Paris - guess we know all our opponents now

(16) 430 BC: A lot goes on but nothing happens

(17) 410 BC: * Delphi completes immortals and starts on some more
* Aztecs complete great wall in Tenochtitlan
* Battle a barb camp with immortals, win but dont take it, pretty badly hurt

(18) 390 BC: * Burlington completes harbour, starts immortals

(19) 370 BC: * Defeat barb camp this time around at the southern tip of our land mass, get a much needed 25 gold
* Tarsus is formed, starts on temple

(20) 350 BC: a lot goes on but nothing happens

-----

Well, I wont claim to be a master civ 3 player, but given the position we're in, with two of the civs we know at war, and india pretty much hemmed in (and now our deal has expired, no iron), we seem to be in an OK position. With the number of immortals we now had, plus several more being built (none of them whipped btw, so the population could take more whipping if needed), we should probably look to roll over the top of the indians fairly soon to get them out of our way and claim some more land.

After that we're going to have to take a look at our economy - we're going along nicely enough at 70% tech, but it's costing us -2 per turn, which isn't sustainable in the long term. We're on our way towards monarchy and will probably be best off switching to it as soon as we get it.

Oh well, I've never played at this difficulty before so I only hope I didn't stuff it up too badly. :)

Turns should be posted sometime tomorrow morning (or evening, depending on your situation). I actually hadn't noticed One's post as it was down to the bottom of the front page already by the time I had woken up.

One, you seem to have put us in a fine position by your description. I haven't taken a look at the state of the game yet, though, but I guess there is still plenty of room for me to mess it up (like I did in the Infantry game, what a rube I was in there! :spank:).

I don't know about putting us in a fine position ... I just plodded along, it was a stroke of luck that our two rivals to the west decided to fight each other, and that we have India contained and without much in the way of resources to the east. :D

We must remember to pillage that horse they have though if we go to war with India!

I had a very productive turn. No war so far with India, but we might not need it now. Remember, starting with me, it's 10 turns apiece, up to 15 if you have some business you really want to finish.

What we really need to work on right now is getting troops West to Babylon, we are so paper thin there it's hard to believe. I have constructed walls in both Susa and Antioch, but walls themselves do not a defense make.

350
-Flora finishes Immortal, starts Immortal, sends this troop over to Antioch

330
-Antioch and Susa whip temples
-I check on our foreign relations, Babs, Aztecs, and Indians are all annoyed with us. I decide to work on this. The Babs will only trade their things for Iron, and in light of their war against the Aztecs, I think it would go a long way in securing our relationship as well as helping them prosecute their wars versus Azteca if we traded them for it. I get Republic for 20 turns of iron, and that gets them to Polite.
-I then start to work on Montezuma, I give him a free territory map, but he's still annoyed. I leave India alone for a while.

310
-The graphics on the Bab towns change, they entered the medieval era.

-The settler in Pasargadae is complete. I don't have a military escort for it, so I send it south.
-We start losing 4 gold per turn, I throttle science back to 50% and break-even

290
-W00T!!! Bombay flips to us! I set Delphi and Flora to producing Horses and begin to regarrison our troops in Bombay. The city starts on, of course, a Temple.

270
-Pay Babs 30 gold for a worker
-Whip walls in Susa

250
-Ockley founded south of Pasargadae
-Trade territory map for 1g to Aztecs, 1g to India, and 4g to Babylon. Aztecs are now cautious

230
-India demands Iron. We refuse...no war.
-Aztec Jaguar warrior enters our territory...through India. Now I really want to get my hands on their world map, but I don't want to give up Medieval tech to get it. We, of course, demand he get out of our territory. He, of course, ignores us. I let it happen since we're in no shape to fight in the west.

210
-Burlington finishes Immortal, starts horse
-Antioch whips walls

190
-Persepolis whips barracks
-Unit movement

170
-Indian settler pair enters our territory bound for southwest of Pasargadae. I tell them to scram, but they'll just go forward one space instead of back. Oh well, that will be a very corrupt little town under pressure from Pasargadae, I don't really fear it. If we want to get evil, we'll send a settler north in that gap between Indian towns and cut those two towns off completely.

Zed, I turn this over to you. We need a lot of things, but mostly we need some security in our west, I'm afraid that either the Aztecs or the Babs will want to take out their pent-up aggression on us if they decide to give peace a chance. The Babylonians have about 12 turns of iron left. As long as they're not fighting us, that gambit for better relations should pay off after it runs out.

We need libraries in Arbela and Pasargrade to put cultural pressure on Madras and Calcutta, or our cities will eventually flip to the Indians (especially Arbela.) We should also put Libraries in our good towns since we can build them cheaply. Also, we need more workers, we only have 5 for all 11 of our cities!!! Most of them are also way behind in infrastructure.

170 BC (0): Flora micromanaged to finish horseman sooner. Arbela and Pasargrade, and Burlington changed to Library, and Arbela whipped. Susa and Antioch canged from Barracks to Granary -- we should be building military in larger cities and letting our border towns build infrastructure. Persepolis switched to worker.

150 BC (1): Arbela completes Library, starts Courthouse. Tarsus almost rebels, worker changed to entertainer to compensate until military arrives to suppress unrest. Flora completes horseman, starts worker. Delphi completes Horseman, starts Library. Right of Passage traded to Aztecs for 60 gold & improved relations.

110 BC (3): Indians found Punjab south of Lahore and east of Pasargrade. Flora completes worker, starts horseman.

90 BC (4): Aztecs & Babylonians make peace.

70 BC (5): We complete Monarchy and start Theology. It'll take 29 turns at 50% science, which is the most we can afford without running a substantial deficit! Aztecs start building the Art of War. We're starting to lose the tech race... Perseoplis completes worker & starts catapult. We trade Monotheism and Monarchy for Feudalism and the Aztec world map, and we trade Monarchy to India for their world map and 35 gold.

50 BC (6): Burlington completes Library, starts Pikeman. Delphi completes Library, starts Cathedral. We may want to start building up shields instead in preparation for Sistine Chapel or, failing that, Bach's Cathedral. We don't have any of the ancient era wonders; we really need to grab some of the best Middle ages ones.

I wanted to end my turn on a round number & I'm out of time, so time for the next batter to step up to the plate. I didn't build a lot of military but we seem to be more-or-less on par with the other civs for the moment; more to the point we *really* need infrastructure in our cities, and I don't mean more barracks! I'll leave the decision as to whether to switch governments to the next leader. We might be able to get away with it if we pump lux up a bit, relying on increased trade to make up for it.

(Yes, it is my turn, for Those With Short Memories.) ;)

"May You Live in Interesting Times"

I sold iron to the Indians, not so much because I wanted to, but because our financial situation is kinda bad, we have the troops to deter them, and with me adding more structures all over the place, our surplus is disappearing.

So my plan was simple: whip some libraries :whipped: maybe a courthouse or temple, peaceful revolt, hand the keys off to Jaffa. That was the plan.

The Aztecs had other ideas. :splat: I'm a turn from my last whippings, and I see a couple Aztec troops march up to their border with us. My gut says "uh oh" but... it could be some of their "patrol" activity.

OK, now THAT many archers :arrow: (next turn) is not "patrol activity". :nono:

I look and find... a warrior in our front line city? That's ALL? Who's military plan was that? Oh boy.

ASP implemented. (A$$ Saving Program). Pike whipped in Persepolis, troops shuffled in the direction of the front. The revolt is delayed.

Hum de dum, the Aztecs pass up a chance to attack Silk Town. Reinforcements are recruited and arrive at Persepolis. Yeah, come get some.

The Aztecs bypass Persepolis? Um... I guess they're heading for Bombay. Neither Babs nor Aztecs have horses. And speaking of the red devils, they too are mobilizing and moving into our lands. This is "Not Good" (TM). Bombay switched off to walls.

Well I've done all the shuffling I can, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I send us into revolt.

A turn passes and we are not attacked. Another turn passes. Then another, then another. Revolution leads us into Republic, in which we are doing quite well except, for the time being, we can only afford 10% science. (But don't worry! This will improve. We really need some courthouses, though).

Advance Aztec units have reached Indian land, but wait! They have now turned around and are heading, uh, in the direction of Susa. I send another troop down there. Babs pass our silk town, then Persepolis. Are they heading for Bombay? I've beefed it up now. Delphi has nearly finished its much-needed Cathedral. Once that's done, I'd love to see it build a marketplace, as we are so crunched for cash, but um, while we happen to have about 30 enemy troops wandering hither and thither through our lands, with all our troops holed up behind walls and consuming much deodorant, I kinda think it might be prudent to crank pikes and immortals from Delphi every other turn (it can reach 15 per), until either it hits the fan or people stop with the maneuvers and declare actual war on somebody.

I took the 15 turns. Didn't exactly want to hand off in the middle of revolution with two massive AI armies marching on us with unknown intent and our defense, well, unprepared. I'd rather play another ten, as well, but either we were never the target to begin with here, or the AI's have been deterred to alternate targets. Walls suck, except when you need them. And by now I kinda have a good sense when to bother with them, and when not to bother. Even so, I don't much like our position in this one.

It's possible, perhaps even likely, that the Aztecs are headed toward Shurrupak, as I kind of doubt they are that eager to throw even that many archers up against five fortified units on a hill behind some walls. Don't quote me on this, though. If they burn Susa to the ground, remember, I didn't bet my house or anything. I am more worried about the Babs, but it could be the AI's found India attractive, while more turns of iron and more swords built for India may have changed something.

Rather than do anything rash, I suggest we stay cool and let the AI's make the aggressive move. No sense buying trouble we can't handle if it's not necessary. And if we are the target, I at least have us in a position to defend ourselves. As for wonders, I knew that was a pipe dream the moment I looked over our position. We frankly have too many cities, too widely scattered and underdeveloped, for a small map. Might even have been whipping potential for full despotic aggression, but I didn't like our position for that, either. The only place we could have built a wonder is our capital, and that's Bad, because we can't swap out to Palace placeholder if we get beat to the item, and I didn't like our chances. As many troops as we have, we also have widely scattered cities, too much frontage, and too many pressured cities that are begging for larger garrisons to deter flipping.

Selling iron to the Indians until they wise up and bring that one in their back lines online should help some, maybe even get some tech for it. I intended to build a galley and go looking for the other two civs, but the turn before the ship would have been built, the Aztecs made their move, and I swapped to a pike. Now I see a peek of french border north of Azteca. Maybe still possible to build a ship and sail all the way up there before the others do it, but seems unlikely, and we have been invaded. I wouldn't recommend trying to suggest they leave our land, either. Not unless you are ready to go to war.

All I know is... the AI's are on the warpath big time, and it's not yet clear who is gonna get some. What is clear, that it's going to be somebody, and it's going to be pretty darn bloody, and we're in the middle of it.

Welcome to Emperor. :rotfl:


- Sirian

Summmary: Aztecs have gone into hiding. Babylon at war with India.

0) 250AD Switch Flora from marketplace to pikeman. Aztecs request territory map swap. We, ummm, accept their offer. The Aztecs sacrifice 50 warriors on our honor, but I bet they aren't the ones sitting outside our cities :)

1) 260AD Looks like Aztecs are going for Susa. Rush a pikeman there, but the Aztecs are standing on the road so I can't get any other reinforcements in. Indians are building Colossus.

2) 270AD Aztecs divert around Susa (or maybe they want to encircle it first?) Babylonians are heading due east.

4) 290AD Send reinforcements to Pasargadae, and switch to walls, in case Babylonians are going there. I think they must be after the Indians, though -- yes, they are turning towards Madras.

5) 300AD Babylon demands tribute -- territory map + 19 gold. Ummm, okay. Babylon declares war on the Indians :hammer: Madras falls. Aztecs finish Hanging Gardens. Everybody is building Sistine Chapel, Colossus or Art of War.

7) 320AD Renegotiate RoP with Aztecs, they give us 7 gold. Not sure if we want to have the RoP, but just cancelling it would bump them down to cautious, which I don't think we want. They have communicated with French and Germans.

8) 330AD Lahore falls to Babylon. We gain a new source of silks :)

9) 340AD Our galley sets off from Burlington in search of new civilizations.

10) 350AD Workers start bringing irrigation down towards Tarsus.

Madras should culture flip to us sooner or later.

The iron trade with India expires next turn. A possibility instead of renewing it would be to see what the Babylonians will give us for a military alliance against India.

The settler is en route to Pasargadae. From there, my idea was to settle the one silks square inside our territory (if the Babylonians ever get off it), to make sure it stays in our territory and put pressure on Lahore. Or could settle in land cleared by the war.

Our cash-flow is pathetic.

OneInTen, you're up next :)

Terrible cash flow is an understatement! I resolve to try to do something about it.

0) 350AD: Rearange what production I can to get us in the black. Change focus from military to infrastructure - fighting a war in this bankrupt state would be suicide I feel.

1) 360AD: Good news as Madras flips, helping our treasury a little. We're now actually making money instead of losing it.

2) 370AD: Pubjab falls to the Babs. Indian take back Lahore, thus reclaiming the tile we wanted to settle. I decide to wait a turn or two to see if the Babs take it back again. Theology discovered, switch to Engineering. Aztecs complete great lighthouse. Persopolis goes into disorder - apparently early whipping doesn't sit so well with it, it's now not growing when I add a specialist. :(

3) 380AD: Optimised Delphi for zero growth at 11 pop, another population would jut make it unhappy at this point, and the production is more worthwhile.

4) 390AD: Tarsus completes its Library, so I start a harbour.

5) 400AD: Lahore once again falls to Babs, like I thought it would. Delphi finishes marketplace, starts Sistine (I don't expect to finish Sistine, but I think we can get another wonder if we stockpile our shields, and Delphi is the only place with enough production. Unfortunately, being the capital, we can't start a palace).

6) 410AD: Science cranked up to a whopping 30% :p. Settler moved into position on top of silks. French complete the Colossus.

7) 420AD: Gordium formed on the silks spot.

8) 430AD: Nothing much really

9) 440AD: Trade Silks for Dyes and 13 gold from Babylon. Decide to drop luxury rate in favour of 40% science. Unfortunately this means I have to use a specialist at Burlington, putting it into negative growth, but I felt it was worth the trade off. Engineering discovered, start on invention.

10) 450AD: Just the usual moving of workers and such.

Well, there you have it. I didn't build any more military at all (changed production on all queued units too), as it seems the other civs are busy with each other, and more units would have just made our cash flow problem worse. With a few more marketplaces due to come online during the coming turn, we should be able to get our cashflow problems mostly fixed, and even possibly look toward becoming the tech leader.

We still don't have contact with the other two civs, I didn't feel like we could afford them, but we should get them as soon as we can afford to (or get that dinky little boat of ours up there).

Anyway, I hope my gambit of not worrying about military to focus on economy pays off. Or if it doesn't, I hope you don't hate me too much when we're crushed by another civ's military. ;)

I'm not going to skip my turn in my own game. Would have signalled having it earlier if I could have, but I couldn't so I didn't. Expect a writeup tomorrow night.

A pleasantly quiet turn. We discover Invention, start Education, buy chivalry, and make contact with France (comparable to our civ according to the histograph) and Germany (dead last, though India will be sinking in a hurry). A couple markets got finished, a couple of aqueducts got started. We're finally digging ourselves out of our hole, right now I think we're almost to tech parity with the AIs, and we've surpassed the Germans by buying Chivalry off them (for 56 gold, compared to the mountain of wealth Babylon was asking for it) and researching Invention.

I would have started us on some sort of building exercise for a current or upcoming wonder, but there just aren't any cities yet that have the shield output in place and could go a few hundred years without an improvement. Flora probably could start prebuilding once its aqueduct is done and some more infrastructure is in place. Everybody right now is polite with us, and Germany/France didn't even need any prompting to get them polite.

We have the German territory map, and our galley is currently circumnavigating the (larger) French portion of it. It may want to backpedal a bit to clear the shroud around Amiens, I think if it does that, a trade route will open, though it's not as if any of the AIs has anything worthwhile to sell us. Embassies were too expensive to buy during my turn, but we may want to look into it in our copious free time.

Ok, got it. Will play tonight or tomorrow depending on whether I have time tonght after doing my RBD5 turn.

550 AD (0): Switched Burlington to worker. We have 7 and need more...

560 AD (1): Germans are building Leonardo's Workshop. Burlington completes worker, starts another.

570 AD (2): Aztecs ambush the Babylonians and take Ashur, on our border!

580 AD (3): Babylonians take and raze Calcutta. Aztecs want us to join their war against the Babylonians... we give them a gold to make them go away.

590 AD (4): The Babs are rushing all kinds of swordsmen back through our territory to defend against the Aztecs. Of course, the few Bab defenders in the area don't seem to need much help. Aside from taking Antioch, the Aztecs are losing a lot of units and don't seem to be doing much damage. Something about attacking troops in hilly and mountainous terrain... even the ones that are fighting Babs on the plains (on *our* side of the border, I might add) aren't doing well. Burlington completes a worker, starts another. Arbela completes Granary, starts Aqueduct.

At which point, my wife commandeers the comp, so my turn is cut short. Next batter up!

Inherited Turn: liked the Burlington Worker idea, vetoed the implementation. A couple turns of delay can have it cranking workers every other turn at the size 7 threshold. So I set it to build a pike and catapult first.

Increased Luxury to 10%, save two turns off the Sistine Chapel, fire all entertainers. Prime Minister Sirian shifts focus from science rate to food/shields. Cities without granaries are changed to build them. Bombay has no library yet? This shall be corrected. Pasargadae swapped to settler.

610-620AD: Babs march through our land. Atzecs and Babs fight, Babs lose this round.

630AD: new city founded in desert to pressure Lahore. Learn Edumacation, attempt to broker only to find everyone who didn't have it yet now has it. Blah.

640AD: Babs win this round.

650AD: Wines agreement up for renewel, Hammurabi wants my firstborn. :( We sell him silks for world map (including french lands) and ~100g. Luxuries increased to 20%.

660AD: Aztecs win this round. I buy two Indian workers for 41 gold and some map info. RoP gets us back some of that gold.

670AD: Punjab displays its wisdom, joins our Empire. Babs offer RoP and Alliance vs Indians, one round too late. I'm not breaking my word to India NOW, sorry. Early bird gets the worm.

680AD: Babs win this round, moving in for the TKO now as their stacks are almost home.

700AD: Major map brokerage back and forth, crossreferencing all civs up to date on known maps. We net rest of the info for ourselves plus ~50 gold. I rushbuild rest of courthouse in front line city west of Flora with our gains. Having had enough of running 20% science and paying through the nose, I cave in and agree to sell Hammurabi my firstborn after all. We buy gems for a whopping 14gpt (NOT lump sum, therefore if he attacks, he loses the rest of the cash we would be paying), which as costly as that sounds, is LESS than the difference between 10% and 20% lux by a goodly amount. Back up to 30% science now.

SISTINE CHAPEL IN ONE TURN. This baby is ours! Astronomy due on next player's turn, which OUGHT to allow us to start trading via ship. We have lots of iron just lying around, which the weak civs (India, Germany) would pay us THEIR firstborn to get. We can get techs and other goodies, perhaps, and at this point we do not want them to be run over by Hami/Monty/Joanie, so that ought to be good deal for us. We also need lots more infrastructure, especially markets and cathedrals, and then some universities in our core cities. Nobody wants a piece of our military, and with the two major powers blunting themselves against one another for so long, we should be able to grow in peace for a while longer.

I expect Aztecs to lose control of their captured city soon and that war, perhaps, to finally end.


- Sirian

Wow, we're going to get the Sistine chapel? To think I only set the city onto it as a placeholder ... guess the AI got a bit slack in their wonder building. :D

It was one worth waiting for Enterprise and West Wing to end to see ;p . I know I will feel a lot safer when the Babylonians and the Aztecs burn off all that military they've been stockpiling. I find it funny that, when I started my last turn and saw all those Bab soldiers crossing our territory lengthwise one square at a time to fight India, I offered them a straight-up Right of Passage just to get them out of my land faster, and they rejected it, not only did they reject it, but we'd have to pay almost all our current treasury plus some per turn (IIRC, I didn't note the specifics) to secure such a deal. :eek:

Karma is so much fun, isn't it? :D

Oh, as an aside, I don't often plug but I was quite entrigued by something I saw today: a site that I came across via Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com , one of the better webcomics, if I am allowed a nested plug). It's called the San Diablos Chronicles, the site is http://www.sandiablos.net and it is the home of a short fiction writing experiment that is quite...words fail me right now, but "unique" probably seems to encompass the experience. It may or may not suit your tastes, depending on how fond you are of cyberpunk and/or experimental writing, but it was different enough from anything I've read in a long time that I'm plugging it.

Not much to report. We finished Sistine Chapel, and watched the AIs cascade through the other middle age wonders (Babylon got Art of War and Copernicus, India got Leonardo).

War between India and Babylon is over. Babylon and Aztecs still at war.

We brokered astronomy to Aztecs for 20 gold + 6 gold/turn, and sold iron to Germans for 50 gold + 9 gold/turn.

There's more silk now in our territory we could connect and sell.

:sleep:

A fairly uneventful 10 for me. Mostly just building stuff. France and Germany are now at war, which probably works out well for us.

I did do a lot of tech brokering though.

Here's my notes, I didn't bother with a turn by turn log:
Discover Printing Press
Printing Press to Babs for world map, 17/turn, 20 gold
Printing Press to France for 8/turn, 7 gold
Printing Press to Aztecs for 2/turn, 20 gold
Germany declare war on France
Discover Gunpowder
Trade Silks to France for 5/turn, 70 gold
Ashur deflects to us.
Trade Printing Press and Gunpowder to Germany for Navigation and 20 gold
Trade Navigation to India for 5/turn, 60 gold
Trade Gunpowder to Babs for 2/turn, 30 gold
Trade Navigation to Aztecs for 4/turn
Flora begins Magellan's Voyage
Discover Banking
Trade Banking to Germans for 7/turn, 3 gold
Trade Banking to Aztecs for 8/turn, 13 gold
Trade Banking to Babs for 6/turn, 18 gold
Trade Banking to French for 24 gold

We seem to be slowly swallowing our area with culture. I also deliberately brokered as much as I could since our economy was poor. It's a lot better now, and the other civs are mostly totally broke, which should let us grow a tech lead in upcoming turns. As an added bonus, everyone's quite pleased with us. Joan loves us. :D

The bad news is we dont have saltpeter, and we'll have to fight if we want to get some I think. However, we do have a fair few units sitting around that at the moment are just costing us money, so some sort of war might be called for (probably need to decide on strategy now and stick to it, so as not to break all the per turn deals I set up).

We've got Magellan's going, which I think we can get. In the turn I saved the game, we'd just started researching Economics, so feel free to change it, it wont cost us anything. I figured Economics was good for us though since it would allow us to shoot for another wonder.

Are we starting to get a potential tech lead going here? Do we need to start being careful about how much tech we give away?

Should we be going for some other wonder than Magellan's? Should we be considering devoting more than one city to wonders?

Tech stinginess, it seems, is more an art form than a science. Refresh my memory, Zed, Carbon, somebody: what victory options are on the table for this game, and which ones are we considering pursuing? We've done remarkably well at peaceful expansion, having had numerous cities flip to us thanks to several factors. All you folks who did a lot of early military buildup are to thank for that. (I seem to remember mostly building infrastructure or expanding settlements on my turns, except that one when the major war was brewing and I didn't yet know whether we were one of the targets or not). All those units have kept us from being attacked, and just as importantly, kept OUR pressured cities from flipping, due to strong garrison. So... they have flipped to us a lot.

One's moves sounded really good to me. Brokering is often the most effective way to GET a lead. It can also speed or even accelerate that lead. The question is, is more of a lead of more value? Or is it ultimately more beneficial to nurse a lesser lead, but to keep the AI's in lower tech for longer, because your lead has you building rails and factories, and the more time passes, the more of a PRODUCTION edge you develop. Holding them back in the middle age while you rush to steam for production and military advantage is what to do for a military scenerio, but that presumes going on the attack at some point. Are we even considering that here? We might be able to keep our heads low as long the AI's keep going at it. Too much war for them keeps them in unproductive governments. We might win the space race without firing a shot.

What do you fellas think we should set as our goals?


- Sirian

From page 1, post 1, no victory options are disabled.

As it stands I think we've got the moxie to maintain tech parity, but I'm not sure about our ability to pull away from the pack. We could try to use the AI's having given us all their gold as a launch pad to tech supremacy, but I'm concerned that even so they'll be able to keep up at 2nd+ civ prices, given their emperor-level bonuses. Both Azteca and Babylonia are roughly our size in terms of number of cities, so unless they remain at war with each other for a long time and build up a lot of units while neglecting city improvements they ought to be able to keep up.

In short, while we're no longer sucking hind teat, we we're still not the front-runners.

It might be nice to grab enough of India to make it worthwhile to build a FP. They've already been weakened substantially by their (losing) war with Babylon; if we could pull off a quick smash and grab it would solidify our position enough to be reasonably sure of a space (or other) victory; even if one of the AIs pulls off a similar coup, we could probably distract a single opponent sufficiently with a late-game war to ensure we finish first. Any more than that would be heading toward domination or conquest, which I don't think we want to do just yet. Even if the AIs go vulture on whatever part of India we don't grab, it will be more or less useless to them because of its distance from their capitals.

I think that the Aztecs may have given us a good opportunity here by distracting the Babylonians, perhaps we should take advantage of it?

One other alternative would be to try to tackle the Babs while they're still at war with the Aztecs. This is quite a bit riskier in that the Babs are probably the strongest civ on the planet right now, but by the same token if we are successful the rewards are better. We probably don't have enough of an army to pull this one off in the near term, however, whereas we might be able to take a good chunk of India with what we've got (Immortals) and just replace our defenders at home.

Such complex issues when you can SEE your enemies! :lol:

Sounds like a lot of options, just wanted to pop in and say u guys are going great so far, and wish ya luck...

:hammer:
Charis

We're coming up on 24. Who's up in the order? :groucho:

See my related post in the Infantry thread for the full details.

Not sure how to call this one, but we don't have to decide who we're fighting anymore, at least. Took my "up to 15 turns" option and played 14. Turn by turn:

900 AD

-I survey the game. For some reason, the Aztecs value their world map above all of our possessions. So I am going to send the galley around to fog-bust and see what's so damn valuable (turns out it's nothing)

-Figuring fighting India will be more rewarding than trying to take on Babylon, I start moving surplus Immortals and horse riding units to Arbela to await the finishing of all those cathedrals (which are more or less required to ensure population growth in the east).

-Stalled several cities on growth until they can complete their cathedrals

-Put Delphi on break-even food, max shields. No sense for it to run a surplus at size 12.

910
-Indian settler pair enters our territory. I use some of our surplus military to play passive-aggressive and prevent it from going past the line from Bombay to Arbela.
-buy Music Theory and the French world map for 115 gold. I switch Delphi to JS Bach, though it probably won't finish it

920
-Babs want to renegotiate our gems deal. We're unable to meet any price they set, so every town except for Delphi and a few of the smaller ones go into disorder between turns. I hire entertainers in a lot of them.
-Babylon, France, India all start on JS Bach

930
-Aztecs start JS Bach
-negotiate a silk + 5 gpt for dyes deal with India. I fire all the entertainers I hired last turn.

940
-Susa finishes aqueduct, starts marketplace
-Ockley finishes aqueduct, starts marketplace

950
-zzz

960
-Economics learned, start on Democracy
-drop sci by one, go from -7 gpt to +18
-changed Bacta to courthouse

970
-zzz

980
-Babylon demands Economics. I refuse, they declare war. I guess we won't be needing all those units by India, then :spank: . I begin moving all units that weren't there before back to the western front. I also dispatch a few Immortals to take out Lahore.

-I form an alliance with the Aztecs against Babylon at the cost of their treasury (18g), world map (worthless), and 5 gpt

-Immortal kills a pike guarding Lahore, Golden Age begins. Did that set a record for the latest golden age for Persia ever triggered by an Immortal winning?

990
-Germany finishes JS Bach, Delphi switches to Adam Smith

-Lahore razed. Gordium and Bacta finally have room to breathe now. Cultural borders still encompass all the land, no place for the AI to resettle it.

1000
-MMOT (Much Movement of Troops, the horse-mounted ones arrive at their destinations)

1010
-I go into overtime to get at least a handle on this war before passing off
-Pasargadae finishes University, starts Knight
-Indians and Babs switch to Magellan. India is building it in a size 2 town with no improvements, though the Bab town might give Flora a run.

-I establish an embassy in Paris. Paris is in civil disorder, suffering from big time war weariness.

-I look at the world map and Germany and Azteca are decidedly losing. The Aztecs are down to two cities on their homeland (with a third in India), Germany is down to four cities now.

-I turn the sci slider way down, gain 120+ gold on this turn.

1020
-Persepolis finishes aqueduct, starts knight
-Democracy researched, I hold off on revolt to let the wonders continue and to allow what little wartime production we have right now to continue. We have blunted all their attempts at offense so far, but we have suffered losses in our Immortal ranks that we don't have the capacity to replace right now.
-Chemistry started. 5 turns @ +23 gpt.

1030
-Germans are starting Adam Smith. Since they actually built JS Bach, this is likely from scratch, and they'll probably lose that city to France before it's done for them.
-France offers an alliance vs. Germany and a RoP. I toss in an alliance versus Babylon and the contents of their treasury and call it a deal. I plan on helping France defeat Germany exactly as much as France intends to help us defeat Babylon, but it will help the war weariness a bit to have another ally out there if/when the Aztecs get whooped.

1040
-Burlington finishes cathedral, starts Knight
-Arbela finishes cathedral, starts Knight
-Susa switched to Knight

Summary:

The next 10 turns are crucial. Within that time, almost all of the cathedrals and aqueducts will be built and all of the available wonders will be claimed, one way or another. Flora is six away from Magellan, Delphi is seven away from Adam Smith. We need to get some troops headed west as soon as all those buildings are done, this war would be a lot more to our advantage if we could have held it off until all those "one last building before we start making troops" buildings were done. C'est la vie. Other than razing Lahore, I've done nothing on the offensive. I tried a pre-emptive strike on Akkad, but I was only able to take out one of their defenders before all the horsies were down to 1 hp, and they've since moved a musket into town. Our objective if we are able to take territory would be to control the gems in the south, which probably means taking Akkad, also. We need more troops to do that, though. All my Immortals have been doing are blunting the stacks of knights that they've sent to us (a 4 hp Immortal is usually able to make a 4 hp Knight on a hill retreat, and this also works for mountain-based knights somewhat). The only non-partisan in this fighting is India, and they will join on our side for all the money we have, all the money we are making (in Golden Age commerce), and our world map. Those settler pairs that they were trying to move through our territory I allowed through and they are attempting to settle the abandoned ivories, which may make them more or less likely to turn to our side, I can't tell. They haven't left our territory yet, though.

Ok, got it. May get a chance to play tomorrow, may not.

Ok, got part of a turn done yesterday. Will keep going tonight, hopefully get a bit more done.

Well, my time's up. Only got 6 turns done, but it evens out the turn increments, right? :)

1040 AD (0): Swap production on a few cities. Why we are building Knights in cities without Barracks I don't know. If we're going to build regulars we should at least be building cheap throw-aways like Immortals or Pikemen to get our unit count up so the AI doesn't think we're a pushover. We hurry an aqueduct in Antioch -- it needs to build a barracks, and there's too many shields to waste switching it now. Our military is really on the low end right now, we need more units pronto! I lower our science to 40 - we still get Chemistry in 3 turns and it gives us a bit more gold to play with.

1050 AD (1): Bombay builds Cathedral, starts Pikeman. Persepolis buils Pikeman, starts another. It has 10 shields so low-cost units will be built here. Antioch builds Aqueduct, starts Barracks. There's no way we can hold Ashur, and it has no city improvements, so we switch it to catapult. We move a couple captured workers toward Flora.

1060 AD (2): Tarsus completes Cathedral, starts Harbour -- it's too far away and too low on shields to really help with the war effort, and really needs food. Ashur completes catapult, and we abandon it. Burlington and Persepolis complete Pikemen, start more.

1070 AD (3): Here they come! Babylon retakes Ashur and sends a Knight against Antioch, which knocks itself down to 1 hp and remains vulnerable in our territory. Several more Knights and Pikemen surround Antioch and are moving toward Persepolis. Bombay completes Pikeman, starts Barracks. Susa completes Harbour, starts catapult. We research Chemistry, start Metallurgy - 6 turns. Our Horseman in Antioch kills the 1-hp Babylonian Knight, then returns to the city to be upgraded. Our Immortals cause 3 Knights south of Antioch to retreat, then 2 Horsemen from Flora and Persepolis and a sacrificial warrior from Antioch rush in to finish them off. Our Knight kills a Pikeman guarding a Longbowman. We move a couple Pikes out of Antioch to cover our victorious Horses & Knight.

1080 AD (4): More Babylonian Knights and Longbows approach Antioch. The Longbowman kills our sacrificial warrior, but otherwise no casualtes. War weariness strikes our cities, necessitating some temporary entertainers to prevent unrest. Madras completes Cathedral, starts Barracks. Burlington completes Pikeman, starts another. Arbela completes Knight, starts another. A Knight from Antioch kills a Bab knight on the plain, and a Horseman gets revenge for the warrior & kills the Longbowman. Our Immortals chase 2 Knights into the hills but we are unable to pursue.

1090 AD (5): Yet more Babylonian reinforcements arrive. Our pikes in Antioch kill 2 attacking Longbows but we lose 2 to Knights. We complete a Pikeman in Persepolis and start another. The Indians are building Smith's but they are a bit late. :) We sortie an Immortal against Ashur and weaken the defending Knight - a followup with one of our Knights kills him and reveals he was Ashur's only defender! We raze the city and get a couple workers, and our Knight withdraws to Antioch. Our catapults and Knights sortie to kill 3 enemy Knights south of Antioch, while an Immortal is killed in exchange for 2 swordsmen outside the city walls. Our Immortal kills a Pikeman outside of Persepolis.

1100 AD (6): An Immortal is killed outside of Antioch by a Knight, but a lone Aztec Longbow travelling from India avenges him! We complete Magellan in Flora and start building Knights. Bombay completes Barracks and starts Pikemen again. Susa completes a catapult and starts another. India and Babylon switch their best cities to Smith's, but we'll finish it next turn. War weariness strikes a couple of cities, which get entertainers. Looks like we've polished off the first wave of Bab knights -- all they've got in the vicinity to throw at us are some spearmen! :lol: We kill one with a Knight. Of course, some of those Bab Knights were only wounded, they'll be back. We need a LOT more troops before we start thinking about seriously going on the offensive.

Diplomacy: Didn't do much. Wanted to trade for French luxuries but they don't have a port. :( We could shop Chemistry around in theory if we needed anything but we might want to hold onto it if it gives us a tech advantage.

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...

Inherited Turn: knowing that we have about six or seven turns of Golden Age left, I find myself faced with a difficult dilemma. When we entered into the deal with Joan, the GA hadn't started yet. If honor it, our whole GA is going to go up in smoke building knights to fight off Babylon, and our future is going to go down the drain. We DID get two wonders of it, and that's great, but... I check with Hammi and he's ready to call it quits on this war, too.

See, the problem is this: post-medieval, a civ can get a military golden age any time it likes. It's called Mobilize for War. I rarely find myself needing to use this option because I usually have a commanding production/infrastructure advantage by this time anyway, and can outproduce an opponent without having to dedicate my entire civ to mobilized unit production. Well, this here situation amounts to a pre-nationalism "mobilize for war" as we are mostly building military. So... what do we have to GAIN from dragging this war out? Nothing except saving our reputation.

Pitting that against a chance to construct a Forbidden Palace NOW, our last real hope of doing so in time to matter, and catching up on infrastructure shortfalls in some places, building banks (which go along with our new Smith wonder) and getting Wall Street online asap... I accept that my decision may be unpopular, and that its costs will be steep, but this war must end. Now.

Before I make peace, I look to see what, if any, final gains I can take from Babylon. Hmm, we don't have all that many units, or rather, most of our knights are wounded. We have one horse and one knight available in spice town, but I recall Zed's report talking about how thin the Bab's seemed to be by the end of his turn. I run our horsie out to scout Akkad. I see one musket, regular. Well, I'm about to make peace anyway, so nothing lost by taking a longshot. I attack. Horsie takes off one hp, then retreats. I send in our knight... he kills the musket... AND AKKAD FALLS TO US!

Hammi and I make peace, I extort his treasury and some gpt, and Joanie is now quite upset with us, and our reputation is shot. The AI's are going to want cash now for luxuries, they won't be taking gpt. But we have Sistine, and if cathedrals can be built, and the FP brought online, we'll get through it.

I swap Pasargadae to Forbidden Palace (thank goodness it was almost done with cathedral.) I swap to courthouses in Bombay and Madras, and infrastructure in every city we own, maxing shields, and in some cases running food deficits. At 2 food deficit per turn, Pasargadae says "10 turns" for the FP. The GA will run out before then, but I get all I can out of it.

1110AD: Smith completed in Delphi. Yay. Starts bank. Chemistry researched, start Physics, make trade deal with Joanie, one lux and some minor cash for one of her lux. Lux rate dropped to 10% and science pushed to get Physics in 4 turns.

1120AD: Resistance ends in Akkad. Starvation begins.

1140AD: Fort Sirian founded in gap between us and Babs, to serve as our forward defense base, and provide more buffer for them to have to go through to threaten Flora.

1150AD: Physics learned, start Theory of Gravity.

1160AD: Dephi finishes bank, starts cranking pikes at 1 per turn. Burlington finished its bank and is building pikes every three turns.

1180AD: Our golden age is over. The announcement will come next turn, but I see the production bonuses are gone now. The FP, which was 2 turns short of completion, now need 4 more turns. I put delphi on colleseum placeholder, pending the next wonder. Joan starts building Shakespeare's.

1190AD: I increase Pasargadae food deficit to FIVE per turn (with 11 units left in its granary) to speed FP production by one turn, now due in two more turns instead of three.

1200AD: Theory of Grav learned, start Magnetism. I hoped to make it by 1250, when my 15 turns max comes due, but it doesn't look like that will be possible. Delphi now building Newton.

1210AD: Forbidden Palace completed in Pasargadae. They desperately need a cathedral, but they also have just one food left in the box, so I have to put them on food surplus, and the cathedral will just have to take a bit longer. The good news: we have a bunch more production and income from all our eastern cities now, including some that were hopeless that will now become major cities once rails come online. Several cities finish vital infrstructure upgrades and are swapped back to military production.

1220AD: Babs make peace with Aztecs, who have lost their entire homeland. They now start moving toward US again, and I am sending pikes westward as fast as they will go.

1230AD: I rush the library in Fort Sirian, at ~120gold. Need to push those borders back. No such rush in Akkad, where flip danger is deemed too high, plus we don't have the budget for it anyway.

1240AD: Babs now moving aggressively into our territory. I don't like this, as we may go back to nasty war weariness if they attack us too soon, before that can unwind itself. Plus, they have been cranking knights while we build buildings. Just need to hold out a FEW more turns, then we could mobilize for war (I expect us to get Nationalism for free as our new era gift).

1250AD: I get reinforcement pikes into western cities. Babs turn around and head home. Guess they changed their mind? We are still one turn away from Magnetism and my production gambit is not quite complete. I make the presumptuous decision to run over the deadline :spank: to consolidate our situation.

1255AD: We research magnetism, enter a new era, get Nationalism for free, and start on Steam Power (due in 8 turns at break-even rates). Whew. I blow our treasury on a single pike upgrade to rifle in silks town, where there half a dozen Bab knights hanging out, on their way back into their territory.


So here's what we have achieved to counter our diplomatic black eye: we have a forbidden palace. We have a MUCH better economy, now with five banks, and able to build wall street (though I think get Newton first). I have completed VITAL infrastructure upgrades in almost every city, and have swapped half of them back to military production, with several riles underway and some barracks in other cities ready to start building units. Akkad was starved down, though some inattentiveness to that on my part delayed the process. Sorry.

If Babs or anyone else attacks us, MOBILIZE and give them the full business. As good as our economy now has become, we're lacking saltpeter, and should concentrate (IMO) on building rifles and only rifles, as units. It would cost us too much to get saltpeter, either way, for cavalry, in my view, and we frankly DO NOT WANT any more territory, with the possible exception of Shurrupak and its gems, or Delhi and its Leo wonder.

Next player up has wide open options, on every front except diplomatic. I made some very tough choices here, but I felt that squandering the tail end of our Golden Age, now that my predecessors had fought the war well enough for Babs to offer us peace, was simply too high of a price to pay for keeping our word to France. This is Emperor, after all, and trying to sustain a full 20 turns of alliance in representative governments is dicey at best.

I'll give back that extra turn next time I'm up, and take just 9. I would suggest not revolting to Democracy until we have finished Newton and built some more rifles. We NEED to swap to Demo, IMO, but the cost of losing Newton or getting caught in a new war with Babs unable to produce units, is just too risky for the short term, so the change should wait.


- Sirian

I definitely won't get to this before tomorrow.

I must press my fingers to keyboard in other endeavors until I can get a project due 11:59 pm on Monday out the door. If it gets to me from Jaffa and OneInTen before Tuesday, and Sirian is feeling frisky, he can just skp me. BTW, with Zed out, the turn order should now be:

Carbon
Sirian
Jaffa
One

Not looking for replacements, though I don't think there are too many who would volunteer.

As for the way this game is going, I should reiterate that this was intended as a no-pressure learning experience. If there's any harebrained schemes or walking-the-knife's-edge gambits that anyone is wanting to try, I wouldn't mind steering this game into the ground too much if it's in the name of science and we all learn something from this game (besides that it takes Babylon a lot less time to build stuff than it takes us). Having stated that, I would appreciate you mentioning your intention to do something wacky first before going out and doing it, and it's also worth mentioning that suicide and autonihilism are neither schemes nor gambits (at least give us half a shot to succeed).

Phrased another way, I'd like to see a bit more "risky" play here, with the real chance of losing out, rather than what we've been doing for most of the game, which is middle of the road conservative play leading to an inevitable late-Industrial/early modern clearing of the board when the AI finds itself unable to cope with tanks and artillery (and I won't deny that I'm the most guilty of that of the entire bunch).

What's wrong with conservative? :)

I would imagine just posting any kind of win for what appears to be (yes? no? ???) the first Emperor level succession game at this forum, would be enough to shoot for. We appear to have survived the most dicey periods, but it's not yet in the bag.

What kind of gambits are you talking about anyway? Almost sounds as if you're disappointed that we're not getting munched on by the AI's here? :)

- Sirian

Actually, I did kind of expect us to be handed a loss at one point or another by this time. We got by far the worst starting conditions of any civ, though we were fortunate enough to not draw the Aztec sharks as our ancient era next door neighbors.

I guess that I'm just somewhat disappointed that we've been unable to do anything more to this point than to struggle forward with our building efforts and react to the AI when the AI forces us to react. I guess if we can get to Hoover this game that we could finally move from reaction to proaction, but I'm pondering our chances of ending up with rubber or coal in our territory, we didn't get any jungle in our starting position. Though if we do get coal, I'd say we've got a better chance than usual of drawing a city capable of Iron Works.

And one more thing. To the southeast of Delphi there's a few dead squares. After seeing how well Phoenix and New Bombay have done us in RBD 3, would we be able to squeeze a drafting city in that gap? Do we have a potential drafting city already in place? Would help our military a ton to have "free" infantry/rifles every turn.

I already put a city there, sorry for not mentioning it. I didn't do so specifically as a draft city, though. It has 3 grassland and one lake tile. With rails, that's 16 food, so it could support size 8 with four mined mountains in use, that could be quite the producer with a factory, and that's presuming it doesn't borrow any land.

The Draft Rush, rather like the Despotic Whip Rush, relies on the faulty priorities of happiness effects. It's honestly something that ought to be corrected in a new patch. I know I introduced it in RBD3, but I'm growing less comfortable with exploiting it. I have 500 units in my prototype infantry game (single player), and almost half of them came from the draft. That has rather made the game too easy, I fear. Like the whip, the draft is a really nice tool to have on hand, but something's definitely amiss with the ability to draft endlessly without penalty. It's one thing to use it in a city or two on a large map bent on conquest, and perhaps something else in this situation. After all, we don't necessarily have all that long to wait. A space victory might be a better option than conquest. Unless we plan to try to conquer the whole planet, we actually don't want any more land. We're at the limit of what we can handle in terms of corruption.

Rubber can also show up in forests, and we had some of those. If not, maybe we'll take some rubber from India.

As for just eking it out and taking what the AI's let us have, that's the way things break in Emperor games, especially ones played in classic style, rather than whip frenzy. You start out behind and play to catch up. My move to build the FP and bolster our main infrastructure was aimed precisely at pushing us past the AI on research and production.

Now that we can mobilize, and draft, anybody wanting a piece can come get some. :soldier:


- Sirian

Great succession game!

Could somebody please post a screenshot?

Yeah. :) As requested, a screen shot.

Ya know, I just noticed, Xochilalco is rather highly
pressured now. Perhaps it will flip to us soon. :)

And check out the histograph as I'm starting my turn, with Germans and Aztecs almost down to the vanishing point :D

(BTW, the culture histographs shows Aztecs still at half our total. There's no way they've got that much culture in their one remaining city, so I'm guessing it still counts the culture they contributed in cities that now belong to other Civs?)

Yeah, culture is a running sum. When it appears to "slip", it's not because your culture is declining, but because its growth has slowed relative to the growth of others. A "shrinking" culture just means that your sum as a % of the whole world's total is shrinking. You can even still be outgrowing all the other civs in culture per turn and STILL slowly losing ratio % of the whole, if you started out with a huge lead via early temples, while all the other civs had nothing but their palace for the first few thousand years.

- Sirian

Not much to report, really. At start of turn I sold Germany one of our spare iron for 8 gold/turn, and put Delphi on temporary food shortage to complete Newton's in 9 turns. And I vetoed production of a warrior in Antioch. Hope that wasn't part of some vital long-term strategic plan :)

For the rest of the turn, I built riflemen and infrastructure, watched Babylonian knights and Indian elephants on manouevres, and started railroading after steam power came in.

Oh yes, and Karachi revolted to us in 1275. That was unexpected. With 3 Indian and 3 Babylonian citizens, and right next to the Indian capital, I didn't much like our chances of hanging onto it. In fact, I so didn't like our chances, I took the free rifleman and left it undefended for a couple of turns.

Somewhat to my surprise, Karachi is still ours at the end of my turn. I've allowed it to have a spearman for defense :)

Delphi started on Wall Street after we built Newton's. I intended this as a placeholder for Universal Suffrage -- don't think Wall Street is going to be much use to us for a while, with our feeble treasury.

Assuming nobody minds, I may take a turn occasionally on a weekend on a sort of jump-in basis. Similar arrangements have been made in the other 2 succession games I've been participating in, but this is the one I was actually most interested in since it was the only one on Emperor difficulty.

Not this weekend though... :)

I wonder if the new Aztec capital will start converting some of the Indian cities up on the peninsula? Indian culture seems pretty weak. :) We might want to starve Karachi and let it rebuild our citizens to reduce its flip-factor.

If you call it, you can have it. Maybe next week.

OK, got it, will play tonight.

Well, I was certainly cursed with "interesting" times.

Seeing as we were trying to build railways, I decided that double worker rate looked attractive and a switch to democracy might be nice.

Unfortunately, at the same time the Babs decided we looked like a nice target for war. In 1320 they declared war with us. Heaps and heaps of horses spotted on the hills. It didn't look good.

Unfortunately, nobody would even consider allying with us. Oh dear, we're on our own. Maybe crossing Joanie wasn't such a great idea ...

In short, we were slaughtered. We've lost 3 of our western cities, all of which were heavily defended. We had a great leader, but he got lost in the crossfire.

I don't see a way out of this hole - we were in anarchy for about 8 turns, and in desperation I chose despotism when we came out. Ouch, pop rushing is expensive for this age of units! Probably a bad idea, but by this stage I'd given up on our chances anyway.

Sorry if I didn't play the war very well, but I just didn't see a way we could win so found it hard to get the motivation to try to hard.

In short I think I stuffed up by going into anarchy when the babs still hated us and we were fairly thin on the ground in terms of units. And it looks like we've lost because of it.

Oh well. :(

Since Carbon is occupied until Tues at the earliest, and Zed is offline during weekdays, I went ahead and jumped in here. I hope that's OK with everybody. :)

OneInTen: Don't fret, all is not lost. The overweight woman has not yet put in her appearance on the stage. (Fat Lady hasn't sung yet). Going to Despotism wasn't the best move, but frankly, it's not as bad as it looked. With oppressive war weariness still hanging over our heads from the last war, even if you had taken us to democracy, we MIGHT NOT have been able to stay there anyway, not with the Babs coming this hard. Where we are going to have go now is... Monarchy. That would have been the best move you could have made for us, but there was always the hope that the Babs would hold off longer, and we could get an industrial base in place. Guess not, but we'll get there.

Our losses certainly sting, but Akkad was just a reach on my part (and now it's been razed, so the Babs don't have it either). Fort Sirian was just military buffer, it has actually rather served its purpose for the moment, which was to buy us time. Losing silk town is the one that stings, but only for the luxury. It was too corrupt to do much of anything for us beside more military buffer, and that's about all it's worth to Hammi as well.

All of our valuable producers are still intact at the end of your turn.

Poprushing definitely not the way to go, though.


Inherited Turn: First order of business, open up F1, click "Normal" and change to "War Time." Let's roll.

There's a cav in the field with 1 hp left. I use our normal immortals from some eastern city, shipped in by rail, to go out and take them down. (The immortals will be slaughtered on the Babs' turn, but trading immortal for cav is a must do at this point).

Finally, I kill all science. We will need a robust military budget to upgrade our many pikes to rifle. We're only going to bring in enough cash on each turn to upgrade 1.5 pikes, but that beats 0 by a long measure.

I leave a couple of eastern cities on vital infrastructure. Everyone else is now building units.

1355: Oh man, Hammi's got enough thoroughbreds to run the Kentucky Derby. All by himself. Well, OK, we really could use a hand here. "Um... Ghandi? Yes, sir, we'll give you Steam if you jump in here. Oh you will? That's simply splendid! Thank you very much. Yes, we have boxcars by the bushel lined up in Arbela, waiting to haul your jumbos to the front lines, just step this way, please. Very good."

1360: India enters the war in earnest. Hammi burns Calcutta to the ground. Babs mostly target the arriving Indian troops. I do some more counterattacks on exposed, wounded knight/cav and get kills, but of course every unit so spent will be slaughtered by the Babs in turn, and we're running out of spare immortals to be doing this with.

1365-70AD: Hammi pillages land around Flora. Our newly trained knight takes out a cav. Much bloodshed by all three armies.

In 1370, I decided we had upgraded enough pike to rifle, and trained enough new troops -- and India had enough troops in the field, helping us -- that we could bite the bullet and revolt again. I prayed for 4 or 5 turns, got 5! Whew. At least it wasn't another nasty 8 jobber.

1375-90: India's troops dry up, as do almost all the rest of our expendables. We lose about seven (7!) rifles in this span, most in the field in various capacities (fortified on hills even) and two inside Flora. Hammi's got a couple units in reach of Bombay and even Delphi now, but we are not yet in any danger of losing more cities, even though I had to leave some cities in the back line empty for a short time to shuffle enough reinforcements to the front.

1395AD: Government switched to Monarchy. I dispatched a note to Babylon: "You chose unwisely." The path of our future is now set. This planet ain't big enough for the both of us. One of us is going to have to go, and I don't intend for that to be us.

1400AD: India returns to the action with a couple units, downing three more red cavalry. This war still needs a LOT of care and attention, as it could still be lost, but I think we have weathered the worst of it now, as Hammi is no longer sending stacks, but just trickles. I skimmed draft units off the top in Bombay and Delphi because both had reached max size/food, but we don't want to be overdoing the draft. Stick with production of units for the most part. Shangri-La CAN be set up as a draft-rush site, but needs a cathedral first.

At what point we can go back to research, I'm not sure, but we cannot undo War Time Mobilization until the war ends, and our alliance with Ghandi does not expire until 1455. So until AT LEAST then, all we can build is units or military infrastructure -- or peaceful projects that were started before I mobilized us. It would be nice to have industrialization by that time, but there are still more pikes we could upgrade. Play it by ear. Our number one priority now is just staying alive and not losing any more cities.

Carbon wanted interesting, well we've definitely got that now. ;)

I presume the rest of the order for this turn would go:

Carbon
Jaffa
OneInTen

Buckle up. This is going to be a rough ride and a long haul. When we do get peace... no more Right of Passage for Hammi, ever. We may be stuck in Monarchy, but he's going to be too. It's World War. And Joanie is taking the chance to roll over Germany while the rest of us are occupied.


- Sirian

Oh yeah, I guess I should attach the file, too. :)

Oh one more note: at the end of 1400AD, there were two bab cav in range of Flora with just 1 hp left. I used our last two expendable units, an immortal and a REGULAR WARRIOR, to kill these cavalry off. Watching a regular warrior finish off a cav on a hill was worth the whole deal. I do have more immortals in production at weaker cities, as it's just too costly to use rifles for counterattack (I'm not sure it's worth spending a rifle to take out a cav, although I did so on several occasions -- but that was before India's extra units all went poofie. Now it's down to actual city defense, and our anarchy has ended just in time to build more reinforcements).

Oh the shame of having your cavs ambushed and slain by a pack of stone age warriors! :lol:

- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
I presume the rest of the order for this turn would go:

Carbon
Jaffa
OneInTen

Fine with me. I probably wouldn't have time to take a turn before Wednesday, anyway.

I noticed in that screenie that Tenochtitlan has revolted back to Azteca. :lol: Poor Hammi. I think we have a decent shot of watching Antioch flip back to us, too, if we don't liberate it first. It's full of our citizens and under border pressure. If Hammi's garrison there lightens up at any point, could be some really bad news for him. :) And I don't think he would raze it with a Luxury in range. Sure would be awfully nice if a revolt obliterated his stacks of wounded/recovering cavs stationed there. :lol:

- Sirian

Just think, not too long ago we were thinking of ripping India a new one, and now they're our best buddies! Good thing we didn't piss them off earlier... :)

[Pep Talk]

I agree 100%, this dance with the Babs has gone on more than long enough. We all know the AI cannot compete with human players in rail-assisted warfare, and we've now got the tech we need to defeat them (Mobilization, Rifles, & Rails -- we might try to get ahold of Military Tradition from France/India as well if we don't have it yet.)

We need to put a serious hurting on the Babs to put them in their place and make it unlikely they will attack us again. Right now they are just too big for their britches. Once we've got a lock on the situation we can go back to peacetime mode and buy up any techs the AIs have gotten ahold of that we haven't found yet (or just get them from the Babs as part of the peace deal? Depends on whether we want cities more.)

The only thing we have to be careful about (other than winning the war) is not getting SO far behind on tech we can't get out of the hole. We can't afford to stay on wartime economy forever either... which means we can't be timid, turtle up, and just wait for the Babs to come to us. Wait until we have the advantage and can consolidate our gains, yes, but we must go on the offense at every reasonable opportunity!

[/Pep Talk]

The phrase "You have chosen unwisely" should now induce abject fear in the hearts of the AI's, for there is NO AI alive which was not punished in the most severe ways imaginable for such offenses.

Nice recovery Sirian! Up to Carbon to keep up his good work now. Good to see when (cough) nonoptimal choices do not cost the game, and folks become better players by both seeing the cost of such decisions, and solid ways to recover from them.

Charis

Well, we're not even remotely close to going on the offensive. It was just 10 turns ago that One declared "it's over". :) We don't have Military Tradition, and we don't have saltpeter either. Turtle is all we do have: a good enough situation to reach stalemate. We need peace first, so we can pause and build factories and some coal plants, too, and see what we can do about getting our own cavalry online. Also, we're BADLY strapped for lack of artillery. Two or three catapults does not cut the mustard in reducing charging units to scrap before they can do anything. I'd trade Susa for a stack of ten artillery right now. :)

Once we get factories rolling, then it will be time to mobilize again, and go on the offensive. If we try to attack without the necessary production, resources, and forces in place, we'll just end up worse off. We're in this mess because Babylon was able to defeat the Aztecs. There's just nothing for it, we're going to have to take them out. But there's no sense moving against them until we can accomplish something.


- Sirian

I should be more careful with what I wish for, as it looks like this one came true. I'll do my best to get 10 or so turns out tomorrow and to not flub them up (no guarantees ;) ).

The situation sounded bleak when One came along with his news, but now I have hope. In the long term, we need to beat Babylon down, if not conquer them outright. We'll never have peace with them as long as they're big and we're not small. I thought the solution to that would be to grow relative to them by consuming all or most of India, but they've forced us to re-think that plan.

I would hate to be Hammurabi's military advisor when he has to relay the news that their modern cavalry got beaten off a hill by men in loincloths wielding stone axes. :rofl: too bad it wasn't an elite warrior, we could have had a Great Leader out of him.

Well, to get factories, we must have peace -- we can't demobilize to make them otherwise. To get peace, we have to convince the Babs that we are not pushovers. Certainly we need to take Antioch aka Silktown back (assuming it doesn't flip back to us) and bloody the Babs nose enough that they are willing to talk about ending the war. We can't do that just sitting in our home cities.

I said take the offensive, but I also said wait until we have the advantage and are able to consolidate our gains. To me, turtling would be just letting the Babs have Antioch and allowing them to dictate when and on what terms the war ends. That will not get us factories any sooner. Yes, we are in a bit of a jam, and we have to be prudent in our offense, but we can't afford to ignore it altogether.

Just beating up enough of his units CAN lead him to agree to peace without demanding more concessions from us. True, he already took 3 of our cities, so that's more likely to make him bolder, but I wouldn't presume that we HAVE TO take back Antioch to get agreeable peace terms. That may turn out to be true, but be open to other possibilities.

In Apoly2, I had two stalemate "turtle" defensive wars vs India, both extremely dicey and in this same "they came in force, while we had inadequate defenses" situation. Both times, after their attacks were blunted, they PAID ME for peace, albeit only a small sum. Hammi is bleeding quite a bit from this attack now. He is losing on average about four units per turn, most of them pricey horses. All three of us were taking a bloodbath during my turn. I would tend to think that by the time our Alliance expires, and after 30 turns of war, that Hammi would take peace. I'd even bet on it. We can probably even get some concessions, too, minor ones.


- Sirian

If we can get peace just beating up his units, fine, but (a) we really need Antioch as a buffer city for the Babs to strike at the next time they come around, and (b) it might be possible, but it doesn't seem very likely, given our relative sizes and the Babs' having taken 3 cities already.

If we don't get Antioch back by the time we're ready to end the war, we should at least do a final offensive to take the city like we did last time around with Akkad, and THEN sue for peace. It would get us that vital buffer zone back and improve our position at the negotiating table. Failing that, we would have to try to get Antioch back at the negotiating table, which may not be easy since it's a luxury center.

There is mostly good news to post from my 10. Here's the details:

1400:

-I change the entertainer in Shangri-La to a scientist so we can at least get Industrialization in at minimum science.

1405:

-Germany doesn't like the iron for 8g/turn, but will go again for 6g/turn
-Our warrior on a hill takes out a Knight before being finally dropped by another Cavalry.


1410:

-Babylon produces a Great Leader when an elite cav takes out an Immortal left in the field :aargh3:
-I get a new RoP with France for 30g lump sum. They're still furious at us, though.

1415:

-Bloodbath for all three sides

1420:

-When my turn ends, there is not a single Babylonian unit on Persian soil. They still won't talk to us, though. From here on out, no Babylonian unit enters our territory and survives an entire round. :D

1425:

-Now, on THEIR turn, Babylon wants to talk with us, "demanding" a straight peace treaty. Not wishing to alienate our Indian allies (and only friends left on the planet) I refuse. I did see how willing Hammurabi was to make peace. He was willing to toss Free Artistry in with peace, or Military Tradition if we gave him 150g (by far the cheapest price for Mil. Tradition of any of the other civs).

-As if we needed more reasons to continue the war with Babylon, they used their Leader to make a cavalry army :eek: It only has 8 hp, though, so it's only 2 cav. Nonetheless, I vow to take whatever measures necessary to kill it off while it's still fortified in Antioch and before peace breaks out.

-The Indians manage to take Xochilalco.

1430:

-I manage to take the army down to 2 hp before I run out of units who can attack Antioch. "Best" defender switches to a conscript rifle, but it'll be back to the army next turn.

1435:

-More attacking Antioch. For several turns, Babylon has been unable to even move a unit within attacking range of any of my cities without being immediately cut down by combined Indian-Persian forces, so all units produced have been sent to Antioch.

-Karachi, which had been revolting for two or three turns, gets enough railroads and food in their radius that I can turn one of those whining Babs into an entertainer without starving them (on the other hand, just starving them out probably would have been a better option).

1440:

-I kill the army in Antioch :goodjob:

1445:

-Now that the army is taken out and Babylon has not been able to keep up with the units, I try to take Antioch itself before we negotiate peace. While one of my vet rifles takes out a defending vet rifle while only losing 1 hp, the conscript rifle that follows it kills 2 Immortals and a rifle, promoting all the way to elite, before dying.

1450:

-France defeats Germany. This means we have another silk and an iron to deal out if we can.

-I renew the straight RoP with India sometime during the last two or three turns.

-There is still one turn of alliance left with India. We can renegotiate peace with Babylon and have them give us concessions. We could also possibly retake Antioch in a few turns, which would be very nice, but is dependent on how long the next chief is willing to let this war last beyond what's absolutely necessary, and how lucky our attackers are.

-I left us on zero science + 1 scientist for the whole ten turns and pocketed the surplus, since I didn't perceive any pressing need to spend our cash. We're now 26 turns from Industrialization instead of 36 with a treasury of over 1000.

-We have an ironclad bombarding Shurrupak, which took out a library and hurt the feelings of the defending riflemen. Was there something else I was supposed to do with those Ironclads that were being built? I made a second one and it is going east to Babylon instead of west, but I don't see any Babylonian naval units, period.

Doing RBD5 first, but should have time to play them both on Wednesday.

Great job with the war, and with slaying their army. I knew from the end of my turn that they were running out of steam, and now that we're in Monarchy, we only need to pause once, long enough to get out mobilzation and build factories. We may not need to go back to mobilization, but if we do, it needs to be with better production on line.

Scrap the 40 turn concept entirely. On a SMALL map, it's a losing move at any point in the game, for any situation I can imagine, other than riding the Great Library. Large/huge maps might be a different story, but even there, this late in the tree, I don't imagine any use for it other than as pure catchup in the most dire situations, storing cash to buy tech at obsolete prices and trying to get a "free one" parallel to that. Those are OCC kind of tactics, really scraping bottom. Desperate. :)

Somebody who outperformed me in Apolyton 4 tried the 40 turn deal on the small map of Apolyton 5 and fell way WAY behind my result, because I pushed through the research and got off my continent much sooner. I finished in 1120AD and he didn't finish until 1460AD, some 55 turns later.

We absolutely, positively, cannot afford to wait like that for anything in this game. We're not going to get far without factories. Go ahead and research Industrialization, it was only going to take 6 turns at break even rates as of the end of my turn, and we must make haste once peace arrives. Skipping 20 turns of factory output would far and away eclipse any commerce savings. Monarchy research may be slower, but we don't need a tech lead. We just need those factories and coal plants, and then we can gear up the war machine. Our weariness with them is completely off the charts, we can't afford to keep revolting back and forth, and they can put us out of our misery if we try to cling to democracy. So... since THEY have forced it onto us to play from Monarchy, we're going to have to adopt a strat that fits with that government: war! And for keeps. Yet the sooner we increase production, the sooner we will pull ahead in the arms race.

Did you have some specific purpose in mind for storing this cash?


- Sirian

I agree with Sirian, we need Factories ASAP after we end war with the Babs, which means we need Industrialization ready right then. If we've upgraded everything we can, then we don't need a ton of extra gold except to rush improvements in captured cities we intend to use as forward bases. We should consider spending a bunch of it to speed our research.

I stayed at zero science in the beginning because we simply didn't have enough cash on hand and that was how the game came to me (running the scientist in Shangri-La seemed at least to be an improvement over that situation). I saved it at the end mostly because I had saved it at the beginning and was too focused on wiping out that army in Antioch (and possibly recapturing Antioch along with it) that I didn't stop to reevaluate why I was saving gold. I also wanted to hold some out in case we could persuade a civ to give us a tech in trade (since gpt deals are more or less out of the question except from India). I agree that now that the Babs are out of steam and we're for most practical purposes modernized, there was no reason for us to continue the zero science thing.

I also forgot to mention that the Babs later retook Xochilalco from the Indians. It's possible, though I can't remember, that the Indians then took it back from the Babs. I am writing this from a computer lab so I can't check to verify. During the second half of the turn, it appears that the Indians got into a production groove because I started seeing lots of cavalry coming from the Indian interior and taking out Babylonian cavalry (which then got blasted back by Babylon the following turn, ad infinitum).

Once peace is established, get some more rails in the west, the Indians frustrated me to no end whenever they'd run a unit through our territory and it ended its turn between the western terminus of our rail lines and Persepolis.

This is only semi-on topic, but: What makes a jumbo (Indian War Elephant) any different from your basic knight? I can only assume the Civilopedia has a typo in it, because both the elephant and the knight have 4/2/2 ADM listed. Perhaps one of the RBD1 alums or anyone who's had experience with the war elephant could elucidate. I am probably going to try for Apolyton 6 in between various SG endeavors, and I'm curious as to what all the fuss about elephants is about (especially how, for example, seeing them on patrol in RBD 3 would instill uneasiness while we have more or less neglected our Roman border and any possible knights that could be hiding therein).

I am also unsure of whether the forum is currently broken and new posts are being registered. I haven't seen any new ones for the past two hours, and while that's not unusual for this time of night, this board/database is known to be a bit on the flakey side.

Edit: it appears that it was just a slow 2 hours. But I'd still like to know about those jumbos.

The jumbos are just knights -- but no iron or horses are required to build them, so India WILL always have them. They are not really anything all that special, but they are one of the coolest looking/sounding units in the game. If India hasn't built wonders, then its jumbos also often kick off their golden age, which like Japan and China, is a nasty thing to be seeing compared to the despotic/wasteful GA's of most other civs.

BTW... Apoly6 is pretty rough. I'd say at least as harsh as 4 was.

- Sirian

Neat idea for unique traits. And I will take your word of caution under special consideration. Though I never played Apoly 4, your labelling it "rough" is all I need to paint a very bleak picture in my mind. And speaking of bleak pictures, here's a game that I wish I had a save from the first turn (so I could foist it upon your shoulders and see if there is a single ray of hope):

Huge map, 11 opponent civs
Chinese
Monarch
random landmass type (ended up to likely be some variant of continents),
warm/wet/3 billion
roaming barbarians

I was by myself. On an island. Smaller than Japan's homeland in RBD2 (and keep in mind that this is on a HUGE map), small enough to make RBD7 Cuba seem vast. There are no rivers. There are no luxuries. There is a one square inland lake upon which Beijing was founded. Most of the island is plains, hills north and east with a few grasslands to the north, a large unsettlable patch of mountains to the south and east. While there are "shore currents" to the mainland, this area is settled almost immediately by the two premier ancient powers, England and Egypt. With only room for about 9 cities with tolerable overlap and England/Egypt unwilling to do anything but extort me on any deal, I just quit shortly after the BC/AD switch since that sort of oppressive start wasn't something I was interested in overcoming.

Well, obviously, having a chance to start from the first turn would be best. Anything else becomes a "scenerio" instead of a full game, as the first 50 turns are the most crucial.

Sounds rough, though.

Yeah, yeah, which is why I won't. I also won't because I can't. I didn't take a single save of that game. I tend to play solo much differently from SGs...I hardly ever play through to the modern era, most city planning and long-term research goals are ad-hoc and eyeballed rather than doing any sort of "dot-mapping" exercises, and the first save usually doesn't come unless I decide the game is a "keeper" or I'm forced to quit.

Unlike Mr. "Rumble in the Jungle" Sirian, my SG efforts are definitely my A-game level of play, and what happens solo is typically just playing around waiting for the next SG turn to roll to me.

Great Game.

Just wondering if you guys are using a graphics modpack?
From your screenshots because the colour circles under your units are very helpful in identifying units nationality. If you are where did you get it?

0) 1450AD Switch to 100% science to get industrialization in 3 turns (-112 per turn).

Aztecs pay 1 gold/turn to renew RoP. Whoo. Better than nothing, at least.

1) 1455AD Our knight kills Babylonian cavalry. Cancel alliance with India. Antioch revolts back to us! Woot!

2) 1460AD Kill 2 Babylonian rifles and 1 pike, then talk peace. Hmmm. This turn Babylon expects us to pay them (last turn they would have paid us). Is this because Antioch is now ours, so we don't have any troops currently threatening their cities?

Oh well. Buy peace and military tradition for 400 gold. Then sell them silks for 8 gold/turn, and buy industrialization for 1 gold.

Why can't I build cavalry? Oh. No saltpeter. Drat.

4) 1470AD Watch Indian and Babylonian cavalry killing each other.

6) 1480AD Indians start on Universal Suffrage.

8) 1490AD The Aztecs demand iron, and declare war on us when we don't give it to them! Oooooh! We're so scared!

France started Universal Suffrage somewhere near the end of turn.

Both Babylon and France have spare saltpeter -- we could get a 20-turn deal from one of them and use it to upgrade our knights.

No sign of any Aztec troops yet, nor have we sent any of our troops to attack them.

We are behind in technology. As usual.

:spank:

It's a preference you can set. Something like "unit color discs enabled". When you're zoomed up, the discs are hollow, when you're zoomed out, they're solid.

And Jaffa...Nice turn, I guess. War with the Aztecs? And they expected us to GIVE them Iron? Are they importing some pungent weed from Charis? :smokin:

Let's wipe the floor with them, I'm still a little bloodthirsty from my turn in RBD3. :soldier:

One's up. :)


Hey Carbon, the patch is due out tomorrow. It fixes a lot of things, and none them should necessarily affect this game in any negative way. We're going to have to decide, for this and all the RBD games: to patch or not to patch.

I'm thinking go ahead and patch. Have you seen the patch readme? It's available here at CF in the General forum.


- Sirian

I'm for it, though if the other RBD games decide not to, then I'll hold off until then, I'm not going to unpatch/repatch ad nauseum. Phoenix and New Bombay from RBD 3 are gonna be screwed over, though (will they *ever* stop rioting if we allow them to grow?). I can't think of any sort of change listed in the readme that aversely affects what we're doing, so there shouldn't be a big deal. Heck, the Infantry game in particular got a HUGE break by this patch.

I agree, we should decide once for all RBD games. No sense in patching and unpatching and repatching and....

It's been a day and a half since Jaffa posted, and you haven't shown up. If you don't post a response within 12 hours of the timestamp on this post, then you'll get skipped this round. Zed, if you want, you can take your turn ahead of me in this game, and I'll take my turn in Infantry first.

It might also be to our advantage to get the Indians involved in an alliance vs. the Aztecs, it certainly wouldn't take them the full 20 turns to capture the current Aztec capital while we take Tenochtitlan ourselves. Something to think about.

I think the consensus from RBD is to patch. At the very least, when the turn comes around to me in this game we will be running under 1.17f, so if you don't have it yet, get it sometime before your next turn.

Ok, got it. We'll see what the patch does to our situation...

1500 AD (0): Applied patch. Didn't notice any of our cities affected by happiness issues. Changed a couple cities production off Ironclads to city improvements. Some places building aqueducts don't even have temples yet!

1505 AD (1): Some factories completed, we skim some workers before starting coal plants. How we got this far on just 9 workers I don't know. Another Ironclad completed, we start a settler. We top up our research tank on Sanitation from France for 40 gold & world map; Babylon now has Communism & Sanitation. We start research on Electricity; I fully expect to get beat to it. Antioch switches from temple to Barracks -- it has lots of our culture already and we need it more for a military base than any production it might generate.

1510 AD (2): The Babylonians are marching all kinds of Cavalry through our territory to get to India, including an army. We build 3 workers & start coal plants.

1515-1525 AD: Not much happens. Babs are moving through our territory. We found Fort Zed where Akkad used to be to act as buffer zone.

1530 AD (6): The Babs are starting to move back home, but I'm not sure why, as most of their troops haven't even gotten to India yet. We complete some coal plants. Delphi is working on a Hospital, and we skim another couple workers. Madras completes a Factory. France has Electricity. Perhaps we should start prebuilding for Theory of Evolution soon...

1540 AD (8): We got a couple more workers and factories done... Arbela starts pre-building ToE with a Palace, and Bombay is building Riflemen in preparation for the inevitable war with the Babs when our peace treaty expires. We need some more military buildup now that the latest round of infrastructure-building is about complete. Delphi is building a hospital but it's the only one since it's the only one that can get a substantial amount of increased production out of it; besides which we need our workers building rails, not cleaning up pollution.

1545 AD (9): We finish researching Electricity a turn early courtesy of India discovering it on the same turn. We start Scientific Method. We are behind in tech but not by a huge amount; hopefully we can parlay ToE into getting Atomic Theory and Replaceable Parts, but that requires us getting Communism and Espionage, the latter of which hasn't been researched by anyone yet. Delphi finishes hospital and starts Rifleman. We start hurrying defensive structures (walls, Barracks) on our Babylonian frontier.

1550 AD (10): We still have lots of Bab Cavalry on our lands and are badly in need of defense. India is not doing well in its war with Babylon, although so far they haven't lost any cities, so I fully expect the Babs will declare war on us as soon as the treaty expires (in only 2 turns). However, we now have several factories online and a couple more due next turn, as well as some cities with coal plants. So, with Mobilization, we should be able to pump out a lot of units in a hurry once war starts; however, we should make sure not to mobilize until we get ToE started (after that point mobilization will help get ToE done faster.) The other thing we want to make sure of is that we don't Mobilize for too long, as at some point we will want to start prebuilding for Hoover.

It's been 24 hours since Carbon's appeal to One, with no reply. He declared this game over, said he had lost the will to apply himself to the war on his last turn because he thought it was hopeless, and has pretty much vanished since then. We've gone out of our way to accomodate him on time, and he's not responding. I would like to see him either confirm that he's still interested, or do us the courtesy of a formal departure. This uncertainty is dragging things out.

One: nobody here's upset about that turn. But now you seem to be blowing us off. What's going on? Where do you stand?


In the mean time, I've got it. Wish me luck. :)

- Sirian

It's MY turn in this game. I can't play it till tomorrow evening (which would have made it too late for Infantry, which I why I passed after goofing), but still well within the window for THIS game. And I'll even play the right turn, too, I promise.

Hmm. You're right. I've been following Zed all along, but forgot that he's a free agent now in the turn order. I just made a habit of picking it up once he had posted.

I played a turn. Do you want me to sit on it (erase it) or post it?

- Sirian

If you've already played it, might as well post it. Then I'll pass off to Jaffa, then back to One if he's still up for the game (I hope he is), then back to normal order unless/until Zed interjects.

OK. :)

Inherited Turn: Zed's right, the Babs are all over our land, fighting with India still. We're not in great shape here. Not BAD, but not ready to fight, nor to mobilize. I could mobilize right now, as that ridiculous phony war the Aztecs dropped on us is still going, but I don't see us as ready. Still too many factories building, still too many coal plants unbuilt. I decide to sweat it out, keep our heads low, and go with Scientific Method. (I can't remember if we've invested any turns in that already or not -- normally I would just go for Rep Parts first, but normally I would also have some kind of tech lead by this point).

The city on placeholder... I take it off and start building rifles. It can make them every other turn. The rest of our cities are doing infrastructure. I swap Delphi over to Wall Street. Everything else is building factory, coal plant, or hospital. Small fry cities are put on basic infrastructure if not already there.

1555-1570AD: The Indians have RoP with us, Babs do not. So India is continuously running 4/5ths of their troops across our rails, past the Bab troops, and into position to attack Xochicalco. Babs then turn around and go back to attack these couple of horses each turn, and even though Babs only lose 1 for each 3 killed, you might say this tactic is "working" for the Indians, as it is keeping them alive longer. If all those troops got to India, cities would fall. Babs have a cavalry army, which wastes itself attacking Delhi (guess it failed its retreat roll). This is the ONLY attack the Babs actually make on Indian soil during my turn.

Joanie has researched Scientific Method, dropping the cost for us and now it's due sooner. Rather than let Wall Street complete, I swap Delphi to Suffrage. Only need to hold out one turn on that, then I can swap it to Theory of Evolution and snag that on my turn.

1575AD: Joanie's ships enter our waters. Uh oh, she's spotted one of our cities with just a spearman in it and is about to launch sneak attack. I check our agreements, find that we have RoP going for about 8 more turns. Bleh. If I declare war or attack, our rep goes into the drink. I may have to if she lands cavs. India sends its usual one or two cavs to Xochi, gets em killed. Dunno if Babs lost any this turn or not -- they weren't losing many.

ToE will be ours.

1580AD: We research Sci Meth. I start on Rep Parts and trade for Communism with Babs. (I gave up Sci Meth and some cash).

One French longbow lands near Ockley. I redistribute defenders, as this unit will have RoP until the moment it attacks, so it can reach any city it likes on our rail net. Fooey. Joanie ought to be SEVERELY penalized for this RoP betrayal, the same as the Human player ought to. How can Firaxis expect players not to rape the diplomatic system when the AI's already do it?

1585AD: Babs and India make peace. :( This is not good, the Babs start retreating from our land. If we are going to ambush their horsies, it would have to be done soon!

Joanie picks a city with a pike and immortal in it to attack. If that had been 2 cav instead of 1 bow, I would have HAD to attack them, as they could have taken our weakest city this way. Lucky for us, I could wait, and now Joanie's record is the one with the black eye. Our pike defeats her bow.

1590AD: Theory of Evolution completed! We receive... Replaceable Parts!?! Um... that's the one I was researching. Well, it will give us Espionage as the other tech, so I start us on Atomic Theory next. We receive Atomic Theory as our second tech! OK, they have definitely changed this. ToE now works like Darwin's Voyage from Civ2: it gives you whatever you are working on now, whatever you select. So... heh, I could have gotten us both Atomic Theory and Electronics! But I didn't know! Well, maybe this is better anyway. I blow ALL of our cash (we have 3 left) upgrading our rifles to infantry and our cata's to artillery.

With just 3 left in our Treasury, but Wall Street under construction at Bombay, I opt to run zero science for a few turns, try to get us back up to 1000 gold, as in Monarchy, that 50 per turn from interest is a BIG deal -- much bigger than it is for Democracy.

1595AD: A couple Bab cavalry make it back to their lands. The bulk of their force is still near Flora, though. 14 cav. We produced three new artillery on this turn, to go with the three we just upgraded from catapult.

We now have factories and coal plants complete in our best producers, and factories or coal plants being built in all our other main cities. I decide it's time to bite the bullet. We're at war with France already. I call up Hammi and demand he remove his troops from our land or declare war. (He was leaving anyway, but I was SURE he would be too arrogant to leave quietly). Babs declare war on us.

With six artillery to soften them up, I attack the Babylonian horsies... with Infantry! I also used our couple of knights, and some immortals. All but three cavs stacked on a hill are slain! We lose about three units in the attack, only one of them a vet infantry.

1600AD: Bab counterattack is pretty feeble. They kill two immortals and one wounded regular infantry, so that's 6 units total we lost in this move. The three remaining Bab cav, plus SIX more they moved onto our land, are slaughtered. We lose no units! France is harassing our shores now with frigates and ironclads, on our east. Our three ironclads arrive and start sinking French ships.

I sit and ponder whether or not I should stop here. The war is just getting started and our position remains tenuous. (I didn't know at this time that I had jumped ahead in the turn order, or I definitely would have stopped.) I decide to accept Carbon's "up to 15 turns if you are involved with something" and play at least two more turns.

1605AD: We now have one city cranking a knight each turn! Most of this turn spent fending off the French. Two of our ironclads are lost, but four French ships are sunk.

1610AD: Lots of Babylonian cavs invade us. France also lands two cavs. I have to split our artillery to deal with them, so there was none to fend off the French ships this turn. Our last Ironclad on that side of the map sinks a French frigate on its own. Our treasury is still not up to 1000 and I feel obligated to get it back there, as our economy could go into the drink now without that income, as we are adding a bunch of new units every turn. I decide to play out the full fifteen rounds.

1615AD: Babylonian cavs are dealt another crushing blow, and they are slowing down. Our railroads are nearly done now, and we have one city cranking an infantry every turn! We have three cities now building a knight every turn, and the rest are cranking more artillery. I'm also trying to build some more ironclads, but that is not going as well.

1620AD: Babs have Infantry of their own now. That's going to make things harder for us, but I believe it vindicates my decision to move to war when I did, as I ambushed over a dozen cavs and nabbed another dozen since then. The initiative has gone over to us now, as artillery is the great equalizer. Even knights and foot troops can fight off cavalry if backed by artillery. Our treasury FINALLY returns to 1000 gold and I increase science up to what we can sustain. Electronics due in 14 turns. We can't build the palace placeholder, either. I'm sure there are several good options for trying to secure Hoover Dam, though. Carbon will come up with something clever. :)

1625AD: Our production is cranking out a lot of troops now, and careful planning and prudent deployment should outwit the feeble AI's. We have a two front war, but the one in the east is mostly just annoyance, for the moment. Nobody has yet plopped down more than a pair of troops on any one turn.

The Saltpeter just beyond Fort Sirian would move us up from knights to cavalry, and allow us to build coastal forts, if we could secure it. I imagine a stack of combined arms -- infantry, knights, and artillery -- could march on any Bab city we please, if we go in force. I've secured our own lands. Though we are at war with both major powers, that's GOOD for us now. We want them to build up war weariness with us and collapse their governments.

The next player should be able to go on the offensive, if he wishes. That ought to be the most fun part, even though we don't have any blitz capability. Good luck.


- Sirian

Don't think we can collapse the Babs, they were already in Monarchy last I checked... the French are another matter, they were in Democracy. :lol: However, they may have Suffrage by now :(

The last time you checked, the Babs were still at war with India. They were back in Republic one turn after making peace with India (being Religious, one turn rollover) and they will pull ahead if allowed to stay there. My attack has pushed them back into weariness, for sure, but not yet enough to collapse them. France is in Democracy. We've reached a point where our production is now strong and we have enough tech/production/units to go on the offensive. We cannot afford to go through 4-8 turns of anarchy to swap back to Democracy, only to have these aggressive attacks by France and Babylon collapse us again right away, and even if we did, we would lack the means to conduct blitz warfare. Lots of artillery use, lots of casualties, lots of foot soldiers and unable to blitz through weaker/low-tech enemies, is the kind of conflict that builds weariness quickly.

Call it the luck of our position draw in this one, but war has been forced upon us. Maybe if India hadn't been right on top of us, and stolen half of the land close to our capital in the early game (the AI cheat where they target where resources are going to show up before they can even see them) we might have had more options. But we had a big chunk of water on one side, mountains/tundra on another, India crowding us big time on the third front, and Babylon crowding us too much on the fourth front to allow us to get enough secure land in that direction in which to build a forbidden palace. The higher corruption of having so little control over the land right around our capital spread us out and really hurt our production curve. We've had to build more military because our "fronts" have been so large, relative to our whole civ size. Lack of saltpeter has kept us weaker than we should have been, as our enemies stack up lots of cavalry. Some great moves have kept us going, including Jaffa's iron city which ultimately led Madras to flip to us, and One's placeholder that turned out to give us Sistine Chapel, which has been huge for us since it came in. This has been a pretty tough game and there's a lot of hardship left to go, I believe.


- Sirian

Heh, no problem with war, we agreed on the necessity of that a long time ago. There's no question we're stuck in Monarchy now for a good long time, so dragging the others back into war is our best option.

Will we force the collapse the French government? I hope so, and it seems possible if they keep attacking us -- they won't want to leave Democracy willingly given they have to wait the full anarchy cycle. If we can't they will have a big tech lead on us soon, so we don't want to accept any peace treaties they might offer. As for the Babs, well they have that religious bonus going so it hardly matters whether we force it or whether they make the change voluntarily. Going back to Republic will not wind up costing them a ton more (2 turns of production & trade, civ-wide, once they go back to Monarchy) than they got from switching to it for a few turns; wish *we* could get away with that sort of maneuver... :)

If the Babs have Infantry now, I guess we need to stock up on Artillery to beat them down if we go on the offensive. Well, if we're going on the offensive, we need more of everything. :) Can't wait for Tanks, :hammer: but got a ways to go for that. One step at a time, Hoover first...

Conquest in slooooooow motion. It took me a few turns to get used to fighting units with artillery, infantry, and knights. Good thing we're in Monarchy or my 10 turns would have BURIED us in war weariness between all the bombardment and unit losses among our knight ranks. Turn-by-turn:

Pre-turn: Can't find anything that I would change.

I DO notice, however, that if Persepolis had been one square to the southwest, we could have built the Iron Works :aargh3:

1630: Babs and French land cavalry by Gordium. I pull artillery from the west to shell them down to 1 hp, then finish them off with knights. This is the last time that landing forces land their units on my round. Our open ocean units don't fare so well, an ironclad between France and Babylon gets sunk, and I mistake one of our galleons for a frigate and I get it sunk on a REAL frigate.

1635: Ft. Sirian gets a heavy shelling from our artillery stacks. It's down to size 1 (in 1.17 bombard defenses for buildings and units inside cities seems to have gone WAY up, but it's still just as easy, if not easier, to shell away the native population. Kind of like pre-starving a city you're going to capture :satan: ). Ft. Sirian will be retaken next turn barring major reinforcements. Delphi's tiles are rearranged so it can build one infantry per turn.

1640: The reinforcements at Ft. Sirian happened, and our knights weren't as lucky versus injured infantry. A mountain gets polluted, those take a LOT of workers to clean up. Pasargadae starts Universal Suffrage. I slow down the shield production so we should be able to build it just after we discover Electronics (assuming we can de-mobilize our economy by then).

1645: Ft. Sirian recaptured [party]. What is our next target going to be, Xochilalco, Nippur (on our way to Shurrupak and gems), or Ur and Saltpeter? Why not all three?

1650: zzzz, only fighting is between naval units and one conscript bab rifle that wandered into open plains and was shelled down and dismembered by a knight. Seeing conscripts is a good thing.

1655: zzzz, moving troops into fighting range of cities

1660: Xochilalco autorazed, the huge stack of artillery I had bombarding it gets moved to the Ur theater. Joan pesters me for a straight peace talk. Still holding out hope to topple her Democracy, I decline. A break from war to de-mobilize and build Hoover would be nice in the near future, though.

1665: Bombarding Ur begins, lots of pop lost plus its temple lost(isn't Ur the second city the Babs build? That's a lot of culture per turn that they'll be missing)

1670: Aha! We pulled the Babs out of Republic! French are still in Democracy, though.

1675: Nippur and Ur shelled down to size 1, I was THIS close to taking Ur, but I didn't have enough attackers in place to take down the 1 hp infantry still guarding it. Oh well, we have enough artillery in place and attackers that it shouldn't be a problem taking on the next turn. Nippur is a tough nut to crack, being in the hills. Maybe if we can take Ur and get cavalry first, it would be easier. Or we could just toss a bunch of infantry at it until it finally breaks. Attrition on the front lines seems to be in our favor, the cities under attack have been shelled to size 1 so they can't draft and the babs have been showing some troubles replacing lost units.

The best news is that we're now back to our original pre-war borders and are starting to push into Babylon. I'd name our primary targets to be Ur for its saltpeter, Shurrupak for its gems, and Babylon itself to really screw the Babs over. If I'm not mistaken, Babylon might also have a wonder or two, possibly Sun Tzu.

All useful rail and mining projects have been completed in eastern Persia, there are some tiles that could be railed up in the west, but it would put the workers in some vague threat for no material gains. Pollution is starting to happen regularly, but still not every turn. We're slowly gaining naval control of our eastern coast, going on offense with ironclads versus ironclads is not a winning proposition when it's out of artillery range, but we're replacing ours faster than France is replacing theirs.

Jaffa, good luck in this war, we're slowly wearing them down, inch by inch.

Great job grinding away at them, CC!

Is France still building Universal Suffrage or have they switched Rheims to something else (like troops)?

We might actually BEAT France to Universal Suffrage. Pasargadae is only a few turns away from completing it (apparently you CAN build it under war mobilization and with the mobilization production bonus, Pasargadae can build it cold in under 10 turns), and can be micromanaged to complete it sooner if we don't/can't use it as a placeholder for Hoover. I didn't check on my last turn, but Suffrage was as yet uncompleted when I began my turn.

I didn't check to see if the Babs went from Republic to Monarchy or Communism. I'm not sure which one would be better for us.

Carbon: :goodjob:

I know how grinding this sort of fighting can be. You made a lot of progress. Only oops was that galleon. :lol: Losing troops is par for the course, that's why production is needed. Once we get hold of the saltpeter, we'll have cavs of our own and be in an even stronger position.

I don't know if Hoover is available under mobilization or not. (Does anyone else know for sure?) If it is, we don't need to break stride at all. If not... would be nice to collapse Joanie first. She might then go through a couple turns of anarchy, then if we make peace she would go back through anarchy, and we might even declare war again to mess her up a third time. That Bee Hatch betrayed us once, and for what? Because we had to exit early from an alliance we couldn't maintain? I'm not particularly opposed to playing another dirty trick on her in reply. :)

Still no word from OneInTen? If he hasn't checked in by the time Jaffa's done, I think we ought to presume him MIA and not sit around waiting on him any more. If he makes a return, we could put him back into the rotation, but no more waiting and waiting to hear from him.


- Sirian

Perhaps we can build Suffrage because it's a military wonder? Not sure what the scoop is with wonders & mobilization, guess we'll find out once we get Electronics!

Improvements, small wonders, and great wonders all have a flag signifying which traits they go with. For example, a temple has the flag "religious," while barracks has the flag "militaristic." Under mobilization, you can build anything that has the flag "militaristic." This means that you can probably build the Military Academy and the Pentagon under mobilization (not sure about the Heroic Epic - is that also a militaristic small wonder?). Since Hoover is an Industrious wonder, I assume you can't build it.

Edit: Can you build factories under mobilization? That would mean you can also build industrious improvements, and therefore can build Hoover.

Btw, Factories, Coal plants, etc, are not checked as industrious in civ3mod.bic, while Hoover is.

I don't think you will be able to build Hoover under mobilization :(, I'm pretty sure only militaristic buildings can be be built.

You can't build Hoover under mobilization.

What happened to the war with the Aztecs? I don't recall anyone mentioning a peace settlement? Guess they got their iron from someone else.

1) 1680AD Captured Ur. The one unhappy citizen is retrained as a tax collector.

The culture boundary from Ur doesn't extend far enough to include the saltpeter. Drat. I make a settler in Burlington to go grab it, instead.

2) 1685AD Captured Nippur. Finish researching Electronics.

3) 1690AD Sidon founded. We have saltpeter :) Upgrade lots of knights.

The citizen in Ur is now content, and agrees to go work the fields.

4) 1695AD We build Universal Suffrage! Not that it's much use to us, but everyone else trying to build it wastes lots of shields. Hah!

5) 1700AD Our cavalry see action for the first time, and we take Nineveh. Nineveh is razed, and Fort Jaffa built one square south (which takes rubber and horses from Babylon -- this seems to be their only source of horses, too :D ).

We need to make peace with someone so we can start building the Dam. Babylon isn't talking, so Joan is it. France pays us 5 gold/turn for peace.

Pasagardae starts on Hoover Dam (due in 9 turns).

6) 1705AD Our big artillery stack moves into mountains overlooking Babylon. Little stack heads south.

8) 1715AD We capture Babylon and the Art of War! Babylon garrisoned with huge stack of pikemen rounded up from our backline cities.

10) 1725AD Tech catch-up. Trade Electronics plus 100 gold to India for Refining and Steel. Trade Electronics to France for 50 gold/turn (since they would just get it from India, and I don't mind them wasting a few turns building Hoover).

Compared to where we were not too long ago, sweating bullets with the Babs threatening to overrun us at any moment, things look great! So most of the world is mad at us, who cares, we're now strong enough to take them all on. Way to go everyone, looks like we finally have tamed this dragon of a game! :D

Factories, Rails, Mobilization, all were key for us. As I said earlier, the AI can't touch human players in Industrial age warfare. :hammer:

Next up: we have some lux to grab in Babylon - gems at Shurrupak, wine at Ur once it expands (could use a worker to get a colony there in the meantime), and ivory at a small town on the way to Ellipi, the last "big" Bab city @ 10 pop (and their new capital.) These will help with the happiness factor at home, as some of our smaller cities are still building cathedrals (thank goodness we got Sistine!) From there, it's just mopping up what's left of Babylon -- its heart is cut out, and all that's left is a thin shell ripe for collapse; the cities can't reinforce each other and are too small to build much in the way of units anyway. No way we'll let France or the Aztecs grab any of that land, it's all ours by right! We've shed enough blood for it...

After that, what next? All victory conditions are enabled, do we want to wipe out the Aztecs and French too, and go for domination? Or do we just sit back and consolidate, and let them decide the next move?

Waiting to hear from Carbon about whether or not we're waiting on One to inform us of his status.

- Sirian

I think, considering our rep is blackened toast by now with everyone besides India, a diplo victory is out of the question (but a diplo LOSS might still be within our grasp...I think Babylon or India could beat us on a UN vote, so make sure to prebuild for the UN when that time comes). We don't have enough culture going on in any one city to qualify for a 1-city culture victory, and I think it may be too late to be in the running for the 100K civ culture victory. We're neck-and-neck on the tech race and stuck in a low-trade government for the forseeable future, a space victory we could probably win, but it would be sweating bullets to the end.

I think Domination is our most viable victory condition right now. The question is if we could score a domination victory without having to invade France (probably not). Then again, after all the pain France has put us through in recent years, being on the receiving end of our tanks wouldn't be cruelty, it would be karma. I think right now what we need to do is to conquer Babylon and Azteca, then roll over France with our tanks when we've finished our business on this continent. Then, if it's too much of a pain to raise our culture quick enough for domination, we invade India and win by conquest, though after all India's done for us, I'd be almost sad if we had to conquer them (Then I look at Bombay's city placement and I don't feel so bad about doing that). Considering how popular Domination seems to be, I've never won by it (though I almost did when I played 3 turns of LK6).

I think by this point the responsibility has shifted to OneInTen to inform us that he wants to continue playing rather than for us to hope he picks up his turn. That said, if he makes it known that he DOES want to continue playing, I wouldn't think twice before I welcomed him back.

NOW, with that out of the way, I will remind you that it is NOT your turn, Sirian. You went out of turn this round, but the new round has begun, and I lead off. The turn order is (should be):

Carbon
Sirian
Jaffa

with Zed interjecting as he's able.

Since Jaffa just played and there's enough time to get another round in before we hit Zed's weekend availability, that means it goes to me again.

That means I'm going to miss conquering Babylon entirely. :cry: Oh well, I can always download an earlier save file... :crazyeyes

'Scuse the misuse of "round" instead of "turn". Unless Sirian and Jaffa are really quick on the draw, you'll probably be able to interject on this round, hopefully with some Babylon left to conquer. If not, you can have the consolation prize of knocking off the Aztecs. :soldier:

We still aren't doing blitzkrieg warfare yet, but we've gutted Babylon, the rest is a foregone conclusion. We also got Battlefield Medicine and Hoover on my watch :hammer: . France and India have an MPP going, and I accidentally made an ROP with France (though it's not as if we have much rep to lose anymore if we violate it).

Pre-Turn:

-The Babs may be out of horses, but they're not out of rubber...yet. They only have one within their borders, at Teotihuacan. I can fix that. I pick 4 random infantry and haul them into the galleon at Persepolis. We're JUST in range to drop them off on the next turn.

-Our military is really thin after our expansion, and only ONE CITY is producing military. Seeing as how most of these improvements will be done in only a turn or two, I refrain from using the veto stamp, but I promise to increase our troop count.

1730:

-Temple rushed in Babylon. Having control over the entire city radius is going to be another key piece to prevent that city from flipping.
-Uruk is captured, then added to our rail net. Our massive arty stack begins to set up shop outside Eridu.
-Punjab, which rioted on my turn, is taken off of Cathedral and trains a settler to fill the gap left by Xochilalco (and to steal the ivory colony from the Aztecs).

1735:

-Babylon wants to talk peace, but they don't offer anything that we can't take for ourselves soon enough.
-Fort Carbon founded, stealing the ivory colony from the Aztecs. How nice of them, they even left us a fort on top of the ivory to man.
-Our cost to research combustion goes WAY down. Sure enough, India and France have it. We don't have anything they want for it, though.

1740:

-The Babs' rubber is cut off, with four Infantry standing on top of it. No more infantry for them, it's gonna be rifles and longbows from here on out :mwaha:

1745:

-Battlefield Medicine completed. Pasargadae will complete Hoover next turn.

1750 & 1752:

-Date scheme changest to 2 years/turn.
-India and France sign an MPP. They have chosen unwisely :skull:. And I was gonna spare them, too. Lucky for them and France, we've got our mouths full chewing up Babylon.
-Hoover Dam is completed. I celebrate by selling all our coal plants, netting us another 30 gpt and saving us a bundle of pollution cleanup.
-Shurrupak is captured, along with 2 of the gems. Cities with marketplaces get an extra three smilies, some of them go into WLTED.
-I buy combustion from Ghandi for 210g and a world map
-Mass Production started, 10 turns @ 50% sci (we could go for 60% sci and just barely run a profit, but we'll only gain 1 turn in research and our treasury will stay poor).

1754:
-Sure enough, their rubber is cut. We begin seeing longbows and conscript rifles attacking us instead of infantry.
-Ghandi has researched Espionage, if we want it we can have it for 280g + WM

1756:
-I let the treasury build up enough, so I rush the temple in Ur (critical for claiming the wines and preventing the remaining Bab cavalry to run through our territory by going over neutral rails)

1758:

-Troop movement

1760:

-Teotihuacan captured. Now the Babs are REALLY out of rubber.

Summary:

A few more cities captured, 2 more luxuries under our control and we're just about to get a third as soon as Ur's borders expand. Larsa (by Shurrupak) and Eridu are about to fall. While I mostly built infantry in our cities, there should be a big round of Cavalry coming off the line for the next chief to play with. The Babs are about to land a galleon on our eastern coast, but I didn't have the artillery or the navy in place to prevent it from happening, plus I'm awfully interested as to what they put in that invasion force. Mass production arrives in 5 turns or so, and after that we can research motorized and have tanks to play with. I considered mobilizing the economy, but decided against it because we WILL want to (NEED to) prebuild for the UN to prevent a diplo loss. The cities that Babylon has left now are mostly coastal cities, with us in possession of their central breadbasket.

It's not quite "Oh my God, what happened to the Zulus?" yet, but it can only get easier from here.

Inherited Turn: I changed almost all our cities over to infrastructure. I left Our capital and FP site cranking one cav per turn each, and one or two building infantry, and Flora making destroyers every other turn.

Carbon may be curious as to what's on the Bab galleon, but I'm not. I pull one of our very few garrison artillery units over to Ockley, bombard the ship from 3hp down to one, then activate that ironclad out on patrol, which can just barely reach the target. Babs go glug-glug-glug all the way to the bottom.

Oh yeah, and I dropped our science rate to zero. In Monarchy, we cannot afford to miss out on the full interest from Wall Street.

1762AD: The Babs have chump change on defense at a former Aztec city northwest of Xochilalco site. A little artillery action to soften them up and the city falls easily.

Our entire massive stack of artillery at Larsa manages to inflict... one hp on one vet infantry. A second fully healthy vet infantry steps to the fore, and King Sirian declares that Larsa shall enjoy two more years of independence, as we're not throwing our cavs against a brick wall!

Our other, slightly larger stack of artillery shoots its guns to slightly better effect. Veteran unit reduced to 1 hp, and the conscript is reduced to 1 hp also. Ack, there's a third unit, another conscript, and we have run out of ammo for this round. I attack! We have two cav and one elite infantry in range, plus one badly wounded cav. Our first cav attacks the unwounded conscript and wins. Our second attacks the 1hp vet rifle, LOSES. I attack with our infantry and he loses 4 straight hps, making me sweat bullets, then finally wins. Still an unfortified conscript unit left with 1 hp, and all we have in attack range is a cav with 1 hp. Well what the Hey, to the bold go the spoils. I charge our wounded cav in there... OH TORTURE, that first round of the animation before it starts taking off health, you can't tell which way it's going to go... WE WIN! City captured. I move a bunch of workers into the area to build railroad across the hills so I can move in some vet infantry and fortify them on this turn.

I mopped up some straggler Bab units in the field.

1764AD: Larsa artillery barrage fails to do anything significant yet again. Well, almost. It took 2hps off one vet inf, 1 off the other, but this is with over half a dozen extra artillery pieces brought in on the north side of the town for extra firepower. I decide it's time anyway, and we lose THREE cavalry in the attack, during which one of the inf promoted to elite before we killed it. Larsa falls to us!

I return us to research, and now that we can run a higher sustainable rate of research (while interest pays some of our bills), Mass production due in just 3 turns. Two turns ago, it was due in 4, so for ONE net turn of zero research, I have garnered about 600 gold and 25gpt from full interest.

1766AD: Our STACK of units is in place at the town above Babylon. Our artillery can bombard along the diagonal from a spot in our own territoty! So I fire off like two dozen guns, enough to take all three rifle defenders down to 1 hp. We blitz, city captured.

After barraging a pair of regular inf down to 1hp each, down in Z-town on the far southwest coast, west of Larsa, our cav blitz on the attack. First inf dies instant, second holds out, kills a cav, promotes to vet. We re-bombard it back down to 1hp, our next cav also dies (that's 8 lost combat rounds in a row, arrgh) and I'm out of artillery, and the defender has promoted all the way to elite! :eek: I charge yet another cav into the fray, he loses 2 hps but kills the elite defender's last two hps and wins. City had no culture, it's autorazed. :(

I talk to Hammi, who has just six cities left now. He's willing to give up his second, third, and fifth best cities for 20 turns of peace. I take the deal, as time's a wastin. We can mop the floor with the rest of Babylon at our pleasure. Our treaty with Joanie is running out and I do NOT plan to renew it, but before we turn our attention to France, there's something else to do first.

1768AD: Persian cavalry march up to the gates of Tlaxcala. "Did somebody request a delivery of iron? We've brought your iron for you! Here, HAVE A TASTE." Tlaxcala, Tenochtitlan, and Tlateloco blitz-captured. Mondo stack of Persian artillery, along with several cav and inf, move into firing range of the last Aztec city, their capital in the midst of Indian land.

I move about 15 or 20 units into Tenochtitlan, which has three wonders and 8 resistors. I do not intend to let it flip.

1770AD: We research Mass Production. Sadly, so did the AI's and on the same turn. They now have a two tech lead, Espionage and Flight. Aztecs survive with ONE hp left on their last defender, a regular spearman.

1772AD: Aztecs conquered. India founds two colonies in gaps left in Babylon (insignificant spots, really, no sense arguing over them) and moves a worker onto the extra wine tile, to build fortification in preparation for colony.

1774AD: Between turns, our treaty with France came due for renewal. I told that slanky ho to go fly a kite. Persia and France are now at war, and France has an MPP with India! (WHAT IS SIRIAN DOING??? :eek: ) Joanie rolls into action, sending several ship pairs toward our shores and, as it turns out, moving her STACKS of BOMBERS into range of some of our lands.

I buy Espionage from Ghandi for 204 gold. I then buy an MPP with him for 100 gold. India now has an MPP with both us and France, while the two of us are now officially at war.

I sit back and do not fire a single shot at Joanie's forces.

1776AD: Joanie's bombers pillage our land. Since she fired the first shots, India enters the war on OUR side. :rotfl: That's 1 for the Thinking Human Being, 0 for the Poor AI. :lol:

Joanie sinks one of our ironclads, though. :(

I sell Ghandi some of our surplus oil for about 50gpt, and also some surplus luxuries for another big bundle of cash. Wow, he's rich! This gets back some of what he squeezed from us a few turns ago to renew our dyes deal.

Our navy attacks! We lose four vessels, they lose only one. DOH!

I scramble workers to rebuild destroyed and damaged roads/rails.

With Flight due for us next turn, I have almost all our core cities on placeholder for airport.

1778AD: We discover flight! More bad news at sea, all that navy I spent my turn building up is gone now. We have one destroyer left and have lost several ironclads. Guess the bad luck has to come home to roost somewhere. I totally botched one attack, as I could have bombarded with artillery from the shore but was too eager, and just didn't believe we'd LOSE destroyer vs ironclad with a 3 to 1 attack advantage. Silly game. Heh. Let this serve as a warning to all: when you have artillery available, USE IT.

1780AD: Airports completed all over Persia. Every city now set to build planes already has an airport. I set those in the 40-50 shield per turn range to build fighters, those over 50 to build bombers, and those UNDER 40 to build bombers in 3 turns. Flora is cranking battleships every three turns now and ought to be left alone. The first one just rolled out of the shipyard.

Intelligence Agency due next turn. Joanie's going HEAVY on the bombers, we need fighters running air superiority to guard both coasts. Tanks are nice and all, but that's when you get there first. We're not going to get there first. We need some air force to fend off her bombers or she's gonna cream us. We're going to have to achieve some naval and air superiority before we can be in position to invade France.

Joanie's got a tech lead. Until her govt collapses, this one is not yet in the bag. I wouldn't worry about the UN, though. Pour all we have into the war, figure we'll get a leader with which we can rush the UN, and failing that, we can go bombard and possibly raze whatever city she starts building it in, if she gets there quickly enough, before we start really giving her the business on her turf.


This is going to be a fun one. Our enemy is no pushover!


- Sirian

Ok, got it. Will concentrate on building up air force and navy, will see what else I can arrange.

Turn notes:

- Infrastructure: Most of our core cities are done building improvements and are building military, with a couple exceptions. Our colonies are all either building libraries for culture or workers, since they are too corrupted to be useful. Some could be swapped to settler if necessary. There is one semi-core city that's already pumping out a settler every 5 turns or so since it doesn't have enough tiles available to legitimately grow beyond 6.

- Military: I organized our units into stacks by city so they would be easier to manage. We have an artillery city, a cavalry city, an air unit city, a naval city, and a tank city (yes I built a few tanks.) Most of our air force is fighters since we didn't have many cities capable of building bombers in 2 turns, but we had a couple cities cranking out fighters every turn. Mostly it's been phony war though I did send a stack of Ironclads and a couple Destroyers over to France to bombard cities. The stack took some damage and lost a couple units so it's on the way back to port. We also have 4 Battleships and a couple Carriers as well as a few transports. We have about enough Infantry to have 2 per city with a couple spares; we still have a few Pikemen to upgrade but this goes slowly since they are expensive and we're trying to stay above 1000 gold. Overall, our military is significantly bigger than France's, but we still need more troops before we can start doing serious damage to France.

- Research: We just finished Radio and entered the modern era, gaining Rocketry as our free tech. Jet fighters cost the same as bombers or tanks to build, so mostly we can't build stuff in 1 turn any more (except cruise missles -- a couple of those might be handy to finish off passing ships our artillery has bombarded down to 1, since they can move for free on our rail net anywhere on our continent.) We just started researching Computers so we can change that if necessary. We have only 2 aluminum on our continent (and none in India), France has the rest. We seem to have gotten to the modern age first; France's cities still are Industrial age cities. India does not have Mechanised Transport yet, and Babylon is of course far behind.

- Diplomacy: We have spies in India and France, I didn't bother with Babylon. France has recently gone into Anarchy, possibly contributed to by our naval bombardment efforts. This is a good thing. :) India has connected up its local rubber source so we can't sell them that anymore. They, for the moment, are still in Democracy, but I haven't seen much evidence that France has been attacking them much. I let our Dyes deal with India expire sice we don't seem to need it anymore. I also used a settler to knock out the Indian wine colony; we could potentially sell them a few lux but I didn't bother so far.

Looking forward: A good plan might be to get computers for mech inf and research labs, building tanks & transports (and a few more ships & planes) while we wait -- 10 more turns of production will get us a reasonable starting assault force. When we finish computers, quickly build labs in our core, and drop science down for a while to get cash to upgrade some infantry. Once we've got some upgrades done we could strip former Babylon down to 1 defender per city to get some troops available for the invasion. Once we land on France's continent they'll have bigger fish to fry than trying to invade former Babylon.

Got it.

Game crashed on me in 1816. Ack.

I'll get back to it in a moment, but I thought I'd post this image from the ongoing war :)

:soldier: :love: :jump: :scout: [party] :whipped: :rotfl:

0) 1800AD Woke our sleeping battleships and moved them out of harbor. Don't they know there's a war on?

Filled 3 transports with artillery, infantry, some tanks and elite cavalry. I think it's time to take the war to France!

Moved bombers onto carriers so they can actually do something.

Moved an infantryman in to defend Delphi in case of surprise attack.

Trained a load of tax collectors in farflung parts of the empire, enough to raise science tax and still pull in a profit.

India and France sign a peace treaty.

1) 1802AD We give India silks. They give us an MPP and 15 gpt. Ghandi is an idiot :)

India declares war on the French.

2) 1804AD Babylon is moving troops into our territory. Our peace treaty with them expires next turn. Is he nuts or something? I tell him to take his pathetic forces elsewhere.

Our troops land in hills overlooking Toulouse. 11 infantry, 3 tanks, 5 elite cavalry, 5 artillery, with air support from our carrier fleet.

Spare workers start planting and harvesting forests for shields. Pity there's no way to tell which squares have already been exploited :(

3) 1806AD Babylon moves his troops back into our territory. Oh my, what is he thinking? We cancel our peace treaty with them. Our tank commanders welcome the opportunity for some easy promotions. Our last 2 immortals welcome the opportunity for any action at all, as they take on take on the Babylonian bowmen. Our aging cavalry regiments capture the town of Calixtlahuaca.

Our forces in France crush the French defenders at Toulouse, destroying half the French tank army (1 tank !!) and the town is ours.

Selectively converting irrigation to mines in cities which are at max pop (either waiting on improvements, or run out of squares). Swap a grassland from Delphi with a hill from Shangri-La (which is starving after losing a grassland in a global warming incident).

Our jet fighters down 2 French bombers (note, in case you were wondering, you can run air superiority missions off a carrier. Very useful for protecting your advance troops :) ).

The other half of the French tank army obligingly kills itself on our infantry at Toulouse.

India renegotiates peace with us (for free), and declares war on Babylon.

4) 1808AD France (now a Republic) has a stack of 5 infantry and 3 spearmen outside Toulouse. They all die.

5) 1810AD We capture Ellipi from the Babylonians. Lumberjacking workers with insta-grow forests provide enough timber to finish a courthouse in Fort Zed :)

With courthouse built and if kept in WLTK mode, Fort Zed goes from 1/1 to useful amounts of production.

India launches a massive cavalry assault and captures Izibia. The Babylonians are destroyed :D

6) 1812AD We sink the French battleship :hammer: Poitiers captured.

Joan wants a peace treaty! Hah! It is to laugh :)

7) 1814AD Not much happens. We lose a bomber to a French fighter. Our army-stack-of-doom moves into position outside Cherbourg.

8) 1816AD Cherbourg captured :) From that entire stack-of-doom, I only used 2 cavalry!

French tanks fail to retake Cherbourg :D

9) 1818AD Ghandi apparently doesn't want our oil any more, despite still not having any of his own.

10) 1820AD We have captured Avignon :hammer: I make a wall of infantry to protect our little corner of France.

Toulouse rush-builds an airport so we can airlift troops to France.

I've been using elite cavalry to finish off 1hp French troops whenever possible, but we still have no Great Leader.

Hmmm. With us and India being at war with France, we'd actually win the UN vote, if it came down to that.

I hear the Fat Lady warming up, and she won't be singing for us! :lol:

Carbon ought to have a blast. After being crowded by India early on, quivering in our boots as stacks of Atzec and Bab units trample all over our lands on their way to attack India, then suffering a BRUTAL Babylonian attack that permanently forced us out of Democracy, it's good to be moving toward victory now. :)

- Sirian

Wow! Your empire has changed quite a lot since I've last seen it!
Last time I checked your game you were struggling to contain Babylonian aggression and were on the losing side. But look at Persia now!!! It's a superpower! :eek:

Well done guys! Excellent! :goodjob:

Ahh, finally some war where we have the proper equipment. Yes, I certainly did have fun. There were some tough nuts to crack open due to all those hills in central France, but our position continues to get stronger.

(only listing significant dates)
1820:

-It all looks good. One thing that I don't think Jaffa mentioned is that on Jaffa's turn we took the only rubber on the French continent. The only way French riflemen can stop us is if their corpses jam up our tank treads. Anyhow, it's time that we struck into the very heart of France itself.

1824:
-Ack, France has subs. One of our carriers gets sunk. :aargh3:

-We take Chartres, Grenoble, AND LYONS...well, not exactly Lyons. Lyons had whipped like heck over those last two turns, so I decided to raze it instead, destroying the Colossus in the process. I see Jaffa saw fit to bring a settler along, so I found Samaria on top of the rubble of Lyons. At this point, I'm thinking, "hehe, it's gonna be 'What happened to the Zulus?' from here on". I mean, I just took three cities in one turn, after all. Oh, we also got a source of incense from Samaria, bringing our total to 7 luxuries. Artillery set into place to bomb Paris (!) and bombers restationed to Samaria.

1826-1830: Bombing of Paris. I get their temple, market, University and barracks (and before I am victorious I will get every single civic improvement except the aqueduct and hospital and the city goes from size 24 to size 4). Still well over size 13 right now, still whipping whatever it is they can whip.

1828: Computers researched, Amphibious War started. Why? Because I've never played with marines yet and I can finish the tech on my turn, so there's nothing you guys can do to stop me! :mwaha:

1830:

Rouen captured.

1834:

Dijon captured. I've been watching the histogram throughout my turn, and this is the FIRST TURN OF THE ENTIRE GAME that we're #1. I also check the top 5 cities, and Pasargadae has made it onto the list (was Lyons there before?). Unfortunately, despite getting the stuffing shelled out of it, Paris is still number one ahead of Delphi, Dehli, and Flora.

1836:

I was convinced that I could take Paris on this turn, but they pulled some tanks out of nowhere and cripple my forces that were about to launch an assault.

1838:

India is actually starting to fight France. Their ironclads attempt to bomb some railroads and are unsuccessful. That's it, Gandhi, just keep doing that till war weariness busts you.

Amphibious War complete, Fission next. I fall JUST short of capturing Paris, AGAIN, their best defender is a 1 hp cavalry. :aargh3:. Some random cities start building marines, but none of them will be ready on my turn :sad:

1840:

Paris finally falls. Hmm...it has Shakespeare's, and that's 8 happy faces. With an MP of three, that's a total of 11 content faces. I decide to keep the city just to see if that's enough to keep the peace. I check the top five again now that Paris got knocked off the list, and see that Burlington comes in at #5..and it doesn't even have a wonder!

France's only oil (by Konigsberg) gets disconnected. Konigsberg then falls to us, the final defender beaten by a 1 hp tank.

Also in the battle for Konigsberg...there emerged a Great Leader!!!! For those of you keeping score at home, this is exactly the second leader that I have produced EVER. He is currently inside the transport just oustide of Toulouse, and he can make it to Gordium on the next turn. Right now, I think the choice is clear: rush the UN. If he were produced while we were still fighting Babylon, I'd probably use him for an army, but an army would be too little too late now. If we build the UN, we can lock away the Diplo victory option so nobody pulls anything sneaky on us...though if we don't win in the next 10 turns (what it takes to research fission) and we held a UN vote, India would probably vote for us if it came to be us vs. France...us vs. India, I imagine France would abstain. I want to win by Domination, anyhow, so just keep pressing on.

I make the diplo rounds after neglecting them most of my turn (there are only so many things you can do diplomatically in this situation with only one civ you can trade with), and sell a lux to India for 13 gpt (all they could pay). We could sell them another, but I'd wait for them to get some more money first.

We have got to be close to domination! I think I'll try to take a quick turn and see how much I can get done. Besides, I've missed out on most of the war so far; my last turn was pretty much just building planes & ships...

1840 (0): We rush a few Libraries. I turn back science a bit to support my Library-rushbuilding habit when going for Domination. :)

1842 (1): India captures Amiens! We bombard Tours with Battleships & bombers, and our 2 tanks capture the city. Rheims, their new capitol, is bombarded down to size 5, and we move in troops in prepartion to capture next turn. We move artillery toward Heidelburg in preparation for bombardment.

1844 (2): We capture Rheims. We bombard Heidelbug but don't have enough troops in place to take it. Next turn...

1846 (3): India signs a peace treaty with France and our MPP has expired... so instead of them paying us 15 gpt, we pay then 12 gpt to keep it going. France attacks us again, and voila, India's back at war. :hammer: We commence bombardment of Orleans and start moving on Leipzig.

1848 (4): We capture Leipzig and are still bombarding Orleans.

1850 (5): We capture Orleans and Munich and are moving on Berlin. The French capitol is now Frankfurt. :)

1852 (6): We're moving toward Frankfurt. Bombardment at Berlin commences. We finally get around to capturing Marseilles.

1854 (7): We capture Berlin and Frankfurt.

1856 (8): What, the game STILL isn't over?!? Do we have Domination disabled or something? Not according to the game description at the beginning of the thread... Fine! Everywhere that doesn't have a library, gets one - treasury be damned! It'll recover. We capture Hamburg for good measure. Bescanon will be captured by India next turn.

Skip turns until 1864 - basically I fortify all our units and wait for Libraries to do their work. 4 turns later, we win a Domination victory.


Yech, that took a heck of a lot longer than I would have liked, but I looked at the map and thought we were in easy striking distance of winning in just about 4 turns (enough time to build a bunch of Libraries and wait for our radii to expand.) Turned out not to be the case. The final cleanup of France could probably have been handled a bit more neatly as well, but I just wanted to get it OVER with.

Final score: 3168.

Attached save file in case you want to go beat up on India or something...

World map for the curious...

Dominated!:goodjob: :hammer: :goodjob:

BTW, whatever happened to Cyrus? That's my second leader EVER, he better have not gone to waste. :mad:

CC: Cyrus is still sitting around waiting to build the UN. So yes, he went unused. Didn't you say to save him for the UN? The game didn't last that long.

Zed: I'm not interested in beating up on India, but please post the save from the turn BEFORE the final victory, so I can get a record of this most worthy game added to my completed list, and more importantly, be able to watch the replay. Thanks.

- Sirian


EDIT: in response to the pre-victory file posted below: Danke! :)

I had to hunt through my autosaves to find the appropriate file, but this ought to be the one you want.

All I can say is...

:hammer:

... way to go!!

The "Intro to Emperor" was a success! You came, you saw, you conquered, and in between you had some VERY nasty situations and tough fights... an excellent game overall.

:goodjob:
Charis

PS I'm compiling the list of responses in the 'next game' thread and should have something to post tonight, either new game or request for clarification

Yay! We rule! [dance] [party] :beer:

Good game :)

Charis, if 'next game' isn't the army game, I'd be happy to go ahead and start off an army game anyway.

--
Jaffa