RBD SG6 - The Benevolent King [Archive] - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

Sirian

Jan 27, 2002, 09:47 PM

That's five (Sirian, OneInTen, Schnarrd, Charis, Jester). Admissions are now closed.

With nothing else to do (the forum being down awhile) I have played the start for this game. We have a very interesting choice to make, which either way, will require strategic cohesion from the team, so I will present my report and my thoughts, and ask the participants to weigh in on what direction to take the game. I think we should vote and come to a consensus, then commit as a team to whichever course has majority support. Sound good?

4000BC: I examine our starting location. My first instinct is move a square to the right, to get access to the coast (coastal wonders, harbor, shipbuilding). However, that's a dry location, so before I commit us, I right click on the other squares. Lo! The jungle above us offers one unit of trade! IT'S ON A RIVER! North we go, as fresh water is too valuable to pass up.

3950BC: The Mayan capital, Xenalia, is founded on a river in the jungle. Our people suffer an incredibly high rate of disease (55%!) but spices are spotted to the north, 2 of them in range of Xenalia. We have two grassland with shield in range, some hills and food grasslands, and LOTS of jungle. Lots and lots. Thick, sweltering, damp jungle. We're going to have to put some priority on clearing it or we will repeatedly suffer plagues. There are no food boosting squares (wheat, cattle, flood plain) in range, so we are going to have a slow start. I set to researching Mysticism at min science, and training a Jaguar Warrior.

3750BC: Our warriors grow to sufficient numbers to be able to take action. They set out to explore southward while a temple is constructed.

3500BC: Our warriors heading south have crossed a desert and found another river. There is a goodly bit of land to the south.

3450BC: Our borders expand due to high culture! Our capital grows to size 2. A minor tribe is located deep in the jungle to our northeast, across the river. We should send emissaries.

3300BC: The Temple in Xenalia is completed! We are surely the first civilization on the planet to complete such a great project! With production at 5 shields per turn, I decide to train three more Jaguar Warriors before building our first settler. I know this will only further delay our second city, but it should not at all delay our third, and I believe (based on how far we've already explored without contacting any other civs) that further scouting would be to our benefit. Additional goody huts, or contacting civs before they find one another (making us the middle man, at least for a while) would gain us more than we lose on six turns of production at the second city. At the very least, I will have a look around and figure out where best to send the settler, rather than sending them out blindly into the dark.

3200BC: Our first warriors have turned west, following the southern coast. A lovely inland lake has been spotted, and the Benevolent sets his sights on founding a Mayan city there. Our second warrior party is completed and sent to make contact with the minor tribe near Xenalia.

3100BC: Our third warrior party is trained and sent south into the interior lands. Our first warriors are circling clockwise around the outer coast, now heading north.

3050BC: The minor tribe teaches us Pottery!

3000BC: Our fourth warrior party heads northwest. Xenalia finally set to train settlers.

2950BC: Our third warrior contacts a minor tribe, who agree to join our rich culture to serve us as warriors. They are poorly trained but highly devoted, and are sent to defend Xenalia. Our first warrior encounters hostiles in the west, and fortifies in the mountains. Xenalia grows to size 3! Sadly, there are no more mined grasslands, so shield output remains at 5 per. Settlers due in five more turns.

2900BC: Hostiles attack and are beaten back. More hostiles approach, so our party continues to camp.

2850BC: Our first warriors defend a second time. They still did not promote to veteran, arrgh. Rather than head west into another thick jungle, where there are silks, toward the source of these barbarians, we choose to head north, into a fertile valley. Another minor tribe spotted! Our third goody hut, to be.

2800BC: Our second warrior has reached the end of the peninsula to our east. It is smallish, and entirely choked with jungles. Entirely. Our first warrior recruits the minor tribe in the far west to serve us as conscripts. We are now running a serious budgetary deficit, with so many troops to pay for (4 jags, 2 conscripts, 1 worker, at 3 gold per turn), and desperately need to found another city soon, lest we go broke. We have been running 1 science per turn all along, though, so our treasury is up near 50 gold now and we will be OK, but times will be tough for a little longer.

2710BC: Settlers produced. They follow the road out of Xenalia as far it will take them, then turn southeast, toward a forest in the midst of grassy plains, where there are cattle. Our second warrior in the south has found gems in the mountain above Crystal Lake, at the origin of that second river. Xenalia begins construction of a barracks.

2630BC: Our western conscripts make contact with our fourth minor tribe and another conscript force is recruited! One will be sent south toward the silks, the other to continue north in tandem with the jags. Costs now running at 5 gold per turn (temple, 5 units over our limit), with income at 2 per turn. Losing 4 per turn! Hurry settlers, hurry!

2550BC: The great Mayan city of Riggoro is founded in a rich valley and begins to produce settlers. I know this will waste two turns of production (six shields), in the long run, but the Benevolent has his eyes set on Crystal Lake, and our capital can soon churn veteran units, which is deemed better. Our budget breathes a huge sigh of relief as Riggoro is able to provide support to some of our warrior parties in the west without expending our treasury.

2510BC: two more goody huts are spotted by our first and third Jaguar warrior parties, one in the far west, one within five squares of Riggoro.

2470BC: BOTH minor villages declare war on us and attack! In the desert west of Riggoro, our warriors defend valiantly against three units and are promoted to Elite!!! They have suffered two wounds and must now rest awhile. In the far west, our jaguar warriors are badly wounded by the first of three enemy units and are forced to retreat! The second unit attacks them, and they are too winded to get away, but they make a stand and somehow survive the onslaught, promoting to veteran! The third enemy unit then attacks, and wounds our party down into the red yet again, then perishes! What a heroic engagement!

2430BC: Our second warriors, who have turned north, and who found that the jungle extended only a little farther, but that there was a huge deciduous forest beyond the wet jungles, have finally reached the other end of the endless vegetation and discovered... barren desert. Endless sand dunes as far north as the eye can see. We appear to be entirely alone in this world. Our first warrior party must retreat to heal, so I run them past the remaining unit of angry locals, running north now along a river over there.

2350BC: Our badly wounded forces in the west reach the mountains at the origin of that river, discover another sourch of rich gems, and make camp to recover. Barracks completed. More jags to be trained. (I'll pump another settler as soon as I can, but the city is many turns away from size 3 yet). Thirty turns have passed.

2310BC: Our second warrior, returning south and exploring the far side of the great forest, run into another minor tribe, which declares war! Our jags defend, are promoted to veteran, then are wounded and retreat.

2270BC: Our newly trained veteran jags provide cover for the wounded group, attack and are promoted to elite! Xenalia starts on settlers. Our third warrior spots yet another goody hut right in our near vicinity. This one is the last, at least in this region.

2230BC: We are attacked again! The minor tribe declares war and, losing one unit, then chases off our elite forces. We have to do a bit of shuffle and dance to protect our wounded units.

2190BC: Barbarians eliminated. And it occurs to me to observe that in all this time, the only "random" barbarians I have found have been those two in the west, encountered early by our first group of warriors. No camps anywhere. I now believe our random barbarian setting rolled up "Sedentary" and those early attackers had to be the remnants of a hut one of the AI's poked into, perhaps killing off the AI warrior or scout and then wandering into our party. It seems almost a shame we haven't had any chances to pick up 25 gold from camps, with so many units running around. Ah well.

2150BC: Forty turns have passed. Our three jags in the east are sent north to explore. One is fortified at Riggoro (he'd been sent there to heal). Our party in the northwest appears to have found the end of that land. Our first jags are told to begin the long journey home, intending to fortify them at our soon-to-be settlement at Crystal Lake, while the conscripts continue northwest to clean up the last bits of darkness in the area.

2110BC: We discover Mysticism! Start on Polytheism. Our southbound conscript in the west, beyond the silks, has met with a French settler/warrior pair. We trade them Mysticism for Masonry and most of their treasury. They also have Bronze, Wheel, and Alphabet, but we say no to further deals.

2070BC: French found Lyons right in front of us. Our conscripts leave their territory and explore southward. Xenalia produces settlers, starts on Granary.

1990BC: Riggoro produces settlers. They head south toward the lake. Riggoro starts on temple.

1950BC: El Dorado founded at origin of river to the north, on the edge of the jungle, where the forest begins. Starts on temple.

1910BC: Jags in the north spot green borders. It's the Persians. Another northern jag spots a goody hut. Out pops three units of warriors and we are attacked. Unit defends, but is forced to retreat. Second unit mops up.

1870BC: Trade Mysticism and 3 gold to the Persians for Bronze Working.

1830BC: That "last bit of land" in the northwest appears now to be a strait leading to another large land area, as we encounter a veteran Indian warrior. We trade India Mysticism for Wheel, Alphabet, and most of their treasury.

1790BC: We find yet another goody hut in the northern desert, just before a Persian warrior could get there, and the minor tribe teaches us Horseback Riding! I change Xenalia over to Pyramids, then discover the Persians are already building them! Did I miss the notice, or did they start way back before I even met them?

1750BC: Crystal Lake founded, starts temple. Elite jag from north returns to guard El Dorado. Our conscripts in the far southwest, below French lands, reach the southern shore. Our elite jags in the north have explored most of the edge of Persian lands. Fifty turns have passed, and our Mayan civilization's Founding Era has come to an end.

Now it is time for the High Council to meet, to set the path of our future and choose the course of our destiny. I will detail our dilemma, and the options I see, in the next post.

- Sirian

Sirian

Jan 27, 2002, 10:15 PM

Our situation looks quite promising. There is a thick jungle stretching coast to coast at the equatorial latitude, where Xenalia is located. Above that, a thick forest, and beyond both of these in each direction, a VAST desert.

North of the northern desert lie Persians lands. South of the southern desert is a wide open plain, mostly dry but with fresh water in the area, plenty of horses roaming, and beyond, to the far south, ocean.

To our west is a large sea or small ocean, beyond which lies another fertile valley, which is closer to France than to us, but not by very much. I foresee this region as a good location for a forbidden Palace and many more cities, but that may be a long long time away.

We have four spices between Xenalia and El Dorado. There is one gem in range of Crystal Lake. There is a horse in range of Rigorro, two more to the south, two silks near the French border, and one more gem in the western valley.

Of eleven opponents, we have found only three and are on par in score with each of them, despite our low-food start. We are clearly on a hot world with flat lands (5 billion, almost no hills or mountains, most of what is there being the origin points for rivers). We may also be on a dry world, which may explain the slow start of the AI's, if their lands need irrigation for them to grow much. Of the other eight civs, I have seen Zulu and Japan capitals on the top5 city list. The English were reported as the largest civ by the Top 8 report. (Wonder if they got a settler from a goody hut?)

Now here's the situation. The Persians are to our north, but they do not yet have iron working. They started the Pyramids early (and often get them, being Industrious and starting with the tech). If we are to have any chance at building the Pyramids ourselves, we would HAVE to march up there and put a stop to their project, either by taking their capital or at least forcing them to swap off the Pyramids to defend it.

If we are ever to attack the Persians, NOW is the time, to do so as soon as possible, before they get stacks of Immortals going. If we can send ten vet jags and take over their capital, we may get a great leader, and we would certainly set them back. Right now, with just five jags and three consripts, "we have an average military compared to them", which means they could NOT handle ten of our jags. On the down side, we'd use up our golden age in despotism, and there's no guarantee that the Persians are the only ones ahead of us on the Pyramids. The French (another industrious civ) haven't started yet, though, so that's good. I have not seen sign of Americans, Chinese, or Egyptians, either, though they may be out there. IF THOSE THREE ARE NOT PRESENT, then we surely do have the jump on building the Pyramids, except for Persia, although the lands around Xenalia would need much improvement.

So we have two primary options: attack Persia, or not.

We have some strategic choices to make within this context: do we keep Xenalia going on Pyramids, and wait for our smaller cities to build temples, then barracks, then troops? Do we skip the temple at Riggoro (can't at El Dorado, it needs more reach to get shields into production)? Or do we swap Xenalia back to granary, let it finish that, then use it to crank troops while the smaller cities finish temples first? Or do we even waste 9 shields, swap Xenalia to spearmen and start cranking troops immediately?

If we opt for peace, we can forget the Pyramids, but could still try for the Oracle. (We're too far from Monarchy to go straight for Hanging Garden). Or we could let the granary finish, and start cranking some workers to improve lands, bring spices online and start chopping down some of the jungle.

On the other hand, if we forget the wonder, opt for war and bend ALL our effort to cranking as many jags as possible as soon as possible, we might wipe Persia out entirely and permanently take over some of their cities, and perhaps even get a leader with which we can rushbuild the Pyramids.

Many choices. Many options. All of them gambits. Even peace, with Persia our closest neighbor and looking so strong, would be a gambit. For they might grow strong and pose an even worse threat later.

My vote would be to attack Persia, but I am open to peace if the team wants, and I am undecided about whether to continue the wonder at Xenalia or to go for granary and just pray that the war gives us a leader.

OneInTen, Schnarrd, Charis, Jester? What do each of you think? I want to hear from you and reach consensus before I post the savegame and start the 10 turn rotation.

- Sirian

Schnarrd

Jan 27, 2002, 10:43 PM

My preliminary vote would be to attack Persia, but first I'd like to see the game (Sirian, could you upload it so we can see it before we make a decision?). I've never liked starting next to Persia, as I think that Immortals are the best ancient unit in the game, and Persia tends to be quite aggressive. Nothing beats a stack of Immortals in the ancient age. Also, when playing as the Aztecs, it tends to be a given that your golden age will be as a despotism. Besides, it won't be a total waste; we'll still get production bonuses from mined grasslands, and that boost to production equals more jags which might be enough to wipe out Persia. I'd like to see if we can snag the Pyramids too, or at least have Persia build them for us (sometimes when attacked, the AI continues to build wonders, even when you have troops marching on its capitol).

Early combat is the way to go, especially since we won't be able to rush to republic/democracy and do some major building.

Sirian

Jan 27, 2002, 10:50 PM

First, a look at our heartland and the northern lands.

http://sirian.warpcore.org/civ3/succession/benevolent-north.jpg

I believe the two yellow dot locations are the highest priority, as both have a grassland with shield in immediate range, and several more good squares on hand for rapid growth once temples are completed.

In the area of the dark blue dot, we either suffer some overlap or put a lot of land to waste. After ten minutes exploring possibilities, I came up with this one, which leave Dark Blue with eight squares of total overlap with four cities, wastes ZERO squares, and ensures high long term potential for all these cities. I'm convinced this is the best option in this region. So after the yellow dots are grabbed, dark blue would come next in priority, then the two light blue squares in the far north.

The purple, red, and two white dots are all "Projects". They will be strong cities in the distant future, but will have dismal starts, therefore they should wait until more productive locations are online.

Now we COULD have one stronger city in the eastern jungle, with no overlap anywhere and only two jungle squares wasted. Or we could do the purple-red plan, have two cities, get more coastal and sea squares into production, waste one jungle square, and have some overlap. The reason I prefer two cities is that, being restricted to Monarchy, COASTAL SQUARES BECOME MORE VALUABLE, and being Militaristic, we build harbors at half cost. Coastal squares offer 2 trade apiece, and 1 from darker blue sea squares. The more coast we bring online, and the more harbors we have, the more total population size and trade power we will have. So I value two lesser but still good cities over one perfect blockbuster. Purple should come before Red because it can grab that whale and it's on the river.

There's a black dot in the far north, in the desert, where a fishing village could go.

Now a look at our southern region:

http://sirian.warpcore.org/civ3/succession/benevolent-south.jpg

With such dry lands, and keeping in mind that we want to maximize coastal harvesting, I drew up a plan to found all our new southern cities (besides Crystal Lake) on the sea. This left the areas you see marked in bright green as unclaimed, and we could fill these in with half-cities, intended to be permanently kept to size 6/7, for continuous production of workers and, after industrial, to crank out one conscript unit each per turn. The green dots would mark where I think these half-city inland settlements might go. The one on the right had a flood plain in range under the black X, and could borrow the two hollow green circles temporarily, until railroads arrive.

The light blue dot I marked in the wrong place, it should be one more to the southeast. I marked it early, though, and didn't want to redraw the entire picture to move it, so just try to remember it's in the wrong place. :) I thought initially it should go there to get a free food out of the desert, but if moved to the southeast, it would get two more coastline into play, and reduce overlap with the green dot.

Red and Purple dots are REALLY barren locations, and should wait until the whites are all grabbed, unless the French are pushing too far toward us. (But then, they would only sail around and grab white dot areas, so even then I say get the whites first).

Riggoro has that cattle, so it's the best settler factory, but not if we decide to make war on Persia (It would have to crank troops). If ever do get the Pyramids, we could expand pretty rapidly from there. We also need a lot of settlers and workers, yet we might do better to wage an ancient war while our chances for success are still high. There are just so MANY possibilities, and we can't pursue them all at once, so... we'll have to pick and choose, and to some degree, take what the game gives us.

Looking forward to getting underway. :king:

- Sirian

OneInTen

Jan 27, 2002, 10:52 PM

I generally play a mostly peaceful game, but in this case it sounds as if war might be our best option.

By the sounds of it growth is going to be at a premium on the map we have, hence the granary in every city the pyramids provides is even more of a boon than usual.

Since we have no plans to get past monarchy, a fast start seems vital, thus I think we need the pyramids, and if you believe the only way to get them is to attack persia, then that's what we have to do.

However, I don't claim to be a great early game war monger, so I'd appreciate not being next in the turn order if we do decide to attack. ;)

Iester

Jan 28, 2002, 12:19 AM

My entire Civ2 existence was defined by being a devoutly pacifist massively expansionistic settler maniac, never attacking until I had more tanks than there were squares on the map.

So, naturally, my vote is to beat our enemies until they cry for mercy, then beat them some more. Cry havoc, and unleash the sheep of war!

:sheep:

Early game conquest is easily the way to go. One question, though. If the Persians have access to iron, they become about a bazillion times more dangerous. Would that change the situation any? I've fought against immortals early on, and it's just about the worst thing that can possibly happen to a fledgeling civilization.

I could play this either way, and I'm always leery of the Persians. But my vote goes to slaughter, quick and painful.

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 12:57 AM

Although we haven't heard from Charis yet, the consensus seems to be leaning toward war. But what should we do with Xenalia? If we keep it on a wonder, we would have to fight our war with just two cities, both of them small and fledgling, and far from ready. It would take quite some time to finish temples and barracks, then build troops. All we'd be able to do is attack the enemy capital and take it, then have to make peace with the remainder of the Persians, or raze the city and pull back with our survivors.

On the other hand, if we swap Xenalia to spearman (to waste least amount of shields), then crank jags every other turn, we can send a continuous stream of troops northward starting immediately, and prosecute a total war to take over and/or wipe out all of Persia.

Surely the total war approach is less risky, but it would mean no Pyramids for us unless we get a great leader out of the war (possible, but I've played with Aztecs and never gotten a GL out of the early war. Those jags get wounded a lot and have to rest up, and rarely actually win in combat on a per-unit basis).

It's easy to keep iron out of Persian hands if we can see where the iron is. Only Zulu Impi are more effective pillagers than Jags. But we are on a long term unswervable direct beeline toward Monarchy, which will probably take another 70 turns no matter what we do. So the only way we'd get Iron Working is from a goody hut (unlikely, since we've gotten 11 of those so far and now covered all the lands not already explored by the AI's) or through trade. Trade is possible, but won't happen any time soon, as we have nothing to trade until Polytheism comes in.

Persian Immortals remain a threat all the way to the industrial age, but we do have horseback riding and horses in range, so even without poprushing, we could build enough horses to cope with their immortals by the time they could march them all the way down to our cities. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, though. If we take out Persian cities, they can't build the Immortals in the first place.

I'd rather stay the course with the Pyramids, ideally, but that is quite risky, since all it would take for the Persians to be able to fight us off is three or four immortals, and we have no idea how advanced the largest civs in the world are. (If a pack of six of them met early and traded a lot, they could be several techs ahead of us by now, and some may have started Pyramids, while our city has no more shield squares ready to go). Not continuing the Pyramids now means losing them to someone else if we try to go back and build them later. If we swap off them, we'd have to get a leader to be able to build them.

Even so, the Pyramids aren't the end-all, be-all. They help more than any other wonder on a map like this, but it's really tough to grab them if you wait as long we did to start. Every time I've gotten them, I've had food surpluses (wheat, cattle) on hand at my capital. If we cranked Jags every other turn from Xenalia, starting right away and not relenting, we could definitely overrun the Persians and capture all their cities, and then build the Hanging Gardens.

I guess the real issue is whether or not we stand a better chance of getting a great leader in a total war than we stand of building the Pyramids all on our own. And there is still the wildcard of being hit with a bout of disease, which could reduce our capital back to size 1 at ANY point the game decides to punish us.

So how lucky do you guys feel? Total war? Or try to play both ends and take a shot at the Pyramids? (And still waiting for Charis to weigh in).

- Sirian

Charis

Jan 28, 2002, 01:06 AM

Xerxes blood shall make our fine Mayan grass grow!! I just have a BAD taste left in my mouth from rbd1 starting (not quite) next to the Persians. Seeing the stacks of DOZENS of immortals shift around left this lingering feeling that the instant they decided it, I was to be wiped off the map. Before their iron, let our little scrappy jaggies eat their lunch. Get Iron working ourselves early to be able to see and plunder any resource they might have.

Keep our capital on the pyramids, scrap the temple, and if needed the barracks. Overwhelm them in an army of every-pouring-out jaggies! :spank:

Games where you have a incremental advantage over your aggressive near neighbor have gone very well for me so far...
Games too close to pacifism have been long slogs.

It seems we're unanimous... Persia must go!

:goodjob:
Charis

OneInTen

Jan 28, 2002, 01:13 AM

There is another option - play the gambit that the Persians will complete the pyramids first, and we should attack on the very turn that happens (or as close as possible), thus getting them to build the pyramids for us. :D

If we did this, we could build our military, take Persia out early, and still get the pyramids.

It's a risk, but think how cool it'd be if we pulled it off! ;)

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 02:02 AM

OneInTen: you're right, that is another possibility! We'd not get the culture for it, but we'd get the free granaries. There is a down side, though: someone else might beat Persia to it. Not highly likely, but possible. And that would mean it would be too late to use a leader on it.

My instinct is telling me that it's a losing move to stick with the wonder in the capital. There are 8 more competitors we have too little information about to stake so much on a late risk, with so few shields ready to go and the threat of disease hanging over us. The more I look at it, the more I think "longshot" for us to build the first wonder from that city.

Let's forego the attempt to build it ourselves. Charis is right, RBD1 and Persia with the Pyramids was just really ugly. Let's go for the total war approach. I'll change the production over to a spearman (we'll only lose ONE turn off our next Jag, so really it's not 9 shields lost, but only 5, effectively). Then Xenalia can crank troops until the cows come home (maybe a settler or worker in there as it grows to size 3 or 4, but don't shrink it down below size 2, as we want to keep production at 5 per turn or more).

Don't worry about iron working. With the total war approach, it WILL NOT MATTER. Persia is doomed. Also, be warned, once we bring Iron online for our civ, we lose the option to build any more Jags.

OneInTen, you don't have to worry, the war couldn't start on your turn anyway. You'll be exploring, managing the smaller cities, maybe some diplomacy, etc. If I put you later in the turn order, you'd be MORE in harm's way as far as the war goes.

One word of warning about Jaguar warriors: their strength lies in numbers. A stack of 9 is a force to be reckoned with, at the same shield cost as 3 horsies or swords. But three stacks of 3 is chump change. WAIT until we have at least 8+ in one stack before we take any aggressive moves. Save elites to mop up wounded enemies (better chance for a leader).

No Right of Passage betrayals, and don't make peace with the intent of attacking again in the short term.

The best news is, once we commit to total war, it will take us some time to prepare, and we can postpone the decision about trying to let the Persians finish the Pyramids. We might attack their outlying cities first, and give them a chance to finish Pyramids while we still try to get a leader, or we might decide we can't risk it and go right for the throat. We need more information, so keep exploring up there, let Xenalia pump out Jags while the other cities prepare (temples, barracks) and we'll see what new information more time presents to us.

If this decision goes poorly, I'll save a copy of the savegame and, after the succession game is over, any of you can go back to 1750BC and see what replaying it differently might have yielded.

- Sirian

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 02:13 AM

Got late word that Cy asked in on this one earlier today, so we'll squeeze him in here.

10 turns per player.
No worker automation, don't overdo "Goto" either.
24 hours to take your turn -OR- to post "got it" with up to another 24 to post your result.

Roster and Turn Order:

Sirian
OneInTen
Charis
Schnarrd
Jester
Cyrene

This order is based on first come, first served. (Charis made his application known on another forum while this one was still down). So OneInTen, you're the next Benevolent. Good luck!

Cy, if you want to express your thoughts regarding our planned war, do chime in.

- Sirian

OneInTen

Jan 28, 2002, 03:21 AM

0) 1750BC: Spearman completed in Capital, start Jaguar Warrior

1) 1725BC: Continue scouting.

2) 1700BC: Jaguar completed in Capital, start another.

3) 1675BC: Goodie hut spotted by warrior. Riggoro completes temple, starts barracks.

4) 1650BC: Capital completes another Jaguar, continues producing them. El Dorado completes temple, starts Barracks.

5) 1625BC: Nothing much happens.

6) 1600BC: Capital makes another Jaguar, you know the rest.

7) 1575BC: Good news and bad news from the hut - we get Iron Working from the Teoihuacans! However, Persians have iron in their territory, and we dont! :(

8) 1550BC: Capital completes its customary Jaguar. Riggoro finishes its barracks and can start Jaguar production.

9) 1525BC: Spot Persian warrior just to our North ... guess they know where we are now. French begin Pyramids.

10) 1500BC: Nothing much happening.

---

Well, that was a fairly mundane turn, but it leaves us with a lot better knowledge of where we stand. Persians have iron close at hand, as soon as they get Iron Working they will be a huge threat to us. If we're going to attack we have to do so as soon as possible!

Our nearest source of Iron sits on the western most white dot on the map of our south. This probably changes the priority for settling that dot a bit. ;)

I think we can probably get troops up to Persia in sufficient numbers before they get Iron Working and get their Immortals online, but it may be a close call. I'm glad I don't have to make it. :p

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 04:18 AM

Great job! :goodjob: I didn't think we could find any more huts (or even if we did, we'd only get attacked again! Our first four gave goodies, then six of next seven attacked us!)

Next up, CharisEvolent the Ben. Or... something like that. :)

"Make war, not love!" :frog:

Zed-F

Jan 28, 2002, 09:05 AM

Sirian, IIRC getting Iron connected to your cities won't cancel out your ability to build Jags... because it's a UU, and they never obsolete. That's one more reason to like Impis and the like - if you have Leo's, you can build a really cheap unit and spend gold to upgrade it for a (relatively) modest cost, even in modern times, rather than being forced to build a more expensive infantry-type unit, which might take longer if you don't have the infrastructure in place where you are building the unit.

Charis

Jan 28, 2002, 12:44 PM

Charis Ben Evolent was thrust to power when the peaceful and serene nation
of the Mayans was terrorized by the violent and malevolent Persians. Xerxes
had set the tone "There can be just ONE nation on this continent!" Little
did he know how true these words would be. Charis Ben Evolent, known to
his friends as Chas, was a benevolent despot, hoping one day to be King
of a prosperous nation. To see that future happen, it was laid to him the
task of building up an army of Jaguar Warriors, mighty and frenetic, these
speedy fighters were known for their swarm tactics.

1500 BC (0) - In surveying the situation, Chas saw a fortuitous coalescence.
The very spot he craved to settle as a bottleneck to avoid a wide distal
boundary from the main line, was indeed a source of iron. Not only that, it
was at fresh water! Settling in this zone would be a top priority. The second
priority was to build a military and to deny Persia access to their iron.
Rigoro would be set for settler right after its Jag was complete.

1475 BC (1) - 1425 (3) Movement
1400 BC (4) - The insolent Xerxes tells Chas to "watch out!" and to move
his troops away. We will do so, but just for the moment.
1375 BC (5) - A settler and puny warrior pop out of Pasargadae, heading for
the iron hill right near it 8-\ They cannot be allowed to hook up!
The Jag in the area thinks about taking him out now rather than later,
snagging a worker in the process. Susa will become the first main target
(along with its horses) within a half-dozen rounds, if we kick things
off THIS early. Diplo screen tells us they've got their capitol plus
four cities (Pasargadae, Susa, Arbela and Antioch). We can see all put
Arbela and the capitol, and those cry out to be taken!

1350 BC (6) - The Settler is completed and 'GO's to the iron hill white dot.

1325 BC (7) - Their settler is approaching the hill...

1300 BC (8) - Golden Age (ack) as we take the settler and warrior out,
building a colony at the iron.

1275 BC (9) - At Susa a Jag defends against an archer. We trade a Jag
for a warrior in battles near our home.

1250 BC (10) - Chas doesn't initiate attacks, but seeks to disrupt their
operations until we can get a "stack-o-nine" to crush a city. (Well,
he tried a two-jag-assault at Susa, thinking only one defender, and won,
but another spearman appeared. Now they need to back up and heal,
and join the other 5 or 6 coming up the plains.)

It could have been a bad move to start hostilities so soon, but I didn't want
to see "Iron Hill City" founded and end up facing Immortals. :eek: I was hoping they
would found near it, letting us pillage, but no, they marched straight up
the hill. Not fun to see a wasted GA, but that's what Aztec early wars are all
about, it comes with the territory.

BTW, we better find out for SURE if Iron availability means no more jags.
If so, we MUST settle NEAR the iron, not on it!

Good luck,
Charis

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 02:23 PM

Zed's been right with a nit before, but not this time. This is something I have recent experience with: Jags come off the queue, and swords go on.

But DO NOT swap around dot locations over this insignificant factor. Build the city right on the Iron, and send a Jag from Riggoro, or if necessary, send the one from Crystal Lake and replace it with a new one from Riggoro at the next opportunity. Just realize that bringing iron online for the whole civ is not a top priority. In fact, we don't want that to happen until the Persians are gone.

Charis: good job all around. I'd have preserved the slave labor (no maintenance, after all) as we are badly hurtin for workers and the colony is just something to defend. Worse, it has put a free road on the square, if things do go badly for us up there. We will just have to make sure they don't go badly. :)

Schnarrd, it looks like the war will get going in earnest on your turn.

- Sirian

Zed-F

Jan 28, 2002, 02:31 PM

Hmm. Last time I played India my war elephants did not come off the queue when I got Military Traditions, but I think that might have been because I never bothered getting access to saltpeter (never needed cavalry.) So, you ought to be able to continue pumping jags at least in cities where you don't have iron. Whether it's worth delaying that final road connection between your iron town and the rest of your civ is up to you...

Schnarrd

Jan 28, 2002, 03:05 PM

OK, I've got it. I'm not used to war this early (I usually wait till knights, or Immortals if I'm playing Persia), but I'll just have to make sure I get that stack 'o nine Jags before attacking. ;)

I'm not sure if swordsmen will replace jags once we have iron online, so I'm not going to connect. I think (but I'm not sure) that since you can't upgrade to a UU (but can upgrade from) that the game treats an upgrade path of military units starting with a UU as a seperate upgrade path (hope that made sense :D ). Not sure how you could have still built a knight-based UU though.

Schnarrd

Jan 28, 2002, 04:56 PM

After the reign of Charis Ben Evolent, the people of the Mayan nation, whipped into a nationalistic fervor (no pun intended - I didn't do any rushbuilding ;) ), wanted someone who would cripple or destroy the evil Persians to their north. To this end, they chose Schnarrdevolent the Warmonger, who promised to use the Aztec Jaguar Warriors to great effect. When Schnarrd ascended the throne, he surveyed the situation and set two goals for his reign:

1. Seriously cripple the Persian empire
2. Make certain that the increased troops built for goal #1 would not seriously strain the Mayan budget

Here's the turn-by-turn of Schnarrdevolent's rule:

0. A glorious Jaguar Warrior fortified near Arbela, inspired by a divine light, beats off an attack by a Persian archer, only losing one hitpoint in the process. :eek:
1. Our Jaguar Warriors pick off various Persian warriors while approaching Susa. Only 3 Jaguar Warriors are in position to attack Susa, the closest Persian town.
2. More Jags move into position to attack Susa.
3. Seeing the enormous strain on the budget (-7 gold per turn), Schnarrdevolent switches Xenalia's production to a settler so that the mighty Mayan despotism might support more of our glorious armies. This loses five turns of Jaguar Warrior production, but Schnarrdevolent sees this as a necessary loss.
4. More Jaguar Warrior movement.
5. More movement.
6. The city of Ironopolis is founded on the iron hill. This eases the strain on the budget, but Schnarrdevolent knows that more Jaguar Warriors will be built shortly, straining the budget once more. Also, one of our Jaguar Warriors near Arbela is attacked by an archer, while a worker in that area near the iron colony is captured. Our other Jaguar Warrior counter-attacks the warrior, but is forced to withdraw.
7. The heathen Persian city of Susa is attacked by seven glorious Jaguar Warriors. Two Persian spearmen fall, and the city is autorazed. Six of our Jaguar Warriors are heavily wounded and need to recuperate, but there are no losses. Our Jaguar Warriors near Arbela recuperate as the Persians destroy our iron colony and capture the other worker.
8. A turn of healing. A settler is produced from Xenalia.
9. Our Jags near Arbela defeat the Persian troops near Arbela.
10. Schnarrdevolent is sorely tempted to attack the Persian capitol city of Persepolis as six Jaguar Warriors are in position to attack it, but he sees that six new Jaguar Warriors will soon also be in position to attack, so he resists the temptation. Formerly Known as Susa is founded on yellow dot (City Formerly Known as Susa wouldn't fit :( )

Looks like Persia will fall next turn. Are we going to conquer Persia fully, or just conquer all but one city? Last time I checked, Xerxes was willing to accept a peace treaty for one city - he should increase the price once we conquer Persepolis.

Good luck, Jester! ;)

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 05:26 PM

With over 30 Jags now (and paying out the nose per turn for upkeep) I think we have enough forces. While we still have some Golden Age left, perhaps we should start El Dorado on a wonder (it can swap to Palace placeholder if we get beat to all the ones we can build at the moment). Riggoro might be best put to use building settlers. Crystal Lake is building a worker but could build a settler instead, as it's large enough. It's time, I think, to let the current military ride its way to victory and switch the empire over to expansionist tasks. Right now, we're so top heavy with units we could not AFFORD to switch to Monarchy even if we had it.

I also think that OneInTen's idea is worth a shot. :goodjob: We haven't gotten any leaders, don't have many elites in place, and there are no other civs who could infringe on Persian territory any time soon. What if we take the city they will offer, give them 20 turns of peace (or however long it takes) for them to finish the Pyramids, park our troops on/near/around the iron deposits to prevent them gaining access, and wait to see if they will build the Pyramids for us, then finish them off. We might lose a chance at an earlier leader and building the Pyramids for ourselves, but that's a somewhat thin chance anyway. The Persians might get beat by the English or somebody, to the Pyramids, but if not we'll get them next to free, just no culture benefit.

As long as we can successfully keep them away from the iron deposits, we would remain in complete control of the situation, able to wipe them out at our convenience. If we parked 8 units in a ring around each iron, that ought to do the trick.

Once the Persians are gone, we will have SO MUCH land at our disposal, it could take us forever to fill it all in! :king:

- Sirian

OneInTen

Jan 28, 2002, 06:24 PM

I like the idea of the Pyramid gambit (of course, I suggested it, so naturally I want to do it). ;)

As I see it, the worst that can happen is that they dont finish the Pyramids, in which case we destroy them anyway, we just don't get anything extra from the deal.

Unless anyone can see a reason why we wouldn't want to give it a shot I say go for it.

Iester

Jan 28, 2002, 07:23 PM

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."

I've got the game. That's a lotta jaguar warriors! This should be fun, to say the least. Let's see, what's on the agenda... conquer the persians down to two cities, then accept their treaty to get them down to one. Then wait, and hope they like pyramids. If they don't get them, assimilate their inferior civilization. :scan:

In the meantime, start wonder building with El Dorado, and settler building with... uh, forgot the name, but I'll check that. :rolleyes:

I hope my reign slakes the thirst of our cruel, cruel gods. This shall be an era to mark on our oh-so-advanced lunar calendars, the sunset of our golden age!

(now just to stay off the pungent weed...)

Jester

Charis

Jan 28, 2002, 07:30 PM

Pungent weed??? Did I hear pungent weed?!?! [pimp]

I'm just glad to see we're in great shape, and that I didn't
start the festivities too soon. (In fact, they're off the iron to stay)

One minor comment, in pursuing the other cities, do NOT trample across the capitol's land. We NEED that to stay as productive as it can, lest one of the other two nations building the pyramids beat them. Seems a decent shot, a good gamble :P

It'll be so nice to see Persia a vassal state begging for its very existence. :love:

Charis

Schnarrd

Jan 28, 2002, 07:35 PM

Quote: "With over 30 Jags now (and paying out the nose per turn for upkeep) I think we have enough forces."

Well, when you said "total war," I guess I took it literally. :D I think this means that after we finish with the Persians, we can use our massive force of Jaguar Warriors (either upgraded to swordsmen or unupgraded) to conquer another opponent. :soldier: :D

Iester

Jan 28, 2002, 08:56 PM

“With the end of the reign of King Schnarrdevolent, haughtiness spread through the kingdom. Mighty as they were, the Persian empire was proving no match for the swift strikes of the Jaguar legions. Eager to claim credit for the times of victory, the fifth cousin of Schnarrdevolent (twice removed, and a half) Frankevolent the Short made his bid to the throne of the Mayans. His claim, however, was contested by the general Filmore, whose victories in Persia placed him in high favour at court. A clandestine war at court ended with no clear winner, with the rulership officially granted to the Frankvolent, but with the armies only half loyal, under a subdued but unrepentant Filmore. Historians note that at this time very little of Frankevolent was seen, appearing only at formal occasions and cricket matches. Official business of the empire was conducted through his Jester, although some have speculated that Frankevolent was actually an idiot, and that the Jester was the true power behind the throne…”

;)

Turn Zero) Changed El Dorado to Oracle. Changed Xenalia, Riggoro and Crystal Lake to settlers. Look at the amount we’re spending on military and shudder painfully. Otherwise, everything looks good.

Turn One) Discover polytheism, start on monarchy. Move some units around. 11 Jaguars will rain down next turn.

Turn Two) The rain of jaguars is successful. 4 wounded, 1 dead. Should have attacked with 6, since they built a spearman in the intervening turn. I burn their inferior little city to the ground. Move some warriors, spot some archers. Their fate is sealed.

Turn Three) Total Persian capitulation. Razed one city, bargained for their second last. They’re down to one miserable hovel in the north, Antioch. The iron will be well guarded.

Turn Four through Ten) Found two cities, otherwise uneventful. Jaguars wander aimlessly.

Okay, that sums up my time here. That was more troop moving than I like to do in the average century. Apologies to my successor, Cy, if he has to deal with one or two residual Goto commands. I think I caught them all, but you never know. I also may have taken an extra turn somewhere in there. If so, oops. I realized I was keeping slightly fuzzy track of them around turn six, when all there was to do was move jaguars.

We are going to have all the south populated very soon. We also have a huge army doing practically nothing. I’ve got both iron deposits guarded, which is costing us 16 gold for those warriors alone. (notes to Cy: I’ve got two elites guarding the north one. If we’re going to keep up that strategy, you can switch the two veterans on the way for the elites. Also, Riggoro is on wealth, for lack of anything better to make. Switch off in time to put out the settler.) I can’t say I see a logical course of action except to expand to our borders and then see if we can kill the French. We’re not technologically prepared for consolidation, and there aren’t any other targets. Options? Just expand into Persia forever?

I also question letting the Persians live. Maybe I didn’t quite catch on to what this tactic was, but it somehow seems unlikely that Antioch is going to produce the Pyramids any time soon.

So, good luck, Cy!

Jester, :king: of the Mayans

Iester

Jan 28, 2002, 09:03 PM

Hey, a file might also be helpful, eh?

Edit:

...

...

Do I just not see my own files? Is there something I'm missing? Don't I just have to browse for the saved game, and then post the message?

Schnarrd

Jan 28, 2002, 09:31 PM

Jester:

The point of letting the Persians live was to not capture their capitol city, which was producing the Pyramids at the time you razed it. Antioch will definitely not produce the Pyramids. Ah well. No big deal. Pungent weed happens. :smoke: Maybe the French will build the Pyramids, after which we can conquer them with our massive army of Jaguar Warriors. :ripper:

Are you zipping your savegame before you post? You need to get the post under the size limit; Civ3 saves are extremely big. Just zip the savegame with WinZip and post the zip file.

Iester

Jan 28, 2002, 10:07 PM

Ah! So THAT'S what the tactic was. Well, that certainly makes more sense; I was too busy concentrating on killing the city my troops were all assembled to take.

Well, uh, next time we're trying a gambit, I'll be sure to think it through a little more carefully. :crazyeyes

Sirian

Jan 28, 2002, 11:28 PM

:smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke:

Well, Jester, old buddy, my young musician friend, this one shall enter the annals right up alongside "ignore the farmlands, irrigate the desert!" from RBD1.

Ah, but that's all right. Now it's going to be REALLY interesting. (Start building those granaries, folks, including at El Dorado if it's not already past 60).

Cy, you're up next. :king:

- Sirian

Iester

Jan 29, 2002, 12:27 AM

Yeah, yeah, I know, I wasn't quite with it there. I'd even read over the thread a bunch of times. There's only one possible answer: :smoke:

As for the pyramids, hopefully the french will get it, and we'll get it from them. Or, if we're really super-unbelievably lucky, we can get it as "Whatever wonder we get from El Dorado". If not, the hanging gardens is always handy to have around, or the oracle even.

On the plus side, our tech is SO slow that we've got plenty of time to build granaries, even alongside settlers. Just need to get rid of some of that military before we drown under their collective weight.

Jester

Sirian

Jan 29, 2002, 12:35 AM

GET RID OF THE MILITARY???

:smoke: :smoke: :smoke:

1) We're heading for Monarchy. In Monarchy, up to three units in each city can pacify unhappy faces with Martial Law. That could mean running fewer luxuries or less need to build expensive colleseums as quickly.
2) More cities will defray costs. We get 4 per settlement allowance now, that will drop to 2 per small town, 4 per 7-12 town, under Monarchy. Still, we're planning a lot of towns.
3) Jags never go out of style. They remain useful to the very end as pillagers/harassers/garrison-to-prevent-flipping, plus refer back to point 1.
4) AI respects raw number of units. Right now, we command a great deal of respect. :) I kind of like that. :)

We did get a little extreme with number of troops, but that's the whole strength of our civ now. We need to balance things out to support these fellows, but we would not benefit to get rid of them.

- Sirian

Cyrene

Jan 29, 2002, 12:55 AM

This is going to be a very short report since, well, nothing happened.

First, the good (?) news: the Iroquois finished the Pyramids in 630 (3 turns in), so I doubt that was ever going to work anyway. The not-so-good news—the great wonder cascade has started. The Germans completed the Oracle the next turn, and now all are off on the Colossus hunt. We can probably bid all great wonders adios until we start the next war and prospect for leaders.

I saw what looked (to me) to be about 4 good city sites in former Persia, so 3 settlers are heading North, and another will be produced in 2 turns in El Dorado. A 5th is on the top yellow dot, and can settle next turn.

I sent a few Jaggies to form a picket line on our border with France, as I viewed settling the southern desert to be priority 9,999,999, and wanted a little peace until they get their galleys up and operating.

Oh, and I just plucked free workers out of the air wherever they shook loose coming off war footing to build roads, so it looks like a madman set them loose 8-). I didn’t want to waste 15 turns moving them into orderly positions…

Sirian: Our peace treaty with Persia expires in 2 turns. My theory is that dead Persians make good neighbors, and that Antioch would look much nicer in our shade of green. There are 20 Jaggies standing around up there ready to deliver the coup de grace and go out in style before we move on to other units.

I looked at rolling over France while we had the army for it. The problem was just the distance. It would have taken so long just to get there, by the time we got to Paris we would have been facing Pikemen and Knights 8-0. Geographically, though, we are set up to cause both France and India no end of grief over the years. Ought to be fun. Especially after they go to Republic/Democracy and can’t afford long wars.

--Cy

Sirian

Jan 29, 2002, 07:58 AM

Inherited Turn, 510BC: Vowed that Jester would only get 8 turns his next go-round, to even these numbers back out. ;) Zoomed every city (must-do activity following any Cy turn at the helm) to see what all manner of inefficiencies the automated assignments for newly grown population have been up to. Oh, hey, not too bad this time. A couple fledgling colonies running at 1 shield were swapped to coastline to produce an extra gold, reducing our deficit. Chicken Itch was swapped to the mountain to get a second shield (and finish its temple much sooner, at the cost of halting the population growth for a while). Rephrased "New Susa" to get a shorter name onto that one. :)

Now for strategic decisions. Persia's toast in a couple of turns. Cy has left me with four (4!) settlers moving northward. That's enough to get all three "good" sites above El Dorado, plus one extra. A fifth settler is being built -- Cy intended to run them way north into former Persia, but unless we get a Great Leader from the final mop up and can use him to rush a Forbidden Palace in the middle of the continent up there, that's a losing proposition. I ready the veto pen but continue marching the settlers north for the moment. If we DO get a leader, I'll send at least one or two of the settlers all the way up to start "Second Maya". If not, I'll grab all this good land remaining here in our homeland.

This leads me to question the value of a fifth settler. What would I do with it? I could send it east, to the far end of the Xenalia River, to start that "project" city in the jungle. Or... I can swap El Dorado to Palace placeholder and go for the Hanging Gardens. Hmm. A fishing village or a Great Wonder? OK, so we're not that hungry for fish this week. I change El Dorado to break-even food, maxing shield output, and we're off to the races! No other city in the Empire can do much of jack at the moment, they are all recovering from building settlers just now.

Still on the inherited turn, I look over Crystal Lake, and think about what might happen down there once we plop four more cities onto the map and capture Persia's last city. The corruption is going to go UP. Hmm. Well it will cost 5 shields wasted to swap off barracks, but I do it anyway. Crystal Lake must have irrigation! I also swap Ironopolis to worker. Then, finally, I wake up all sixteen of our iron-guarding jags in the north, move most toward Persian city, move one north to explore last bit of darkness there, move the rest (a few) south.

Now STILL on inherited turn, I check the diplomatic situation. India has made contact with somebody (Japan?) French have Map Making (arrgh). Nobody has heard of Persia yet (good!) We have contact with six (6!) other civs, but I can't even see where the three newcomers are. Well, OK, I hate not having good intelligence, so I establish embassies with the three new civs. Ah, they are all south, and must be on our landmass, as only French have boats and they just got the tech. Interesting.

Still on inherited turn, I inspect Cy's worker assignments, nod approval of all the road building, veto the guys in the mountain above El Dorado (move them west to a grass, where a road can be finishing in THIS millenium). I also vetoed the miners next to New Susa, sent them westward to get the horsies online.

STILL on inherited turn, I broker contact with India while I still can, as someone else can (and will) do it next turn anyway. I then decide to broker some tech, because now that France has mapmaking, the bastard AI's will trade maps with one another, and trade maps for tech, and tech for maps, and maps for contact, and blah blah blah, all jump ahead and leave us in the dust. So... I brokered our two techs to anyone who could pay in cash or gpt. France wanted simply too much for Mapmaking, or their world map, so that will have to wait.

490BC: More Jag positioning in the north. French start Colossus. Two more civs now have mapmaking, and I trade Iro's our world map for the tech and their territory map and change. I trade someone else Polytheism for their world map, and make lots of minor deals, including buying a French worker, which is sent to build road to Chicken Itch. (Sorry, I know that's not its name, but I can't remember the real name, so don't hate me). Moya Mona founded on a yellow dot, starts temple. Worker produced at Crystal Lake, moves to irrigate. Another worker started.

470BC: Move last units into position on Persian doorstep. "Just routine training maneuvers" we tell the nervous Persian emissary. Fortified the conscripts near India on a choke point, completely bottling them up in their area. India will need ships to go around, or the cahuna's to declare war and attack, to get past this blockade. (DON'T MOVE THIS UNIT!)

450BC: Meet with Persia to discuss terms of extending our peace treaty another 20 time units. They were eager to lick our boots, but not quite eager enough to voluntarily join the Mayan empire, so we informed them that they would be added forcibly. Vet Jag attacks archer, reduced to 1 hp, promoted to elite. Elite Jag attacks fortified spear, wins with 4hp left. Vet jag attacks last Persian defender, does 2 damage, leaving him red, then perishes. Elite jag attacks, Persian city captured!

"We have destroyed the fledgling Persians!" -- that's what I expected it to say. It said no such thing. I sat and stared at my monitor for five minutes.

WHAT IS THAT BLIGHT ON OUR LAND??? :mad:

:eek: :aargh3: :spank: :rocket:

The Persians have respawned in the No Mans Land between Mayans, India, and France. They have just magically been given a new city and fresh units, as if the gods reached down and said, "Do Over. You get a second chance."

Gah.

Welp, folks, the war with Persia ain't over, and I can't end it on my turn. Sorry. I'll move what troops we can in the general direction, they ought to get there in about 1000 years. In the mean time, I fortified 5 jags in the captured city, with the intent of preventing it from flipping back. Please don't move them.

No leaders, so Cy's "send them to Persia" orders to the settlers is vetoed. They are now ordered to settle closer to home.

And not only is the whole war not over, it's not even over yet here in our area. There's an archer/spear pair threating our road builders. Good thing I sent the spare troops south. They attack, and one is wounded to red and retreats, the others win and both are promoted to elite.

I send both of the jags that can be spared from The Cy Line north toward the Persians, in the west. I am under no illusions that one or two jags can finish off a newly spawned civ, but maybe I can pillage their irrigations or something, while awaiting reinforcements (and waiting and waiting).

430BC: Gossamer founded, startes temple. A Persian archer that must have been wandering the wilderness appears to threaten our road builders in the forests near the spices. I have only one jag in the area, he attacks, fails, retreats, and I then have to place him in harms way between the enemy and the workers, to save them. Used the extra pop in captured city to fund a scientist, dropped science rate to zero.

410BC: Our jag is lost to the archer, but the workers have been saved. Reinforcements obliterate the offending archer unit. Worker produced at Ironopolis, moved to mine the hills, harbor started. Granary finished in Riggoro, settler started.

390BC: Canopy founded, starts temple. Chicken Itch completes temple, starts worker. Right of Passage with France for their world map and 40 gold. I'd sell the Zulu a RoP but they are flat broke.

370BC: Our forward jag spots Persian settler/spear pair (ALREADY???) and bravely attacks. HE WINS! Two workers captured and sent south, where we hope to meet up with second jag before anything bad happens to them. Wounded jag moves onward toward Persepolis, lands next to a stack of two Persian archers and two spears. (Wow). No way did these turkeys build five units and a settler in like three turns. They had to have been given all these resources out of thin air! The good news: we have more war to fight!

:splat:

Still 370BC: Spirit Dune founded, starts temple. Roads coming along nicely, more to be built.

350BC: Persian Archer attacks our wounded jags, they retreat in the red. Whole stack pursues. Captured workers flee south, meet up with second jag, which is assigned to escort them to our territory while the first jag leads the enemy stack westward. New Susa set to lose 1 food instead of gain 2, for ONE turn, to slow its growth down below pace of granary completion. (Thus saving six food at end of the day.) Harbor queued up next for New Susa, which now has a whale and fish in range.

330BC: Um... the Iroquois have started the Hanging Gardens. (!!!) Joan has started the Great Wall. (!!!) Guess it's a good thing that El Dorado has been prebuilding for Gardens my whole turn. We are still 11 turns away from Monarchy. Wounded jag flees west to mountain, entire Persian army on the chase.

310BC: Last minute diplomatics, selling world map and RoP's. No sense paying for Monarchy, nor for Construction at high cost, let Joan spread that one around a bit before we buy in. Settler finished in Riggoro, sent on Goto (automatic orders) to the Yellow Dot in far south, due in 5 more turns. Worker in the area moves onto flood plain to irrigate, build roads, and then irrigate that wheat and help out cities in the area. Another worker due next turn or two from Crystal Lake, which can work in that area. I sent a vet jag on Goto to Moya Mona and Gossamer to give them defenders. Rest of jags near El Dorado are available, and marching toward France/NewPersia, but not on auto.

I set Riggoro to Forbidden Palace PLACEHOLDER, pending either the Great Library (unlikely) or a shot at a middle age wonder in another 80ish turns. I'd prefer SunTzu for this map, but frankly, get whatever we can get and be happy. This means that Riggoro is busy for the next 1000 years, and must stay on Forbidden Palace until El Dorado completes the Hanging Gardens and the Palace placeholder comes available. We now have enough cities to sit on a Palace placeholder forever, if we had to.

With El Dorado and Riggoro on wonders, that leaves Xenalia and New Susa as the only available strong cities. Both finish granaries soon, and New Susa is slated for harbor after that, but each could then crank troops, workers, or settlers as the current Benevolent sees fit.

We need more workers! Not at all costs, but that's something some of these corrupt cities can help with. We also need to start thinking about cutting down jungles around the capital, although we're not quite ready to begin that. Need basic roads and to mine/irrigate a few squares first. Keep an eye out for any workers the AI's might trade to us, pay cash (about 25 gold), for any that you see. Wouldn't hurt to get a horsie or two online, also, and maybe a couple more veteran spears.

The Iroquois are building the Colossus just across the channel from our southern shore, and Japan is also close, and they all now have ships. Unless you want to see alien colonies appearing on our southern shore, and SOON, we also need to put some priority on grabbing the land down there. The yellow dot I sent a settler toward, and the white below it with the horsie, are most in jeorpardy. Just don't give up on our wonder builders to make settlers, we don't need those spots THAT badly.

El Dorado is slated to reach 300 shields (and finish Hanging Gardens) in 16 turns. We get Monarchy in 10 turns, so that will work out fine. Since we are religious, we can revolt in just one turn, so don't hesitate, even if it starts costing us a little bit of unit maintenance. The reduced corruption should make up for it. And start to irrigate some grasslands in appropriate locations, where shields aren't more vital, as by the time they're done, we'll be in Monarchy and can benefit.

- Sirian

Sirian

Jan 29, 2002, 08:17 AM

I urge not selling contact with Persia to anybody, it would trash our rep if they find out how we're abusing Persia. Best to finish them if we can. India is bottled up and France has nobody in the area, so we MIGHT kill Persia a second time without them making contact. I think it's worth a shot, the contact wouldn't be worth much anyway.

Since we can't possibly take or keep a tech lead, broker anything we get to whomever can pay (but don't take below-market offers).

The two newly captured Persian workers in the west might be best used to build a fortification in the middle of the Cy Line of Defense. Keeping France out of our lands, and having a nasty mountain fortress to hold the line against ANY invasion, might be worth the time. The only other thing those workers could do is build roads from the Cy Line down to Ironopolis. Workers are at such a premium now, we need to make sure those get back to our territory safely, too.

The only way we could ever make the north productive is with a great leader to rushbuild a forbidden palace. On the chance we get the opportunity, I drew up this set of suggestions:

Purple Dot could be the FP site, it's on the river, centrally located, with cattle and shields and lots of food. Yellow Dot cities are both strong locations and near important resources. White dots are good secondary sites, Light Blue tertiary sites, and the reds are minimum priority "plug the holes" locations, mostly fishing villages that would boost trade.

- Sirian

Charis

Jan 29, 2002, 08:38 AM

Gah!!!! That's another rule I would toss on the dungheap! Respawning??? Dangit man, if I pick 6 opponents I want SIX opponents, not 7 or 9. Do *I* get to respawn if I wiped off the map. :mad:

Let's say I'm glad that happened on your turn Sirian :P I wouldn't have expected/remembered the respawn and done the same, and would have felt a wet noodle whether delivered or implied. Well this has turned from a game where you could almost declare early victory to one where we've got a REAL fight before us.

> I urge not selling contact with Persia to anybody, it would trash
> our rep if they find out how we're abusing Persia.

Did you happen to look at their attitude when you first saw them? Is it the 'same' civilization with reversion-chances in captured cities, or a new civ with same name? (The former I gather)

> Zoomed every city (must-do activity following any Cy turn at the
> helm) to see what all manner of inefficiencies the automated
> assignments for newly grown population have been up to. Oh,
> hey, not too bad this time.

Yay, I'm not the only one picked on for peccadillos! :hammer:

> Rephrased "New Susa" to get a shorter name onto that one.

I just plain didn't get the first one. Now if you refound a city ON the site of Susa that was a great name, but I was quite confused to see it back next to our capitol ;p

> Still on the inherited turn, I look over Crystal Lake, and think
...
> Now STILL on inherited turn, I check the diplomatic situation.
...
> Still on inherited turn, I inspect Cy's worker assignments, nod
...
> STILL on inherited turn, I broker contact with India while I still

Gadzooks man!!!! I think we need to have 10 turns for everyone and 2 turns for you, since you do so much before turn 1 ! :splat:
(j/k of course... good moves. Although taking off a mine in the middle seems counterproductive unless he just started)

> Our forward jag spots Persian settler/spear pair (ALREADY???)
> and bravely attacks. HE WINS! Two workers captured

[party]

> This leads me to question the value of a fifth settler. What would I do with it? ...
> Settler finished in Riggoro, sent on ...

You can never have enough settlers :P We ARE in the land grab phase after all. When your subcontinent is sparsely populated, each settler is one less "blight" on your land a few years later.

A strong turn overall, marred only by a galling Firaxis design decision (imho)

Charis

Cyrene

Jan 29, 2002, 09:19 AM

Hey all.

On the settlers. Both corruption factor in the North and the number of turns it will take to get there were (are) duly noted. That is why I sent the first settler to the yellow dot site in the original homeland. My goals in biting the bullet and sending a wave North were (1) Land Grab, I didn't want to kick the Persians out just to have the Iroquois or someone show up in galleys; and, (2) I was more concerned with population and food production than with shields at this point. There are some pretty good squares up there, and the pop could produce workers to really develop the Northern Kingdom, which will in turn produce like mad once we get a Forbidden Palace up there. That being said, I considered taking a couple of extra turns to even up the year a bit, as nothing had actually happened on my turn, but thought it a good time to hand off to you as the settler wave was still in the center of the Southern Kingdom and my intent could still be easily subverted 8-). You are, after all, our city location planning specialist.

On irony. The mine in progress in the south? Heh. I had that guy building a military/resource road, but knew I was about to hand off to you, and, not wanting to hear about your "finish each square completely before moving on to save wasted movement turns" doctrine, I set him to a mine while still next to that city before he broke loose into the desert with road again. HaHa!

On Contact with the Japanese (I think it was them). Did you see how I got that? That warrior I had parked in the far south caught a glimpse of their border over the sea, and, by getting on the final square of land, I could see exaclty one square of their area, so I waited for someone to wander into sight...

Good luck all. This is going to be a real PITA until we get rail in 8-).

--Cy

Schnarrd

Jan 29, 2002, 03:18 PM

Quote: "Rephrased "New Susa" to get a shorter name onto that one."

You renamed Formerly Known as Susa?! Oh well. Actually, I wanted to found that city on the site where Susa used to be, but I figured that by the time the game got back to me, that site would already be settled. Consequently, I just founded the city where convenient just to have a city called "Formerly Known as Susa." :crazyeyes Now I don't even have that. :rolleyes:

Ugh! The Persians respawned? :vomit: I guess that's just one of the risks of ancient era combat. :( Looks like the next few turns could be tricky, especially if the Persians respawn again. :mad:

Sirian

Jan 29, 2002, 04:13 PM

Cy: regarding workers, my "don't move on" policy is in regard to roads, not other improvements. The automation will sometimes irrigate or build a mine, then move on without building a road, requiring another worker turn to be "wasted" later to move back onto the square for the roadbuilding. However, it's OK with me to build just the road, and come back later for other improvements.

A military/expansion road net is too vital to wait around on, when there are so few workers available. As dogged as I am about worker efficiency, it's just a "rule of thumb". Don't waste worker turns without a good reason. I had a good reason with the two workers I reassigned, though, and in the south, at Crystal Lake. That city needs some irrigation, and so does Dz-tin and the yellow dot, so I sent the first worker across the forest without stopping to build a road.

I always have more workers than this. We have so few for two reasons: killing Persia was more important, and in all our early kingdom, we had one cattle and a couple game, no real food surpluses for somewhere to crank out several workers, so our cities were always strapped for population.

Charis: I wasted one worker turn on the mine, however, I saved two turns on the founding of yellow dot city in the south by getting the road built, and we have horses online. If the miner had been halfway through, I'd have let him finish. I also wasted two turns of slave labor on that one in the mountain at El Dorado (plus the turn spent moving onto the mountain). However, that road got connected and another toward Moya Mona is underway, while the mountain road would still be six turns out. Cases where I deemed other jobs more important. If there had been other workers in those areas, I might have done it differently, but those were the only guys who could get vital connections made, and turns have been saved on unit movement as a result.

Schnarrd: isn't "X Formerly Known as Y" ultimately a tongue in cheek reference back to Prince? So... Prince of Persia? (That would be another esoteric reference, or am I just reading too much into that? :) ). You can rename New Susa again, but try to keep it shorter. "Formerly" or "Notsusa" or something.

Cy: you did a great job on your turn. We NEEDED a settler push, but I would argue that single-shield cities with only long-term hope of corruption relief should almost invariably wait until all the production-able locations have been grabbed. We still have two jungle sites to the east which will be POWERHOUSE cities after many centuries of jungle chop, and short term will bring in lots of much-needed trade. There's a white dot still needed southwest of Chicken Itch. Some of those southern coastal locations will be pretty badly corrupted but not beyond hope of courthouses, so I'd put all of those on priority over anything in the Persian area. Now that might be different if there were ANY civs up in that region, but there aren't, so even if other civs did expand into the region, their cities would also be single shield and not be doing much of anything, not even have culture expansion. If you take a look at RBD3 savegames and look at the unclaimed area north of England, this is about like that. On maps with this much land mass, the AI's have plenty of locations to grab, so except for those silks (the location south of Antioch), I'd say everything up there is low priority.

- Sirian

Sirian

Jan 29, 2002, 04:33 PM

I've never had a civ respawn on me before. (Remember Egypt in RBD2? It didn't reappear -- neither did China in my Desolate Japan game way back when). I wonder what circumstances are required for such a respawn to take place. The only thing I can see different is that Jester razed their capital (thus freeing the name/slot of their first city for re-use?) and that there was a large patch of as-yet unclaimed land for them to be given.

Persia had cities on three of those north dots, but one or two were autorazed. If we had played out the OneInTen "let them build it" gambit, then even if they hadn't built the Pyramids, they might have gotten the Oracle on the cascade (instead of the Germans). Even if not, we could have had more cities up there and possibly (possibly) avoided the respawn.

Then again, once we capture the new Persepolis (don't raze it!) and finish Persia for good, we'll have at least one city in that middle area, and be in position to grab that second gem luxury. So there are some up sides to the current scene. :)

- Sirian

Schnarrd

Jan 29, 2002, 04:59 PM

Quote: "Schnarrd: isn't "X Formerly Known as Y" ultimately a tongue in cheek reference back to Prince? So... Prince of Persia?"

I suppose it is, but I didn't think of that at the time I named the city. You're probably just reading too much into it. :D

As for respawning, in my first game as the Iroquois, I had to reconquer the Greek capitol 3 times in the ancient era - and I never razed a single Greek city. Each time the Greek capitol respawned as the next city in line to be built (ie Pasargadae after Persepolis in the case of the Persians). I'm really not sure what the requirements are for a respawn - I think there just has to be a certain amount of unclaimed space. If that's the case, even if we conquer the current Persian capitol, we have to face the possibility of yet another respawn. :mad:

Iester

Jan 29, 2002, 05:17 PM

I took two extra turns? Yikes. I didn't _think_ I was that out of it that night, but apparently so. Well, 8 carefully counted, VERY carefully played turns next time. Maybe attend some support group meetings for help getting off the Pungent Weed.

:rolleyes:

What's the status of the french and indians as far as tech is concerned? If they get a real army of horsemen and swordsmen, our Jaguars are going to look pretty tiny by comparison. Still useful, but a big cost for reduced effectiveness. Although I've underestimated those scrappy guys before.

Should we take one of the French or the Indians out? I was presuming, by the end of my turn, that persia would be wiped out at will (wrong...) and that we'd either have to find an enemy to fight, or we'd end up paying huge sums for a military we aren't going to use until it's outdated. We can wipe the persians now, but the fundamental problem remains; jaguar warriors are high-maintenance, and not getting any lower. Use them, or we might as well lose them.

Jester

Charis

Jan 29, 2002, 06:23 PM

The differential benefit for using them as attackers dimishes with time as their opponents get stronger, but I really don't think it's use them or lose them. The answer: More cities, and Monarchy.

With Monarchy you get up to *8* free units per city, no maintenance cost (8 for metro, 4 for city, 2 for town). (Contrast to zero free units in Republic or Democracy) Also up to *three* can serve as military police to make the people happy, unlike two in despotism and zero in Rep/Dem.

You guys ARE right in realizing our cash drain is high with this huge number of jaggies, but the solution is not to kill them off or to disband, it's to settle, settle, settle. (Along these lines I agree more with Cy than Sirian on the utility of a 1 shield city far from capitol -- I just prefer to deny AI that land and don't want them near my core cities. Point is well taken though that they have no shortage of land to grab now and have no reason to snag ex-Persia land.)

Charis

Iester

Jan 29, 2002, 07:23 PM

You're right, I'd forgotten about the extra police effect. That would be worth it, the factor that tips it over the edge.

Still, in our situation, Monarchy < Despotism when it comes to maintenance. Sure, we get 8 units free... if you happen to be able to pull hospitals out of your magic hat. At best, we get 4. Likely, all those little cities will net us a whopping 2 each. Despotism, we at least get a flat 4.

Still, you won't find me complaining about settle, settle, settle, so I'll just wait and see just how much those jaguars can do.

Jester

P.S: Sirian? We're starting Summoning Team... you around?

OneInTen

Jan 29, 2002, 08:51 PM

Well it looks like it's my turn, so I'll play as soon as I get the chance (probably in about 6 hours or so).

Sirian

Jan 29, 2002, 09:38 PM

I was late to Summoning Team Night (sorry) and arrived right after Cy timed out. We caught Jester up, broke things off at the start of act 3.

Good luck on your turn, One.

Malishara

Jan 30, 2002, 02:59 AM

Zed's right about the Jags, it seems. This game was on Chieftain diff, ancient era.

OneInTen

Jan 30, 2002, 03:32 AM

Well, when I picked up the game I figured it would be a quiet time just pushing units towards Persia, so I settled in for an easy ride. ;)

0) 310BC: Indians use a boat to get around our blockade ... I guess we can't hold them back from the rest of the land. Crystal Lake completes its worker, decide I may as well build another.

1) 290BC: Start retreating our warrior away from Indians, since I don't see the point landing In their territory and pissing them off. Try to lead Persians further astray with our Jaguar. Arbela completes its temple, decide that since the population there isn't producing useful shields, settlers are about the only thing worth building there. Chicken Itza finishes worker, starts on a settler. Looks as if the Indians have their eyes on the Iron.

2) 270BC: Further leading Persians astray with the Jaguar ... I reckon we can keep them out of the way until we smash them and never have to deal with them. :p Indians plonk down their city, guess they're not heading for the Iron spot yet after all.

3) 250BC: Temple completed at Dzibilchaltun, start Harbour.

4) 230BC: Still making those Persian units do a merry dance. :D Xenalia finishes granary, starts settler. Eeek, the Japanese have snuck across and made a city in our region - on the coast in between Ironopolis and Crystal lake.

5) 210BC: Workers finally back in behind our unit line.

6) 190BC: Yarra-Yarra formed with the settler on the yellow dot, starts on temple. Joan wants to trade territory maps with us tipping in a gold for the pleasure, so I politely decline.

7) 170BC: Persians come to beg for peace. I take the chance to note they have no further cities before laughing in their face. Nasty persians seem to be on to my tactic as some of their troops give up the chase.

8) 150BC: New Susa finishes granary and starts harbour.

9) 130BC: Spot that persians have a settler on the loose protected by a spearman just south of their city. Their archer they left chasing is allowed to catch up to the Jaguar, Jaguar wins combat losing only 1 hp. Monarchy discovered, begin revolt immediately. Switch research to Code of Laws. French begin great Library.

10) 110BC: El Dorado switched to Hanging Gardens. Riggoro switched to Palace. Try to block settler/spearman from going too far, unfortunately I only have on Jaguar there at the moment and they're sitting in forest, so attacking is impractical.

Well there you have it, I missed out by a turn in being crowned King OneInTen. The next 10 turns should hopefully be enough to obliterate the Persians for good this time, we have a good lot of our units headed that way, and they've only got one city, with perhaps one more on the way. We shouldn't have too many problems taking care of them - can only hope that it brings a great leader in repayment for putting up with them for so long!

Other than that, it's all smooth sailing thus far, although I'd be somewhat happier if we didn't have Hakodate plonked down on our happily little area.

Sirian

Jan 30, 2002, 04:57 AM

Good job, One. Don't let Hakodate sway you. You can change the name on it after we capture it (some day) if that suits you. ;)

As for this controversy about Jag availability, here's a shot from an Emperor game on which I based my observation:

Sirian

Jan 30, 2002, 05:00 AM

So I'm thinking... "not available in this game, not available ever". Apparently, however, both sides are right. Both ways can happen. What's the determining factor? Difficulty? Something from preferences? Not having checked Monarch level yet, I decided to have a look in THIS game we're playing now, at Ironopolis, which is built on an iron. Here's what I found, draw your own conclusions:

OneInTen

Jan 30, 2002, 05:25 AM

I don't know about the Jags ... could it be a pre and post patch thing? It's got to be either that or difficulty level, surely.

I've just started a road from our iron town towards the main road network in my turn, but it'll take ages to complete, by which time we're probably not really going to be wanting to attack with them anyway I'd think.

So I'm not sure it'll be an issue for us.

Charis

Jan 30, 2002, 09:10 AM

I'm surprised you haven't noted this before...

Units that can be upgraded don't go obsolete for good. They are not available to build if/when there are resources **in that city's box** to build replacement units. That first surprised me when I saw a warrior available to build in the LATE game when someone pillaged a road connecting that city to iron. Yet no warrior choice available in 'online' cities.

I would have to guess there was no Iron in the city where the first screenshot was taken, and obviously there was Iron in Ironopolis!

Once we have a fully connected network, if we chose to pillage the road(s) to Ironopolis, voila, all the other cities have the choice to kick out a Jag. This is why I asked in early game if we should found Ironopolis ON the hill (can never be cut off) or make a road TO the iron (easy cut off).

Tis lookin' ok. I just hope Persia: i) dies out for good, doesn't respawn again, and ii) doesn't get to sour anyone else's opinion of us.

Charis

Malishara

Jan 30, 2002, 11:41 AM

Well, the city I had was connected to iron, but had both a swordsman and Jag available to be produced, as the screeshot shows. I'ver never run anything but 1.16f. I'll step up the difficulty a bit and see what I find... assuming I survive. :p

Malishara

Jan 30, 2002, 01:04 PM

Well, I tried Monarch, and got the same results. Both swordsman and Jag available. I checked a city that culture flipped to me, same thing. It had one American worker, nobody else, so I don't think that affects it.
:confused:

Zed-F

Jan 30, 2002, 01:47 PM

Could the difference be whether you pop up the city view and select something from the build queue on the right side of the screen, or whether you stay zoomed out in map-view and right-click on the city to select "change production"? I noticed that both of Malishara's screens are of the latter, while both of Sirian's are of the former...

Malishara

Jan 30, 2002, 06:17 PM

Nope, just rechecked using zoom. Mine still gives both as available units for production.

Sirian

Jan 31, 2002, 04:07 AM

Charis: you're up here, been so for a while now. Don't let all that ice and those fishing village plans go to your head. :fish: ;)

Or are you just postponing having to confront another Persian respawn? :lol:

Charis

Jan 31, 2002, 07:23 AM

Gah! :eek:

Thanks for the reminder. I keep a list of games in a notepad file with turn order, but hadn't entered Benevolent yet. :smack:
(That's also why I'm starting to say "Good luck JimBob" in my posts to help remind the next guy ;p)

My bad, I'll try to sneak home for lunch to play it, else early eve.

Charis

PS Although it is true that a Persian respawn doesn't sound appealing, mainly due to threat of re-respawn!

LordNocturne

Jan 31, 2002, 09:30 AM

I don't know, but would it matter if you built right ON the Iron? I believe Ironopolis was indeed built upon iron.

Just an idle thought...

Charis

Jan 31, 2002, 12:37 PM

"Who started the war with the Persians anyway??" roared the General. "Sir,
a check of the royal archives informs us that Charis Ben I started the war,
but did absolutely nothing to prosecute it!" "Well tell him or his son or
whoever to get his carcass over here and FINISH IT!"

Thus did start the humble reign of Charis Ben Evolent II...

110 BC (0) - Anarchy?? The country is in Anarchy... I wonder what will come
of this... Two cities get entertainers to avoid waking up in state of revolt.

90 BC (1) - "Crowned King?????? But, but, I haven't done anything!" cries
Charis Ben II. The Archer+Settler step out of the forest, and are
eaten alive by our hungry little vet jag! :hammer:

70 BC (2) - Kagoshima of Japan finishes the Colossus, the Indians and French
start the Great Library. Settler is sent North to Yellow dot persia spot
near spices, fish and horse.

50 BC (3) - We see New Madras founded near where our "Iron sitter" is, and
the French come RIGHT up to our Maginot line and found Toulouse. Iroq start
Gardens, Indians start Great Lib. Alas, the French city is at a choke and
cuts off free passage to the Persian lands. The jags up there will HAVE
to suffice! We'll back up and found our own choke city on other side of
mountains.

30 BC (4) - Indians want Monarchy for literature. They get a shiny Mayan
dollar instead.

10 BC (5) - After several rounds of cat and mouse, the archer fails on his
attack on our jag, and the Spearman runs away in fear.

10 AD (6) - The dawn of a New Millenium!! It is a pity the "blight" has lived
to see this... now begins our final assault! At the temple, the generation
of a Great Leader is prayed for. A spearman trying to run back INTO the
city and is slain (wounding one elite jag). On the city, they're down to
size 1 (bah), lose one spearman, and three injured jags.

30 AD (7) - A polite Hiawatha wants to trade Territory maps. He too gets
the shiny Mayan peso. El Dorado completes the Hanging Gardens, a wonderfully
appropraite wonder for the Benevolent Mayans. An elite jags goes against
the last Persian spearman in the city and... wins (no GL).

"We have destroyed the Fledgling Persians, Excellency" They deserved it!
:hammer: :hammer: :lol: :hammer: :hammer:

50 AD (8) - The Palace is expanded for the Mayans first Benevloent King. :love:

70 AD (9) - France wants to cancel the RoP (or have US pay through the nose
for it, so lapse it does). They're now annoyed... hmm... :confused:

90 AD (10) - El Dorado goes on FP placeholder, do what you like there.
The City of Chimichanga is founded up North on the coast. Nearby
Arbela is working on a Settler, intended for the purple dot FP location.
Ironopolis is about to finish a Settler to go N-NW and form a boundary
city over the mountains from the French.

There is an UNMOVED Settler left to go on this turn. He's unsure where
to go, thinking about the dark area to South of the blight known as
Hakodate. There may be higher priority spots, including up in Arbela's
area. May the next King be wise in deciding...

Note this was a reign of war and jockeying. Diplomacy was ignored, so
feel free to contact other leaders soon.

Thus ends the reign of Charis Ben Evolent II. Good luck (Schnaard then Jester?)

Sirian

Jan 31, 2002, 04:56 PM

Schnarrd says he's unavailable til Sunday, so go ahead Jester.

One bit of advice: take the Monarchy for Literature deal, if you still can. If we can build the GL at Riggoro, great. If not, keep it going on placeholder and we'll try to nab SunTzu or whatever we can get. If by chance we DO get the GL (seems unlikely, since there was cascade from Colossus) we could ride no science for quite some time.

As for France... let them infringe on Mayan territory at their own peril! :) Too many affronts and we'll give them a piece of our mind.

Getting those silks north of Canopy online might be a good project to add to the docket.

Good luck Jester, then Cy (and see you guys tonight).

- Sirian

Iester

Jan 31, 2002, 10:15 PM

Well, that was boring. Wish I could have been out slaughtering demons. Instead, I get to practice piano and singing! Yay for me!

However, I've got the game. I'll play it out either tonight or tomorrow.

Jester

Iester

Feb 01, 2002, 06:09 PM

"The turn of the first century of the new millennium was marked by the rise of a diplomat to the throne, Mortimer the First, also called the Merchant, for his trade skills. His reign is famous for parlaying the social advances of the Mayan Empire into economic advantage, securing prosperity, and beginning development of a radical trade concept which would come to be known as Currency..."

Okay, I start playing. First things first, take Sirian's advice and trade the French for literature.

Only, they're so enthusiastic about monarchy that they not only give us literature, but also code of laws, 80 gold and 5 g/per turn. I also give it to the Japanese for 12 g per turn, 50 bucks and a world map. And the Zulus, for 8 pt, 70, and a world map. Hope nobody minds my bartering our HUGE tech advantage away for a measly 700 bucks, 3 turns of research, two maps and literature.

I hope they enjoy their monarchy!

:king:

My turns (8 of them, if I can count today, which is by no means certain) were pretty much dead uneventful. The deal, listed above, was the high point. Everything else was deadly dull. I produced a couple workers, switched riggoro to the great library, and founded Delicious Whale. The Japanese and English both asked for our map, and I told them where to stuff it. Nobody got pushy, which I'm somewhat disappointed with. Roads were paved, lands were irrigated... all in all a caretaker turn.

Hope yours if more eventful, Cy. Our tech is pumped, but if we really wanted to, we could be making 35 odd bucks per turn if we sacrificed our tech. It all depends on how much we want currency. I could have gotten philosophy, but... why? I also could have gotten construction, but the french have it, and we might be able to finagle/bully/steal it from them.

Jester

Malishara

Feb 01, 2002, 09:28 PM

Delicious Whale? I would have named it Blubberburg myself. :lol:

Sirian

Feb 01, 2002, 09:43 PM

My turns (8 of them, if I can count today, which is by no means certain)

210 - 90 = 120. 120/20 = 6. You have taken 6 turns. :)

Cmon kid, don't make us look bad. :) Take your last two turns (if you can do so before Cy posts "got it"), then in the future, note what START DATE you begin at, what rate of time passage is taking place, and what end date to stop on. Or should we supply you with this info? :p

Nice going with the brokerage (I expect us to broker quite a bit. I normally try to be stingy if I can get ahead, but this is a low-economic scenerio, and if we're going to get ahead, it's through brokering or pure aggression. I believe.) The MAIN reason, however, why I suggested we broker Monarchy is that Iro's also have it, and if they brokered it, we'd get zippo. So grab any good deals we could while we could! Two techs, piles of gold, etc etc, sounds like we got a good deal. :)

- Sirian

Cyrene

Feb 01, 2002, 11:46 PM

Actually, I not only already have it, I have finished my turn.

Now, if the board will ever let me post the damn thing, you can get the game (I have no problem reading the posts, and posting notes like this, but ever since the crash it can take me hours and hours to get a post with a saved game posted).

--Cy

Sirian

Feb 02, 2002, 12:08 AM

If you're still trying, and still awake, Cy, you can email it to me. I'm up next.

Cyrene

Feb 02, 2002, 08:23 AM

In AD 230 Cy_Tzeltal ascended the throne of the Mighty Mayan Empire. The Kingdom was quiet and prosperous, so he put his focus on growth. 5 cities were founded in his reign, ground was broken on two more, and plans were prepared for an 8th city.

In the Northern highlands known as Chiapas, 3 cities were founded. First, the Great City of Palenque was dedicated in the foothills of Chiapas. In this city will be built an awesome Forbidden Palace as a portal to the underworld, where future Maya kings might defeat the Lord Death and return in dreams and visions. Also founded were the cities of Yaxchilán and Uaxactun. Ground was broken for the cities of Bonampak and Copan, but they will not spring to life until the next turn. In the town of Spirit Dune, plans have been drawn up for yet one more city. The builders will be ready to depart in 5 turns to a site on the edges of the Chiapas on a great river. At this time the first two waves of building fortold by the house of Sirian will be complete in the north.

The settlements in southern lands did not proceed as smoothly. Our planners had picked out a nice green site SSE of Cystal Lake with cattle and horses, and a settlement party was on the way, when, in the second turn of my reign, the Arrogant Japanese landed a party from a ship and snatched the site from beneath us. May the futons in Fukushima be fouled with fetid fudge of an excremental nature furnished by flatulent fowl who have eaten a few too many fermented figs. My blood boiled with thoughts of war, but Venus had not yet appeared on the horizon. The day will come when we will cleanse our lands of these folk, but for now we will let them build in ignorance of their eventual doom. Unable to build in a preferred site, Tikal was founded in a blasted wasteland, nestling up to the few squares of green it can utilize like a cold person just inside sidling up to a fire. On our border with France, the town of Sentry is also founded. May it keep open the pass into France until such time as our hordes of fanatical warriors shall sweep through and doom the Pink Nation. The French are an odd folk. They are so proud of digging two outhouses in their border town, they named it for them. And they call this “culture”?

Our spices are highly valued by those who know us. In return for them we received in trade maps, silks, Construction, and Philosophy without having to reveal any of our scientific advances. Despite the fact the game engine hasn’t noticed yet, we have moved into a new age, and are researching Feudalism at a moderate pace that can be adjusted to suit the next ruling house. Oddly enough, no other civilization has yet completed a Great Library, and we are now 10 turns away from completion. IN the next turn we will discover if the House of Sirian needs to prepare to eat headgear. Oh, and speaking of spices, two of ours are not on-line south of El Dorado.

For future kings: A galley is being built on the west coast in Gossamer. We could ship a settler directly west of Gossamer and found another city to keep Persopolis company. By virtue of being backed up to the water, backed up to our cultural borders with un-pressured water squares to give culture area, and near our capitol, these cities should be unflippable once their culture grows together. I generally dislike colones at sea, but the strait is so narrow that it will be easy to shuttle things back in forth in single turns. And, even at war, unless there is a physical blockade, the transports will be invulnerable, as they will go city to city in one turn. They would give us a jump-off point in the first war with India, when we will land a strong force in that one-square bottleneck just outside Calcutta, then roll up the peninsula from Persopolis 8-). It will have to be settled kinda quick, though, as India is really on a settling tear. Oh, and don’t ask me why I built the road one square too far south over there (if I was planting a city there, I would put it in the coastal square equidistant between the two forest coastal squares, not one more south where the road mysteriously goes to). Speaking of flipping, Sentry IS flippable, eventually. And I do mean “eventually” in the real long term, but still, it is something to consider. I put it there anyways. It is good to be king 8-).

Good luck to future rulers.

--Cy

Sirian

Feb 03, 2002, 12:13 AM

In the year 330AD, our Benevolent, the great king Cy-Tzeltal, was struck down by a strange sickness. His son, Siri-Tzeltal, whipped the entire palace in a froth, demanding to know the source of the illness. Our wisest alchemists concluded that the fetid jungle around our home city had gestated something evil. What, they were not quite sure, but pointed to records from ancient times when a bout of disease struck the entire capital.

"CUT IT DOWN!" said Siri.
"How much of it?" they asked.
"THE WHOLE JUNGLE. EVERY LAST FERN, TREE, AND WEED!"

So workers from all over the kingdom were recalled to Xenalia (with a few minor exceptions) and many new workers were trained at a school in New Susa, some from Gossamer and Chicken Itch, too. They have set in to chop down the jungles, and more workers yet are needed. Many, many more.

Siri-Tzeltal received a message one day. A rider from the distant northern colonies arrived. He bore a parchment that said only, "Forty-Two."

"What is this?" Siri demanded.
"The answer to a question."
"What question?" asked Siri.
The messenger scratched his head. "Uh... I have no idea, My Benevolent."
"Who asked this question?"
"Your Great Great Grandfather, Benevolent One."
"Hmm. Well it must have been important, right? No wonder those colonies are so useless. By the time we can do anything about their problems, it's too late. Well, off with you. And next time you come, bring the answer AND the question."

Now what in the cosmos does "forty-two" happen to mean??? ;)

Effort expended by Siri-Tzeltal on the northern colonies: zero. They were allowed to run their own affairs. Cy, I forgot your city names once I started, but you can rename them next time you're up if you like. I also decided to go ahead and even out the turn numbers, as waiting all the way through another cycle is going to drive us all mad. :)

Inherited Turn: RoP's with England, China, for all they would pay plus world maps. Inspected the workers, zoomed all the cities. A few worker assignments looked questionable (mining in the north? When it's all lost? Why not irrigate a little first, get them growing faster -- especially on rivers -- and mine later? Oh well, I'm not paying attention up there, just worked on a road to connect a former Persian town to the luxuries). Irrigating deserts instead of plains at Dzin was a minor weedy choice -- could have mined plains for more shields, or irrigated them for more food. A whole lot of workers doing lowish priority jobs at colonies, while just a couple workers in our heartland. I decided it was time for labor reforms on a national level.

New Susa swapped to aqueduct, then set up to crank workers every other turn from now until the space ship launch. Or... at least until we have 40+, or else some other locations to take over the worker training. We have a LOT of work to be doing, with jungles but also a ton of cities with little or no improvement. I managed a major effort in the Crystal Lake area, but everything else in the south was pulled home to Xenalia (after vital road nets, in some cases).

We've got core river cities with no irrigated grass? We got off despotism quite some time ago, our cities should be much larger even counting building so many settlers. I'd like to set as a goal to get Xenalia to size 12 by the time the game gets back to me. Grow it quickly, then later we can swap irrigated grass to mined hills and really crank something... maybe troops.

Our colonial phase is now all but over. Let the cities in the north build more settlers, but no more support for them from home unless they are invaded. (Except maybe a worker or two to connect the silk). We had not yet paused in stretching our neck, but our once-military is now in shambles, scattered widely and about to go obsolete in terms of siege warfare.

So with these two things in mind, I said fooey to infrastructure (except granaries and aqueducts, which are NEEDED for growth, please put some priority on them, and on courthouses in cities with more than 40% corruption happening). Units and more units, that is what I wanted to build. Dzin and Ironopolis are now cranking troops at a decent clip and could stand to do so for a long long time, because other cities are busy with wonders or worker training... or too corrupt to pitch in.

Oh, one more thing. Everybody borrowing tiles from Xenalia was told to take a hike. The capital is the top priority.

340AD: I decided to research Feudalism at our best rate (without large deficit). If we get the Great Library, this might be a bit of a waste, but then again... we'd be on toward SunTzu and more importantly, Pikemen. We could really stand stronger defenses.

370AD: all the old deals expired, and we dropped about 30gpt. To recover from this, I renewed RoP's with all our near neighbors except Iro's, and this will keep most of them poor and us richer. Feudalism research continues, due in just over a dozen turns. New Susa starts its continuous worker production.

380AD: settler sets sail across the bay.

390AD: JOAN PROVOKES WAR! :mad: Er... uh... hmm. Where is our army? Dangit. Um... FALSE ALARM. We have no army. Joan can do as she pleases, for the moment, and what pleases her is grabbing more land out of the middle. (India got barricaded again on my first two turns, so we've not heard anything more from them).

400AD: Joanie's bold moves continue. She has two cities now on the coast. Our settler has no choice but to head for the gems. That may seem like a sad consolation prize, but may ultimately be worth more to us than either of Joan's locations would be. Gems = big trade value, while two corrupt cities with lots of food = not much more than a boost in territory to slightly increase RoP profits.

430AD: Mayans complete Great Library in Riggoro. (Sirian eats hat. Ooh, cotton, flax and dye, tasty).

440AD: India completes the Lighthouse from cascade -- at same cost as GL??? WE BEAT THEM BY ONE TURN! Today must be my lucky day, beat the AI's on Emperor in RBD7 by just 3 turns. The cascade has ended! We are now 100% certain to get SunTzu in El Dorado, and could start a placeholder again in Riggoro after it finishes aqueduct to go for another one.

450AD: Much map brokerage. England/China too poor to pay for full world map, so they don't have it yet. Everyone else does.

My suggestions: THE GREAT LIBRARY IS OUR FRIEND! Let the AI's do our research for a while, and keep sapping them for RoP money until such time as we are in a position of strength sufficient to BE ABLE to fight a winnable war. Finish Feudalism at rapid rate, swap El Dorado to SunTzu, then drop science to zero (maybe run one scientist in a northern colony, for 40 turn breakthrough on Engineering, that's one the AI's sometimes skip if they head right for education). We need all kinds of spears, pikes, horsies, and especially workers, but don't build any more new barracks, as SunTzu is going to wipe them out anyway.

Japan has a ship near our capital, and Delicious Whale never got a troop. If Japan has the gall to attack an undefended city, they are to be eradicated from this world by the end of the game (their worst mistake). If all they want to do is found a city FOR US right next to our capital in the old purple dot spot, where it's immediately under unbearable cultural pressure, well, sure, go right ahead! :lol:

The settler near the gems, I think should be moved onto the hill where the Jag is standing. That gets the defensive bonus in a HOT location that may well see combat. BUILD WALLS. Even ahead of a temple. This location gets the gem in immediate range, and picks up some flood plain to supply food. With no hope of a road any time soon, I rushed the harbor in Persepolis to allow for the gems to start trading. We may need a harbor in Gossamer to go along with it, I'm not sure.

Please focus attention now inward, on supporting and improving our core cities. Yes, defend the frontiers and colonies, but let them slack off on infrastructure in favor of walls and defense units. Our high production cities are what we will need to crank lots of troops, just like happened in the ancient war with Persia, and it will take time and lots of focus to bring our heartland up to full speed.

Good luck, One in Ten.

- Sirian

PS: for the next 800 years, and to benefit Those Who Can't Count ;) each player's turn will conclude on a year ending in 50.

Charis

Feb 03, 2002, 12:41 AM

Almost bust a gut opening the save file to see about 19 workers all chop-chop-chopping down the rainforests ;p I also rather liked the hem-in of the Indians by the 3 jags.

I'm not sure if it was mostly Cy or you founding the northern colonies, but *I'm* glad to see them :P (willful suspension of disbelief at the corruption factor, I know, but someday we'll get our FP going in Pallenque) Looks like Arbela is making a settler
for the fish-game spot in upper right.

> Irrigating deserts instead of plains at Dzin was a minor weedy
> choice -- could have mined plains for more shields, or irrigated
> them for more food.

:lol: I'm not alone

> New Susa swapped to aqueduct, then set up to crank workers
> every other turn from now until the space ship launch. Or... at
> least until we have 40+, or else some other locations to take

> So with these two things in mind, I said fooey to infrastructure

Wait, wait, it's an imposter!!! (j/k... situationally appropriate, just a 180 reversal from some other recent situations)

> 430AD: Mayans complete Great Library in Riggoro.
> (Sirian eats hat. Ooh, cotton, flax and dye, tasty).
> 440AD: India completes the Lighthouse from cascade -- at
> same cost as GL??? WE BEAT THEM BY ONE TURN! Today must
> be my lucky day, beat the AI's on Emperor in RBD7 by just 3 turns

:hammer: woot again!

> The settler near the gems, I think should be moved onto the
> hill where the Jag is standing. That gets the defensive bonus

I urge you to think long term ;p j/k I imagine you're expecting
combat there. Maybe I just haven't seen Joan that aggressive, but the river location right where he is standing, the gems in city radius, AND possibility to steal cattle if culturally strong, I'm thinking stay put. I'm also thinking get a third city there ASAP on or near the iron. Perseopolis is our "prize" up there.

The diplo screen, wow everyone is so smiley. Advisor says Joan is our equal, military same size, *has no iron*, and her best offensive unit is the horsemen. And we disdain their puny cultural achievements. We have an RoP of 13 turns meaning no hassles before then. Also she has gems out the wazoo back home in Orleans. It's Monarch diff -- am I way too trusting or are you way too paranoid. It'll be fun to see :rolleyes:

Even turns... good thing.

Charis

Sirian

Feb 03, 2002, 01:06 AM

Joan's not the only player in the region. If the AI is going to go ape over a target and decide to launch secret attack, it's almost always over a too-lightly defended resource city. Also, I'm not keen on spending 116 gold to rush the temple to get the gems in range. I much prefer the idea of them being just one tile from the city, and STOP spending cash on highly risky colonies that could be set up to fend for themselves. All this for a cattle? :)

I'm glad the north was settled, too. All that area under our control increases RoP profits, if nothing else. I'm not criticizing the settlements, far from it. But if cash and other valuables continue to be funnelled away from core cities and treasury reserves, to benefit colonies, I think it weakens us. Now I spent to rush a harbor, to bring a gem online, and one temple, to get a silk within our borders. That was for resources that can bring some return. Cattle, wheat and population in far flung colonies without any such precious resources are much less valuable to our civ as a whole.

Glad you liked the humor regarding the workers. :)

- Sirian

OneInTen

Feb 03, 2002, 04:22 AM

OK, I'll play tomorrow.

Schnarrd

Feb 03, 2002, 09:17 PM

Wow, we got the GL?! :eek: If I remember correctly, that was just a placeholder for some miscellaneous wonder. :crazyeyes That's going to help immensely until education with us being stuck in monarchy.

Anyway, I'm back, in case you haven't already seen the builder thread.

OneInTen

Feb 04, 2002, 06:07 AM

After the reign of Siri-Tzeltal, the people turn to his heir, Juan-Inten-Tzeltal for guidance. He smiles upon the people, knowing his reign will be just and fair, and no harm shall come to pass while he watches over them.

2) 470AD: Juan, deciding he agrees with the former King's love for hills, forms Cooper Pedy upon them, eyeing off the nearby opals. The French, obviously heading for the same spot, turn away. The phrase "empty headed animal's food trough water" can be heard in the distance.

3) 480AD: Joan decides she would like a chat. Apparently she laughs at the so-called Juan King, but wants to swap territory maps. Juan farts in her general direction and refuses, not wanting that settler in his house. Our learned men discover Feudalism, for this we reward them with a holiday, telling them to take their time on Engineering.

4) 490AD: The people love his royal highness so much they build a nice lawn for him to play croquet on infront of his palace.

8) 530AD: The people love his benevolence so much a second story is constructed on his palace.

10) 550AD: Our silks deal ends, but there's nobody willing to trade them to us for a fair price, so King Juan decides to do without for now. Persepolis is temporarily in disorder, but an entertainer will keep the unproductive lazy citizens happy enough anyway. As a final gift to his empire before handing over to younger hands, King Juan forms the sea-side town of Jan Juc in the north.

Juan steps down from the throne, deciding to leave while in his prime.

OK, Sun Tzu is all but ours, I've got the city on 0 growth to max out shields there, we do it in about 10 turns as I recall.

At Persepolis, the settler being produced should be used to settle the iron spot I'd say, just to deny the AI. :p

Joan managed to get a settler past us, the blocking line wasn't lined up properly when I took over, and I didn't change it thinking there was some great reason for it. Oh well, if there was, I've broken it because now they're blocking Joan. I saw a second settler coming and decided enough was enough. The first is running lose though, the next Kind will have to deal with it as he sees fit.

India also apparently have a city up towards our north, I'm not sure if that was there when I started, I get the feeling it happened early in my reign. Oh well, it's bound to be unproductive for them, so I'm not too upset by it.

All in all a quiet turn of mostly worker building and moving.

Charis

Feb 04, 2002, 09:11 PM

I have the game, will play either tonight or get some real sleep and play tomorrow ;p

Charis

Sirian

Feb 04, 2002, 09:17 PM

Juan-Inten! I love that name, nice one. :)

Charis

Feb 04, 2002, 10:38 PM

550 AD (0) - Yax in ex-Persia changed to Settler. Looks like a good mix
of production down South. I set New Susa to a Settler. The two Roman
cities need "boundary compression" to feel the full weight of our
culture! :P

560 AD (1) - The people are easy to please. Already they wish to improve
the palace. Alas, a French AND Roman settler thinking the same way I am
a rush settlers right to where I intend to 8-\

570 AD (2) - We start a fair amount of Pikemen. With upcoming techs our
jags get to be more cost than benefit.

580 AD (3) - Iroquois and French start SunTzu (boy are they late)
French settler right upon us, we rush the settler at Perseopolis!

590 AD (4) - Three jags near Perse spring to action, and form a human
wall to cut off the French settler while ours beelines the iron hill!

600 AD (5) - Joan doesn't want to extend RoP. I'm tired of having her using
the roads to trample our territory. And yet 3 gpt is 3 gpt, we deal.
We extend India's RoP for two reasons: to be polite, and so that our
warrior camped on top of their iron doesn't have to move! :0
We also trade about 100 gold and 4 gpt for contact with Germans and
Egyptians. This might help us get more from GL. Ack, the Indian galley
spills out a settler in good coast northern Persia spot just a few turns
before our settler is ready.

Well it must have helped with GL, we master The Republic. Ew!!! We are
not just happy but THRILLED with Monarch!! Thus sayeth the benevolent ones!

610 AD (6) - The Germans, whose military outnumbers us, wants to trade tech.
Ya right. We buy contact with the Russians. Immediately after, THEY show up
to talk. Want a similar tech deal to get Monotheism. Uh, no. Gosh she's poor.
Finally the annoyed Egyptians show up. To say they are backwards is an
understatement - they fear our Pikemen! Japan wants to talk to exchange
territory maps? Talk to the hand Toku! Their RoP expires and we renew for
a small discount. We master Monotheism by our soothsayers, imagine that!
The people love this and do the palace thang!

Interstitial Nook is founded as a tight wedge between those two Japanese
colonies on our turf.

620 AD (7) - A chinese settler who just landed forms a city a knight's move
off the Iron near Perse we form a city same distance way (on the coast)
and plan to rush a temple there. 8-\ India starts SunTzu.
"Ferric View" is founded in sight of the Iron Hill.

630 AD (8) - We get extra spices on line. Next leader might check to see
who needs. Hurry a settler in Spirit Dune. Another French pair is about
to run right past us as we've got a few turns left.

640 AD (9) - Germans start Sun Tzu.

650 AD (10) - Mayans finish Sun Tzu :D Finally too many unhappy citizens,
we crank up luxury to 10%.

Consider establishing Embassies or otherwise improving relations with
Russia, Germany and Egypt.

* Above Spirit Dune we're playing Jaggie blockade, stopping the French
settler from reaching a good spot. We have TWO settlers heading to the
nice river/iron/spice/forest area where we want to found two cities.
One is coming up and is below the french settler, the other is north
about 3-4 turns, coming down the road. Once done with blockade get those
jags back to the cities they *abandoned* !
Good think we're benevolent and they're all so polite. We're sooooo paper
thin (it's a theme in my games I think) anyone could sneeze and capture
half our cities.

Good luck!!
Charis

Sirian

Feb 05, 2002, 09:34 PM

Schnarrd's up, Jester and Cy on deck. May your Benny be an Evolent One. :)

Schnarrd

Feb 06, 2002, 03:49 PM

Woops, it is my turn! I would have played earlier, but I thought someone else was up. :rolleyes: Thanks for reminding me, Sirian. I guess this shows the virtue of checking the roster order once in a while. :crazyeyes

Iester

Feb 09, 2002, 08:40 PM

(poke)

Still with us, Schnarrd?

Sirian

Feb 09, 2002, 11:09 PM

Jester, if Schnarrd doesn't post within 12 hours from now (by noon eastern Sunday) go ahead post "got it" and take your turn. :)

He's also over 48 in RBD3. Schnarrd, could you at least post to let us know what your situation is? If you've played a partial turn but don't have time to finish your 10, perhaps you could just post the portion you've managed to complete?

- Sirian

Iester

Feb 10, 2002, 12:16 PM

Schnarrd, I hope everything's okay on your end, but you have been officially skipped.

Got it!

Jester

Iester

Feb 10, 2002, 02:06 PM

I can’t find anything wrong with the empire… except that I can’t help wondering why Xenalia is producing a colosseum, not a cathedral! Why? It’s cheaper, better culture, more luxury value, and works with the chapel, if we get it. I change it around, hope it wasn’t a bold tactical move that I’m just not seeing. Embassies established with Egypt, Germany and Russia.

The Iroquois threaten us, wanting contact with the Germans. I really don’t feel like fighting a war with the largest civilization on the planet when we’re not ready. So I give it over.

I look around to see who’s got monotheism. The Germans and Iroquois (surprise…) have it, so I barter it to the Indians, who are the only ones who are willing to pay anything much for it. Nobody else will give more than their territory map, or a few gold.

We get chivalry from the library (Germans and Iroquois). I decide that this would not be such a good tech to barter away. Signing one’s own death warrant, and whatnot.

Most of my reign is building, chopping, settling, and dancing with the French and Japanese for build spots. Those Jaguar Warriors sure are fun!

I built some pikemen, and switched some cities off settlers to pikes. What are we going to use settlers for? 95% of the good spots in the world have been claimed, and most of the remaining ones are too far away for us.

New Susa is in disorder (whoops), but will come out next turn no worse for the wear.

I founded three cities: Fukushima’s Horse, which is at the south tip of the continent, mostly to compete with Fukushima for the horse, and to do some fishin’. Port Coatl and Riviera are the deny-the-French cities in the middle of the north territory. Riviera, of course, is so named both because it’s on a river, and to spite the Frenchies.

Cy: The only thing left to do from my reign is to finish settling that barren desert, sealing off our borders. There are 2 settlers there to do it, and the Jags to keep the Japanese and French out. Also found a fourth city in the French-Indian territory.

Good luck!

Jester (signing off at the end of the 750 turn!)

:smoke:

Cyrene

Feb 10, 2002, 06:25 PM

Got it.

I'll try to go ahead and get this in tonight and get this game back in gear 8-).

Cy

Cyrene

Feb 10, 2002, 11:22 PM

Well, this is a bit rare for me, but I don't really have anything to say 8-).

Our civ seems to be a bit bogged down, I hope someone with more inspiration than I had tonight can light a fire under those guys.

Theology came in via the Library mid-turn. I had been running a placeholder for it in El Dorado and swapped, but the entire world is building it and our shields per turn stink, BUT, this is the time when there are wonders-a-gogo, so I did it anyway 8-0.

Jungle-hacking continues apace. Jester, I only built one city in the desert, locking up the coast. Unless I'm misunderstanding the game (happens every day), with no production bonus from government, a pure desert city, even with irrigation, would stall at pop 2. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me. I built the town near "new" Persopolis--the placement was a tad agressive. Keep an eye on it and Sentry--either we push Joan or Joan will push us. I was going to place another one even more agressively, but France expanded one turn too soon, so there is a settler retreating back to Persopolis.

It goes without saying our military and production stinks 8-).

--Cy

Cyrene

Feb 10, 2002, 11:24 PM

Well, this is a bit rare for me, but I don't really have anything to say 8-).

Our civ seems to be a bit bogged down, I hope someone with more inspiration than I had tonight can light a fire under those guys.

Theology came in via the Library mid-turn. I had been running a placeholder for it in El Dorado and swapped, but the entire world is building it and our shields per turn stink, BUT, this is the time when there are wonders-a-gogo, so I did it anyway 8-0.

Jungle-hacking continues apace. Jester, I only built one city in the desert, locking up the coast. Unless I'm misunderstanding the game (happens every day), with no production bonus from government, a pure desert city, even with irrigation, would stall at pop 2. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me. I built the town in French/Indian territory--the placement was a tad agressive (but even *I* have never placed one as agressively as F-Horse--yikes!). Keep an eye on it and Sentry--either we push Joan or Joan will push us. I was going to place another one even more agressively, but France expanded one turn too soon, so there is a settler retreating back to Persopolis.

It goes without saying our military and production stinks 8-).

--Cy

LKendter

Feb 11, 2002, 12:33 AM

Originally posted by Cyrene
Unless I'm misunderstanding the game (happens every day), with no production bonus from government, a pure desert city, even with irrigation, would stall at pop 2. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.
--Cy

Once Railroad are available, an Irrigated and Railed desert will produce 2 food, so desert towns can grow :)

Sirian

Feb 11, 2002, 12:44 AM

This is from Schnarrd at Civilization Fanatics. I haven't been able to
access the website since last Monday or Teusday, and I was wondering if
the website has been down for that long or if something's screwy with my
connection. I've finished my turn in Benevolent King (it's been
finished for a while) but I just haven't been able to access CivFanatics
to post. Anyway, I found your website and I just want to know if
CivFanatics has been up.

- Schnarrd

I've mailed him Cy's results, so he can take his turn at this point, and offered to help with relaying if his problems continue. I'll keep you all posted, if he is unable to make his appearances for himself.

- Sirian

Sirian

Feb 12, 2002, 05:45 AM

Relay from Schnarrd:

The ascendence of Schnarrirex to the Mayan thrown was one marked by many
strange occurrences. When he first took to the thrown, many Mayan
cathedrals reported times of heightened anxiety where time would seem to
"slow down." The priests took this as a sign from the gods that the
reign of Schnarrirex would be a glorious one, but Schnarrirex privately
had his doubts. First there was the fact that the Mayan homeland was
largely undefended; not all the Mayan cities even had one troop in
them. Also, although the glorious Jaguar Warriors had rid the world of
the stinking Persians, against some of the more modern weapons, it was
doubtful whether they could hold their own. They still were useful, for
their presence in cities seemed to comfort the ever-fickle Mayan
populace, but only to a point. Second, most of the Mayan heartland was
suffering for lack of raw materials to train new troops and construct
new cathedrals. The wretched jungle that had once infested the
heartland was now largely destroyed, but with a few exceptions, quite a
few of the cities near the capitol were still suffering under torpid
production rates. Finally, there was the fact that the smelly French
still polluted the air with their existence when they should be held
under the Mayan yoke (besides, the Mayans needed new fodder for
sacrifices). Schnarrirex did not forsee an immediate destruction of the
French, but he knew in his heart that their time would come.

Schnarrirex started his reign with a standard renegotiation of the
various treaties held with other nations (a theme to my turns). : ) He
guffaws to see some nations pay up to 12 gold per turn for the silly
right to wander the Mayan lands - even when those nations are on the
other side of the ocean. In all his wheeling and dealing, Schnarrirex
notices that the Mayans still do not possess the knowledge of the entire
world map! He quickly remedies this with a right of passage deal plus
about 100 in lump-sum gold.

Schnarrirex also started the training of a large number of troups
trained with a thing called a "pike" - a strange instrument that is
quite a departure from the Jaguar Warrior's axe, but effective
nonetheless. With all this training, however, he did not neglect the
spiritual paths; Schnarrirex did construct a few cathedrals (the
frequency of time "slowing down" and of heightened anxiety had been
increasing, and not all the priests were interpreting this as a good
sign now).

The Great Library was used extensively during Schnarrirex's reign, as a
rather strange thing occurred when two civilizations discovered a
technology: they gave it to the Great Library for free. No Mayan
scholar was exactly sure why the other civilizations were stupid enough
to do this, but they decided to capitalize on it nonetheless. However,
with the discovery of "Education," the other civs became "Educated"
enough not to give their technology away and the Mayan scholars had to
do research by themselves. Schnarrirex decided to ensure that the rest
of the civilizations didn't stay stupid and give technology to each
other instead of the Great Library, selling Education to all those who
could afford and netting about 40 gold per turn and 60 gold lump sum in
the process. Meanwhile, the Mayan scholars set their sights toward
Music Theory, for it was thought that with Music Theory, a great
Cathedral could be built in Xenalia, and a University was started in
Xenalia for the purpose of preparing for this mighty building.

Toward the end of Scharrirex's reign, the incidence in "freezes in time"
had increased dramatically, and Scharrirex was reported to mutter under
his breath, "Stupid Netlinks connection." It was thought that this was
some arcane prayer to the gods to stop the bizarre "freezes in time,"
and actually it was. The day before Scharrirex's reign ended, his
closest advisors reported that Schnarrirex looked murderous and had
punched several armored guards, thinking that their helmets were
something he called, "monitors." The next day his mangled corpse was
found outside the Palace grounds with the bloody message written on it,
"Better dead than disconnected."

Miscellaneous notes:

The French should go soon. Since we're stuck in Monarchy, we shouldn't
build for too long and let all the Republics get ahead of us in tech and
gold. Also, if we go into combat soon, we may get a GL, which can be
used to rush the Forbidden Palace. Only problem is, we're in no shape
to fight a war now; we need a whole lot more knights and troops in
general.

On wonders: As stated above, the university in Xenalia is a placeholder
for Bach's. We might not get Bach's because of the cascade from
Sistine, but if not we should at least get Leo's. The Iroquois in
particular are going to be a problem since they already started Bach's
and have a lot of shields invested in Sistine. Hopefully we'll finish
Sistine and they'll either switch to Leo's or waste their shields since
they already have a city working on Bach's (the AI never seems to switch
the city with the most shields invested to the next wonder).

Also, thanks to all the jungle-whacking our productions rates in most of
our cities are significantly improved.

There are also two settlers wandering around that I'm not sure what to
do with.

I think that's it. Good luck to the next ruler.

Zed-F

Feb 12, 2002, 06:46 AM

Whoever's next will need a save file...

Sirian

Feb 12, 2002, 12:53 PM

Inherited Turn: I made a good many changes to build orders and some to city management. Schnarrd's plan for wonders looks good so I upheld those ideas. I decided to give some our surplus spices to Zulu for 20 turns, help our overall reputation as not being ENTIRELY miserly. Also sold them some iron on the cheap, might as well give them a better shot to hold off the Iro's for longer, if they go at it.

Our workers have done a good job clearing jungle, but some of our core cities remain underdeveloped, especially Riggoro, New Susa (finally renamed again), Moya Mona and Canopy. I decided to do what I could to focus workers on improving production at these four locations. Then I saw that our silk was STILL not online, and not only that, nobody has made any effort to link it up??? Some recent Benevolents have been dozing on that one. :)

Time to whip these northern colonies into shape. :whipped: I rushed two settlers, and mobilized the one already up there, intending to plug the last three holes and get that over with. Our waiting settler in Persepolis might be sitting around hoping for an opportunity, but I don't see one coming any time soon. So I woke up our ship and set about to sail over, get the settler, then deliver him to the south to plug that hole in the desert. Finally, we STILL haven't settled a spot within the first ring around our capital? This too must be immediately corrected, so a settler was switched to at Delicious Whale.

Finally, I vetoed all improvements at 1/1 colonies in favor of pike training, except at northern colonies that already had over 30 shields invested on something -- or locations that I thought should build some walls. Yeah, in theory it would be nice to have cathedrals etc etc, but in reality, what we need is troops, if we're going to hold on to these locations, and the core has about 100 more urgent priorities than to stop to build troops to send out to colonies while those sit around dozing on millienia-long construction projects, thanks to corruption.

One of the BEST things about SunTzu is that it lets us build vet units anywhere, even at otherwise useless colonies.

960AD: Worker reshuffle begins. In some cases, I am even just moving them, but in others (most cases) I am cleaning up projects along the way, while moving in the general direction of areas where I want them to be.

I brokered some techs to somebody, don't remember who. I think I renewed our spice for silk deal with France, at some hefty new cost to us. This should be the LAST time for importing French silks, as I will ensure that we get our own supply online if not on my turn, then shortly after.

970AD: Every time I see "Chichen Itza" a voice in my head shouts "CHICKEN ITCH!" like it's some kind of hilarious joke. :) I can't help myself, it's like one of those stupid ad jingles/slogans that you can't get out of your head. Who named that one anyway? I don't think I've gotten that much mileage out of a name at any other point.

I blew a buncha cash rushing courthouses in Persepolis, Ironopolis and the city south of Dzin. WE ARE SUFFERING CORRUPTION AND NEED MORE COURTHOUSES. (Why am I seeing this theme repeating in so many games? Am I just nuts? Or do others simply not place the same amount of importance on managing corruption?) I then changed a few other cities to courthouses, and would have changed even our core cities over if not for the dire thinness of our military and a sense that I ought to be preparing us to at least be able to defend ourselves if we are attacked.

980AD: Music Theory, start on Astronomy. Um... India has landed a spear near Moya Mona? What are they doing?

990AD: Broker Music Theory to Joanie for mucho moolah. No one else can pay the going rate, so it stops there. Returns from my increased focus on military production starting to pay off, things are already more secure in the south. I've founded four of the five new cities now, the last is waiting for the settler to shuttle down on our navy (which consists of one little galley, not even a vet).

1000AD: Um... those are not Indians. Those are Iro's. Duh. I'm so used to India being purple, I'm not paying proper attention. India is gray in this game. Iro's are purple, and that spear wandering in our heartland has now been determined to be up to mischief.

I dial up Hiawatha. "Yo. Get your stinkin brutes off our land, or we're going to plant them and use them as fertilizer." Hiawatha declares war. Our jags plant his spearmen in the middle of our sacred forest, near El Dorado, and use them as fertilizer. Heh, he was warned. Message dispatched to Salamanca: "You chose unwisely." Our few knights are mobilized. One is left on the western front at Sentry, the rest will be in the southeast soon.

I dial up Toku and offer to bury the hatchet, remove the death warrant from his head for grabbing some of our land, pay him about 350 gold (half cash, half gpt), and invite him to join our Holy War against the aggressive and arrogant Iro's. Well, OK, I didn't offer the cash at first, but that's how much he wanted. I paid. Japan declares war on Iroquois, and we are now locked into an alliance (against which we have NO weariness concerns, thus no reason to even want peace anyway) until the year 1200AD.

1010AD: Japan's vet galley near Izumo ATTACKS Iro's regular galley moving up our colonial east coast, and sinks it! The loyal citizens of Izumo, celebrating this victory and overcome with admiration for the Mayan culture and people, happily pledge their allegiance to our Benevolent Kingdom! Well well well, that's going to shorten the time it will take to bring our silks online.

[party] [dance]

Iros have two galleys doing the shuffle on our WEST coast, up north. One landed that spear, and so is empty. The other probably has one or two troops on board, though maybe not. I'm not particularly concerned. In the south, an Iro galley sails up toward our shore. Yeah, come get some.

1020AD: An Iro warrior in the west, below our gem colony and Persepolis, steps onto our land. Guess he had been wandering and exploring. Our elite jags obliterate them, sadly no great leader emerges. Our forces arrive in the likely theater, the area around Dzin. Fukushima's horse, Interstitial Nook, and other cities in that entire region have received healthy reinforcements, mostly because I had them all building units lately, but also some arrive from other parts of our lands. Iro's keep on sailing. Ha! But... bad news. I see them sitting on a sea tile. THEY HAVE ASTRONOMY!

1030AD: India comes knockin, wants Education and 90 cash for Invention, I take the deal. Iro's start Copernicus. Some swords come online for us, and more knights and pikes. I'd still call our forces "very thin" and I am moving several knights right up the coast in line with the Iro galley, expecting them to make landfall with a pair of troops (probably an attacker/defender pair) any day now.

1040AD: Iro's land a pair of knights north of Dzin, apparently fevered by the temporarily undefended new city of Proving Grounds in the desert that I just founded (that fifth settler finally arrived). Our knights attack the invaders! Both win, one becomes elite! That's four for four on attack by our forces in this war so far, plus that one naval defeat the Iro's suffered at Japanese hands. From all I can see so far, this war is not going well for them. :)

1050AD: I moved a bunch of workers now done improving Riggoro's most urgent needs into the desert near Proving Grounds to build some roads. We need better access through the area to shuffle our troops around, as needed. Proving Grounds has ONE flood plain, be sure to irrigate it soon.

With Japan to keep them occupied, and having to invade us via the sea, I don't expect any serious attacks by the Iro's, but we are fairly well prepared. The only thing we are NOT well prepared for would be for Joanie to betray us, but I don't expect it. She's got trade deals, RoP, and good relations with us, and just in case, I HAVE been doing absolutely nothing in that region other than building more units throughout my turn.

OneInTen: after your difficulties in RBD4, I'm frankly a little nervous handing off a war to you in which some aggressor has the initiative and is coming after us. However, our position here should be fairly well defensible. We have units in the combat region. The one thing you MUST NOT let happen is for Iro ships to slip past, and for you not to pay attention and not respond with appropriate shifting of our units. Don't let me read that they sailed right on by you and landed a bunch of troops and took out our capital. OK? :) Just keep building units, and keep a close eye on their ships. The ones up north are low to zero threat, but any new ships coming up from the south are sure to be carrying units, and the AI CAN be both smart and patient about where to land, holding off until you leave them an opening where they can jump in and put some hurtin on us.

Don't leave the south wide open, but don't let ships sail past our counterattack forces either. Shuffle whatever you have to. As long as they don't sail four or more ships at once and plop down a stack of eight, our current forces can handle anything they throw at us. And so can you, so good luck managing it. We're counting on you. Don't take any unnessary risks. Here's your shot at some redemption. :)

- Sirian

Iester

Feb 12, 2002, 07:09 PM

Chichen Itza was my name.

I actually read your warning against naming cities silly things. So I pulled out a map of the Mayan empire. Chichen Itza has long been a favorite of mine, so I threw it down.

I abandoned that silly rule after seeing Chimichanga. So, along came Delicious Whale and Kagoshima's Horse.

OneInTen

Feb 14, 2002, 03:54 AM

Sorry for the delay, went out to dinner last night and didn't get home until late, and snowed under with work I have to get done tonight. The next player is welcome to skip me if they like (since you'd all prefer I didn't play anyway by the looks of things :p )

Sirian

Feb 14, 2002, 07:58 AM

Charis is on deck. We'll leave it up to him as to whether he wants to take his turn next, or wait for you, One. We definitely want you to keep playing, though. Your best effort is all that we ask.

- Sirian

Sirian

Feb 15, 2002, 06:34 AM

OneInTen: we're still waiting to hear from you here. Do you think you can get in a turn in today or early tomorrow? Are you still with us here?

- Sirian

Charis

Feb 15, 2002, 08:05 PM

Hmm, a whopping 5 days, so I'll lag no more in snagging this turn.

Got it
Charis

Iester

Feb 16, 2002, 04:43 PM

Who's up after Charis? If One In Ten comes around, he'll be up, but after him, is it Schnarrd, or me? Schnarrd's next in line, but he also took a turn more recently than I have.

Not that it matters, I just want to make sure.

Charis

Feb 16, 2002, 07:42 PM

For a war, this was about as quiet as it gets. Not one shot fired (that might help war weariness?! :P)

Looks over old notes... Xenalia for Bach's, also hoping to get Sistine or
if not that, Leo's. We've been thrown into war by Iroquois and have Japan
joining us. Keep Joanie happy, don't let their ships just slip by, get
the silks outside Cocoon online... 15 turns of alliance with Japan, so
it's pure war this reign.

Using 1.17f here on out...

1050 AD (0) - Charis Ben Evolent was again upon the throne, and he surveyed
all of his lands. With no fleet WHATSOEVER he's not clear how he is to
prevent Iro ships from sailing past! :P

1060 AD (1) - We learned Astronomy?? Uh, we had 6 turns left at end of last
turn. I guess there was some trading? Gunpowder next sounds good.

1070 AD (2) - Bismarck says "Ah, gunpowder? I can help you for just
380 gold, a paltry sum. Japan renegotiates its RoP. (I forget the map
size, but wow, it has gotten real slow between turns!) Even 1 single gold
makes him say never, sure it's a straight up trade :(

1080 AD (3) - The workers are hard at clearer. No signs of Iro trouble.
As the turn goes around I'm starting to see Saltpeter. Crud!! One Saltpeter
was a prescient founding by Japan in Echizen, on our Norther colonies.
It's time for a Deacon-Beacon maneuver here! :hammer: Sonofabiscuit,
Toulouse of the French, which former under the nose of our blockade line,
has salt. It's their only one. Dehli has salt. The 'Japan'-stolen salt is
the only such in our North.

Woo!!! The loyal citizens of New Calcutta yearn to be with us! That's no
biggie except... that city has Saltpeter!! It's next to Perseopolis.

Where else? Ah, we have it at Tikal also at home. Iro have one supply.
Japan has no other source. We could in one blitz turn deny both France
and Japan of saltpeter. Keep this in mind JUST before they get cavs, and
we could cripple them. Heck, look closely at the location of these cities.
We could take and defend those with no *credible* fear of counter attacks.

Cocoon pops out a 'missonary' settler to convert the Japanese of Echizen!
Start moving workers to connect up our saltpeter asap...

1090 AD (4) - MMOW.

1100 AD (5) - Bismarck shaves 1 gpt of his RoP. (And they call US misers?!)
Iroquois offer peace treaty straight up. Bah, we're in an alliance, no can do.
Hmm... he offers 120 cash to, when asked.

1110 AD (6) - England and Japan sign a military alliance vs Iroquois! Do the
sharks smell blood?? England then declared war. El Dorado completes the
Sistine Chapel for our Benevolent nation! :hammer: Not pressing with our
city sizes, but we should get some more cathedrals going. He starts on the
next wonder (Leo/Copernicus) Delicious Whale finishes a granary and...
a Cathedrals takes as much time as a Library? Is that all? We're more
religious than I thought! Saltpeter is now 'online'. At 60 gold a pop to
upgrade, I must hold off with 100 gold in the treasury. Leo might be nice...

Samurai are seen running around now, btw.

1120 AD (7) - Sugar!! The Iroquis have finished JS Bach at Oil Springs :(
Just 11 turns before we're done at Xenalia. I switch Dorado to Copernicus (20)
and move Xena to Leo, due in 11.

1140 AD (9) - Oh joy! Delhi completes Copernicus 8-\ Our misdeeds in
earlier infrastructure, research and production base are hammering us :hammer:
El Dorado switches to courthouse. Hope no one else gets Leo in 9. (10 before
I move workers.) Ack!! An un-mined mountain in our wonder city, gah!
(This will amplify the pain if we lose Leo by a turn or two!) A slew
of workers dispatched to the mountain. Finish mining and switch worker,
running a brief food deficit. Everyone and their brother is after Leo.

1150 AD (10) - Our Cocoon silks finally online and the French silk trade
expires next turn (expire it!!). Speaking of the French...

They're kickin our butts in tech, four up. They have saltpeter but just hooked
up recently and no muskets yet. Just one source. A source 3 squares from our
city Sentry. A city with two muskets and a Knight. A city longing for a
border conflict. Next turn cancel the silks, then we have a seven turn
agreement not far from ending. Here's a thought, what I would try if I
had 10 more years...

Take the next 7 turns to mobilize war with France. At around that time you
can take peace with Iroquois. Aim to take *3* cities including the saltpeter
in the span of 1-3 turns, then talk peace. Toulousse, Bordeaux, and New
Paris. They're very lightly defended, spears and pikes. If we take that
saltpeter, that ends the French threat. No cav, no muskets, they continue
to stick with spears and pikes and longbow. We have been benevolent towards
the evil cur long enough, thinks Charis Ben Evolent. Start the assault by
pillaging the saltpeter spot! :hammer: (Why a limited war?? We're benevolent!
Besides, if we hurt them bad, Japan on their other side slaughter them and
become an uberpower, and that one attack of three cities cripples their
military for the next several hundred years. In any case, let current
contracts finish or we'll take a massive diplo hit, as well as not be
very benovolent)

Chemistry dropped to 1 turn no matter how low research this year, so I
look to buy it for 1 gold. Indeed, India sells it for 1 gold. That throws
us into middle of Banking, due in 4-5 turns. Hmm, Japan will give us
Banking for just Spices. Wow, Cathy is more generous. For spices, she'll
give Navigation, Printing Press, and all her gold of 12 pieces.

There is a settler about to arrive in a coastal founding spot just below
Echizen of Japan. This is to put keen cultural pressure on the city and
bloodlessly take his saltpeter. If you need to, redirect elsewhere instead.
Mirage should finish his Temple asap for the same reason.

As far as Northern defense, there has been little ship activity. I've sent
several pikes up there, and centralized two knights in Palenque. They should be
able to respond quickly and fend off a light wave. Recently one ship was seen
going by, so it's conceivable you'll get a landing.

Good luck! (Schnaard, you're up. Someone doesn't swap places when they don't
respond and delay the game several days, they're skipped. I hope next go
around EVERYONE can get their turn!! Current order as I have it is...
Sir,OneIn10,Charis,Schnaard,Jester,Cy)

Charis

Sirian

Feb 16, 2002, 08:59 PM

Good show, Charis. I like the sound of your plan. No saltpeter would indeed defang Joanie, although you are overlooking one thing there: trade. Denying her her own supply will surely help us, but is no guarantee that she can't produce muskets and cavs.

Keep that in mind as we make war plans.

One's interest here seems to have waned after his difficult turn in RBD4. I still hold out hope that he's just been busy or something, but he's showing signs of abandoning us. Since we want to keep these things moving, he needs to start responding very soon if he wants to continue.

- Sirian

Schnarrd

Feb 16, 2002, 09:34 PM

I should be able to play tomorrow afternoon - I don't have access to my computer today (I'm posting from a different computer right now).

Edit: Actually that means that technically I don't have it since I haven't downloaded the game from my computer, but you get the point. :)hammer:

Quote: Take the next 7 turns to mobilize war with France. At around that time you can take peace with Iroquois. Aim to take *3* cities including the saltpeter in the span of 1-3 turns, then talk peace.

Ooh, blood! *Licks lips* I guess I'm still feeling warlike from my RBD 3 turn. I'll try not to go so overboard in this game. ;) :satan:

Schnarrd

Feb 17, 2002, 11:18 PM

Well, looks like this is going to be another turn that I've delayed. :( I got 7 turns done, but I think I'm just going to have to wait until tomorrow to get this one done. Sorry I haven't been very prompt with my turns, but I've just had a lot to do this weekend.

Schnarrd

Feb 18, 2002, 02:10 PM

Sorry again about the delay in getting this posted, but I’ve been helping someone move this weekend, so I’ve just had enough time to go to civfanatics briefly and check on RBD 3 and 6. Speaking of which, I only have about twenty minutes to post a summary before I go back to moving boxes, so my report will be in prose and will not be in character. This is the only time I’ll be able to get anything posted today; the rest of the day is devoted to helping my uncle move. Since my notes are not handy, I’m not sure exactly what happened in which turn, but I’ll try my best.

My turn started out fairly normal, but steadily grew worse. The first thing I did (as usual) was that I checked for deal renegotiation (I was impressed; I only needed to renegotiate two deals this time). I canceled the French spice deal later and prepared to attack the French. However, two turns in, I got a message saying that Berlin had finished Leo’s seven turns before Xenalia was able to finish it. Xenalia switched to a university, wasting over a hundred shields in the process. This was only the start of the bad news on my turn. Two turns later before I had had time to build up a sufficient force of knights and muskets, the Iroquois sign a military alliance with the Indians. The Indians weren’t the civ I was planning to attack, and I’m not quite ready for war, but that’s still not too bad. Consequently, I move the stack of knights that had been developing in Sentry through French territory (we had a Right of Passage) towards our border with India. There are also about 7 Jaguar Warriors that I gather and move towards New Karachi. These assault New Karachi the next turn, killing a musket and two spears wih a loss of two jags and capturing it. However, the turn after I capture New Karachi, the Iroquois sign an alliance against us with the French. This is now a two-front war! Seemingly endless amounts of French troops are spotted near Sentry and the area around Persepolis and more stacks of jumbos are spotted near New Karachi. Luckily, most of the French military seems to be obsolete. I turn the science down to zero (I needed the cash for upgrades more) and rush a caravel in one of my coastal cities to transport troops from the Mayan heartland (I realized at the end of my turn that there was a galley sitting in one of our cities for just this purpose. Woops.). As our group of knights is closest to the French front, that is where I attack (more weed on my part, as the Indian front was more in need of reinforcements). I lose four knights attacking spearmen and warriors, but I capture Toulouse and another French city in that area (sorry, can't remember it offhand). I also upgrade as many pikemen to muskets as possible and contact the Iroquois who are willing to accept peace for 20 gold (maybe if I had contacted them earlier when the military alliance with the Japanese had expired, we wouldn’t be at war with the French. Oh well). During the next turn, New Karachi, not being reinforced with Mayan knights, falls to Indian jumbos. Our front line is paper thin and I found myself hiring magicians to defend it with smoke and mirrors. Forget sweating bullets; I was sweating cannon balls.

I’m kind of shady about everything that happened after this, but I’ll cover the major points:

New Paris was captured. During the assault, the great leader Ahnizotl was created and was used to make a knight army (we desperately needed it).

All the Indian colonies but one in the former land of Persia were captured.

The heroic epic is being built, due in 7 turns (I think?).

Ferric View (nice name, by the way) is doomed; there are enough jumbos around it to fill 3 Barnum and Baily circuses. I only hope we can keep them from overrunning all of our colonies in that area.

We need to end one of our wars soon; this two-front war is killing us.

Sorry if I missed anything, but I need to go immediately. Time to move more boxes.

Sirian

Feb 18, 2002, 03:16 PM

Never thought this one was going to be easy. I always knew those colonies around Persepolis would come under attack some day, which is why I urged more military preparation. :) Thanks for taking time to post while so busy, Schnarrd.

Jester, you're up next, then Cy.

- Sirian

Charis

Feb 18, 2002, 05:28 PM

Schnaard, I'll echo Sirian's comments, thanks for getting the post in.

Some thoughts for the next leader... (Jester, i don't much envy you! :P)

Our colony cities are gone. Poof! Finito. If you do nothing and hope to hold them off, we'll be nothing but Jumbo food. What can we recover? I have two thoughts:

- Give away some cities!! As a freewill offering, give Cooper Pedy, Ferric View, Cuello and Bordeaux and New Calcutta to Japan over the next two rounds. Why???? Keep the cities and saltpeter out of French-Indian hands, and have our troops that have moved magically transported home safe. Japan will get a musket in any city you give.

- Ally with Japan. If you get Japan vs French and India, France is gone. They will wipe them off the map. That may not save our cities from India unless you also give a city or two to Japan in the war zone to get some distraction. Rough cost looking at the save file, most of our treasury and 10 gpt.

- Pull what troops you can over the current and next turns to Perseopolis and New Paris. With the above distractions, and by shipping in a few muskets, those two cities might just be defensible. It depends how many more troops India is prepared to send.

What do we get from this trio of moves? Intense goodwill from Japan for free cities (alas you can only give cities free, can no longer trade for anything), relieve from India and France (hence time to build up what we need to), and, if it works, our two better cities up there held rather than taken.

Then again, this could be pungent weed talking. :smoke:
I just see the alternative of sticking it out as one guaranteed to lose a dozen troops and ALL cities in that area with nothing at all to show for it. Not only that, the pressure then on Toulousse would be intense if they press the attack.

One other comment looking at the save file. EEP! Well, eep for the workers and the catapult exposed in the field. They'll be washing jumbo cages momentarily. Overall, this was a great move by France to pull in India, awful timing for us, and payment for our razor-thin-ness, something we usually have not been punished for recently.

One other aside. Interstitial Nook is getting more pressure than it's giving!! You may need to garrison some more troops there or have it flip. 7 of the 21 tiles are not under our boundaries - that's equivalent to 7 foreign nationals. We're closer to our capitol, but actually, not by a ton. If Fukushima flips first that would remove some of the tension.

Hmm, one more, looking at the map. Since we're at war with
India, be sure to capture New Bengal in our Northern regions.

At the risk of 'one more'... we're at zero science, but no scientists! Maybe Jester can scrounge up a scientist from somewhere. ok, ok, i'll be quiet now... must get to rbd5 and inf!

Charis

Sirian

Feb 18, 2002, 05:48 PM

Jester, if I might point you to some reference material: if you haven't already, you could take a look at what has gone down in RBD4. That's a game where colonies/front line buffer were overrun, but not the core.

Our core is what counts. I know I started this war (with Iro's) on my turn, but really they started it. They were on the warpath and I had no intention of letting them choose all the conditions of where and when to engage. I see little to no reason to let Iroquois off the hook. WE are in permanent Monarchy and have no concerns about war weariness. The only concern we do have is military defeat.

Some of Charis's suggestions may have merit. This is why you don't overspend on colonies: when they are lost in battle, you don't take a crushing blow. This is also why it is better to spend energy building up the core, low-corruption cities, so you have the might in place to build enough units if you get into a bad scrape. Far too much energy was spent on distant colonies and land grabs, although there have been some benefits to that. By now, the north would be filling with other civs if we hadn't grabbed it. The real downfall was lack of work improving the land in our core. That, too, I tried to address, but it has been slow in coming. We might accept peace with the Iro's rather than let them continue to bribe more civs into attacking us, though, so that choice is up to you. If the whole world ends up against us, that's definitely not a rosy scenerio.

Whatever happens, as long as you don't lose vital core cities, don't sweat any decisions you have to make, or any poundings you take from superior enemy forces. Good luck.

- Sirian

Schnarrd

Feb 18, 2002, 06:07 PM

Well, things went more smoothly than expected with the move. :) I personally thought that it would take up to around 9:00 at least, but everything went so well that I'm back by 6:30!! :D

Just a couple responses to Charis:

Ally with Japan. If you get Japan vs French and India, France is gone. They will wipe them off the map. That may not save our cities from India unless you also give a city or two to Japan in the war zone to get some distraction. Rough cost looking at the save file, most of our treasury and 10 gpt.

I'm not sure if I included this in my writeup (quite possible - I was extremely rushed while typing it), but the Iroquois already signed a military alliance with the French against the Japanese (or was it the Indians vs. Japanese? No, I don't think so, because I strongly considered signing a military alliance with the Japanese, but reconsidered when I saw that bit of news). Also, I think that the French will be willing to accept peace soon, as I miraculously managed to whittle away their force of knights (the knights kept attacking our muskets, and it looks like regular knights do not withdraw much, as many were killed attacking our cities). I also managed to capture three of their cities. By the way, the French do have another source of saltpeter deep inside their territory near Rouen, so this does not take away their only source of saltpeter.

What we could do is get the Japanese to ally with us against India, but I'm not sure if they're already at war with them or not. I'm also not sure whether the Japanese will do much on that front.

EEP! Well, eep for the workers and the catapult exposed in the field. They'll be washing jumbo cages momentarily.

Well, actually I purposely left the workers exposed to buy some time from those jumbos (is this considered an exploit? Considering the lengths the AI will go to to capture workers, it very well might be). I'm telling you, I was fighting with smoke and mirrors (actually, it was more like wisps of fog and highly reflective puddles :D ). Concerning the catapult, I simply didn't have enough troops to protect it.

Give away some cities!! As a freewill offering, give Cooper Pedy, Ferric View, Cuello and Bordeaux and New Calcutta to Japan over the next two rounds. Why???? Keep the cities and saltpeter out of French-Indian hands, and have our troops that have moved magically transported home safe. Japan will get a musket in any city you give.

This move wouldn't be necessary to get on Japan's good side (they're already gracious towards us), but it may prevent our cities from becoming peanuts for the jumbos. Definitely worth some serious consideration. If we give away those cities, however, we do NOT want to ally with the Japanese against the Indians - those cities would fall just as fast in Japanese hands as they will in ours. Let's hope that if we do this, the Indians do not have a ROP with the Japanese.

About cultural pressure: I did notice that some of our cities were getting more than they were giving, but I just did NOT have enough spare cash to rush cultural improvements in those cities, and I don't think we will have enough spare cash anytime soon. If those cities revolt as a result, so it goes. :(

EDIT: Oh, by the way, we ARE at peace with the Iroquois. Not sure if that's in my writeup either (you can see what happens when I submit a writeup without the help of my notes :rolleyes: )

Sirian

Feb 18, 2002, 06:51 PM

One really BAD thing about giving away cities: the nationality of the citizens changes to that of the giftee. This means no chance for the city to flip back to us. I'd rather let India take them over, I think, in the hope of some day either having them flip back, or us go and liberate them. Scorched earth would not buy us much, as there isn't much of value in those cities anyway. Figure we may lose that gem, though, so we need to stop selling the other one to whomever, and keep it for our own use.

- Sirian

Iester

Feb 18, 2002, 06:53 PM

Okay, I've got it.

This should be, uh, interesting. Time to test my warmaking skills to the limit. Hopefully diplomacy will pull us out of the fire, but from the descriptions, it's not going to work out that way.

Mayans to horse! (or was that Proletarians? I can never remember.)

Jester

P.S: Why are we researching physics? I mean, scientific progress is wonderful and everything, but metallurgy and military tradition await. Wouldn't they be more valuable? Oh, well, I'm not going to waste the 5 turns to change it. But... why?

Turn Zero: The french, pansies that they are, wimp out of the war before I'm even done turn one. They're willing to give me Democracy for a little cash and a peace treaty, but we have no need for such inferior technologies. So I accept 21 gold per turn instead.

Charis

Feb 19, 2002, 01:43 AM

Wow! can't believe the french wimped out THAT easily.

Good replies above from Schnaard and Sirian. I forgot about the citizenship trading places. But I don't see much problem there. If India takes them, we're not liberating them soon, and they WILL whip and conscript the heck out of them, leaving none of us left. Whether or not to jettison them, and/or bring in the Japanese, is whether or how long you think you can hold Perseopolis and the army fort. I was thinking, instead of 'making a stand', you pull out your defenders and run to those two cities, give to japan and pull them into the war. They won't last long, but enough distraction to mount a defense and to heal the hurt army.

Oh and I did wonder if the workers were bait. My concern was that it led the jumbos *closer* to Perseopolis and the other city before a defense could be mounted. I don't think of it as a bad exploit, although if I were the AI designer I wouldn't give worker capture quite that high a priority :P Glad your move went well and you finished early.

Hard to tell... Jester is going to have a blast. And yes, even if it all goes totally south... they're just colony cities - not like Perse has a wonder or anything.

Good luck :P
Charis

Sirian

Feb 19, 2002, 07:39 AM

India's not in Despotism, nor is anybody else. They won't be whipping anything. :whipped: :nono:

I'm loathe to give away cities. Just not in my nature. :) They want my cities, come take them away from me! And if they can do that, more power to em. But I have a lonnnng memory, and yes I do carry grudges. :lol:

I am opposed to the worker bait exploit. If it happens because the AI is just rabid about chasing them down, that's one thing. Deliberately sticking them out there is another. This AI is plenty easy enough to outthink anyway. If they really do have STACKS of pachyderms coming, it probably doesn't matter much this time.

- Sirian

Iester

Feb 19, 2002, 11:42 AM

The stacks against us are actually even larger than they appeared. Perseopolis is doomed. I've pulled back and am going to make my stand at New Paris. If all goes mediocre, I'll be glad I concentrated my forces. If all goes well, I can take back perseopolis. If all goes very badly, it's not going to matter where I made my stand.

Jester

Iester

Feb 19, 2002, 12:49 PM

The war could not have gone better.

Sure, we lost ferric view, and new calcutta, and I razed Cooper Pedy to the ground, but this war is ours.

Losses were minimal, forces in the region plentiful.

Price for a peace treaty with the indians, 80 gold, possibly less. I leave it up to you, Cy, whether you want to take it, or punish them for ever even thinking of going to war with us. :hammer:

We have the forces en route to take back our cities, and probably a great deal more. At our current production, I don't think the indians could hold off against us. Or we could just continue the war for the purposes of getting a leader. The Heroic Epic will speed that up. It's all up to you. They've got two large stacks of inferior units (swordsmen, pikemen and worse), but that's just about all they've got in the field, except for a few remaining elephants.

But I can't take all the credit. There was this Samurai, who I called Yojimbo, who practically won the war for us. One samurai, five elephants. It was quite the sight to see.

But even he can't take all the credit. The indian generals have been :smoke: , if you know what I mean. They're so bent on conquering japan that they bypassed our territory with much of their force. This meant that I could confuse them into switching back and forth from advancing and retreating just by pulling back or pressing forward. Sun Tzu would have been proud.

I also bought metallurgy for 100 bucks (a good deal, no?), so we're caught up scientifically (except for, snicker, democracy...).

I think we're in a pretty good spot now. There are a couple things to deal with, but I think you're not going to have trouble with them, Cy. In any case, they're your problems now.

Jester

Cyrene

Feb 19, 2002, 01:50 PM

Sounds juicy.

I can't wait.

Timing on my turn is going to depend heavily on if battle.net is better tonight than last night 8-o.

Last night games dumped every 20-30 minutes, then you got the "Player Not Found" deal on the character you were using for a while. Sigh.

On a Civ3 note: I'm not the only one who mis-clicks and accidently sends troops into foreign lands!

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/02/18/britain.marines/index.html

HAHA!

I can just picture Spain contacting Elizabeth on the Diplo screen and telling her to buggar off 8-).

Liz: "Erm, we were just on manoevers, yeah, that's it."

--Cy

Schnarrd

Feb 19, 2002, 03:05 PM

Jester:

Wow, you managed to get reinforcements in that area? Nice! :goodjob:

If we really have turned the tide against the Indians (haven't seen the save yet), I say smash the Indians into the dirt where they belong. :soldier: The war will still last a long time, but we're a monarchy and can sustain long wars. Besides, I want to see the Indians punished for what they did to us. :whipped: Also, with the heroic epic going and quite a few elite knights (at least, we had quite a few elites on my turn), we should be able to get another leader out of this war which we can use to rush the forbidden palace in the former Persian lands (of course, if we totally conquer the Indians, we can rush it there, too ;) ).

Iester

Feb 19, 2002, 05:12 PM

It's not so much that we have reinforcements, although there are 5 or so knights moving to the front. It's that our big cities are pumping them out about one every five turns each, and we can move them to the front in about four turns.

We lost a couple elite knights from some unlucky combats, so we might be a little low on them. But we've got plenty of veterans, and more on the way, so...

It's possible the indians have a larger force than I anticipate, and that would slow us down. But they seem to be concerned more about helping the french against the japanese than about killing us.

The other option, of course, is to be dastardly about it, and take the peace, build up a force, then wait for the next person to declare war on us. The entire world is at war; there's bound to be an opportunity sometime. And we're making a lot of money, and could get cavalry pretty soon.

Cyrene

Feb 20, 2002, 02:38 AM

Hi all. This is one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” types of reports. I’ll eliminate some suspense and say things turned out mostly ok, though. And some things turned out pretty well 8-). The ten turns took 5 hours, my notes run 3 pages on my succession game steno pad, and even I can’t read them, but I’ll try to make sense of it all 8-).

Cy_Tzeltal ascended to the throne after many years of bloody warfare between the Mighty Mayans and the poor other civilizations. The Insipid Indians were on their knees begging for mercy, yet Cy_Tzeltal was obdurate. “Begone you blight on Society” he thundered, “Jester the Great has got you on the run, and I shall finish the deal!” (Besides, after spending 10 turns building RR in my other RBD game, I was ready for some blood, baby).

A review of the status of the Kingdom and the army was made. The kingdom, though on war footing, was in fine shape. Gold flowed into our coffers, and, though most was devoted to military production, a few infrastructure builds still continued. The Military situation, though, was not so bright. I considered the military outlook as 4 fronts: homeland, northern, France, and India. Homeland was barely ok, all cities had a least one unit, and a few had two pikes, so it had not been raided too completely. The French front was weak. True, we were at peace, but I considered a peace treaty with Joan as ephemeral as a fart in a whirlwind, and just as distasteful. Our next conflict with Joan is coming; we might as well prepare now. The Indian front was in fine shape. It had both a solid defense and some potential offense, as well as reinforcements coming via the sea lanes. OTOH, it would be a long and rocky road up the Calcutta Trail to India. This would be especially difficult if India started sending masses of Jumbos down the pipeline (not to mention if they started mixing metaphors). More alarming, I counted 17 Indian military units loose on the front. Even more alarming, they did not seem to be interested in attacking our cities there—I suspected they were going to use their friendly relations with Joan to tromp through France and open a second front at Sentry. This would not be good. Even MORE alarming than that, was the thought that France’s peace treaty with us would expire in a few turns, and if we had all our free units jamming up the Calcutta Trail, an alliance between India and France could be most embarrassing. The northern front was enough to make a strong monarch cry. Our sole extra fighting unit was a single knight with 1 hit point. I considered wimping out and going for peace. Nah, let’s have some fun 8-)! I formulated my war plans:

1) Strip the homeland defense for the greater glory of the Mighty Mayan Empire! Deal with seaborne invasions with wishful thinking.
2) Shore up the French Front.
3) Try to invent some way to throw the Indians off our northern area.
4) Begin an enormously over-complicated plan, wherein I would (a) ignore the 17 Indians units near our cities on that front, leaving their defense to our muskets, (b) stack every single knight into one humongous 12-14 knight stack-o-doom with our army and start up the Calcutta Trail kicking major ass, and (c) send 6 muskets via the seas for an amphibious assault on the hill that makes up the only square of land between Calcutta and Ganges to cut off the Jumbo Pipeline, (d) keep a close eye on the ignored Indian army to see if they indeed had a second front on their mind.

Continuation: Left production alone, upgraded 6 pikes to muskets in homeland for the sea-lift, emptied a northern city of all defense to cover the lone Northern Knight with a pike. Upgraded a couple of Pikes in the North to Muskets in case of emergencies.

1305. A Jumbo roars out of New Hyderabad on the Northern front and attacks the pike covering the Knight. The pike dies in a valiant defense of the knight, the Jumbo withdraws a square. I empty Arbela of all defence to send its musket to keep an eye on New Bengal. The Indian armies on the front continue to slide south, the first stack goes into France. I am convinced they are intending to open a second front. I call on dear Joan. For spices and 100 gp she claims she will shut my back door and deal with the impertinent Indians. France goes to war against India. Diplomacy makes for strange bedfellows, eh?

1310. The Jumbo in the North, instead of retiring, turns south and attacks Chimichanga, overwhelming the Pike on duty. India takes and holds the city. I retreat the wounded knight back to the empty city to heal. I am so angry at this failure, I immediately order the doubling of our Northern Army. Yes! I send an entire knight north to help out (hey, I had other problems, they were just going to have to get the job done or perish). India veers off and attacks Strasbourg in France. Goooood. I empty my Indian front cities of Knights and set up the assault on Ferric View. In the homeland, I gather my 6 intrepid Muskets together for a pep talk. “have you ever heard of Patton?” I ask. “no” they say. “Good. I hereby call upon you to become heroes by dying for your country. The first Mayan Suicide Squad is formed!” And off they went to heroically cut off the Jumbos and die wonderful, song-inspiring deaths.

1315. Action in the North! The citizens of Chimichanga, indignant at the Idiot Indians occupying their lovely town, and rise up in the night and overthrow their oppressors! It is once again a Mayan town. A rampaging Jumbo thunders out of New Bengal, only to meet defeat at the end of our Musket. On the Indian front, our armies overwhelm Ferric View and return it to its rightful owners without a loss.

1320. The Lonely Knight of the North, denied his opportunity to retake Chimichanga, heroically assaults New Hyderabad and wins the day! The piss-poor Indian excuse for a city is razed, and the resulting worker parked on the only spot outside out boundaries so no other squatters will arrive. France and Japan sign a peace treaty. The Idiot Indians spend their turn reorganizing their troops, and I prepare an assault on New Calcutta.

1325. Finally, Joan reacts against the Indian army in her midst. She whips some rear, and I empty all units not on the New Calcutta assault and head them north.

1330. The assault on New Calcutta overwhelms the defenders (barely)! I raze the city. I do not have the units to pacify a size 2 town. We will replace it with a proper Mayan town as soon as I can arrange a shipping priority. The remainder of the offense continues the glorious march up the Calcutta Trial. No longer are we just retaking lands that are Mayan by right—now we move into Indian Territory and we rip it from their bosom! Spirits are high! Our lead scout pulls up next to New Karachi to see its primary defender is…A RIFLEMAN! AHHHHH! Excrement on a stick! Run away! Run away! Ahhhh! EEEP! I have failed the Mayan people 8-(. I have let visions of glory cloud my judgement, and now we are at the mercy of the Irritating Indians because they have a tech lead! Fortunately, my advisors hit me over the head with a tire tool, and have a plan in place when I wake up. (1) Spend money. If you fail, at least you had fun. If you win, no one will care. (2) Spend more money. (3) Recall the Suicide Squad. Suicide is ok, but stupidity is not. I get Magnetism from the Japanese for a lux and some cash, and Nationalism from Cathy for Spices and (gulp) 20 gpt (ah, the vagaries of expression--400 gp sounds good for Nationalism—20 gpt sounds like I should be whipped). I recall the Suicide Squad to the Indian front so they can be upgraded there and join the slog. Eeeep! Eeeeep! Gmaes are no fun unless you can panic.

1335. The entire P. T. Barnum and Baily Circus comes thundering down the Calcutta Trail. They take out 2 knights, lose two Jumbos, and outflank me and park stacks of Jumbos on the mountains. On the counter-attack, I take out 2 wounded Jumbos, lose one Knight in a really stupid attack, and call off the counter. I am not in the position to counter against this mob, so I withdraw a bit and regain some sort of defensible lines. Sorta. This is the low point of my turn. I start considering when to pull the army out so we don’t lose it. On the bright side, the upgrades to Riflemen are underway, and Old Ghandi is going to get a shock of his own few turns…

1340. In the North, the mighty reinforcement Knight finally reaches New Bengal, and takes it in the first assault. We keep this town out of pride. On the Indian front, the new Indian assault is weak, and our new line holds with only one loss. Upgraded units are on the way, our first two Riflemen take up defensive positions, and my spirits rise. One more turn guys, hold on one more turn. . .

1345. I do the diplomatic rounds. Military Tradition is on the table with everyone that still talks to us. This means the Elephant parade will soon be replaced with Cav—I have to do something. I renegotiate a deal with Cathy from 8 gpt for gems (that we don’t have but I’m working on it) to 20 gpt and Military Tradition. Eat Cav, Ghandi! Our first Cav is born. I found the replacement city by the Gems on the Indian front to blunt Joan’s interest. I cannot recall the name of the town, so I name it something silly. Please rename it to the original name 8-). I finally have the forces on hand to counter-attack the elephant brigade, and eventually clear them all out. Finally! Woot!

1350. The new Indian wave comes down the Calcutta Trail. And it consists of. . .conscript riflemen and one Jumbo? HaHa! So, Ghandi, you have the same production and supply-line problems I do, Eh? I skip the targets of opportunity and drive straight for New Karachi (again). I lose one knight, and take out 3 conscript riflemen on garrison, and, as I lean forward for the victory entrance…AAAAH! There is a Jumbo in there with one hit point! I dig up an elite cav with 2 hp left that was guarding the cannon stack (the very last unit that can reach the city) and throw him into the fray. Success. New Karachi is ours! Now, with the roads under our control, I have two cavs in Ferric View that can reach the previously-skipped targets of opportunity. A veteran cav takes out a Jumbo. Then, as the last combat of my turn, an elite cav takes out a conscript Rifleman and a Great Leader is created! Woohooo!

Notes: All is not well. Our infrastructure sucks, we are broke (1 gp), our research is at zero, we have captured cities itching to revolt, and we are at war with a country we just can’t beat right now. OTOH, we have a Great Leader (in a caravel on the way to Spirit Dune). I want to hear other input, but I know exactly what I would do with him. FP. In Palenque. No contest. Former Persia, even after clearing all that jungle around our core cities, is twice as good as the land we have. FP all the way, baby! That will give us 2 countries, and I think it will finally get us out of the infrastructure/money/production hole we have been in most of the game. There is a settler on the way to former New Calcutta. There are two other settlers heading for (I think) Moya Mona for shipping overseas. New K is very vulnerable to attack—it is at the end of the rope. Hopefully, any counter will be weak and go against the Knight decoys. I did make one Cav there. No joke, though, by past experience 10-12 more jumbos, riflemen, muskets, or a mixture are going to show up in one to two turns--look out. India is not out of gas, I just caught it in a long supply line glitch (imho, of course). We’re also going to have to keep troops there against revolt, as well as in New Bengal.

IMHO time. I think France has it in for us in the long run, but Joan is running scared right now. Our peace treaty expired, but she is still paying 21 gpt and has not mentioned it. France was using all kinds of odd units against India. She is having upgrade problems. I think India has one or two more nasty pushes, then will be out of gas. Again, IMHO, I don’t think eternal war with them is worth it, I would give it a break, build the palace in Persia, and out-produce the planet.

Who knows what I am forgetting—it is very, very late. I’ll keep an eye on this thread tomorrow, ask if you want input.

--Cy

Charis

Feb 20, 2002, 08:28 AM

Cy your reads are like a rollercoaster ride after a big dinner at La Bamba! It's a wild ride and you don't know if at some point you're going to soil your clothes :P

Interesting plan and maneuvers, and in the end... a Great Leader. (Heck we're used to "well, ya, it's mid war and, uh, we're broke, and we have no infrastructure, but... good luck next guy!")
On this turn you might have had five different plans if you asked five different folks. (In fact I think my plan called for giving away a city and ending the war. Yours has a certain appeal) The part I liked best was France being called into the war against India :hammer:
That's one way to get an enemy our of your hair - make it an enemy of your enemy. The comment that made me most nervous was...

1) Strip the homeland defense for the greater glory of the Mighty Mayan Empire! Deal with seaborne invasions with wishful thinking.

FP all the way would be my 2c. As far as ongoing, perpetual war, hey, we're in Monarchy! We NEED to keep all these democracy-wannabees in fight-fight mode. (Thinking about what happened to me in Infantry game, being on the bad side of democracy war weariness... shudder) I just checked the rules to see if we were missing anything, but no, we're fine. (well, a tad cheeky on some names)

Charis

Cyrene

Feb 20, 2002, 09:42 AM

Ole Joan done good 8-). She took out around 15-20 Indian troops before it was over with. I just had to clean up the stragglers. She is still “Annoyed” with us—this is the first time I’ve ever had an “ally” that was “Annoyed”. Of course, this is also the first time I’ve ever had an Ally that was still paying me tribute, too. In fact, I felt so good about our relationship, I beefed up the defenses in all our border cities with France 8-0.

The Northern campaign was low comedy. On the main front, we’re moving and engaging a dozen units a turn, while in the North India is trying to attack us with 2 elephants and we try to defend and counter with 2 knights and borrowed troops, leaving cites constantly undefended. It is still hosed up there, as resisters outnumber out one unit in New Bengal. We’re going to have to find some units somewhere to put in that city, or else we’re going to have to take it again. . .

The Indian campaign was very frustrating. I started with grand visions of conquest. It is 3 tiles from Ferric View to New Karachi, and it took me 5 turns to cover that distance 8-0. If Gandhi had kept his Jumbos stacked and on the mountains, we would STILL be stuck in the mud. Fortunately, he had too much success, and came down into the flat to pursue and move on Ferric View on precisely the turn my upgraded reinforcements were coming in, and I managed to wipe out his assault force, leading to his mad scramble for troops that gave us the opening to slice through a hole in his line and take New K. The Chinese AI had a heck of a view of 5 turns of carnage. It was pretty grim for a couple of turns, there. And, for the first time for me ever in Civ3, artillery not only did something useful, but actually saved my ass. Someone had either produced or upgraded to 4 cannon on the Indian front, and (for once in my life) I had moved them up with my army. Three of them were on the road to New K (guarded by a stack of knights) when the Elephant Poop hit the fan. The one left in Ferric View helped repel the Jumbos and save the city when they outflanked me and struck in my rear, and the 3 on the middle tile between Ferric View and New K were the absolute key to the defense—Gandhi just could not take that tile. It was the battered remnants of that force that took New K.

--Cy

ps—I guess my name will be mud if India sinks that Caravel with the GL on it on the continuation turn, eh?

Sirian

Feb 20, 2002, 12:42 PM

WOO! Sounds like you had the kind of excitement I had in RBD4 with Babylon running over us. :) Now THIS is the stuff I play for. Maybe we'll try another Monarchy game later. :)

Iester

Feb 20, 2002, 12:59 PM

The northern war was a constant source of amusement. I hope you enjoyed Don Quixote up there as much as I did.

Those cannons were from me. We had catapults moving there, and the last thing I did on my turns was to upgrade those catapults for 200 bucks. Glad it turned out well for you. I just came out of a game where I repelled a HUGE invasion with artillery, so I thought maybe it might come in handy.

Joan's too weak to hurt us; let's hammer the indians until they die!

:hammer:

Jester

Arathorn

Feb 20, 2002, 01:07 PM

*cough* screenshots? *cough*

Please?

Arathorn

Schnarrd

Feb 20, 2002, 03:05 PM

Yeah, we had a few catapults in Sentry (probably built by Charis ;) ) that came in handy on my turn, and seeing that huge Indian army inspired me to make a few more. ;)

No contest about what to do with the GL. The only reason I didn't move the GL I got on my turn to Persia was that we needed an army so bad on the Indian front (plus, with a game destined for much war, I thought it would be a good idea to build the Heroic Epic early) :)hammer:

Cy: Your turn also sounds rather like my turn, except I was also extremely rushed while playing. :D

Iester

Feb 20, 2002, 03:11 PM

My vote is definitively cast to use the great leader in persia. It's certainly not worth it to get an army, even a cavalry army. The extra production from the FP is worth any three wonders, let alone a single wonder, which we could probably score anyway.

And, just because it looks so cool:

:hammer:

Jester

Sirian

Feb 20, 2002, 07:32 PM

Inherited Turn: Deployment Assessment. The front is a little hairy, but Cy does have sufficient reinforcements moving into the theater. Our military is scattered, but there are few real threats. I draft a couple of units in Persia to shore that area up a bit.

I'm pretty confident that if I can just get a stack of rifles to New Karachi, that I can sit on the isthmus and let India beat its head against the wall. For all the cries of "let's go destroy India", we frankly have other priorities. There's nothing to gain in India except revenge. I'm going to park right here and consolidate our position. Everywhere. Starting on the home front with our economy. Military production vetoed in almost every city. I order up banks in our core cities, catherdrals in the second ring, and courthouses just about everywhere else. Persepolis is changed to Granary, and while I'm there, I draft a unit.

Now the diplo front. We have three spices sitting around? I trade one to China for Democracy and what change they can muster. (Our hero SunTzu has been noted to say: "Know thy enemy, Know thy self, and your victory will be assured.") We must learn the ways of this "democracy" so we can discern its evils, the better to save the world from it! ... I then trade the other extra spice to Egypt for Free Artistry.

Finally I check the wonder situation. Not good, we don't have a single city building one. I know the war was urgent and all, but we couldn't spare one city for wonders? Oh well, too late now. Just be careful not to miss out on Theory of Evolution. Like, WOW could we ever use Hoover Dam in this game. You know? :)

1355AD: India's retaliation is pretty harsh. Our two elite knights in the field are run over and one unit at New Karachi is also slain. Like... smoke a mirrors. I've got ONE rifle in range, and that's going to have to do for this turn. My retailiation vs India kills three of their five jumbos. Our new cavalry becomes elite!

Ship with our leader docks, he disembarks and makes haste northward.

1360AD: India runs over that rifleman in New Karachi with a regular cavalry unit. Like four rounds, four losses for our rifle, unit dead, their unit promoted to veteran. Heh. A jumbo then comes in and smacks the living daylights out of our last healthy unit, an elite knight. The jumbo loses one hp and promotes to vet. All we got left in New Karachi is a few torn up units with like 1 or 2 hps left.

And that was the end of the good news for Ghandi. He ran out of steam, his other jumbos and cavs on our doorstep but unable to attack. Then it was my turn, and five more rifles move into New Karachi and are fortified. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride in. The cavalry arrives just in the nick of time! Blam, blam-blam, it's an elephant hunt! Down they go. One cav elite, another, another. Wooooohooo!

Forbidden Palace rushed in Persia.

1365AD: Ghandi wants no piece of our newly dug in rifles. He seems enamored with the hill behind New Karachi and parks four units there, and more on our doorstep, but none attack us. Man that's sad. Oh well for them. We lose one elite cav in the attack, and Ghandi's units are wiped out. I park a rifle on the hill to prevent him moving there again.

Our cash each turn has gone to unit ugrades. Now that the FP is online, we're raking in an extra 60ish gpt now. Been running 90% taxes, 10% luxuries. Every city in the north now swapped over to something useful. We need more workers, so a bunch are set to build some, the rest granary or cathedral.

1370AD: Our gems come back online. I take a moment to exploit the new bug that lets armies be upgraded, so now all our knights have been upgraded. (Not really worth it to leave elites lying around, at the rate we're promoting. Better to get elite cavs going). I'm not sure yet how I feel about the army-upgrade bug, but for the moment, I'm not shedding any tears over it. That's something the game OUGHT to allow anyway, as this current way makes no sense whatsoever.

I dial up Joanie, inform her that our peace treaty has expired, and that we're not interested in renewing it. She says, "Hold on there, Benevolent One! We'll pay you 40 gold if you agree to another 20 turns." "Oh? Well all right, for that sum we can forgive a few of your sins and spare you our wrath for the moment." Peace renegotiated.

1375AD: India lands a spear on our northern land. :lol: Our Persian cav demonstrate the foolhardiness of this move.

Japan is doing some odd stuff in our territory. I cancel our RoP, in case he is plotting something.

Joanie is moving a MASS of horse units northward.

1380AD: France completes Smith Trading.

India lands a musket in our northern land. Our OTHER cavalry in the theater demonstrates the foolhardiness of this move.

1385AD: Germany completes Billy's Theater. Everyone cascades to Newton, expect that one to come in any day now.

King Siri pores over his world map, decides that there are too many democracies in this world. He ought to do something about that, help save the fools from "trying to govern themselves." As all learned people know, they need a Benevolent One to guide them!

Benevolent One Siri-Tzeltal dials up Hiawatha, informs him that the peace treaty has expired and we have no interest in renewing it. :lol: "Better gear up, you treacherous bastard. You are now at war with the Mayans."

Siri-Tzeltal dials up Shaka, offers him Saltpeter for alliance vs the Indians. He accepts.

Siri dials up Joanie. "Yes, hello dear. How much will you offer me for a Mutual Protection Pact? Oh? 15gpt? Hmm, the offer's a bit light, but I'll take it. While we're at it, how about I renew our spice deal, see, and also our alliance vs Ghandi, and you teach us all about Medicine. Oh marvelous! Yes yes, we plan to keep you in war for a long long time, so you might as well be on our side, as you definitely don't want to be on the other side. You've been so cooperative, I'm going to throw in a Right of Passage." France and Mayans are now polite.

Siri dials up Toku. "Let's get the Iro's." Toku: "Been waiting for you to call!" Mayans and Japan sign a military alliance. Siri sells Medicine to Japan for Furs.

Siri dials up Ghandi. "What will you offer me for peace?" Ghandi puts his offer on the table, Siri busts a gut laughing and hangs up. You have to love toying with the old man. He's such a riot.

1390AD: ALL OVER THE EMPIRE, WE LOVE THE BENOVOLENT!!!

:love: :king: :love:

Apparently, our people still remember the trespasses of the Iroquois, and are ready for peace with them to come to an end.

Zulus sign a military alliance with Iros, AGAINST us. Siri dispatches a three word note to Zimbabwe. Shaka's advisors look so pale, some are mistaken for ghosts.

1395AD: Banks are completing in our core cities, and we are now building some cavalry again. Unit upgrades have nearly been completed, though still a number left to go. Don't upgrade our ancient jags, they are more useful than swords would be.

1400AD: Joanie's units, armed with Right of Passage, finally move in force onto Indian land.

Four banks are now finished, and a fifth is halfway done. Xenalia starts a PLACEHOLDER for Wall Street. Our treasury remains flat broke, but our income is up to 250ish gpt, so we could have a full 1000 treasury and start pulling in that essential interest, in just four turns of full surplus with no spending. (Can Charis manage that??? With so many colonies where stuff could be rushed??? Haha).

Egypt is wanting Saltpeter and we have extra, but she has nothing to offer us. Hold out for some tech and use that (and maybe the spices that will expire in a few more turns) to buy tech off her. Our cities are all on infrastructure, except ones that have most of the urgent stuff already built and are making cavalry.

As a final act before retirement to make way for a new Benevolent, Siri allowed his western generals to talk him into authorizing "a brief sortee onto Indian land" to see if they might "run across some units to attack in the Benevolent One's glorious name". Siri said OK, and his generals kind of went a little wild, running over several cavalry, burning New Madras to the ground, and carting the citizens back to Mayan lands to serve as chain gangs, in retribution for their most unwarranted attacks against our peoples earlier. A Mayan settler group is moving up to settle the land there, but that would also make a good stopping point. It's easily defending, just a small front to manage. Rather than stretch our neck to eviscerate the Indians, we can let Joanie pound on them while we shift our gaze to Iroquois.

If anything goes really badly (like in the north), there's the draft option. We're still rather thin up there, but I strengthened it some, and now there is production up there, so some diligent unit building could have decent forces in place soon.

Japan is getting some from the Iros, they MAY lose. That wouldn't be good, so I think it should become our target to get an eastern fleet, and the ability to go invade the Iro's, going before they can get a full rail network online, and while their units are stuck in Japan. Sure would be nice to raze a couple of their cities, starting with that one at Fukushima's Horse. Don't overextend, but just keep in mind, the Iro's are the ones we want to slow down now. The only reason I didn't bring the Zulus into the war vs them on OUR side is that I feared Hiawatha would just swallow them up, and that wouldnt' be to our advantage.

Joanie and India are locked into at least another 20 turns of war, as are we with Iro's (unless Japan cries uncle). That's kind of how I want it, but just because we're at war doesn't mean have to feel obliged to go kick butt. Think about the costs vs the benefits, especially with India. If India and France fight to a stalemate, both are weakened and kept out of democracy. The only concern we'd have would be those northern continent folks running wild unchecked. But we can worry about them later.

If we weren't so badly in need of new infrstructure all over the place, we could mobilize. Don't think that's wise at the moment, but if we get into SERIOUS trouble, keep the option in mind.

- Sirian

Sirian

Feb 20, 2002, 07:44 PM

Charis, you're up. OneInTen is welcome to return to this game if he wishes, but we haven't heard from him and I'm presuming him MIA. So the roster without him goes:

Sirian
Charis
Schnarrd
Jester
Cyrene

Charis

Feb 21, 2002, 12:56 AM

Got it. Should be able to play tomorrow night. Tonight was my Essex game, with 15 turn rounds. (Sirian, you would be proud of this round, see the post if you get a chance ;p)

Excellent job of assessing and handling the new situation. I also looked at it and thought that pressing into India was folly -- the kind of folly that one can only get into when one has spent hours making about 713 individual worker action moves laying railroad when they would prefer shift-A ! Also appealing from a testosteronic standpoint, but not 'optimal'.

> Just be careful not to miss out on Theory of Evolution.

Wow, ToE has gone from 'well, decent if you want two junk techs' to really RATHER useful.

Armies can upgrade now? Sounds like a feature, even if it is a bug. Why should one of the best units have a life span of about two player turns instead of 1800 years (like Spearmen).

My favorite part was the one part of the plan that I wouldn't have done myself... call up the world and get EVERYONE at war :P Way to think 'Benevolent'! :hammer:

Charis

Schnarrd

Feb 21, 2002, 03:33 PM

Hmm, in retrospect, it probably was the best course of action not to go after the Indians. I guess I was just angry from how much damage he did to me on my turn. :rolleyes:

Good job on getting everyone at war with each other. :goodjob: Not necessarily something that would have occurred to me, either. Hopefully the other civs will see the light and abandon their blasphemous republics in favor of :king: .

Charis

Feb 21, 2002, 09:49 PM

Not my best turn, but not a total disaster.

1400 AD (0) -

Situation is quite interesting. We're involved in major wars, more hoping
to have both friends and foes beat themselves silly, while we don't press
much ourselves. In fact, looking at our military, it's REALLY weak for the
level of fighting we're doing. With 16 offense units and about 60 defense,
yet only one defender per city, even near front lines, going on an offensive is
virtually ruled out. When we get rails online, everything changes. Our entire
army can show up at a given point instantly. Until then I'm not pressing anything
on military.

Science? Moderately advanced, I'm told. Very good. Steam power is close, so
we're nearing an "infrastructure push". Being on such a large continent, the
Hoover beeline route via ToE again makes most sense. Industrialization sideline
to speed production to get there.

What's our objective up North? Seems like Ganges is a good stopping point.
If our army and offensive units were down south, we could shore up at
New Karachi and send the offense to Iro land. Judging from the settler
in the stack, I'm guessing someone wanted to plant a Mayan city up
at the neck near Ganges (or Site-Formerly-Known-As-Ganges). Actually...
the very spot where the settler is at makes a 'canal' city. Ah, there is
iron nearby, at a spot also a canal point. Let's go there. Ganges can
be razed to avoid border incroachment. Hmmm... the French Knights can handle
that themselves, methinks.

1405 AD (1) - Troop and worker shuffling. Guad Al Canal is formed next
to the iron not far from Ganges.

1410 AD (2) - The French knights take Ganges (which had about 5 defenders),
sustaining moderate casualties. Seveal Indian cav seen coming into the
area. We seal off the Knights' retreat :P A double-sided bloodbath
is ideal. With no French reinforcements, India should retake Ganges,
then we take and hold it for good. That's the plan anyway :P

Smolensk of Russia completes Newton. No reports of other initiation,
so the cascade must be over.

1415 AD (3) - Decent mini-bloodbath at Ganges. France holds, but looks to
have just one defender left, at one hp. (Don't give up now Gandhi!)

1420 AD (4) - India did come back and take Ganges, leaving 3 cavs as
defense. Hehe, here comes our army... Actually three elite cavs are all
it takes (no GL). We capture rather than raze, to keep the horses and
have a barracks spot. Hmm, it kept a marketplace and aqueduct,good.
We'll starve it down, still sadly the best option.

13 more turns of MPP with France, eh?

1425 AD (5) - England and Zulu sign a peace treaty. (boo) Not a single
unit seen from India their turn. Totally out of steam, or do they
just know better with an army and 3 other elite cav staring them in
the face. Perhaps we should liberate Calcutta in benevolence??
Our army takes on a musket there. We win, but wow, lost about 8 hp.
A cav in the army became elite (?!). A cav then killed a spear defender,
but no more units in range and (at least) one spear left.

1430 AD (6) - About nine french knights and cavs dance about Strassburg,
but go nowhere. Chicken Itch finishes its bank, and our benevolent
capitol hops over to Wall Street (although I *would* like some city to
build Mil Academy soon. In fact, El Dorado does so next turn) A fair
amount of Libraries and Marketplaces are started this reign...

The town of Aurora is founded in the NE corner of our Northern expansion.

What's that... is there activity in the south? Is that a Galleon I see
at Yarra Yarra? I thought we set them to build a library? Dzi and Yarra
have a small draft.

Crud, a rifleman, not a musket, shows up at Calcutta. One cav nearby,
and it attacks. Er... uh... a sad report.

Our army has been slain!! We sent it to Calcutta to bring benevolence,
but now they spit upon our King!! A vet cav did it, losing no hp to our
four. :eek: Calcutta will pay for this. (Sorry, it couldn't be helped.
I had kept it in town to heal, got to 12 hp, then in just two battles, zero.)
Our elite cav retailiates against the mounted assassin, and drops to 1 hp,
then is victorious (phew).

1435 AD (7) - Holy cow! Calcutta is now size 7, down from 12! Those
non-benevolent mega-drafters!

China won't renew RoP for 7 gpt. It will only do so for free 8-\
During this next turn, they conscript Calcutta down to size 4. Sheesh,
at this rate we won't HAVE to raze it :P

Actually... that suggests six conscript rifles. With those and the roughly
two new cav we're seeing per round, not only can we not defeat Calcutta,
but we're in danger of a rout due to lack of rifleman (couldn't keep up
with cavalry). If our nation were on rails... but alas, we're not...
This is not an easy decision, but...

We sound a benevolent retreat. Back up to the hill...
Along with that we call up a bit of the draft. Gently so. We pillage
as we go. On the next turn, India loses two cav counters, then is not
heard from again.

1440 AD (8) - Woot! Finally some good news! The very sight of Mirage start
a library just outside Echizen seems to have collapsed their border by two
squares last turn, and this turn, poof, they rebelled! :hammer:

We're over 1000 gold now, having spent 20 turns at lone scientist research
on Steam Power, and would take a fortune just to cut it down to 14 turns.
Hmmm... not sure I agree with a science delay right when we get to steam
power. :confused:

1445 AD (9) - The retreat is a slow one, pillaging as we go. Things
quiet down. Too bad we can't let open a 'hole' for France to go through
without letting India through. I think Joan's frenetic knights would
enjoy some play.

In the south, in a rush streak even Charis Ben Evolent didn't know about
two galleons FULL of combat hungry units land on Iroquois soil!!

:hammer:

Tonawanda wets its pants, and does the old triple-draft, from size 12 to 9.
Goigouen is encircled, path for reinforcements cut off, and in three attacks
their defenders of musket, cavalry and spear fall. It is razed (benevolently.)

1450 AD (10) - Bizarre!!! This is new AI behavior afaik!
In Iro land, we had a rifle and cav off to the side pillaging. The units
*IN* the city under siege come *OUT* and fire! First two cavs die to
our rifle, promoting him to elite. A thrid cav kills it :( Then a rifle
pops OUT of the city (I was next to the city, it did not have to) and
shoots on offense at my cav! Our cav wins and becomes elite, then a second
rifle dies on offense. :rolleyes: Is this the "new surprises" we were told
were undocumented in the patch?!

Up North in India, they decide to test the waters again. Three cav show up
and two die to our rifle, the third deciding not to go there.
We counterattack one hurt Indian cav, and slay it. Going after the other
will likely cost a rifle... still, why let it live?

That's about it, time for a final diplomacy round. Sanitation from Japan
for Spices. Egypt will give it for saltpeter. Hehe, Cleo, you had your chance
honey, I offered you salt 3 times and you wouldn't give me squat. Forget
it, it goes to Togo. No one has had ANY tech new in my whole turn. Check
again soon and see if we can get something.

Ideas for Next leader...

- Get worker(s) over to 'the plug' - the horse on the hill outside of Ganges.
Build a fortress there, add about 3-4 rifles, and we're rock solid.
Otherwise a blitz of about 4 cav might really sting bad.
- On Iro, they have strong reinforcement lines open and have had two turns
to bring them up. If I were continuing I would bail, and bail now.
We razed a city, reduced their size 12 city to 8 or 5, and pillaged a bit,
with almost no losses. It was meant to do just that, a little guerrilla
warfare. Load those guys on 2-3 boats, land somewhere else, and repeat,
rather than lose a battalion for no reason to draft troops.
- A turn to get Steam and build the rail net would probably be the most
profitable thing we could do next.
- Wall street arrives in a few turns, so keep 1000 in treasury.

What??? Charis leaves the treasury with 2000 gold, up from near zero???
:hammer:

Schnarrd

Feb 22, 2002, 06:08 PM

Will post tomorrow.

Sirian

Feb 22, 2002, 07:54 PM

Charis: that wasn't a science delay at Steam Power. That was me trading 10 turns (if that) for running zero research for 30 turns and using that ton of cash to upgrade our forces. I spend thousands on my turn upgrading knights, pikes, muskets, and you still called our military "thin". :)

I agree the rails would help us out big, but we're going to have to wait either for someone to research it for us, or the 40 turns to go by the slow way. Probably the former. Our situation was much in need of consolidation, and I couldn't have done it without running zero science and spending the cash.

Even if we had researched at our best rate, it would only have gotten us there about 10 turns sooner. You KNOW I love rails, but something's got to give when we're as spread out as that, and there had already been a few turns invested in Steam at zero science rate from Cy's turn. :) He too was spending every dime we had just to hold the smoke and mirrors together. :)

- Sirian

Schnarrd

Feb 23, 2002, 05:29 PM

Hmm, I thought I'd be able to squeeze in 10 turns today, but it's looking more and more like I'll have to wait until either tomorrow or Monday, so if the next ruler wants to play his turns in the mean time, please don't hesitate to download the save and go ahead of me.

Iester

Feb 23, 2002, 06:48 PM

Got it! I guess this might just be my first crack (:smoke: ) at the Classic RBD Turn: Railroad building!

If not, then I'll just harass some iroquois, and pass it on without losing too much!

Charis

Feb 23, 2002, 07:24 PM

that wasn't a science delay at Steam Power. That was me trading 10 turns (if that) for running zero research for 30 turns and using that ton of cash to upgrade our forces. I spend thousands on my turn upgrading knights, pikes, muskets, and you still called our military "thin".

Ah! That's where the money was going! A very good use of the gold stuff. The 'thin' comment was more numerical than quality, I didn't realize that not only did we have few but what we had was old corps not long ago. The 'thin' was also meaning that to get significant forces up to where needed would take a long time. I'm still kickin myself for losing the army (but losing in in two battles, one on our turn, on on their turn was a real unexpected kick in the teeth)

Should be a fun turn, good luck,
Charis

Iester

Feb 23, 2002, 08:43 PM

So I was just biding my time, building our new railroads and trying not to get killed by the iroquois, when all of a sudden the Indians move a spearman, a lone, vulnerable spearman next to our hill of extreme fortification. I whip out an elite cavalry, wondering what on earth they're doing. "They must WANT us to get great leaders," I quip to my brother. Our cavalry, not surprisingly, wins unscathed.

And we have a leader!

The question is (a question I would like input on, before I proceed with my turn) what do we do with him? Do we make a cavalry army, and go loot 'n pillage? Do we save him for Hoover? Do we save him for ToE? Do we rush Universal Suffrage? Remember, the faster we use him, the more chance we have of getting yet another one.

Input?

Oh, and side note: Appropriately, Ironopolis can build an Ironworks. It would be a great "fate" thing, but barely useful at all. Should we build it? Or not?

Sirian

Feb 23, 2002, 09:33 PM

You're the Benevolent! Use your best judgement. We await your enlightened decision with devoted anticipation.

- Your Loyal Subjects

:love: :king: :love:

Iester

Feb 23, 2002, 10:55 PM

Cy, (and sigh), I accidentally hit the "take turn" for the last turn of my reign. Some days, you get the :smoke:, and some days, the :smoke: gets you. Hope I haven't shafted you out of a brilliant game winning negotiation.

My reign wasn't too interesting. I pulled our little sortie out of iroquois territory, and tried to land it further down. We took heavy losses in one turn, so I pulled out again. If you want to pursue that, Cy, feel free, but I don't think it's a game we need to play.

I made peace with the Zulus (we were at war with the zulus?). The MPP with the french ran out, and they weren't willing to pay to keep it up, so I dropped it. Both the indians and iroquois are willing to make peace for pretty reasonable amounts. Something to keep in mind.

Our railroad network is coming along, in skeleton form first, then filling in the cities once our military network is done. The north is now connected to our major cities, but you'll need to connect us up to the indian front.

Our leader is sitting in riggoro, working on a treatise about something he calls "evolution". Only time will tell if that comes to anything. ;)

Our frontier with the Indians is pretty much rock solid, thanks to that choke point. I can't see how that fort would fall to less than a nuclear weapon. Still, feel free to reinforce it. We can always use more military.

But not as much as we could use hospitals! All that food going to waste! I've switched most of our good cities to hospitals as they finished their other jobs. Infrastructure needs work, especially in the north. None of our wars appear pressing. We may be thin in the military defenses, but with rails we can do with much less. I thought infrastructure was the greater priority. Besides, every size 13 city is 4 more free units over a size 12 city, right?

Ironopolis is producing an Iron Works. This is a pet project. Feel free to cancel it. I just thought it would be cool, seeing as how I've never been able to build one before.

So, there we go. Good luck, Cy, or Schnarrd, whichever of you plays next.

Jester

Sirian

Feb 24, 2002, 12:51 AM

Both the indians and iroquois are willing to make peace for pretty reasonable amounts. Something to keep in mind.

Also keep in mind that they are religious civs, and giving them 20 turns of peace means 18 turns in democracy for them, at least, unless weariness with someone else keeps them locked up. War is to our advantage. We may be Benevolent, but that's only to our own people. These treacherous bastards both made the first aggressive moves against us. Those were SERIOUS mistakes on their part. :lol:

If the price were nice enough (buncha tech, cities, their wives and firstborn) we might let one of them off the hook for 20 turns. But WHY on earth do WE want or need peace otherwise? Peace is good for democracies. Um... what else is it good for? :) Barring the ability and means to grind these schemers into the dirt, we can at least play the game they chose to play with us: war, when we think it's to our advantage (which pretty much means from here on out, unless they offer us something to make 20 turns worth our while -- possible).

Good job getting a military rail net started. :)

France may not be willing to pay for MPP, but unless they are asking us for a ton of cash, it's a great way to keep them in the wars with us, AND make sure no one else buys them away. (Remember what Iro cash led them to do last time). It's nice to have some friends in the world, for trading partners if nothing else, and MPP's are the easy way to keep them at war but also still bound to us as junior partners. I know this whole line of thinking runs counter to the usual democratic buildup, but we are NOT going to win the tech race in Monarchy with an isolationistic, peaceful approach.

- Sirian

Iester

Feb 24, 2002, 02:55 AM

The only reason I even thought about the peace road was to get our infrastructure up. We need at least 30 turns of good solid producing, then probably another 20 for factories with the dawn of industrialization. Break that up and keep cranking military in some cities, but the sooner we get that over with, the better. The north especially is in need of that; our core just needs hospitals and factories to be cav-crankin' powerhouses.

You're right about the MPP with france and the wars. I'm still a civ 2 player at heart, and war isn't something I do unless I'm prepared to annhilate them scorched earth style. But by all means, let's be as benevolent (or is it beneviolent?) as we can.

:hammer:

Jester

Cyrene

Feb 24, 2002, 08:54 AM

I can take this turn right this instant--so I got it.

Sounds pretty routine.

Results should be posted back in an hour or two, unless I (or the AI) goes nuts over something...

--Cy

Cyrene

Feb 24, 2002, 11:30 AM

No nuts 8-).

A quiet turn. The Iroq only tried one invasion, and it was weak (a single cav). India is content to shell coastline roads. The has been much alighning and re-aligning amongst the AI.

Rail backbone is in--every city is connected. Sci Method comes in in 4 turns, the GL is waiting, and Palenque is building Battlefield Med as a placeholder for Hoover. Pleas check your build queue the turn Sci MEthod comes in and before ToE is GL'ized.

Some factores being built "out of order", as I anticipate Hoover and the resulting net gain on more basic infrastructure once the factory + hydro effect kicks in.

I made Zero Military, which puts us in a theoretical pathetic situation, but I really think we can get away with it until Rep Parts, by which time all our good cities should have factories + Hoover and be able to make 1 Infantry every 2 turns, plus we'll be albe to instant-upgrade all our riflemen as we a carrying a serious chunk of change forwards (about $2k, iirc). The Indians almost (but not quite) annoyed me enough to start a navy...

The Military Academy came in, too.

I'm afraid I let Joan wiggle ut of the Indian war, though she is still locked into a ROP with us. Keep an eye on her...

There is an enormous worker stack building a mine at Palenque, if you zoom the city you'll see why...

Oh, and I left the Iron Works in place. How could Ironopolis not have an Iron works 8-)?

Good luck to future leaders 8-).

--Cy

ps. The reason for the big stack-o-troops in New Paris is that I noticed the nationality ratio of French/Mayan stank there, and am ensuring against a flip. Please keep a healthy stack here. This might be just the spot to park all our obsolete jaggies.

Schnarrd

Feb 24, 2002, 11:55 AM

Ok, got it. :D Those two turns were taken really quickly.

Schnarrd

Feb 25, 2002, 09:42 PM

Someone must have switched the names of the Builder's game and Benevolent King, because I certainly did an enormous amount of building this turn. :) Here's the turn-by-turn:

Inherited turn: I try to renegotiate some ROP's, but no one will give us anything but a straight ROP. Does this mean our reputation was damaged? I also notice in the Military advisor screen that some countries are still in Democracy! Sure enough, some countries are not at war, including Egypt and England. I swiftly move to remedy this! I sign an MPP with Cleo for 303 gold and one with Liz for 200. Also, since I do not want someone to get Women's Suffrage and be able to sustain war while in a democracy, I start that in Xenalia. Finally, I call up Ghandi and sit down for a nice vegetarian curry with him.

"So, are you finally willing to give peace a chance?" he asks.

"War! What is it good for? Absolutely everything!" I respond. "By the way, the 'vegetarian' curry you're eating is made out of beef."

Ghandi gags. I love doing this. :D

Finally, I switch many cities building hospitals, etc to factories. Other infrastructure improvements will be built all the faster with factories.

1: Liz and Cleo declare war on the Iroquois and Indians.

In the interim, a bunch of workers are popped out of various cities to help on the rail net.

5: Scientific Method discovered! Simultaniously, our so called "Great Leader" finishes his treatise on what he calls, "The Theory of Evolution." Upon its completion, it is said that he proclaimed, "Darwin, eat your heart out!"

6: Spurred on by the magnificent "Theory of Evolution," Mayan scientists finish the research of two technologies: Atomic Theory and Electronics, which many say could yield the schematics for a great "Palenque Dam." Palenque begins construction of this wonder, and engineers predict its completion in 15 turns.

7: France declares war on India.

8: Between turns, Cleo comes begging for the secrets of Scientific Method. This reminds me that I should have done negotiations right before I completed the Theory of Evolution in order to get better prices for the technology! Oh well. :( I notice that she has three technologies that I don't have and decide to bargain off Scientific Method next turn. I do, however, buy Espionage for spices and 50 gold.

OK, here's how all the negotiations went:

Cathy: She had a massive wad of cash (around 1600). I trade Scientific Method for most of the wad (1515) @ second civ price.

Bismark: I get 61 per turn plus 190 @ third civ.

Mao: 17 per turn plus Sci. Meth. for Corporation plus ivory @ fourth civ.

None of the other civs had much money, so I was going to go for a one for one trade for the next technology when on a whim, I contacted Joan to see what she'd offer. I wasn't expecting much since she was furious, but she surprised me. She had a massive lump of cash (over 1000) and was willing to offer 370 gold plus replacable parts for SM! This got her up to annoyed. Since I didn't want an AI with that much money running around, I also sold her a luxury for 620 gold. This got her up to polite. Finally, since she was the only advanced civ not at war with the Iroquois and I wanted to keep the Iroquois out of the tech trading loop, I bought an alliance vs. the Iroquois from her for 160 gold.

All the other civs are too broke to afford SM.

On a side not, with the widespread discovery of SM, leather becomes the garment of choice for people all over the world.

Finally, since now we have Replacable Parts, I check to see which civs have rubber. We have 3 sources, while the only civs that don't have it are Russia and China. Russia is eyeing an Egyptian source very close to their borders, and I forsee future wars over that rubber.

Our new research goal is Refining, due in 14 turns.

9: Ah, the joys of Replacable Parts! It's so easy to improve land now!

I suddenly realize that we probably weren't the first civs to start Women's Suffrage, and check to see who's building it. Almost everybody! Just to see how much shields are stored up, I investigate Moscow, which is building Suffrage. It's four turns out! We were eight turns out, but luckily we can switch to either Intelligence Agency or Battlefield Medicine without penalty. I switch to Intelligence, due in two turns.

That's it! I built major infrastructure during my turn. Most cities will finish factories during the next rulers turn and the next ruler should be able to vastly improve our underdeveloped land with Replacable Parts now having been discovered. I don't think I ever appreciated the %50 worker bonus under democracy as much as I do now. I never realized it made such a difference; some of our core cities still didn't have basic improvements in place when I took the throne. Next turn will probably be devoted mostly to beefing up the military; we're still pretty thin. The Intelligence Agency in Xenalia can be switched to Battlefield Medicin if the next leader so desires. Hoover is due in 7 turns, while Ironworks in Ironopolis is due in 21. I made sure that city was improved. :D

Good luck!

Sirian

Feb 26, 2002, 01:22 AM

The Reign of Schnarrd the Magnificent comes to an end. What a glorious golden age of knowledge advancement and deal making! A most Benevolent result! :goodjob: Especially worthy was the effort to spread our ways to the obviously unenlightened democracies in Egypt and England. :D

I shall endeavor to be worthy of the long shadow cast by our latest Benevolent!

:love: :king: :love:

Sirian

Feb 26, 2002, 07:03 AM

Inherited Turn: I spent about 3700 gold on military upgrades. We now have a boatload of infantry, artillery, and more infantry. I drafted one inf at Persepolis, and he went alone to hold the fort, along with our cavs, while the rifles were being ugraded.

I micromanaged a number of cities, optimizing food or shields. I decided that on my turn, I would focus mainly on the south, which would see its rail net effectively completed. The north would not be neglected, but much there would remain for future rulers.

1605AD: Oh, what's this? Ghandi sees conscripts left in charge of our fort and charges with all he's got. Sirian's Inadvertent Bait Scheme is thus hatched. The enemy manages to kill our brand new conscript infantry unit after they kill two attacking cavalry, and India runs out of gas. His remaining troops stack up in the front square and the tiles behind it.

Our shiny new artillery units rain shells down on the poor Indian troops, then our units slaughter them to the last man with no units lost on our side. Figure about sixteen Indian units dead to our one lost conscript. Heh. I'll have to bait them like that again.

I land four infantry and a cavalry on Iro soil.

1610AD: The Iros throw everything they have at our forces, and they have a lot! We kill about seven Iro cavalry, and some more retreat, before our force is overwhelmed and eradicated. We'll call this one a stalemate. Our units got wiped out, but they "got their money's worth". We'll need to be able to plop down about 12 infantry in one stack, and bring a settler once we have a foothold to found a port city for same-turn troop shipments to Iro soil. We can then begin to push them in earnest, but that is clearly not going to begin on my turn, as there are too many factories left to build, and hydro power not yet online.

BTW, great choice by Jester with the leader, as the hurried Hoover will have us cranking the kind of production the AI just HATES to see in RBD military hands. :lol:

OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ZULUS!!! (No, seriously, in THIS game, I just noticed, they are gone! Hiawatha swallowed them, just as I knew he would if they went to war. Did somebody ring Shaka's death knell by allying with him? Or did the Iro's just decide to take him out on their own??)

Well now, that adds some urgency to taking on the Iros. We're also going to have to go to war with Germany soonish, to get him out of democracy before he goes nuts on us with research. Would be REALLY nice to set both Russia and Egypt against him.

1615AD: Russia establishes universal suffrage. I trade saltpeter to Egypt for Refining, topping off our tank. We start Steel, and I run lowish rate, hoping someone else will research it first and lower the cost for us. Would also be nice to build back up the treasury a bit, after I spent 2/3rds of it on the inherited turn.

I'm building almost exclusively infrastructure, and mostly factories. We'll finish the rest of the colleseums, universities, and hospitals we need in our major cities, and some courthouses and granaries in our colonies, before we start concentrating on troops. Coincidentally, that's also about the time we'll be able to build planes, real ships, and eventually tanks. Before then, build up the inf and arty.

1620AD: We complete Battlefield Medicine.

1635AD: We complete Hoover Dam in Palenque. Factories are done in most of our best producers, and they are cleaning up last bits of infrastructure. Xenalia is building Intelligence Agency. (We'll have the cash on hand to plant a lot of spies, but no sense spying on France, Japan, or Russia, our most staunch allies).

By the way, both Cathy and Joanie paid US handsomely to enter into MPP's with them. Smart ladies know a wise and Benevolent ally when they see one!

:love: :queen: :king: :queen: :love:

I baited Ghandi again. Another dozen of his cavs are slaughtered, again at the loss of just one conscript infantry. I've promoted a bunch of our cavs to elite, and a bunch of our conscript units to regular. One even made it to vet!

1640AD: Rails complete in our heartland. Moving on the south now.

1645AD: Baited Ghandi again.

1650AD: Only two of Ghandi's cav reach the kill zone? Bah. Is he weakening already? Or are all his units healing up from the constant shallacking they took at the hands of our artillery?

Rails in the south nearly completed now, some desert work left to do. I had to clean up two pollution, and I used the rest of this turn's workforce to mine the desert around Persepolis.

Ghandi bait is set up for another round. Almost all our remaining unpromoted conscripts are fortified in our hilltop garrison. Despite some 50 attacks during my turn, over half by our elite units, there were no great leaders.

Egypt has made peace with some folks, I don't think they would renew the MPP without charging an arm and a leg, so I opt not to mess with that. I doubt it will stay in place long enough for our deals with Germany to wear off and us declare war, but you never know. Russia, at least, is locked in, and so is France. Japan is weary of war and made peace with the Iro's. We can let him rest a while, he's WAY behind in tech. At least he hasn't shared the Zulu's fate, which is something I feared might happen.

There is a settler in Xenalia, intended for the port city we need to found on the Iro side of the Fukishima strait. If you move against them, go ahead and plop it down two tiles north of their city, then just raze their city when you take it. :) Don't move without a heavy stack of infantry, though. Some ironclads in the area, backed by artillery, might not be a bad idea either. More transports there would also be good. (See? I'm not asking for much!)

Good luck, Charis! Still a lot of building left to do, I imagine the next major war won't go into full swing until the late part of your turn at the earliest, possibly later.

- Sirian

Charis

Feb 26, 2002, 07:47 AM

A very solid round, all around, by all leaders, good job! :goodjob:

If I was in any way wishing for more action in these games, that was fulfilled in spades. Major battleage goin' on in these parts! :ripper:

I did have to chuckle at "Joanie, our staunch ally", after taking over her city and saltpeter near sentry, she's been able to bounce back, eh? And CATHY a staunch ally?? Did she get off the weed she was smoking in 90% of our other games?

Almost due for another ridiculous abbreviation.
BGA ... Baited Gandhi Again! (or BAA for baited AI again)

I'll finish rbd5 this eve (oh please, I hope I do, just two turns left)
then get on here (glad I snuck the 5CC game in quickly).

Charis

Schnarrd

Feb 26, 2002, 10:11 PM

The Reign of Schnarrd the Magnificent comes to an end. What a glorious golden age of knowledge advancement and deal making! A most Benevolent result! Especially worthy was the effort to spread our ways to the obviously unenlightened democracies in Egypt and England.

I shall endeavor to be worthy of the long shadow cast by our latest Benevolent!

Wow, high praise indeed! Especially coming from Sirian! And not a single nit. ;)

Hmm, I didn't notice that the Zulus were getting their butts kicked, otherwise I might have given them some resources or something to at least allow them to stay alive.

I'm looking forward to the next Benevolent's turn, for I expect to see some combat after these two builder turns. :D

Charis

Feb 27, 2002, 06:30 PM

1650 AD (0) -

What a pleasure for Charis Ben Evolent to return to power and see that
his gloriously benevolent outpost of Ganges is safe secure, and at peace.
Well, peace only in a sense since the entire world is at war. What governments he

wonders... Half in communism or monarchy, half in democracy. The latter need
a little more action (Russia, Germany, England, China).
Yaxchilan? You've come a long way, cranking over 50 shields a turn now!
Lots of very benevolent projects going on throughout the land, excellent.

Not a big military turn, as some might have expected.
When you have a military advantage, militarize.
When you have a production advantage, produce.
When you have a science advantage, research.
Right now we have a production, not a military advantage.

1655 AD (1) - Gandhi continues to beat his head on the rock that is Ganges,
promoting one of our conscripts.

1660 AD (2) - India and Egypt sign a peace treat. Cleo ends the MPP. It would
cost Atomic Theory to get it back.. maybe later.

1665 AD (3) - India and England give peace a chance. Hrm...
Charis Ben Evolent is just plain not happy with the Japanese settlements
on his land, and vows to do something about it. Hakodate's Chaperone is
founded, and we prepare another settler for a fishing village nearby.
These cities are nicely near the capitol.

1670 AD (4) - Egypt and Iroquois sign a peace treaty. Bleeech.
The fishing village, Pherripisces is founded. (And the humor of Bovinia
just outside the cattle strikes me now :P)

1675 AD (5) - Gandhi baits Charis! Or... does Charis bait Gandhi?! It's getting
harder to tell. The Benevolent one is annoyed by Gandhi's raids, and thinks
that stepping up and razing Calcutta would be good. Gandhi sends *six* cavs
to their death, making two vet inf elite before slaying them 8-\
Then one more cav dies to promote another inf.

Infantry fires on calcutta and destroys the barracks. It's now size 3 down from
5 so it's drafted. Temple and Marketplace also destroyed (ouch). Hmmm...
an elite cav is the city's top defender? (We kick his arse handily with our
own elite cav.) Another cav promoted to elite vs a rifle. Hmm, make that two.
No wait, three! (sheesh) No!! FOUR! The last one vs a spear, and it takes
the city. We raze it. Perhaps now Gandhi will understand the meaning of
"border zone". A fifth cav goes elite vs a stranded Indian cav.

An ironclad outside Fukumura's horse meets an Iro ironclad, defeats it and
becomes elite.

1680 AD (6) - Lol!! They're stubborn. Here comes an Indian settler, plop!
Settles another "Calcutta" one step further back from the last one.
We lose one of the 'elite' cavs who had gotten too far for infantry backup.
Hmmm.. Palenque can crank out artillery and cav in one turn.

We raze Calcutta. Again.

Gonna stop there, I have infantry to get to tonight. Besides now is the
time for the next leader to decide next 'martial' objectives in our
benevolency.

Notes for future leaders...

- There's still a leader in Xenalia, intended to found on northern tip of
Iro land below us, planning to raze the city below that shortly after.
- There are lots of troops in Ganges and Fukumuras Horse for your attacking
pleasure. There are also a ton of cities that can crank out top troops
at the rate of one per 2 or 3 turns.
- Won't be long before tanks - well, 20 turns. That's when I myself would push
the next attack in a big way. But we can't afford to let foes and friends
sit in democracy unhindered for that long. So at least keep up a low burn
and try to pull Egypt and Germany into some war.
- The troops North of Ganges had razed Calcutta and were planning to return
back and re-bait Gandhi at the fort. Of course if he is silly enough to
refound Calcutta, we would be happy to raze it again :hammer:
- No huge building needs left, I spent alot of turning building last few banks
and universities and such. (E.g. some size 12-13 cities have no colloseum yet)

Unless I have it wrong, order is:

Charis
Schnaard <<<<< up
Jester << on deck
Cy
Sirian

Good luck,
Charis

Sirian

Feb 27, 2002, 07:16 PM

Attachment function is down and out for a couple of days. If direct email transfer is not an option for anybody, let me know, and I can host the files at my website temporarily.

Schnarrd

Feb 27, 2002, 10:15 PM

Charis:

If I'm to take my turn, either you'll need to relay the save to me through Sirian or send the save to me direct at jeranpat@nls.net.

Melle

Feb 28, 2002, 04:23 PM

Another lurker unveiled!
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading about those games. I might wish to join one myself one day, as soon as I get a bit more civ3 experience (just gave Regent difficulty a good spanking [punch] , but I'm not quite at your level yet)
Keep up the good work

PS Benevolent kings, should they be allowed to draft? When you've beaten this one and go looking for more challenge, maybe...the REALLY Benevoloent King?

Hmmm...razing/starving cities? Beneviolent for sure. no prob there ;)

Schnarrd

Feb 28, 2002, 04:54 PM

By the way, got the game. ;)

Schnarrd

Mar 02, 2002, 09:37 PM

I did manage to get some Civ in last night, but I only got about eight turns in before I was dragged to bed around 1:30. :( I haven't been able to some spare time today, so I'm passing the game off now. I also won't be able to post a proper turn summary until tomorrow, but I've started a major invasion on the Iroquois. Two GL's were spawned in the fighting. Here's the save:

Sirian

Mar 03, 2002, 12:35 AM

Is that the correct save file??

Charis
Schnaard
Jester <<<<< up
Cy <<< on deck
Sirian

Dozer

Mar 03, 2002, 03:02 PM

Can us observers get a current screenshot? the last one was a dot-map :\

Thanks in advance :)

Schnarrd

Mar 03, 2002, 03:33 PM

I believe so. As I already stated, I didn't play my full 10 turns, and neither did Charis, so that explains the funny date.

Now, as promised, here's the writeup:

Schnarrdevolent II ascended the throne in a quiet manner, slipping "incense" into the drinks of the former king Charis' closest advisors. As soon as he became ruler, he did what many ancestors of his became famous for: he surveyed the diplomatic front and renegotiated several deals with various countries. ;) He also noticed that several countries were still in the foul and baseless form of government known as Decocracy. Some of the democracies were at war, but others were completely at peace! Schnarrd quickly remedies this, signing an alliance vs the Iroquois with Mao for 250 gold and an alliance vs the Iroquois with Cleo for spices (by the way, this also keeps the Iroquois out of the tech loop).

Schnarrdevolent II was also known for his utter hatred of the Iroquois, having mounted a full-scale invasion in Iroquois territory. In fact, the first turn of his reign he landed three galleon-fulls of infantry, cavalry, and artillery in Iroquois territory, razing the city of Tonawanda next turn. The Iroquois founded Raze Me, I mean, Tonawanda close by the next turn, but that was also destroyed. However, the Iroquois counter-attacks were brutal, slaying many infantry and cavalry units. It was only on the second-to-last turn of his reign that he managed to found the city Beachhead in Iroquois territory.

All this fighting also brought about a wondrous occurrence: the Great Leader Axayacatl emerged from the fray to lead an army of glorious infantry against the Iroquois. Soon after this GL was created, another, Tizoc, emerged, to wait in Beachhead for further orders.

Schnarrdevolent II was also known for brokering Electronics to various other civs midway through his reign, since it seemed that it would be discovered independantly quite soon without his help. The results of the negotiations were as such:

Russia: 84 per turn + 340 for Electronics
Germany: Alliance vs Iroquois (they were a democracy at peace with every civ) + wines for 240 + Electronics
China: 120 per turn (surprised me!) + 50 for Electronics
France: 45 per turn + 200 for Electronics

All the other civs were too broke to afford it.

Schnarrdevolent also oversaw the completion of the Ironworks in Ironopolis, as well as many other infrastructural improvements throughout the Mayan empire. Upon the construction of the Ironworks, however, a jeering crowd in Ironopolis taunted Schnarrdevolent by catcalling, "You've got too many Irons in the fire!" and proceeded to tear Schnarrdevolent apart, tragically shortening his reign.

Miscellaneous notes:

The next leader has plenty of troops in Iroquois to play with, and more on the way.

There is a GL in Beachhead waiting to be picked up by a galleon or that can be used to make another army. I would not suggest the latter, though, since an army was built during my reign and can be used to make a cav army in Iroquois.

Good luck, Jester!

Sirian

Mar 03, 2002, 06:56 PM

Just being at war means nothing. Attacking your enemies is what raises weariness. We need Germany at war with people on their own continent! To manage that, we're going to have to declare war on them ourselves. I guess that will wait another 20 turns now. :) At least that should work out to come due on my turn. :) China... I don't know about. They are small enough that we can probably postpone dealing with them until later... but I rather doubt that bringing them in vs the Iro's will collapse them, they are too far apart -- and it didn't work last time either.

Tough going against the Iro's. I KNOW how rough it was trying to get a foothold there on my turn, so very well done pulling that off. :goodjob: And two great leaders!!! :D

- Sirian

Sirian

Mar 04, 2002, 03:35 AM

These aren't current, but not too badly out of date. Our south:

Sirian

Mar 04, 2002, 03:37 AM

Here's the north (Formerly Known As Persia):

Sirian

Mar 04, 2002, 03:40 AM

And here's our core: the (in?)famous cities of Xenalia, Riggoro, El Dorado, and "Chicken Itch". :lol:

Iester

Mar 04, 2002, 07:06 PM

Sorry, Schnarrd, but it's time for the annual Weedies, and you're up.

Unless our beautiful dark green has been replaced by turquoise...

Unless our name of "king" has been changed to "lincoln"...

Unless our title of "benevolent" has been changed to "president"...

Unless we control well over 80% of the world...

Unless we have hordes of modern armour poised to strike...

... this isn't the right save file.

So, take the time to thank your mother and your producer and your makeup artist, and post the right save when you feel like it.

:smoke:

Jester

Schnarrd

Mar 04, 2002, 09:57 PM

That was definitely one of the weediest mistakes I've done. :rolleyes: And it even said on the save file, "RBD 3." And Sirian even asked me if it was the right file! :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: Guess I was playing RBD 3 around the time I played Benevolent.

:o :crazyeyes

Charis

Mar 06, 2002, 01:01 AM

Another '48' hr past post notice. Well, past the correct save file showing up anyway :P

Jester, hopefully you're already on this one, but I've not seen any response in this game or rbd9. My medical advisors are hoping that there has not been a case of... weed ingestion or such?!? :eek: There is much benevolence to spread!

Good luck J, (or Cy if this sits unheeded)
Charis

Iester

Mar 06, 2002, 12:57 PM

I've been kinda busy this past week. But I'll play them! Really, I will! This one kinda got kyboshed, as I was already pushing it to the edge of the time frame, and then I found out it was the wrong one.

I'll play 'em right now.

Jester

Charis

Mar 06, 2002, 01:57 PM

Ah, very good! :cool:

Glad to hear you're back and on the case. The friends and foes of the Mayans are now assured of MUCH true benevolence!!

I know it's awkward when the nudges become shoves, and I
hope you or others take it properly as "Just gotta keep the
game moving, no prob at all, catch your turn next cycle"

Give 'em heck, here and in Mother Russia (9).
:hammer:
Charis

Iester

Mar 06, 2002, 10:37 PM

I've played half my turns. I'll try to finish them by the end of the night.

Again, sorry for the delay. I've been busy, busy, busy.

Iester

Mar 07, 2002, 10:38 AM

We'll have tanks.

Not just tanks, but 3 (4, if we use the leader) armies of tanks. And not just armies, but pentagon-enhanced armies.

All who stand in our way will have jaguars rained down upon them.

We have a tech lead, we have a military advantage... we can win this game however we like. I'd like to try space race with a strong dose of strongarming rivals. Any other thoughts? Outright barbarism? Domination? Regardless, there isn't a civilization on the planet that can really stand in our way anymore.

Jester

Cyrene

Mar 08, 2002, 08:24 AM

Got it.

I'll be able to play this tonight, and it should be ;osted rather early in the evening.

--Cy

Cyrene

Mar 08, 2002, 06:52 PM

Just when I thought I would have a nice, relaxed turn, RL jumped up and bit me in the ass. I did 8 turns, which brought us to a nice, round 1770.

The situation is ok, but the write-up will suck as I am in a hurry. Tanks are in and flight is on the way. Radio is in. GL reserved to make UN. Check the diplo screen, the web of alliances is intricate 8-). Oh, and add China to the folks we are war with (they started it, not me 8-)).

My main fun has been the war with the Purple Wonders of the Iroquois. I’m hanging onto Oil springs by my teeth as it has JS Bachs in it. My other intentions should be crystal clear from troop deployment, but feel free to change it up. Stepping Stone was founded solely to give us some area control and get some rail pushing forwards, there are workers under some of the infantry and an extra settler standing by in SS.

Good luck, and sorry for any weediness.

Oh, Hiawatha is starting to break out some longbowmen and Riflemen, so I think we may have him on the run (finally).

I THINK you can get a relief force to Oil Springs before Hiawatha gets his act together. Don’t ask me why there is an empty army there, I don’t know how it got empty.

--Cy

ps—unless the prng gets us, you will get to pop two cities on your first turn 8-)

Sirian

Mar 10, 2002, 04:16 AM

Two? Yeah, for starters. Then I decided to take out Salamanca. :)

Inherited Turn: Wake up sleeping workers and get them moving on pollution and other tasks. Zoom all the cities, adjust a number of minor details. Place a few phone calls...

Mayan deals with Germany are cancelled.
New trade deals with Egypt and Russia are struck, mostly for cash.
Mayans declare war on Germany.
Russians declare war on Germany.
Egyptians declare war on Germany.
French declare war on Germany.
English declare war on Germany.

Our Most Benevolent King Siri-Tzeltal shall finally and completely save the world from the scourge of Democracy! :lol:

Total cost for alliances, a mere 400 gold and a few horses. What a small price to pay to rescue the German, Russian, and Egyptian peoples from the horrors of freedom and self-government. :king:

1772AD: Japan captures Iro city north of the fur. Iros attack some of our tanks, wounding several but killing none. Then it was our turn. Two whipped-to-death cities razed, then replaced with our own shining new villages. Then we captured Salamanca and I moved twenty (20!) units in on garrison. That's way lighter than I wanted, but should do ok for one turn. We now control the Pyramids.

1774AD: Japan moves all it's units OUT of the newly captured city :rolleyes: and Iros retake it with a single cav. So I take it from them and burn it down, founding Pine on that site. Rushed a few temples. Moved tanks into position to attack Grand River. Now there are thirty units in Salamanca.

1776AD: Declaration of Independence! ...er, oh wait, wrong time line. :) We raze Grand River and take our first casualty on my turn, a tank dying to a vet inf. Tanks roll into position to attack Cattaraugus, I found a city north of Salamanca to plug that gap. Our first carrier sets sail.

1778AD: Cattaraugus razed, relieving the last of the border pressure on Salamanca. We should now be reasonably safe in preventing it from flipping back to Iros with a garrison of a mere thirty units, so I stop piling more in there and start planning to attack more than one enemy city per turn. Cattaraugus location is still within Iro borders so replacement settler moves into position but cannot found yet. Tanks advance on next major Iro city.

I decide to bait Ghandi by leaving four conscript infantry in the hill fort.

1780AD: We discover Flight! I start us on Computers. Ghandi take the bait, losing half a dozen cavs, killing one conscipt and promoting two others to regular. Another Iro City Razed. More replacement cities founded. I have been skimming the excess pop off our large cities and home and mining more of their tiles to increase production. This means plenty of settlers on my turn, but settlers will dry up a bit on later turns, while unit production will increase. We have ONLY about 120 infantry and that is nowhere near enough to man garrisons, yet we still need more tanks, too, so I hold on building more than a few new infantry.

I bait Ghandi again, this time with three conscript infantry and one wounded cav in the fort, and a bunch of artillery.

1782AD: OMG! GO GHANDI! He sent everything he had against us! Like... 20 of his 26 cavalry, most of them actually reaching the fort to attack it. He loses nine (9!) cav in the assault but overwhelms our units and captures seven artillery pieces!!!

Wow, he actually made a play there. :lol:

OK, then it was my turn. I pulled arty, our few newly produced tanks, and plenty of garrison infantry from all over our empire, to counterattack. The rest of his 20 cavs are wiped out and we lose one more infantry. For the final cav unit with 1 hp, I was out of fast units to attack with and didn't want to stick an infantry out there to get butched next turn, so I pulled our elite Jaguar Warriors out of mothballs for one final moment of glory.

Our Jags slaughter the pathetic Indian cavalry and rescue all of our artillery units! :hammer:

Sirian

Mar 10, 2002, 04:45 AM

1882AD (cont): Oh by the way, Russia and Egypt are now in Communism and Germany is in Anarchy. One MAJOR German city on their north border has been RAZED, a second was captured, and all their cities up there are shrinking.

England is playing the slut this game. After jumping in our bed for some horses, she jumped into Mao's bed and declared war on us, then got in bed with Joanie and divorced Mao in a heated split. She's down to two size 1 cities and enjoying a final fling before they put her out of her misery. She did not survive to the end of my reign.

I raze Ganaghaeehe (or however it's spelled, haven't seen that name quite enough yet to have it memorized like some of the earlier cities in the chain). I then raze Centralia, the last major Iroquois city, and their capital moves to... Zimbabwe!!! :lol: A captured Zulu city of size 5 is now their best city???

:rotfl:

I move forces into place to start mopping up other Iro cities. Sadly, with as many units as we have in that theater, they are now ALL tied down to garrison duty, mostly in the two wonder cities. After such a minor city as Tours flipped on me in Infantry Variant with half a dozen units inside, I've gotten a bit more nervous about city flips.

1884AD: Having decimated India's cavalry down to 6, from 26 (how do I know?? Oh forgot to mention, I planted spies all over the world!) I decide it's about time to stop coddling that old fool and remind him who the superpower is. I move forces into position to raze Calcutta for what? The third time? :lol:

I found Trading Post next to that fur at the Iro/Japan border and move workers into position to bring it online.

1886AD: Calcutta razed. Our galleon lands an infantry to cover for the cavalry unit that raced out there to finish them off. I move workers into place, including one via the galleon, to complete a road through the region next turn.

Our forces finish mopping up the last of the Iro towns in the west. I lacked for settlers, so captured rather than razed, that may have been a mistake. ALL three of those southern ice villages are whipped to death, going to be permanently sitting on size 1 with a taxman the rest of this game, AND at risk for flipping (at least until the Iros are conquered). :(

1888AD: India sends the rest of its cav against our forward infantry and our wounded cavalry. Our units make a valiant stand, killing three cav, and our inf promoting to vet, before they are wiped out.

I then wipe out those Indian forces and found Hammertown in a position from which Chari-Tzeltal can conduct the conquest of India (if that should please him).

1890AD: India is back up to seventeen (17!) cavalry? Do they have that much production, or did they whip that hard? In any case, I had four vet inf fortified in the new city AND some tanks and lots of artillery! AND THEY ALMOST TOOK IT OUT! One of our tanks got killed, along with several vet infantry.

Almost doesn't cut it, though. No cigar for Ghandi! :smoke:

Our counterpunch has him back down to five cavs again.

To conclude my turn, I made the diplomatic rounds :queen: :queen: :queen: and got our three Lovely Ladies to PAY US for alliances vs Germany, India, Iroquois, and China. Poor Toku was broke so we let him in on some deals for free. I also sold some Oil to Egypt for 1709 gold IN CASH!!!

So despite lots of spending, running 90% science the first half of turn, buying alliances to open the game and rushing a goodly number of temples, I leave our treasury once again with more in it than when I started.

I agree with Jester, a Space Race victory sounds most appealing, and yes with a GOODLY dose of strongarming our rivals. I've spun the downfall of Germany, or at least slowed them mightily. To my surprise, they seem actually to be losing the war vs the combo of the ladies on his continent. That could shift when he gets panzers, though, but post-patch the AI now PROPERLY places priority on upgrading their units, and all three civs on that continent are dug in with lots of infantry, so I don't expect anybody up there to be collapsing into ruin any time soon.

In the mean time, Iros are all but extinct now, and more a threat for captured cities to flip back to them than anything else. Keep our garrisons strong! Mop up more Iro cities, or India, at your pleasure, but realize that at the end of my turn I locked us into alliances vs Iro, India, Germany and China, so there will be no peace in our time. On the other hand, we do have plenty of friends, as the ladies and even Toku are all gracious with us and paying us large for our goods and support.

- Sirian

Sirian

Mar 10, 2002, 04:59 AM

I forgot to mention, I build a lot of airports and a lot of vet fighters, there are some scattered around, and spares mothballed in Xenalia, ready to be called up and sent to wherever the next King wishes. I also finally MM'ed enough cities with mines vs irrigations to set up a number of rapid infantry producers, so unless that gets vetoed, there should be a steady supply of DEFENSIVE units to go with the new tanks and bombers being built, as I found lack of garrison troops to be bigger limiter on my turn than lack of strike units.

Good luck to the next king! You'll get Computers, can use the leader any way you want (we have enough tech lead to go for Fission next and probably build the UN before anybody else can get to the tech anyway). I probably could have had two more leaders my turn if I had only used the one we have.

- Sirian

Sirian

Mar 10, 2002, 05:04 AM

Hiawatha's lands, now under Benevolent Rule!

No more whippings and forced labor camps in these parts.

:love: :king: :love:

Charis

Mar 10, 2002, 08:27 PM

I think I'm up here, so... got it.

Wow... this is a VERY DIFFERENT world than when I last saw it!
Pretty much for the better :P

Charis

Charis

Mar 11, 2002, 12:32 AM

1790 AD (0) - Wow! Modern era! Rails! Arbela is size 20? Bovinia 20? Chicken
Itch is 20??! Hakodate and Fukushima are still in Japanese hands?!?!? Wow...
(Hako's chaperone will expand mid-turn, btw) The whole world is at war,
and all are Communist apart from our Monarch friends, Japan.
Also can't believe the absolute number done on the Germans. How would you like
to be staffing their hotline. "Sir, the Mayans have declared war." "Biz, the
Russians declare war... oh, the Egyptians too." "Uh, sir... French too."
"Sir, one last call, from that ho' Liz. Her too. Besh wishes"

What to do next is the question... ? I'm feeling a bit benevolent, but
we'll see what the AI does on its turn. I sorta like the very clean choke
points we have now with all enemies. That oil near Mauch Chunk is all I
definitely want to grab. Althought... Imtombe is a *REAL* choke point.
Driving them back to their and sparing their lives would be unparalled
benevolence!! :hammer:

1792 AD (1) - Almost a case of "no counterattacks," but India decides to kill
or maim four of their own cav on our frontline stonewall. Major troop
production, wow... have we been at war or something?? I hunt down the cavs
and kill, and clean up much pollution this turn, that's about it.

1794 AD (2) - Iro and China have come to peace. Japan declared War on the
Iro (hehe! Go Toku!) *NO* attacks on the benevolent Mayans?! Not only that,
we see again how solid our previous leaders were. Last turn I moved a settler
on Iro land near Chunk to secure the oil -- midturn we had three border
expansions in the area and now the oil is ours. Still... a forward city that
WE founded can't hurt.

I was wondering if with ALL this mil unit production our support costs
were through the roof. Looked, and it's zero! Ah yes! The Glorious benevolence
that is the King!

No airports down south? Let's pop one out in Triad (where, incidently,
a longbowman has moved up to assault us, hehe) Waxing him was the only
combat this round.

Hakodate, we're **SO** pleased to have you on our continent, we want to just
shower you with attention and benevolence, great ally and monarchial friend
of Japan. Hakodate's Benevolence and Fukushima's Benevolence are founded,
along with Chunky Benevolence outside Maunch Chunk! :D

1796 AD (3) - Russian and Egypt sign alliance vs India, and Russia declares.
Cleo doesn't want to extend MPP or RoP. I let MPP go, but renew RoP free.
The Iro's immediately want to know just how chunky IS our benevolence?
They bring a cav against it, who lowers our inf to 1 hp before dying.
Two longbows make their move against Miali :P
They are defeated and we camp out there, bringing up artillery to destroy
the very roads leading up to it! (One extra settler sitting at India border)

1798 AD (4) - soso
1800 AD (5) - Now here's a funny one to see. That oil... tis extra, and I'm
thinking disconnect it, but I forget. This turn of Iro, a cav streams out
of Chunkville and pillages it :P

This brief reign has been characterized by benevolence, but one with a BIG
stick. Should any benevolent need to go to war, he shall find ample and
advanced units! Computers due next turn, next up: Fission, and hurry or
build the UN.

Good luck, (Schnarrd up, Jester on deck)
Charis

Schnarrd

Mar 11, 2002, 03:03 PM

Big stick, eh? :spank: Does that mean we're the only ones with tanks? :tank: I guess I'll just have to keep reminding myself that we're going for a space race victory.

Ozymandous

Mar 12, 2002, 01:52 PM

Regarding those smallish used-to-be Iro cities in the south, why not gift them to an ally? Then they get the headaches of having to deal with the whippings (or does that cancel out when you gift?), and you might even get them back due to culture eventually. :)

Sirian

Mar 12, 2002, 02:08 PM

Give away cities that Mayan soldiers spilled blood to liberate? Just so the warmongering AI's can whip them more???

I think not. :)

They are finally under Benevolent rule, and though they may grumble and moan as people are apt to do, they will at least not be whipped any more. Some day they will thank us.

:love: :king: :love:

- Sirian

Schnarrd

Mar 12, 2002, 10:29 PM

Inherited turn: Wow, we're kickin'! We can roll over practically any enemy we wish, and we're only paying a few gold per turn in maintenance with a couple hundred units on the payroll (ah the blessedness of the Benevolent monarchy!) :king: Now, if I can only manage to play Benevolently instead of rolling over every enemy I see like in RBD 3, we should be able to coast to a spaceship victory.

1: In between turns, Joan makes peace with both the Chinese and the Iroquois (didn't we have alliances with the French? They're breaking their treaties, unwashed fools!). Duringmy turn, I sign alliances with the French again for a combined 28 gold per turn (I figure with per turn gold the French are less likely to break their treaties). We also discover Computers and nearly every city is switched to a research lab. Fission started, research complete in eleven turns. I expect a large decrease in research time in three turns, when all our research labs are complete. :)

3: Xenalia finishes its research lab and starts the SETI program, complete in 12 turns. Also, the Indians send about 6 cavalry towards Hammerville (as if they really expect to capture it!).

4: Indian task force wiped out. An inner struggle insues within myself as I am tempted to send a large amount of tanks in Indian territory to conquer them. I win. :) (Don't worry, no tanks sent!)

5: Another Indian task force sent towards Hammerville. This one is also wiped out.

That's about it! I really had to struggle to not take over the Indians and Iroquois (when I have tanks and my opponents don't, an inner alarm sounds telling me to attack immediately!). Instead, I had to do with bombing the daylights out of both the Indians and the Germans. I love aircraft carriers. ;)

Schnarrd

Mar 12, 2002, 10:31 PM

See if you can figure out THIS web of diplomacy! Only military alliances and war lines are shown.

Iester

Mar 13, 2002, 09:38 PM

I'll play this up tomorrow morning, hopefully.

Jester

Iester

Mar 17, 2002, 02:36 PM

I don't think this game is going to require much more thought.

The germans, egyptians and russians have entered the modern age. They got rocketry out of their free tech, but haven't made any other gains. They're communist, and their tech is stalled up badly. We've got bombers, tanks and mech infantry enough to kill anyone if we so chose. We've got the UN coming in 6 turns before anyone else even has Fission.

If we lose this game, the computer is cheating. :crazyeye:

Space flight is coming in 11; we can prebuild the apollo program if we like. I can't honestly see what difference it would make, since tech is what's holding us back, not production.

We could probably win a diplo victory just on our bribing ability alone, but, well, diplomacy is for the weak. So what say we space race it this time?

I didn't really do much on my turn. We've got an army in Iro territory that could wipe them out, but I see no real need to. The germans are being shelled by our bombers, and there are more carriers being loaded to harass whoever else we want.

The Manhattan Project is a possibility. I can't see how it would change much either way. Maybe we'd better not build it, just to keep nukes out of their hands. I really don't think it would make a difference at this point, though.

Good luck and much patience to Cy; I have a feeling much of your turn is going to be pollution cleanup and bombing runs. Mine certainly was.

Let's finish this monster! The turns are getting longer and longer!

:hammer:

Jester

Cyrene

Mar 18, 2002, 08:13 AM

Got it.

--Cy

Cyrene

Mar 18, 2002, 08:35 PM

Wow, Jester is right—this one is starting to get outta hand, too.

I only did 5 turns as this game is getting pretty big and I have another monster to play tonight 8-0.

Here are the fronts:

Diplo: Things were getting too peaceful for me 8-). France is back in the war vs India, and added in Germany, too, though I doubt they’ll actually send anyone there. In fact, I now have the entire planet aligned against Germany to keep Bismark busy. Cathy bit off more than she could chew, and lost a few cities at the start, but seems to have rebounded nicely, especially after I hosed up Germany’s transport and supply net.

Iroquois: Decided to grind them up. Am doing so 8-). You have 3 armored columns on the move, grab them on the continuation if you want to change things up. You have an armor reserve building up in Gewauga. The Purple Wonders are completely out of gas, and only need a good sneeze to collapse.

Germany: Cut their country in half (road/rail-wise) with carrier-based bombers to try to help out Cathy, who needed it. It seems to have slowed Bismark down a bit.

India: A look at Hammertown will tell you they were next on my hit list. We’ve almost got their transport net cut in half too, as well as a pet battlewagon keeping their oil disconnected.

UN in one turn, Space Flight in 6, Apollo pre-built in Yaxchilan just to amuse myself. Japan has seen the glory of Monarchy and joins us in this most enlightened form of government.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to teach some French how to chew gum and walk.

--Cy

Sirian is up.
Charis on deck.

Sirian

Mar 18, 2002, 10:14 PM

Cy: grand turn! Give em Hell in Iro land! :lol:

Your estimate of who is the Whipper and who the Whipee, in the Prussian-Russian war, however, needs some adjustment. I took a look, and Cathy has had ONE city razed, and that's it. Not even a scratch on any of her others. Otto, by contrast, has had one city capture, three razed, and four or five more reduced to size 1 or 2! Not only that, but on the histograph he has suffered so much... that he is no longer #2 in the world.

This came as a shock to me, as I decided on a whim to Get This Over With the fast way... and go win by a vote! UN due next turn, right? And we have four allies and four enemies, so WE would be the deciding vote and win this thing! Well, that was the plan, at least...

Sirian

Mar 18, 2002, 10:16 PM

...to your regularly scheduled Space Race Victory!

[plasma] :alien:

Jaffa Tamarin

Mar 18, 2002, 11:16 PM

Originally posted by Sirian
This came as a shock to me, as I decided on a whim to Get This Over With the fast way... and go win by a vote! UN due next turn, right? And we have four allies and four enemies, so WE would be the deciding vote and win this thing! Well, that was the plan, at least...

Did you do bribery first?

I wonder if they've change how easy it is to get votes from the AI Civs, in the latest patch...

Sirian

Mar 18, 2002, 11:24 PM

Nope, no bribes. I expected our opponent to be Otto, not Catherine. Ole Biz has been gettin the biz at the hands of those easterna ladies, and bribes would not have helped us against Cathy. Our enemies were NOT going to vote for us, so that's four abstain automatically. Even if the other three voted for us, Cathy would vote for herself, so the diplo win is out. Out out out, back to Plan A: Spaceship.

- Sirian

Charis

Mar 22, 2002, 12:19 AM

Sirian

Just checking -- were you caught mid-turn or did you mean
to post a save file? I'm on deck, but no rush, just making sure.

Charis

Sirian

Mar 22, 2002, 12:35 AM

This one got backburnered for a couple of days. Bad precedent to start, I know, but everyone else has had their turn doing it here or there. :) The forum was down one of those days, so that doesn't count. :p I'll post something by tomorrow night, not sure yet if it will be a full turn or a partial.

- Sirian

Sirian

Mar 23, 2002, 04:47 AM

Well... I spent my gaming tonight deleting my save files out of all the completed SG's in which I've played, to help on the server space problem... then on writing a reply to Gris at RBD, which got ate, and on later writing an email to Charis, which got returned (his domain went under? Need a new email addy, Charis). Oh yeah, and I'm still not clear on the new upload procedure.

In all of that, not one minute for actual playing of Civ3. I'd offer to let Charis skip me and take his turn, but he's on a Feast night anyway, I think, so... I'll just keep it one more day and see what tomorrow brings.

RBD civ players need to check the announcement, and also the "delete old saves" thread, both Sticky, to check into what they maybe should do in regard to old save files.

- Sirian

Charis

Mar 23, 2002, 08:52 AM

Good call, take an extra day here by all means.

Nod, addy change, new domain is insightbb.com
as @home.com went under. I'll send you one sometime later today as well.

Ugh, I'll have to wade through back games and do some deleting... 8-\ Going with standard post for under 300k attachments for now and will delete later.

Charis

Cyrene

Mar 23, 2002, 03:12 PM

This whole deal puzzles me. Why not just delete all threads with no input after “X” days? This is not the Dead Sea Scrolls; civilization as we know it will NOT have valuable knowledge taken away if the Admins delete threads detailing the playing of silly games. These are GAMES. WTF? People act like deleting a single thread is somehow akin to the burning of the Great Library at Alexandria.

If someone thinks this crap is somehow vital to the development of mankind or a great source of wisdom that will solve all future ills in society, then THEY can buy the space, copy the threads there, and spend their time to maintain this archive of great knowledge.

Get a carnal-relations-with-your-mother grip on life. Sheesh. Masturbation is ok in and of itself, but when you start to think that things you do for fun are not only fun for you and the voyeurs, but somehow integral to modern civilization, you need help.

I am NOT going to delete past attachments. If the board is running out of space, then the Admins should delete the old crap. I am a guest here, and that is fine with me. If I think my words are somehow the source of world peace or cold fusion, it is my responsibility to maintain them, not the poor Admins of this board who are using up their spare time so we can have fun.

--Cy

Sirian

Mar 23, 2002, 10:52 PM

Cy: I'm not sure that deleting the threads would automatically pick up the attachments, too. If not, then that would be the worst thing to do, because the real problem (surplus files) would be left behind, with no way to indentify which files are more expendable.

- Sirian

Sirian

Mar 23, 2002, 10:58 PM

IT 1840AD: Hey, let's win this thing by the vote! We can trounce old Otto, give him the "Biz"! :lol:

1842AD: OOPS. Catherine is our opponent? How did that happen?

1846AD: The Benevolent summons his War Secretary.

"WHY ARE WE NOT ATTACKING THE IROQUOIS?"

"Uh... Your Majesty? There are no more Iroquois."

"Oh." ... ... ... "Well then, why aren't we attacking India???"

"I'll get right on that for you, Sire."

1860AD:

Sirian

Mar 23, 2002, 11:09 PM

* Eliminated Hiawatha.

* Conquered most of India.

* Rushed Manhatten Project at Crystal Lake.

* Built Apollo Program and first three Ship Components.

* Upgraded all front line or core defenders.

* Moved Carrier Stack o Doom next to Germany.

* Used HuitHuit to rush the hospital at Salamanca. (No use saving leaders at this point).

* Topped off the tank for temples at key locations. (Left low priority crackhouse sites to fend for themselves).

* Blew our treasury.

* Most cities are on Wealth. (We do not need any more units).

* Nukes are under construction. (Keep Schnarrd AWAY from the Red Button, plz :p ).

* Egypt and Russia went to War. I gave Cleo some rubber to defend herself with.

* Ecology due in two turns, need Mass Transit as top priority at any city over size 12.

* Still a long way to Tipperary. Try to keep our science going, don't attack any of our allies, and don't plan any major naval invasions. Sit on the vote, we're going for the launch!

Charis <<<< UP NOW

Please let me know after you CLICK HERE (http://sirian.warpcore.org/civ3/succession/rbd6-Mayans-1860ad.zip) to download the save from my website, so I can erase it. (Yes, it's over 300k).

- Sirian

Sirian

Mar 23, 2002, 11:16 PM

Minimap after my reign:

Schnarrd

Mar 24, 2002, 04:43 PM

* Nukes are under construction. (Keep Schnarrd AWAY from the Red Button, plz :p ).

Well, I am on deck, right? :nuke:

Charis

Mar 25, 2002, 12:20 PM

1860 AD (0) - I sorta miss Hiawatha... NOT! :hammer:

Countdown for launch is the mode. (The load time on this save file is
not a good sign). I must admit though, total puzzlement as to why
we would be making nukes, and the King has a brilliant idea! "Why not
convert this production capability into spaceship components when we're
finished with our research!" "Great idea sire!! (cough, don't you think
was their intention, cough)" "What was that cough?" "Nothing sir, nothing!"
"The nukes are due in 3 and 9, while no space tech due for 7 to 12 turns"
"No nukes will be made on my watch, squire!"

Hmmm... it's a rough world out there! Three foes dispute our benevolence?
China, Germany AND India all at war with this peaceful realm of ours.
And that's one hairy alliance chart. :rolleyes:

1862 AD (1) - India and China sign up vs Russia. One MORE alliance.
Next Egypt and China vs France. Oh my, does the world ever need benevolence!
Wait there's more! Japan and India vs Egypt.

1862 AD (2) - India and Germany come to peace.

Happy Day, we learn the wisdom of Ecology! [party]
Cities celebrate by instituting Mass Transit systems! We turn our
attention now to Synthetic Fibers to aid the space program (cough,
Modern Armor).

1864 AD (3) - Would I like to hold elections for Secretary General??
Oh no, thank you. No doubt my benevolence would shine like a beacon
to the world, but I must reject such an anti-monarchy system.

After such an offer though, the King does wonder... what ARE we
fighting about anyway? Is it due to an alliance? Yes, France vs Germany(7),
China(10) and India(0), Russia vs Germany(4) and China(10), Egypt vs India(10).

Here comes the assault on Karachi. I note the abundance of elites in the
area, and sure enough... Chimalpopla arises from the Chaos!! :hammer:
Let's see... 3 armies unused and unfilled... nah. Maybe it can rush a space-
ship part. They're "non-rushable", but if like wonders, perhaps. Still,
our production is not lacking but our research. Cure for Cancer would be
MOST benevolent, but a real side-track from a tech perspective. We send him
home to Xenalia to ponder his next move.

India is really thin, with about 10 troops for six cities. Our mech
takes out his last rifle in Karachi, and we capture Magellan's voyage!

Pressing the attack we sieze New Delhi, losing one tank. Pune is next,
and we call over the army from HAMMERTOWN to the new capital, New Bangalore.

1866 AD (4) - Russia and China come to peace terms.

Pune crumples when we look at it. We found a city, with our OWN citizens,
on their turf. "Enya"

Hammer's Army and two tanks roll over New B', and we're down to two Indian
cities - New Lahore and Cherbourg. Er... one... New Lahore had just one
defender. Er... India goes the way of Iroquois.

The very last battle is a bit of a giggler... Mech Inf vs Spear.

valley of the Stars has our air force.

1868 AD (5) - Germany and Japan come to peace.
1870 AD (6) - Fill in a few border 'holes' in ex-India, ie the town
of "Benevolent Shores"

That evens up the years and I'll stop here.
Treaties left: France vs China for 7, Egypt and Japan none, Russa vs Germany
just one turn. So we can have peace vs Germany next turn if we want,
and with China shortly after that.
- The science slider is temporarily high, oscilating. Keep treasury over 1000.

Good luck, (leader, army, troops, we got all you need)
Scharrd, you're up :P (Jester on deck)
Charis

Schnarrd

Mar 25, 2002, 02:54 PM

Got it!

Sirian

Apr 03, 2002, 06:43 AM

Now that the holiday is over, I want to get this game back on track toward completion.

Schnarrd? Can you post your turn -before- Thursday?

Schnarrd

Apr 03, 2002, 02:28 PM

Yes, playing now. (If you've been following CC1, you know what a rough week I've had. You guys could have skipped me, but apparently everybody's been pretty busy!)

Schnarrd

Apr 03, 2002, 06:08 PM

Yep, that was the highlight of an otherwise dull turn. Cleo is now in bed with Mao. She allied against us! In response, I got Cathy to ally against Cleo for furs. May Cleo be scr*wed like the, uh, loose woman she is. Neither Cleo nor Cathy have rubber, although there is a source unconnected along their shared border. Consequently, the next ruler could sell rubber to Cathy for a massive wad of cash if he so desires.

Otherwise, not much happening. Synthetic Fibers in one, most of our cities on wealth.

Good luck, Jester!

Iester

Apr 03, 2002, 08:31 PM

Okay, there's just no way. I remember these turns, and I won't have that kind of time until next week, presuming I want to keep sleeping and eating.

Pass me by on this one as well. Hopefully, it's all just caretaking until launch anyway.

Jester

Charis

Apr 05, 2002, 09:30 PM

Cy << up
Sir << on deck
Charis
Schnarrd
Jester

Cy, see if you can get Cleo out of bed with Mao

Cyrene

Apr 05, 2002, 10:48 PM

Ok, thanks for the bump, I missed this.

Got it.

I won't play it until tomorrow morning, though.

Been playing Dungeon Siege tonight, and am too annoyed to play 8-0. Full rant on RBD.

I should have just reloaded Outcast or TR4 and had some real fun....

--Cy

especially outcast. dang i miss that game. got to get the cd's back from my cousin. what a great game. but i digress...

Cyrene

Apr 06, 2002, 11:26 AM

I'm having multiple game crash problems. Still trying to find the source.

Working on it.

--Cy

Cyrene

Apr 06, 2002, 01:37 PM

Cy fix crashie,

Cy go smashie.

Full report upcoming.

Cyrene

Apr 06, 2002, 03:18 PM

Ahhh, I love the smell of modern armor in the morning…

This is the first time I’ve had modern armor in a looooong while. My solo games are pacifist defend-only builder games, and my RBD SG’s have either had restrictions or been over by the time modern armor came along. In this game, we have the definitive tech lead, but are still researching slowly enough to stretch this one out for the space race. After playing DS last night, I was NOT in the mood to just hit the space bar 5 or 10 times, which is all winning requires in this game anymore. So, erm, I went berserk.

Sociopath, that’s me 8-0.

Upon opening the game I went looking for the victim of my misplaced aggression. My first choice was Germany. One turn to Synth Fibers, one turn to upgrade, and (eeep!) 6 turns for the transports to travel to Germany? What, set things up so the NEXT player gets all the fun? Pshaw! Hmmm. Everyone else is in Communism but Japan. They are in Monarchy. Monarchy? That is our gig! Hmm. The people of Japan prefer Monarchy, eh? Yet they know not the glories of Mayan Monarchy! It is time to show our benevolence by liberating the people of Japan from their oppressive Monarchy and allow them to lead lives of fulfillment under the most glorious Mayan Monarchy! Even better, our ROP with Japan expires in 2 turns, which is how long it will take to get Modern Armor on their border. This is indeed a sign we are destined to be the liberators of Japan!

1882. Preparations for Japans glorous liberation.

1884. We end our ROP with Japan. Violently. 6 Japanese cities are taken or raised. We bribe dear Joan (oops, wrong game) to be our ally.

1886. Dear Joan gets in the friggin way, and only 1 city is taken by us, though France claims a city. I need to have a chat with that woman…

1888. 5 cities fall to our army of liberation.

1890. 2 new cities rejoice at the benevolence of our Monarchy. The days of Japan’s amusing monarchy are numbered. I have been unable to get Cleo out of bed with Mao (I tried dumping cold water on them), so I take a new direction. A suicide invasion of the Chinese mainland is prepared. If I can’t get them out of bed, I will break the bed! It has been 5 turns, but I am not stopping now. I use bombers out of Cherbourg (on the southern tip of former India) to isolate the suicide target.

1892. The forces of our glorious Monarchy liberate Japan and the grateful people become one with the mighty Mayans. Our suicide invasion is a fantastic success, as we exploit the weakness of the turn-based system to run our transports past the Chinese fleet, and land our troops before the transports are sunk. We take the isolated city, and rename it Bed Breaker to signify our intent. Being a modern sort of Monarchy, and having just had our entire navy on this front sunk in our invasion, I rush in an Airport, due next turn.

Sirian: This game is a hoot. I tried to pay back some of the city micro you guys always do for me with about an hour’s worth of moving troops for the takeover. You are mid-war with 3 nations.

Egypt. I have ignored Cleo except for navy battles. We have won some and lost a lot. More Battle Wagons would be nice.

Germany. Same old bomb-from-carriers interdiction as was going on with my last turn. When I took this game Cathy was on the offensive, but Biz started pushing her back, so just before the handoff I sold her rubber for 1/3 her treasury to try to keep the stalemate going.

China. 8-). Mao is in serious trouble, he just does not know it yet. You have a beachhead city in Bed Breaker, which has 15 Modern Armor, 1 Mech Infantry, and our entire land airforce in it, with all roads cut leading up to it. Airport due next turn. You are cut off entirely by sea as our fleet is on the other side of the globe. Our land army is in Chicken Itch waiting for the airport to come in in Bed Breaker. I don’t have an exact count, but it looks like about 50-60 Modern Armor and 1 or 2 dozen mech infantry in Chicken Itch. I DO so love turning over a raised hammer to Sirian or Charis or Jaffa 8-). Hammer time!

Allies:

France. Just bound her to a new ROP and Alliance against China. Joan is at the bottom of my list 8-).

Cathy. Started my turn strong, but then started losing ground back, even though our carrier air force is hosing up Germany. I sold her rubber on my last turn, trying to preserve a stalemate here.

In general: Check the histograph, wow what a move lately by our glorious monarchy 8-). We are closing in on 100k culture, but 2x all others seems a bit distant. OTOH, I don’t think china will survive Sirian…. It is on two islands, though; might be time to make a few paratroops or load those transports. Sorry I lost our fleet in that arena on the suicide charge 8-). It goes without saying we are broke…

It is almost worth the download to look at the troop stack in Chicken Itch.

All hail the Glorious Monarchy of the Mayans!

--Cy

ps--the crash problem was due to an army that had somehow unloaded itself and turned into crash unit from hades--deleting the empty army did the trick (so to speak)

Sirian

Apr 06, 2002, 09:04 PM

Cy went nuts? :eek: CY??? :eek:

Schnarrd I would have expected. :lol: But Cy??? :eek:

Um... one problem. ACE file? What am I supposed to do with that?

- Sirian

Charis

Apr 06, 2002, 10:18 PM

ACE is a zip alternative, de-ace programs available for free.

In any case, here it is expanded and put in a zip

Charis

Sirian

Apr 12, 2002, 07:30 PM

I'm still up in this game but my time has passed beyond "late". If Charis is ready to play, feel free to jump in there and skip me, I won't be getting to this one tonight either. Still have to finish a grueling report from LOTR2.

- Sirian

Iester

Apr 23, 2002, 12:53 PM

Schnarrd, where be ye? If Sirian's skipped, which he has been, you'd be up.

But you're now WAY over, unless I'm mistaken.

Which means the game is mine.

Feel free to claim it before the day is out, maybe this bump will point it out to you.

If not, it's mine.

Jester

Ozymandous

Apr 23, 2002, 03:51 PM

Schnarrd has been missing from the 5 Iro city game for over a week also, he may show up but I'd plan to play tonight Jester if I were you (just a FYI). :)

Schnarrd

Apr 23, 2002, 08:05 PM

Sorry! I've been MIA in pretty much all my games. I'm afraid you'll have to skip me in pretty much all of them. The RL events that kept me from Civ before have still not resolved themselves. Unfortunately, this has been an extremely complicated and emotionally draining process. I hope that it will be completed soon.

Sirian

Apr 24, 2002, 04:32 AM

Cy was the last one to play. I was "up" and totally slacked off. I've got a deity game that's already been won but which I am mopping up the details on the end to finish it off, and that's been quite time consuming -- so I rather have not been in the mood to pick this one up, which is also already won but doesn't know it yet. :)

At the end of RBD5, we went into a Grab the Game format and abandoned the roster for the most part. That would be fine here too. I was up, and Charis after me, but I said he could go ahead and he never did either. :) The real question is whether or not we're reaching a plateau of general disinterest, and will end up playing less on a permanent basis (or stopping, even), or just in a lull while we do other stuff. Charis STILL owes me a reply from a month ago about the RBD Civ Tourney idea, that's been shelved since I first proposed it, and, well... I'm just chillin out waiting to see how things are going to go.

I would like to see this game here, RBD6, wrap up and finish. I very much enjoyed playing it and feel kind of sad that I've not been interested in polishing it off, but... I haven't. Sometimes I enjoy the gameplay of the late game regardless of whether or not the outcome's in doubt, and sometimes it just seems like work -- and it varies day to day.

ANYBODY on the roster who's ready to pick it up and take some turns, please do. Take 5, 10, or whatever moves you, then post and hope someone else will grab it soonish. :)

We can't run out of Benevolence now! The game's almost over! :)

- Sirian

Iester

May 14, 2002, 11:45 AM

It's... alive!

Okay, so I played a couple turns. Nothing special, mostly schlogging, dealing with disorder, clicking past workers, airlifting armour to the chinese, watching the chinese waste an entire army (20 or so) mech infantry beating their heads against our wall, razing one of their cities, etc...

All in all, this game just needs some finishing. My bite was pretty tiny, but we only need ten or so more tiny bites and this game is over, or one or two major, 10 turn players. It's all just research at this point.

I might come back to this soon; if someone else could pick it up, I'd like this (my first SG, I do believe...) to get finished.

Jester

LKendter

May 24, 2002, 08:37 AM

@Sirian - Same boat here, do you want to open for more players?

Sirian

May 24, 2002, 02:00 PM

Lee: This one's in the bag and I just haven't had the will to dot the I's and cross the T's. If you want to pick it up to run a few turns of modern mop-up, go right ahead. :)

- Sirian

LKendter

May 30, 2002, 06:52 PM

OK -
Consider this post my "GOT IT".

This will be my weekend filler game.
I will post results Sunday night (gmt - 5)

It looks the goal is a space race if I read things correctly.

LKendter

Jun 01, 2002, 10:06 AM

(0) 1898 AD - We still have Jaguar Warriors :rotfl:

Increase science - Satellites 1 turn earlier.
Techs left to get - Superconductor, Nuke, Laser.
NOBODY else has started a spaceship, while we have 4 parts built.
It will take a while, but I begin the process of getting rid of the junk units.

Russia will pay cash up front for luxuries - I take the money ($950) and run.
We now have plenty of unit upgrade money.

GOALS - Spaceship ASAP.

(I) Have to hire a couple of entertainers in junk productions cities.
This late is the game it takes way to long to check for possible disorder.

(1) 1900 AD - We continue to bomb the *#$(! out of Germany.
I will be doing this every turn.
We are so close to winning - I fortify many of our workers.
Tatung is captured.
Tientsin is captured - bb sunk in port.
(I) France / Egypt peace treaty.

(2) 1902 AD - Shantung is captured - BB / Tran destoryed in port.
(I) France / Germany peace treaty.
Begin research on SuperConductor 9 turn eta.
Oh goodie - I get the domestic nag wanting aqueducts / hospitals.
I hope the patch lets us shut her UP.
SpacePart #5 completes [party]

(3) 1904 AD - Macao is captured - 2 bombers caught in airport.
(I) Russia wants spaceflight - TAKE A HIKE.
Just Cautious, but that B$$!@!@# declares war.
Really stupid - She prepaid for the luxury.
SpacePart #6 completes [party]

(4) 1906 AD - The AI can be so silly sometimes.
They amphib by Macao, the same spot they could reach by rail.
We have no alliance vs. Germany - A peace treaty is signed.
We get all their money - $128.
They are been crippled at this point - 4 large cities by the capitial, all hurting for infastructure.
We sign peace with Egypt, get a mere $4 (all they had).
(I) I think I will pass on a UN vote.

(5) 1908 AD - We begin bombing Russia instead.

(6) 1910 AD - Our air sucks vs. China. Barely dented Hangchow.

(7) 1912 AD - Hangchow is captured - caught a bb in port.
Chengdu is captured - again catch a bb in port.

(8) 1914 AD - Nanking is captured - just 1 defender!
(I) SpacePart #7 completes [party]
No other Civ has even started - this game is wrapped.

(9) 1916 AD - The bombardment of Xinjan begins - Size 11 is to large to capture.
The landing force by Bed Breaker included a settler.
We can know repair the road back to the airport. :)
Shanghai is captured.
The French sneak a horse colony in the middle of our lands.
I rush a temple in Satsuma so the we will wipe it out culturally.
(I) France / China peace treaty.

(10) 1918 AD - This time I have to cleanup a Russian landing by Bed Breaker.
Xinjan just won't go down to size 6. Maybe the next person will have better luck.
Check the Diplo screen - still no money to be map. Just get chump change for world map.

Summary -
This game is WON
Who wants to be next?
Just need a couple more rounds to finish it.

My 10 max went a lot quicker then expected.
Even with 20 turns I couldn't finish, science just taking to long with Monarchy.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RDB6-1918AD.zip