An army-themed game brought to you by the Monkey Cult and the folks at RBD.

Civ: Zulu (leader Mzilikazi).
Map: large, continents.
Barbarians: raging.
Opponents: 11, semi-random, definitely includes Persians, Germans, English and Americans.
Difficulty: monarch

Victory conditions: conquest only.

Proposed ruleset (open to discussion) :

Editor changes:

We start with an Army instead of the initial worker. Everybody else gets a worker, as normal.

Army build cost halved (from 400 to 200 shields).

Military Acadamy and Sun Tzu swapped in tech tree (so Military Academy is at Feudalism, Sun Tzu at Military Tradition). Requirement for a victorious army removed from Academy.

Ability to build army units added to Pentagon small wonder.

Army support requirement down to one city.

"Rush improvement" ability removed from Great Leaders.

Experimental change: I checked the box for "Build Often - Artillery Land Units" for the English and American AI.

Variant rules:

Only armies and elite units can operate outside our cultural border. Only these (and units which can't form armies -- ships, planes, artillery -- and non-military units) have the necessary training and discipline to operate in unfriendly territory. Units of vet status and below must remain inside our cultural border until they gain elite experience, or get assigned to an army. If a low-level unit accidentally finds itself outside our culture (because a nearby town got captured), it panics and runs for the nearest 'safe' square. (Exceptions: non-elite units are allowed to cross neutral (no-culture) squares en route to garrison new cities, and are allowed to accompany our workers and settlers into neutral territory to protect them (defensive protection only) -- but no having our workers wandering around outside our territory just to get the military units out there.)

Only armies can assault enemy cities. Only units properly trained and grouped into armies have sufficient power to be able to attack enemies entrenched in their city defenses. Whoever heard of a city being stormed by a single tank? :) Bombardment is allowed.

An army must remain on garrison duty in newly-captured towns until resistance has been crushed. Extra garrison can be any grade of unit.

I expect a slow start, with limited possibilities for offensive military action until late middle into modern era, when we can build sufficient numbers of army units. Unless we get attacked earlier, and can generate elite units in defensive operations.

Roster:
Jaffa
Melle
Charis
Smegged
Sirian
Ozymandous

10 turns per player after I start off, probably drop to 5 if (when) things get busy later.

Interesting ideas. But...

START with a Great Leader? I want to be expansionist! First-turn Pyramids -- WOOHOO! But isn't that a little ... ummm... unbalancing?

If all small wonders can build armies, why worry about when Military Academy becomes available? Can you (we) find some other use for MA, so it's not a semi-worthless wonder?

I have no idea what's possible with the editor, but how about making military academy a regular building (prereq of barracks) available after Feudalism (or whenever)? Then you could leave the rest of the small wonders alone.

This one sounds kinda fun, if the kinks can get worked out. But I don't want to commit to another game right now. If I commit, I want to be able to do my part to keep a game moving.

Arathorn

The initial Leader for the human players is to be used to form an army. What the AIs do with theirs is, well, up to them :)

Something which is a regular building can't have the ability to build armies. That flag is only available on small wonders (at least through the editor...)

Ya, I'm still interested. Armies have been an increasingly beneficial/used part of several other games.

Initial thoughts... I may have more later:

- Do NOT give an initial GL, rather, an initial Army. (If you can get one out of a goody hut, why not start with one)
Pyramids on turn 1 not good :P Way too chaotic for AI, just give them an army too

If you don't win a victory with it you DESERVE to lose. If you do, you get Heroic Epic option early, for more GL's and more Armies.

> Only armies and elite units can operate outside our cultural border.

Excellent, this is very 'clean'. Scouts and explorers don't have exp status, so they're "ok" just like artillery.

Actually, I would add paratroopers here, who are designed specifically for behind-enemy-lines ops.

- SunTzu and Mil Academy swap seem just about right in the order, although that's rather late to wait on several barracks. You don't need to "swap" in the editor, you can just change the pre-req from Mil Tradition to Feudalism or Chivalry.

> Only armies can assault enemy cities.
Also a clean rule

> Only armies can be used to garrison newly-captured towns
> until resistance has been crushed. (So we should expect to
> raze most cities, unless there's a particular reason not to --
> beachhead, wonder).

Will make for tough/good choices.

> Army build cost halved (from 400 to 200 shields).
Good

> Ability to build army units added to all small wonders (still
> thinking about this. Maybe just to Forbidden Palace and military-
> theme wonders).

No, it's NOT a city setting, but nation wide! Once the building with the flag is built, your CIV can make armies. That bldg is the Mil Academy. Adding the flag to other buildings would make it a useless bldg. No need.

> I expect a slow start, with limited possibilities for offensive
> military action until late middle into modern era, when we can
> build sufficient numbers of army units. Unless we get attacked
> earlier, and can generate elite units in defensive operations.

It will, I think, be a fast start but with a big plateau. The first army you build will do rather well and be fast. Yet after that, city-assaulting will be very restricted, until start of middle ages and the Academy.

WHAT to put in the first army will be a key question? Swords or horse likely strong choices, or you could go earlier and start epic earlier, but have it go obsolete earlier.

Charis

PS Great, now i'm up from 2.5 to 3.5 games beyond my capacity :D

Originally posted by Charis
- Do NOT give an initial GL, rather, an initial Army. (If you can get one out of a goody hut, why not start with one)
Pyramids on turn 1 not good :P Way too chaotic for AI, just give them an army too

Guess so. GL does kind of give a big advantage to Civs that start with a wonder-tech.

Actually, I would add paratroopers here, who are designed specifically for behind-enemy-lines ops.

We can still use elite paratroopers :) I don't think it's worth making them (and marines) a special case. This is supposed to be an army game, not a special ops game. We're just going to have a very limited supply of special ops troops, so if we want to use them, we'll have to make each one count :)

No, it's NOT a city setting, but nation wide! Once the building with the flag is built, your CIV can make armies. That bldg is the Mil Academy. Adding the flag to other buildings would make it a useless bldg. No need.

Looks like a city setting to me. I checked in RBD5, and only Paris with the military academy has the option to build armies.

PS: I'm expecting we should have no problem winning a victory with our first army. Taking the requirement off the Academy was more to encourage army-building by the AIs.

--
Jaffa

Jaffa: it wasn't the army idea that lost my interest. It was the shotgun wedding (and without consulting me!) of the Army concept and the Cretin concept. (Charis was determined to mess with that no-culture concept anyway, though, and picked that game to declare Open Season :( "pickup" with huge roster. I wish that had been done on a different game).

Overall, I like the rules suggested here! They have... some functionality to them. :)

* "Not operate outside our borders" for non-elite is just perfect! For a conquest game, that is. I really like that twist.

* 200 shield cost for armies? Sounds good. Pricey at first, but once factories come online, same cost as a B ship. Good.

* Only armies can assault cities. Grueling! Might be harsh for any ancient warfare, but as you say, you're intending for us to get a late start.

* Swap Military Academy with SunTzu. Interesting. Acceptable.

* Army support changed to one per city. OK.


Now some concerns:

* All Civs start with an initial Great Leader.

I don't like that one. If the aim is to start with an army, let's start with an army. In fact, rather than have everyone start with an army, let's just have US start with an army. I can take the save file and edit our starting worker over to being an army unit. We would start with the free army, while no one else would, but you'd be surprised how much losing that first worker would hurt us!

If you don't like that idea, then let's just remove the requirement for "needs a victorious army" from the Mil Academy, and just have to WAIT for our first army to come along (hut, leader from defensive action, or middle ages and Academy).

* Ability to build army units added to all small wonders.

Let's have three of these, max. Academy, Pentagon, and Apollo Program. This means the second one (Pentagon) can't be built until we have three armies, and the third won't arrive until the Modern age. Also, since this is an army game, let's completely remove the Heroic Epic from the game, so that it stays an army game instead of a great leader wonder rushbuilding festival.

* Germans.

Too easy! (Have you seen panzers?) Also, what about that "not allowed outside our borders" clause?

Let's forsake the Germans and their easy libraries and universities and free techs, and godly UU, and instead play the Zulus. That way we can have scouts and actually SEE what is outside our initial 21 tiles. :lol: Plus we send scouts all over to pop huts, more chance for those early armies, or more settlers to expand with. Plus... have you ever played the Zulus into the modern age? I haven't. I've either won with them in the middle age, or quit the game for various reasons (too easy, patch arriving, etc). Wouldn't it be just 2damncool to roll a Zulu army of Modern Armor over enemy cities???

* Only armies can be used to garrison newly-captured towns until resistance has been crushed.

:( :( This one sounds like a "Glutton For Punishment" brand variant restriction. Armies count as ONE unit! What, we're going to stack six of them in some newly captured city and watch them all vanish in a city flip, completely wiping out our entire game on some random roll of the dice? I hate it. Hate it hate it. I hope you will reconsider.

Maybe change it to "Must keep an army in with the garrison until all resistance is quelled"? That would serve the purpose of featuring the army unit, without placing our fate in the hands of a dice roll. I hate dice rolls that decide an entire game on one luck factor. Entire games (like Master of Orion 2) have been dumped in the round file over such a problem. If I want to roll dice, I'll get some out and toss them on my desk here. :) Then I'll put them away and save myself the hours I would have invested. If that makes any sense?

* Only armies and elite units can operate outside our cultural border.

Overall I like this, but it should not crimp our peaceful expansionism. So can we modify that to allow units to guard workers and settlers in neutral territory? (And also to scout at the game start, IF you veto the Zulu idea? I'm not in favor of being unable to go scouting).


"Actually, I would add paratroopers here, who are designed specifically for behind-enemy-lines ops."

We can still use elite paratroopers I don't think it's worth making them (and marines) a special case. This is supposed to be an army game, not a special ops game. We're just going to have a very limited supply of special ops troops, so if we want to use them, we'll have to make each one count

YES!!! Go Jaffa! Make that stand against Charis "Mix-n-Match" Brand Mission Creep! :lol: ;) We're behind you all the way! :D


- Sirian

Oh one more thing. Domination? Much easier to pull off on a large map than conquest, and liable to cause an RBD3-ish early end to the game. Is that what you are intending?

- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
* All Civs start with an initial Great Leader.

I don't like that one. If the aim is to start with an army, let's start with an army. In fact, rather than have everyone start with an army, let's just have US start with an army. I can take the save file and edit our starting worker over to being an army unit. We would start with the free army, while no one else would, but you'd be surprised how much losing that first worker would hurt us!

How about if you explain to me what needs changing in the save file, and I do it? :) Is there a save-file-editing tool out there someplace?

* Ability to build army units added to all small wonders.

Let's have three of these, max. Academy, Pentagon, and Apollo Program. This means the second one (Pentagon) can't be built until we have three armies, and the third won't arrive until the Modern age.

How about Academy, Pentagon and Forbidden Palace?

Also, since this is an army game, let's completely remove the Heroic Epic from the game, so that it stays an army game instead of a great leader wonder rushbuilding festival.

Or (and I think better), just remove the 'rush improvement' option from the Leader unit :) I want the Heroic Epic -- and Leaders will (I think) be the way to beat the one army per city cap (not sure how it works exactly, but I'm guessing it's only checked for built armies).

* Germans

Too easy! (Have you seen panzers?) Also, what about that "not allowed outside our borders" clause?

No, I haven't seen Panzers -- which is one of the reasons I wanted to play the Germans :)

Zulus would work, too. But I don't know any famous Zulu generals :P

* Only armies can be used to garrison newly-captured towns until resistance has been crushed.

:( :( This one sounds like a "Glutton For Punishment" brand variant restriction. Armies count as ONE unit! What, we're going to stack six of them in some newly captured city and watch them all vanish in a city flip, completely wiping out our entire game on some random roll of the dice? I hate it. Hate it hate it. I hope you will reconsider.

My idea was that, yes, we would stack many army units for a couple of turns in newly captured cities that we needed to keep. Which would be a strong incentive only to capture cities we really did need to keep, and raze all the others.

Maybe change it to "Must keep an army in with the garrison until all resistance is quelled"?

That was my initial idea, actually.

How about allowing only armies and elite troops to quell resistors (and there must be at least one army). That still prevents the busing in of masses of regular troops from behind the frontlines and making capturing cities too easy an option, which is what I really wanted to avoid.

* Only armies and elite units can operate outside our cultural border.

Overall I like this, but it should not crimp our peaceful expansionism. So can we modify that to allow units to guard workers and settlers in neutral territory? (And also to scout at the game start, IF you veto the Zulu idea? I'm not in favor of being unable to go scouting).

You could scout with the initial army unit :) A bit risky with it having no defence, though...

Okay. Regular units can guard settlers and workers in neutral territory (but then must stay in the same square as the unit they're guarding).

With us having to raze most enemy cities, domination may not be so easy to pull off. But conquest-only would be okay with me, too.

--
Jaffa

Is there space for a non-RBDer? If so, let's just say I agree with everything that Sirian says (whatever that was ;) )
I'd vote for monarch diff, assuming I get a vote. If the vote goes for emperor, I'll just quietly slip away.

You can't use a GL to form an army if you don't have support. Tried it with a GL I got when I just had 3 cities, and no dice!

Jaffa: I would be opposed to altering the Forbidden Palace. I chose Apollo because it will otherwise be useless in this game, which meant we would wouldn't have to tinker with any others.


The ulilty to change our starting worker to an army unit would be Gramphos's C3CT/SGE.


Removing "Rush Improvement" option might do the trick. If you want to go that route, I'm OK with it.


How about allowing only armies and elite troops to quell resistors (and there must be at least one army). That still prevents the busing in of masses of regular troops from behind the frontlines and making capturing cities too easy an option, which is what I really wanted to avoid.

Why? Razing cities is the easy way out. Capturing them and holding on to them is much more difficult, bothersome, useless, and resource-consumptive -- and realistic, from a historical and characterizational point of view. Razing cities and butchering or enslaving whole populations is called "war crime".

If you go out of your way to FURTHER penalize capturing cities (above and beyond the absurd level the game already goes to that length) you'll effectively be imposing a "no-capture" rule on us, because I would much rather raze any city (ANY) than to put our precious elite and army units at stake en masse. And that would absolutely be easier to do.

I don't see the garrison to have to avoid city flip as a "fun" aspect of the game. It's just a nuissance, and makes so little sense. (I'm talking in general, not just here). You're better off razing in virtually every circumstance (especially now that ALL captured AI cities post-industrial tend to be perm-useless with the new neverending penalties).

I like the "only elite and army go on offense" theme, but I do not care for the notion of then cutting off our hands by making sure we tie up all our offensive units on garrison. If you want "harder", take razing off the table and FORCE captures (but allow us to garrison with anything) or else just pump up the difficulty level. That would be harder. This... would only be "tedious" IMO. I would stop at nothing to give away, get rid of, starve and disband any captured cities, or let an AI retake them so I could then attack again and raze them. And I would raze everything captured on my turns, wonders be damned, because I could not stand to place the fate of the game in the hands of the chance for a city flip to wipe us out. Is that what you have in mind?? :)

And I'm including "elite and army". If conscript, regular, and vet units are to serve any purpose at all, it would be on defense, which is what a garrison is.

If we stacked six armies in a city and watched it flip, that's game over. GAME OVER. For me at least. I would not be interested in working to build up another set of armies and elite units, just to go do that over and over. You need like 30 units to hold an enemy capital with reasonable likelihood.

For me, that would be the difference between a fun conquest game with severe restrictions, and a most unfun game of Russian Roulette with the Civ3 random number generator.


- Sirian

Why not make it an easy rule to remember? Jaffa does not seem to want to make the game as a whole a lot harder with the capture rules (just makes holding captured cities harder,) so it looks more like a flavour rule. Hence, just make it no captures, period -- all enemy cities must be razed. You want a beachhead, be sure to remember to bring a settler.

Maybe I'm missing something but...

Once you take the city, it *IS* now in your cultural borders and your regulars and conscripts are allowed there. Even as stated, the way it works out is:

Defeat an enemy city - if you keep it the army must stay until the resistance is put down. He's going to use the most appropriate troops to help with the job, which are going to be conscripts. The elites head out to get in position for the next city. Once the resistance is put down, off the army goes off to join them and the conscripts remain as garrison of a non-resisting city.

I think this is what Sirian was suggesting, and fits Jaffa's rule without need to bend or change it. Makes sense too, from a reality viewpoint. If you don't want to risk having the army in there at all, of course you're better off to raise. If you plan to hold it, bring up the conscripts/regulars and get some more muscle in the city. With a large garrison, the resistance is over quickly from what I've seen, and with proper artillery pounding before you begin, even that number is reduced.

> If conscript, regular, and vet units are to serve any purpose at all, it would be on defense, which is what a garrison is

Exactly. The Marines (elite) 'take' the city, and while there is active military resistance, qulll. But then what happens. The Army comes in to "hold" the area indefinitely while the Marines are released for the next *offensive* action.

As far as Mil Academy being a per city option, sheesh, er... oops. how did I ever miss that? Three places sounds about right. Palace, Mil Academy and .... Pentagon? (The Apollo has no logical connection, although I like the idea of 'later in game'. Of course that could be done by giving Pentagon a requirement like Computers or Fission)

I do like the Heroic Epic in the game though. It gives more armies to those who are active militarily, as opposed to all civs being on an equal footing. Along those lines though, whether we're German or Zulu, let's be sure to get some mil opponents and not just crush a bunch of library-heads :P

I like unchecking "Hurry Improvement" from Great Leader. No question it's for an army then.

Charis

PS Sirian, I was initially rather surprised from your comments then realized, ack! There was a minor sense of hijacking which was mutual -- but as I think about it I would be the guilty party. We both had thoughts on the no-culture line, from rather different angles, but yours was i) better thought out from a gameplay point of view, and ii) the first to be 'expressed' as we were discussing game ideas. So I must apologize -- the intent was not in any way a hijacking, but I can see that's what, to some degree, it turned out to be. :splat:

New rules in first post :)

Swell. :) Looks great from here. Let me know if you have any problems with the mod or save edit and want help.

When do we start? :scout:

sounds like a lot of fun :D

If you have any more slots, or need another player, let me know, this sounds fun. :)

I will jion if there is a spot left open.....

Okay, Smegged and Ozy, you're in. Meldor, you're first alternate if someone drops out early on.

Turn order:

Jaffa << playing
Melle << on deck
Charis
Smegged
Sirian
Ozymandous

So the great Zulu General Mzilikazi, after his betrayal by the evil King Shaka, took his most trusted Captain and led a small band of followers to a pleasant coastal area. He turned to his scout, and ..

"Whatever happened to the scout?"

Oh .. ummm .. it seems in turning off everything except Conquest victory, I also turned off Civ-specific abilities. Let me try this again :)

So the great Zulu General Mzilikazi, after his betrayal by the evil King Shaka, took his most trusted Captain and led a small band of followers into the harsh and unforgiving desert...

I would vote to move across the river to the left (closer to those hills, that worked out well in RBD7, hills+floodplains), leave the worker right there to irrigate -- OOPS we don't have a worker! -- build a worker right away! Pop the hut with the army? Heh, big risk there, but what the hey, if the village goes postal we blame you :lol: and start over. :)

My 2 pfennigs.

- Sirian

I played a while longer than I had anticipated, because, well, I wanted to make sure we had something viable going before handing it on. Anyway...

General Mzilikazi sent his scout up a mountain. "I see the coast, and incense on a hill," reported the scout.

The faithful Captain with his empty army went north, and was taught the secrets of Ceremonial Burial by the Harappan tribe.

The General, being a good military man, recognised the benefits of a strong defensive position. "Let's get out of this damn desert, and settle on that hill between the mountains."

Three steps??? Hopefully that won't hurt, but it's something you never truly catch up from. The single step to the left caught
the river, included an equal number of mtns and hills, and the incense, and the flood plains. No benefit I can see from two extra steps.

You get the defensive advantage of being on a hilll but lose the benefit of having a hill to mine. Whether starting on hill or desert, you get the same food/shields no matter where you found.

Ironic too, that in a game with NO worker, Murphy gives us a game with about five flood plains to irrigate and encourages us to walk some before settling. :p

At least the goody hut didn't slaughter us :P

Good luck Melle,
Charis

The General orders research into Bronze Working. "We must have troops to form our glorious armies!"

A second scout was trained, and sent forth into the wilderness. Our capital grew, and almost immediately shrank again, as the citizens succumbed to diseases of the flood plains. Oh, ack :(

The Mauryan tribe taught the secrets of Masonry to one of our scouts.

In 2900BC, we made contact with the English! Attempts were made to trade technologies, but the stingy English demanded two of our technologies, and our entire treasury, for any one of theirs. Piffle. Our might armies will obtain their secrets! :)

The General finally gets around to forming work parties from some of the citizens, to irrigate the fertile floodplains. He may be a top-notch military man, but this city-management lark is all new to him.

A local tribe gives our scout some primitive scratchings. It's a map, they claim. Our scout scratches his head in confusion.

2710BC, we make contact with the Germans. We exchange our knowledge of Masonry for their assistance in finishing our research into Bronze Working.

Zimbabwe grows back up to size 2, and almost immediately another citizen dies :( :( Ummm. If this keeps happening, we're never going to be able to build a settler.

2230BC, contact with the Persians. A scout recruits a warrior from a small tribe! Yay! Our first military unit! The warrior heads back to Zimbabwe for further training.

Zimbabwe finally got up to size 3 in 1990BC. I put 2 citizens on the hills, and left just one on the floodplains, to reduce the risk of any more deaths before we could make a settler.

Settler finished somewhere around 1870BC. Barbarians are spotted approaching our capital from the East. And we still have no defence. Ooops.

I moved our settler and army unit out of the capital while it got ransacked (not sure if they would have been destroyed, but I wasn't going to take the risk), and emptied our treasury buying Alphabet and Iron Working from the Germans.

Finished my turn in 1750BC. The settler is still in Zimbabwe -- I don't want to send him out without military escort, or at least a scout running ahead to look for barbarians.

The free warrior from a goody hut is still on long goto back to Zimbabwe. He's been attacked twice by barbarians, and already promoted to veteran status.

Melle, you're up now, for 10 turns. You should get to found our second city :) I suggest the red 'X' location, taking the iron (before the English get it). The scout can be used to provide cover (move the scout ahead with the settler following, and if necessary sacrifice the scout to barbarians while the settler escapes).

Note, the settler is fortified and hasn't moved yet this turn.

Game...

This is a pretty rough start, maybe the worst I've seen. All things told, I'd say worth at least a whole difficulty level. It will be like we're playing Emperor now. Are we going to tough it out?

- Sirian

Well, I'm happy to continue with this, but I'll restart if the team wants. (Vote now! Vote often! :) )

If that settler gets intercepted and doesn't get to found a second city, then yes, I think we should give up on this map.

Let's play.

Unless it is clear by AD that we aren't going to have a chance at victory, then I say don't restart.

The jungle to our south-east will provide us with fertile land once it has been developped, and there are luxuries and iron all around the place :).

1750 BC (0) - General Charis looked over the land, and was nervous.
Disease ate at his homeland, and conditions look far fiercer than
expected. He vowed to try at least a reign to see if he could turn things
around...

Oh my that is one vast expansive dessert to the East of us. To the
further East are LUSH areas near Germany. Closer is at least some
Iron and River and dyes, so let's head there. Perhaps claim the
nearby iron first as well as halt the expansion of England there.
I'll send the settler there, since some folks wouldn't mind a restart.

Interesting strat here - in a known mil game, have almost ALL expansion
around an FP site, then later annihilate anyone near your capital :P

1725 BC (1) - Wishing our settler luck on his long journey...
1600 BC (6) - Barbarian two steps away from Zimbabwe. We can swap to
warrior from Impi one turn away (and upgrade soon to Swordsmen for Army)
Good timing anyway.

1575 BC (7) - We soundly thrash the barb. Rio Ferro is founded on red-X
on hill, on river, next to Iron.

1550 BC (8) - Mysticism from a wandering Nubian tribe.

1500 BC (10) - That's it. There's a warrior running up to garrison Rio,
and both are set to make workers. Feel free to swap either to settler
or Impi or whatever. Next city to found would be the iron hill to our
south.

I don't think this is a "punt" game myself, although yes, it's a weak start.
Interesting - one would think an army would be a far better first unit than
an army, but not so far! :P

Rather than a (by now) typical rapid expansion start, a non-corrupt
military and infrastructure start, followed by serial bullying might
work well. Let THEM do the settling? :P

Roster:
Jaffa
Melle
Charis
Smegged <<< up
Sirian <<< on deck
Ozymandous

Good luck,
Charis


------------
orig msg:

No the title isn't for the start, I think it's "weak" but not a restart by any means.

The title is because I just finished my turn here and was about to post, when I pasted in the roster and saw... it's not my turn!
:splat: It's the weed I tell ya!!

Melle, if you've not got it or haven't started yet, let me know and we can swap for this round. If not, my bad, and thank goodness this isn't a bogged down game yet, nothing really lost.

Charis

Post your turn, Charis.

I'm pretty sure Melle hasn't got it yet. The save I posted has only been downloaded twice, one of which must have been you, and I think the other was Smegged, as his comments imply knowledge you couldn't get from the pic I posted.

"The save I posted has only been downloaded twice, one of which must have been you, and I think the other was Smegged, as his comments imply knowledge you couldn't get from the pic I posted."

That'd be it :).

Roster correction:

Jaffa
Melle <<< up
Charis
Smegged <<< on deck
Sirian
Ozymandous

Melle, are you there?

Um... Charis sneakin some of his Pungent stash again?

How can we have an aggressive start when we MUST be attacked first to get elites, and can only attack cities with our army? We might do some nibbling, but I have my doubts.

Please lets get some workers going!

- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
How can we have an aggressive start when we MUST be attacked first to get elites, and can only attack cities with our army? We might do some nibbling, but I have my doubts.

But they don't need to know that ...

Build up our defences, declare war, let them come and attack and train our troops for us :)

Melle, I tried sending you an email through the forum, but I'm not sure if it worked. If we don't hear from you by this evening you're going to lose your place in the roster.

Originally posted by Sirian
How can we have an aggressive start when we MUST be attacked first to get elites, and can only attack cities with our army? We might do some nibbling, but I have my doubts.

Well....

How about this excerpt:

"Units of vet status and below must remain inside our cultural border until they gain elite experience, or get assigned to an army. "

Vet's can't leave our borders unless they are escorting a settler or formed into an army, but we DO have an army, right? :)

There you go, make three vet swordsmen and send them out to do whatever, that is whithin the rules. :) Any unit can garrison, but was it ever clarified if any non-elite or army based unit can leave our borders if they are going *to* garrison another city?

> non-elite units are allowed to cross neutral (no-culture)
> squares en route to garrison new cities

This addresses the question of getting garrison to new city, and it has a big implication: 'fast' garrison units. Since the non-elites planning to garrison must hang in 'no culture' land just before the frontline, for them to reach the newly taken city they will either need to be fast, or they must be connected by a road and only 3 squares away. His entourage will also include several road/rail workers and hopefully an artillery stack, along with a cadre of elite troops.

Those armies are someday going to have quite an entourage, eh?? Fast garrison units and injured elites will be the "first turn" garrison, along with the army, to start asap on quelling. They will be followed up in the city by "permanent" garrison, cheap, slow defensive units, likely conscripts after nationalism. On turns 2, 3 while the army still helps quell, the elites start to plow forward, getting into position, and weakening any "perimeter" defenders of the city, taking up their positions, and securing artillery bombardment squares. Then on quell, army comes up and, badda-bam, badda-boom, the process repeats.

Addressing the previous post... when does this happen, or what does early combat look like? Well our units sure can (and should) get some training on *barbarians*. Farm them for elites. :D

As for as war vs other civs, it just will happen outside their city walls before the army is full. I imagine our starting army will get filled with 3 swords (strong both attack and defense) or 3 horse (fast attack and move). They can gain experience inside the army, so filling him with elites isn't needed.

Not sure if we'll have barracks right away, but warriors trained up to vet on barbs can get upgraded to vet swords. Elite ones would be better off non-upgraded to have something that can operate in foreign-culture zones. If we find iron, upgrade 3 regular warriors and shove them in an army, there's nothing that can hold us back! :hammer:

I think this is a clear vision for an aggressive early start ;ak47: , not pungent stash. Not that I'm known for avoiding the stash all the time! [pimp]

Charis

I've had a busy time with school lately and haven't been able to get any web time at all. I meant to check in about 24 hours ago, but then my sister needed the computer for her school work. I don't know when your local evening is, but I'll take the game now, OK?

gogogogo!!

:D

Good luck,
Charis

In the year 1500 BC it came to pass that Mzellekazi ascended to the throne of the Zulus, the encouraging words of his abdicating father, Mzilikazi, ringing in his ears. “You get out there and take the throne right now”, he had said, “Or else you are going to get banished!” ;)
After taking the throne, Mzellekazi silently thanked general Charis for covering for him so well up to now.

1500 (0) Mzellekazi looked over the situation he had been handed. He saw that the English tribe had a multitude of cities compared to him, and set out to do something about it. He also saw that the trusty scouts already had explored more land than he could hope to settle in several lifetimes. The only problem was, most of that land was desert. He could either settle along the edges of the desert or go somewhere else. Further inspection showed plentiful deposits of pungent weed far to the east. Since he knew the dangers of smoking the pungent weed, and more importantly since he had already secured a private supply :smoke: , he decided to forego grabbing up the extra weed.
Then his somewhat smoke-shrouded brain noticed rivers running through the desert not far away at all, transforming them into food pains, eh, flood plains. He also considered the founding of a coastal city to the west, but was unable to figure out the proper placement. Finally he decided to leave such tasks to Ziriankazi the dot-mapper, a savior destined to appear in just a few short generations. ;) Mzellekazi decided to change the production in Zimbabwe to a settler to grab the food pains. He didn’t touch anything else, though.

1475 (1) Scouts scouted. One met a barb camp and rapidly changed direction.

1450 (2) A scout met an Iroquois warrior. Hiawatha was polite and in possession of The Weel, Writing and Polytheism. He also had contact with the Americans and the Aztecs. However, the royal treasury was too small to be located, and no trades were made.

1425 (3) Our cultural border expanded, for all the good it does us. A scout found more iron west of the Germans.

1400 (4) Nothing much

1375 (5) The English established an embassy with us on their turn. Zimbabwe grows, one entertainer needed. Two barbarians show up near Zimbabwe, one mounted, one not: Trouble. Settler changed to Impi. If we don’t get moving we are going to be terrorized into submission by the barbs. Warrior reaches Rio Ferro (Arrgh, if I had only kept him near...)

1350 (6) The Wheel is discovered! The nearest horses are slightly west of the Germans. I opt for horseback riding as next tech, due in ten. Please splatter me with weed icons as needed. Impi produced. Entertainer no longer needed. Barbs draw near. Worker quietly retreats from scene of conflict.

1325 (7) The horsie attacks! :eek: He loses a point! :D The Impi loses a point! :mad: The Impi loses another point! :eek: The horsie is killed! [party] Whew! The other barb approaches. Worker produced Rio Ferro. That town won’t produce anything more on my turn, so I leave it on worker as a placeholder.

1300 (8) The worker commences the arduous task of connecting the iron. The English starts building the Great Library in Warwick. The pyramids are under construction in London. The running-home warrior encounters a barb, and is prohibited from attacking. But he will be attacked next turn. A scout finds an Iroquois border to the south.

1275 (9) The Impi readily handles the second barb at home. The warrior wins against his barb and is promoted to elite! :goodjob: He is no longer in “running home”-mode. But what am I going to do with him? Well, that’s for the next player to decide. I’ll make him stay put (and incidentally heal) the last turns.

1250 (10) a scout scouts, but runs into another barb camp on his second step. Bummer. Say bye-bye to the scout. :arrow:

Feel free to criticize anything; this is my first attempt at an SG, and I could use the advice

here it is

Originally posted by Melle
The warrior wins against his barb and is promoted to elite! :goodjob:

Whooo! Our first elite! Obviously we should bring him home for ticker-tape parade through our capital city [party]

Well, maybe not. Probably put him on settler-escort duty, for now.

Next town location? I'd be tempted to go and grab those dyes in the jungle before somebody else does, then horses, then back-fill to our capital. Dyes may be a bit of a reach though, and horses are more critical for us, so maybe going for horses first would be better.

Charis, Melle, are you going to swap permanently, or go back to original order for next round?

All right, an elite! :hammer:

Back to original order:

Jaffa, Melle, Charis, Smegged, Sirian, Ozymandous

I'm currently following Jaffa in several games, leading to sequential burying :P

Charis

OK, back to normal order.

Uh, Jaffa, I checked my hotmail and found 1125 messages. 1110 of them were from you, telling me to play the game. I get the point, thank you. :p

1110 messages? Eeep. I was using the email form from the forum and it just hung on me when I hit the send button :P

And Smegged? Your turn to play.

forgot Charis had his turn earlier.

Will play today.

I guess you're all going to have to trust my judgement :D.

NOBODY is going to like this report.

Inherited: We are far behind on tech. Hmmmmm.

In Between: A barb horseman attacks our elite warrior. Our warrior hits, then the Horseman hits four times in a row! Finally, our warrior takes the last hp off the horseman. That was close, he's going back to heal inside a city methinks. Scout gets killed by barbs.

1225 BC: Romel establishes Embassy. Sent elite back home.

1200 BC: Crap, barb horsie is after elite. I move elite onto mountains.

In between. Our elite unit gets slain :(.

1175 BC: Settler complete, sent north to secure some land near the grasslands.

1150 BC: zzzz

1125 BC: America contacted, traded world map for contact with Aztecs. Horseback, territory map and 58 gold for our world map from germany. 42 gold + world map for writing + territory map from England. Moved Impi out of city to try and prevent worker death. Zimbabwe gets pillaged, and we loose our army :(. We start literature.

1100 BC: zzzz

1075 Bc: Persians and germans are building the great library.

1050 BC: Americans started the great library

1025 BC: Looked at the histographs. I'm gonna be surprised if someone doesn't rally the world to wipe us out soon.

1000 BC: spot goody hut near settler.

The other day Sirian wrote something to the effect of: Being good isn't about not making mistakes, but it's about being able to pull your bacon out of the frier when you do.

Well, Sirian, here's your chance.

:eek:

There's challenge, and there's beating your head bloody on a thorn encrusted knobby stump.

This has now gone from 'one of our roughest' starts to absolutely in the deep drink, time to pull the plug.

Others were thinking about a redo for a less gnarly start. I objected then, but would not object now. Of course if one likes to beat ones head on bloody stumps, far be it from me to be the party pooper :D

Charis

PS At least you're honest, Smegged, I rather appreciate that, thanks :hammer:

Zimbabwe gets pillaged, and we loose our army

Well... that's a whopper. :)

The army game with no army! :lol:

So let me get this straight? You moved the city defense out to protect a worker, and left the general of the army undefended in the Palace, and the barbarians executed him? :eek:

Well, OK, now it's personal. I was all in for pulling the plug with this start, but people voted to stick it out, so it's too late now. I at least am going to stick it out. They can come take Zimbabwe over my dead body!

smegged: you're getting the full blown "sink or swim" treatment by the game, I see. This ain't quite Civ2, is it? :) Maybe we need to get you into some Regent games (LK's series) to help you through the trial-and-error period a little faster or start on some infield (as opposed to left field) games -- aka standard games.

Somebody wake me when my turn comes.


- Sirian

I don't actually think that there was much more I could have done. I could have possibly prevented the army from being killed. Maybe. But other than that, it was a really devestating turn. The only other thing I could have done would have been to rest our elite warrior a turn, which would have meant he would have had 2 hp. But he would have lost the mountains, and I couldn't see the horsey anyway (there must have been an uprising I'd say).

I'd say it's time for a reload. If we weren't using variant rules, we may have been able to pull this one off, but I can't see it happening with the restrictions imposed, and the loss of the two units that can actually attack somebody :(.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz :sleep: zzzzzzz...

Wha? HUH??! You mean it's my turn now? :eek:

It's your turn now Sirian :).

I just have very bad civ III luck. Like very bad. After completing a couple of games (on Monarch diff.) I tried the isolationist variant. (It wasn't going to be, but I decided it would be fun, and I was isolated from the rest of the world until navigation anyway.

But here's my luck. I missed out of the great library by 3 turns, another less important wonder by 3 turns, Hoover by one turn. Then I planted a spy in Persia, and the whole world went from polite into war with me when that failed. I just gave up on that game (I had a rail net and wouldn't have been killed, but I have no idea how I would have won - spacerace maybe). But I was completely sick of that game by that time (missing all those wonders, getting placed on the smallest continent etc...).

But such is life.

THE DARK AGES

(Also known as the Millenium of the Whip and the Scythe)


1000BC: Coup de tat! A young impi warrior, son of the slain Army General, leads a band of tribesmen into Zimbabwe. The Old Chief is shown to an early grave, and the heads of his family are adorned on spears outside the Palace.

A thousand years pass, a most harsh era. Zululand goes undefended and our once proud military tradition is all but lost in our struggle to feed our people and expand our meager territory. Our leaders grovel on the floors of our enemies, and lick the boots of alien diplomats, enduring all of their insults with sickly smiles. Our people are whipped mercilessly, and any who oppose the chiefs' mad plans of farming, farming and more farming, all disappear and are not heard from again.

50AD: Our people finally emerge from their darkness into a New Age. After a millenium of bootlicking, farming, training of workers and scraping together of diseased and beaten settlers, the first military barracks is completed in Ulundi and, for the first time in over a thousand years, our Impis train once more and we dream of... having a military.

Our warriors are timid and beaten, and refuse to venture outside our borders unless and until another great army forms, or perhaps if some of them should prove their worth in battle, they might grow in confidence.

Once proud, now humble, we wander lost through the deserts of our homeland, in search of... our destiny.

The following document is discovered clutched in the cold, dead hand of the ancient Chief, last of the mad line of chiefs who led us down this dark path to ruination. For surely it was madness to waste our time FARMING when we could have been out conquering the world!

I didn't think that you'd be able to do so much in so few turns :eek:

Well done. And as for regent. Tried it, found it so damn easy that it bored me. Especially ancient era.

Gogo Sirian! Yay! Bloody stumps, here we come!

Okay, so who's still in this game? I have yes votes from me, Sirian, and (I think) Charis. Who else?

Your army needs you! Enlist now! We promise you nothing but blood, sweat and tears, and an unmarked grave in some foreign field...

"Ummm, sir, aren't you being a bit negative?"

...and free beer! :beer:

Ozy, you're up, if you're still playing.

Who could turn down free beer? :)

I won't get a chance at this till tonight but plan to play then.

Hmm, I'd agree with the general consensus however, was a rough start and now that we don't even have an army to attack foreign cities with. Argh!! :eek: We'll surely be biting at the AI's heels for awhile until we luck out and get a great leader. Maybe we should have kept the initial worker instead? ;)

Should be fun, looking forward to it after all these archipelago games i have been playing lately (navies are fun but . :D

I'm still in, unless I'm being kicked out for high weed useage :smoke: I also think that we can still pull it off. Cause once rails come onto the scene, we're set :D.

I didn't think that you'd be able to do so much in so few turns

"Few" turns? :confused: :lol:

You saw the dates, right? I played 50 turns. That's the upper limit on what I'll play to start a game, but this was in effect a restart within the same game, so I pushed it beyond all reason, and still don't like our position here. However, I had to stop there or I'd be off in total lala land playing by myself. :p

As it is, I did restart the game once, too. On turn one, when our lone settler moved ON AUTO off the settlement location, I proclaimed WEED and reloaded and disabled the auto. Day by day and week by week, I'm inheriting more and more GOTO orders, and more of them are doing things I wouldn't do. I'm about ready to give up the privilege of handing off GOTO orders of my own (very rare) for the insurance of never being handed a stack of automated units incoming on my turn. IE, a rule of NO AUTOMATION BEYOND THE END OF YOUR OWN TURN. We'll see. That said, our lone settler in my save game is on auto for one more turn, heading to the white dot. :p

- Sirian

Who could turn down free beer? :)

I won't get a chance at this till tonight but plan to play then.

Hmm, I'd agree with the general consensus however, was a rough start and now that we don't even have an army to attack foreign cities with. Argh!! :eek: We'll surely be biting at the AI's heels for awhile until we luck out and get a great leader. Maybe we should have kept the initial worker instead? ;)

Should be fun, looking forward to it after all these archipelago games i have been playing lately (navies are fun but . :D

oops, sorry about the settler. I try to catch all the auto moves before I hand my turn over, but I missed that one. I got them all in the opium game though.

Very well, bloody stumps it is! :hammer:

You read correctly Jaffa, I was removing my previous objection to a restart, but was awaiting your call -- I'm still in.

to Smegged,
> I just have very bad civ III luck. Like very bad. After completing > a couple of games (on Monarch diff.) I tried the isolationist
> variant. (It wasn't going to be, but I decided it would be fun,
> and I was isolated from the rest of the world until navigation
> anyway.
> But here's my luck. I missed out of the great library by 3 turns,
> another less important wonder by 3 turns, Hoover by one turn.

Don't take this wrong, as it's from weed-user to another but...

It's not bad luck. I can almost guarantee it.

I've been in a load of SG games now, and in several we "miss wonder xyz by 1 turn" and cry bad luck. Then I open the save file and see we're at size 6 running +4 found for twenty turns, instead of shifting workers or mining a previously irrigated square.
It was weed, not bad luck. In rbd7 we GOT Great Lib by about 3 turns. We were ALL OVER the production in that city, and Sirian's getting it up to JUST the right size was why we got it, not good luck. (Well ok, some luck, but you get the point)
In another SG I saw another player lose a wonder by 1 turn and again I look back, and he could have run a food deficit for 10 turns, making the food box almost bare, to gain 2 turns. That's not "weed," but doing the deficit maneuver is an advanced MM technique many civ 3 players would make. I'll pick on me as the example next - in rbd14 I went max shields instead of max food for a few turns. It wasn't "dumb", not by far my worst move, but it could have cost us the Pyramids. Sirian caught it in time, took advanced measures to "fix" it and we **just** got the pyramids, with precisly 1 turn to spare. He pointed out this error very clearly because (or so I hope!): i) he knew I was quite capable of understanding the critique, ii) expected better of me (a good sign :P ) and iii) knew I would take it properly and well (which I did).

Losing the army wasn't bad luck, it was either a big 'whoops' (there was an army in there????? ack!) or poor judgement.
Founding cities doomed to size 2 isn't bad luck, it's not fully grasping the *DIRE NEED* to evaluate a city site on the basis of available food in low-food-areas. Seeing a city languish at size 6 for eight centuries isn't bad luck, that's misunderstanding the true benefit of fresh water. I don't mean "not knowing" that a river or lake lets you not use an aqueduct, I mean "KNOWING" what difference that really makes in a game, and when you DO ignore the river and build off it. Now, why do I point these out? Because I've been there, and overcome these areas of misunderstanding (still working on some :P ), and because we're holding out hope you can too. But... (and this is a big but), if you don't give up on the "bad luck" conclusion and look hard at worker management and food management and choosing great city sites, neither you nor anyone else in that situation will get any better, and their 'luck' will not improve! :P

Keep at it!
Charis

PS OTOH, losing an elite fortified in the mountains *IS* bad luck :P

Well, this looks like one of my "no ancient warfare" games, except that the hole is deeper than usual. Basically, just sit tight, settle everything you can, focus on infrastructure with almost no military and cave in to all demands until someone gets too greedy and tries to invade you. Then you conquer him. Then you conquer the rest of the continent (map allowing) Then you sail ahead to the victory of your choice...
But this is deep one hole...Well I might be able to handle it, with the help of Sirian. Or to put it the other way, Sirian might manage in spite of me setting him back every feew turns ;)
Well, I'm in. I'll be running the "Legalize" campaign when the elections get going :p

And smegged: Thanks for relieving my worries of being "the stupid newbie who screws everything up" ;) No offense meant, I've smoked my share of weed in non-SG games.

Originally posted by Charis
Very well, bloody stumps it is! :hammer:

You read correctly Jaffa, I was removing my previous objection to a restart, but was awaiting your call -- I'm still in.

to Smegged,
> I just have very bad civ III luck. Like very bad. After completing > a couple of games (on Monarch diff.) I tried the isolationist
> variant. (It wasn't going to be, but I decided it would be fun,
> and I was isolated from the rest of the world until navigation
> anyway.
> But here's my luck. I missed out of the great library by 3 turns,
> another less important wonder by 3 turns, Hoover by one turn.

Don't take this wrong, as it's from weed-user to another but...

It's not bad luck. I can almost guarantee it.

I've been in a load of SG games now, and in several we "miss wonder xyz by 1 turn" and cry bad luck. Then I open the save file and see we're at size 6 running +4 found for twenty turns, instead of shifting workers or mining a previously irrigated square.
It was weed, not bad luck. In rbd7 we GOT Great Lib by about 3 turns. We were ALL OVER the production in that city, and Sirian's getting it up to JUST the right size was why we got it, not good luck. (Well ok, some luck, but you get the point)
In another SG I saw another player lose a wonder by 1 turn and again I look back, and he could have run a food deficit for 10 turns, making the food box almost bare, to gain 2 turns. That's not "weed," but doing the deficit maneuver is an advanced MM technique many civ 3 players would make. I'll pick on me as the example next - in rbd14 I went max shields instead of max food for a few turns. It wasn't "dumb", not by far my worst move, but it could have cost us the Pyramids. Sirian caught it in time, took advanced measures to "fix" it and we **just** got the pyramids, with precisly 1 turn to spare. He pointed out this error very clearly because (or so I hope!): i) he knew I was quite capable of understanding the critique, ii) expected better of me (a good sign :P ) and iii) knew I would take it properly and well (which I did).

Losing the army wasn't bad luck, it was either a big 'whoops' (there was an army in there????? ack!) or poor judgement.
Founding cities doomed to size 2 isn't bad luck, it's not fully grasping the *DIRE NEED* to evaluate a city site on the basis of available food in low-food-areas. Seeing a city languish at size 6 for eight centuries isn't bad luck, that's misunderstanding the true benefit of fresh water. I don't mean "not knowing" that a river or lake lets you not use an aqueduct, I mean "KNOWING" what difference that really makes in a game, and when you DO ignore the river and build off it. Now, why do I point these out? Because I've been there, and overcome these areas of misunderstanding (still working on some :P ), and because we're holding out hope you can too. But... (and this is a big but), if you don't give up on the "bad luck" conclusion and look hard at worker management and food management and choosing great city sites, neither you nor anyone else in that situation will get any better, and their 'luck' will not improve! :P

Keep at it!
Charis

PS OTOH, losing an elite fortified in the mountains *IS* bad luck :P

Yes, loosing the army was not bad luck, it was "whoops, there's an army in there". Building the cities in the wrong locations. One was weed, the other was necessity. I'd say it'd be better to loose one gold and a few turns than a settler.

About my solo game. The reason I lost the wonders was NOT due to me not microing enough. The reason was that the ai was constantly at war and rushbuilt the wonders. I lost one of them due to cascade, but the other two I'm positive were rushbuilt. How do I know. I investigated the capitals of all of the ai cities (the cities that got two of the three wonders). I was at least 10 turns ahead in each case. Yes, there was some weed on my part (loosing the cascade wonder), but having the ai rushbuild hoover and the gl was bad luck.

Having said all that, I know I'm not the greatest civ III player. And I am improving. It seems that I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place with my civ III play. I dominate regent, but Monarch is tough.

But half the fun is getting there. I won't be joining anything above Monarch, and I'm bored by anything below it. I guess I'll just stick to Monarch games :).

When the AI rushes a wonder, that's an :eek: of the first order! I've seen it and it ain't pretty, but if they beat you that way by a couple of turns, sometimes it would still have been avoidable if speeding the wonder instead of merely securing it.

I still remember the sting of losing Suffrage in Rumble in the Jungle. :)

I'm just glad the AI doesn't ruthlessly farm for leaders and use them to rush everything. They COULD, you know. Play "team style" to screw you over, deliberately go to wars, but not attack each other's cities, then use the leaders to rush everything. Of course, if they did too much of that nonsense, the game would be in the round file and I'd be playing something else. :)

Maybe in some of those cases for you it was really just bad luck. It happens. Still, Charis has a good point, as at least some of your problems are definitely not luck. Maybe Regent IS too far down the food chain for you now, but this game here is in practically a Deity situation with this slow start, at least through the middle age we'll be licking more boots and praying nobody sneezes in our general direction. You got handed a rough situation, that's for sure, and I have no problem with your results except for the big oopsie with the army. We have to build the Military Academy just to get our first army going now. But we'll do it, as long as the AI's don't come wipe us out first. So far they have been picking on one another. (Poor Abe got mopped up, and he respawned in our area. The south is littered with abandoned roads on the sites of former American cities, that all got autorazed).


- Sirian

I do have bad civ III luck. In a solo game I'm playing now, I happened to start next to the persian dogs. Which is bad enough. Especially when they have a tech advantage. But I had a vet swordsman at full health, loose to a normal immortal (who was at 2/3 hp). What was even worse was when a normal swordsman lost an offensive battle versus a vet warrior who had no terrain defensive bonusses :eek:

I eventually saved and called it a night because I was disgusted at the way the rng kept rolling against me. I'll get back to it tomorrow and show the Persian dogs that they have chosen unwisely ;).

Built two cities, settler on the way but missed a dot from the map, here's how it went down...

50 AD (IT) : Changed Zimbabwe from marketplace to settler to try to get the last three dots done.

70 AD (1) : MMOW.

90 AD (2) : Isandhlwana finishes warrior, starts a temple. Intombe founded (the settler mentioned in Sirians post).

110 AD (3) : Zimbabwe builds a settler, starts another.

130 AD (4) : Bapedi builds worker, starts a settler.

150 AD (5) : English start Sistine. (MMOW)

170 AD (6) : America and Persia sign alliance vs. Iroquis. Ulundi builds Impi, starts another. Impi sent to explore the lands near the two southern "dots" to check for barbarians in that area. The "extra" Incense we had close to the capital is brought online and traded to England for 1 gpt. I tried to get more but that was pretty much all they would offer except fur's and furs wouldn't do us as much good as our second luxury as the extra gpt I thought.

190 AD (7) : Iroquois worker bought for world map and 15 gold (every worker helps).

210 AD (8) : MMOW.

230 AD (9) : Zimbabwe finishes settler, starts marketplace. Rio Ferro builds barracks, starts Impi. Mpondo founded.

250 AD (10) : America establishes embassy with us.

Notes:

- Bapedi could (should?) change off the settler to something else since England established a city one square SW of the green dot on the map.
- Settler on the move in the south was heading towards the cyan dot, Mpondo was settler on the lavender dot earlier.
- We're now making 15 gpt profit and a single scientist. Can't (or couldn't when I checked earlier) afford to buy any tech's although Monarchy, The Republic, Monothesim and Feudalism were all on the table. When possible we should buy a better government just to get us out of Despotism.

Here's the empire at the end of the turn.

BTW, according to the "dot map" left by the ancestors, the last city should be settled in the south where the orange archer is sitting in the forest.

Seemed to be a few other areas we might want to settle in further to the East but might be a bit of a reach.

Nice effort at consolidating and expanding upon our weak position (weak only because of the terrain - not because of what any of the other players have done - except for maybe loosing the leader :mad: ).

Missed this becoming my turn while the forum was down. Ooops.

0) 250AD First order of business, let's get out of this despotism. Turning off entertainment tax allows us to set up a deal for Republic -- WM+58g+14gpt from the Iroquois.

Sell a RoP to the tiny Americans for 37g.

We need to build up our treasury before we can revolt. Juggling citizens and setting entertainment tax at 10% gives us +5gpt net. Merf. Guess we wait for deals to expire, instead :eek:

Switch all production to settlers and impi (except for some towns still on temples).

3) 280AD Trade Republic+38g for Monarchy from America. Hopefully they'll pick up some middle age techs and lower the price for us.

X-man demands tribute. Bah.

4) 290AD Bapedi finishes a settler. Send him on a race towards elephants before English culture swallows them.

6) 310AD Ngome founded (light blue dot).

7) 320AD Start a revolution! Six turns of anarchy. After training some tax collectors, we're on -8gpt (on 75g treasury).

9) 340AD Rio Elephantos founded. We have ivory :)

Hmmm. I can't put a Rio Elephantos citizen on the irrigated grassland square because the English still have citizen there :crazyeye:

10) 350AD The English finish building a road to Rio Elephantos for us. How nice :)

11) 360AD Playing through to end of anarchy. Swazi and Tugela founded.

"Our people want to build the Forbidden Palace." :D

12) 370AD Germans demand tribute. Bah, again :(

13) 380AD We are a Republic! [party]

Rio Elephantos and Tugela need temples as soon as we can afford them.

We need more impi, more techs (Feudalism for Military Academy so we can build our mighty armies :hammer: ), more money, more (any) armies, more, more, more! I had science research off all through my turn, but we do have a small investment in monotheism already (6 turns, iirc).

Possible future settlement -- red dot goes after German horses, blue dot is another fill-in desert city.

Edit: no hurry on settling blue dot -- apart from establishing border, it's going to be useless until rails. Maybe we could put another city the other side of Birmingham, and see if we can get that to flip.

Jaffa
Melle <<< up
Charis << on deck
Smegged
Sirian
Ozymandous

Got it

The first elections are held and Melle reaches power. The first thing he does is to outlaw the barbaric ceremony that was held when a despot came to power, known as The Sending of the Thousand and One Letters. The second thing he does is to look over the kingdom.

380 (0) He shakes his head at the feeble minds of the despotic lords, then he gives orders to fund research. Feudalism in 14. He finds a Galley in progress. He inclines his cigar in respect of the effects of the now legalized weed :smoke: . Such a boat would not be allowed to leave our scant borders, as it lacks elite status. Galley changed to settler. (Melle has brief misgivings about the last order, not remembering whether that rule applied to boats. But taking a deep breath of smoke, he forges ahead)

390 (1) Hlobane finishes temple, starts settler.

400 (2) The citizens of Ulundi feel less than satisfied with the new leader and are given some bread and circuses.

410 (3) Bapedi builds barracks, starts Impi.

420 (4) Rio Ferro builds Impi, and starts another. Riots at Zimbabwe

430 (5) Ulundi builds Impi, starts aqueduct. Riots at Rio Ferro. The Germans join the race for Sistine.

440 (6) Zimbabwe build temple, library started. Rio Elephantos cut off by expanding English borders.

450 (7) Gold coast finishes settler, starts library. Hlobane finishes settler, starts courthouse.

460 (8) The Aztecs and Persia sign a military alliance against the Iroquois. Bapedi builds an Impi, and keeps producing more.

470 (9) The English found a city north of the German horses.

480 (10) Rio Ferro builds Impi, starts swordsman.

490 (11) Rounding out the turns. Zimbabwe builds library, starts marketplace. Isandhlwana builds temple, starts library.

500 (12) England starts the Observatory. I feel left behind. We do have some gold, though, and probably could trade for a few things. Feudalism will be in after you press Enter.

I have two settlers moving to sites. How about here and here?

File:

Originally posted by Melle
(Melle has brief misgivings about the last order, not remembering whether that rule applied to boats. But taking a deep breath of smoke, he forges ahead)

It doesn't. From rules in first post:

Only armies and elite units can operate outside our cultural border. Only these (and units which can't form armies -- ships, planes, artillery -- and non-military units) ...

Those dots look good. :goodjob: One is on the river, the other grabs a dye for us, and both squeeze that German city a bit.

Of course, they will need lots of defenders if we build there.


- Sirian

Originally posted by Melle
He shakes his head at the feeble minds of the despotic lords, then he gives orders to fund research. Feudalism in 14.

Melle, did you consider buying Feudalism? Running 40% science for 14 turns cost us at least 40gpt (total cost >560g). At the end of my turn, we could have bought Feudalism from the Iroquois for 18gpt (total cost 360g, and we would have had the tech immediately).

Something to think about, for future reference :)

Charis, you're up. Please get us a temple in Rio Elephantos. More garrison would be good, too...

500 AD (0) - "Well we're not DEAD last on this forsaken planet!" barked
General Charis. You could tell he was itching for his armies to prove
their worth on the battlefield, and yet practically speaking, he needed
to fight for survival, not conquer the world. We're at peace, but ouch,
look at the stares our diplomats are getting. We're one turn from Feudalism
(slider needed to be turned down btw). 13 cities. No wonders, no hope for
a wonder. And yet we want Leo and SunTzu desperately.

He summons the diplomats. Persia is annoyed, but lacks Iron (ha!!!)
They have Mono, Feud and Engr. They point out we have no horses.
They'll sell Feud for 20 Gold. We're planning to spend 41, double that,
to learn Feudalism this very turn.

General 'C' calls forth his science advisors. "Yes, sir?"
"You're fired. Each and every one of you. Shut down your little ivory towers
and figure out how to make us a better FIGHTING MACHINE. If you can't figure
it out, buy the knowledge from someone who can."

The diplomats continue. Everyone has the same three techs, except America,
as backward as we are. No trading? No roads? Crimeny!!! What kind of back
ward planet is this with no ROADS between capitals?! And if everyone has
Feudalism, why is no one building Art of War? "Bloody peaceniks! All working
on some sissy chapel!" ("Uh Sir... wake up! SunTzu won't be known until
Mil Tradition, but soon we CAN start a great 'Academy'!)

He called his miltary advisor next. Some new guy. "How are things going?"
"Fine sir." "Fine?" "Well, yes, we're at peace." Pause. "Is that it?"
"Yes, sir". "I see, how is our troop production?" "We're making a swordsman,
General." The General sat up in his chair. "A swordsman??? Oh that will do
well guarding the laundrymat! Son, how is a swordsman going go fare vs a
musket, or a Knight?! I can't upgrade a bloody swordsman!" "But sir,
compared to the Americans our army is strong," he beamed. "Well compared to
England, our closest freakin neighbor who devoured America, we're WEAK!"
"Well, uh, sir, we're building a pair of libraries to help our cadets study
better!" The General coughed and sputtered. "Son! You got Persians ready to
mob you, chew you up, and spit you out with yesterday's Wheaties, and you're
promoting science, libraries, and obsolete units?!" He was fired too.

He brought in his nephew, Major Charis, to oversee domestic affairs for the
next decade. The only problem was... Major Charis was a major weed user.
Yet he wasn't as brusque as his uncle. He looked at the actual troop deployment
list and almost keeled over with a coronary. *NO* city had a second defender,
and five had but a warrior. Two had NO defender! He immediately cancelled
all plans for libraries and set about the training of more of our national treasure...

... the Impi!!!! "For the Impi is not wimpy!" would be his motto. The major
also sighed... we need Leo's to help our Impi's one day learn the secrets
of mechinaized infantryism. He gave Zimbawbe notice to start SunTzu, NOW,
and get either that or Leo, and we would conquer the other. (Oh gosh, now
I see why we're building another Swordsman. It's not "another", it would be
our *first* such unit, and our strongest)

Looking south, glad to see two settlers, but rather nervous at seeing a
Persian settler right there with them. The major notes what his Uncle would
say... "When your military is strong enough, let OTHER people build your
cities for you!"

We finish by topping off Feudalism from the Aztecs, bringing them up to
cautious for now, from annoyed. We plan to go for an 'optional' tech
with one scientist (Chivalry) and buy Engineering and Invention next.
For that we need Mono first, don't we. The Iro give us a decent deal.
Our current treasury and 11 gpt. Still, running zero science gets us that
tech about 20 turns early, at half price, and gives us a surplus of +59 gpt!

510 AD (1) - Micromanaging quite a bit to get the most out of our limited
shields and food...

520 AD (2) - America wants an ally vs the Iroquois, one of the few civs
downright smiling at us. Get a grip, Eisenhower!

Mpondo finishes Temple, starts Courthouse (with 33% corruption)

Down south, we've reached the top of the two red-X sites and found Umtata.
But eep!! Although we have Persia beat out by a step for this and the
second spot, Germany has a settler and defender a step AHEAD of us for
the lower one! :eek: They can either found there where they stand, or since
it's so close, they're heading for the coast. They'll win I think.

530 AD (3) - Our quick-moving impi seems to have redirected the settler a
step down. Is this good or bad?

540 AD (4) - Yes!!! Deflected! Rather than settle, he moves once more, and
we're in positon. PLOP! The carpetbag flies open and we found...
Westpoint. :hammer: There is a *second* German settler RIGHT next to
the spot, and the Persian is ONE step behind us.

The General *applauds* the timely actions of our previous leader in getting
that settler built and on the way, as well as the courageous actions of
Seargent Impmeister, deflecting the German settler from his destination.
(The General also hopes he wasn't too rough, and realizes we're doing the
best we can with the cards we were dealt :P )

Hmm, we have excess gpt and will NOT be starting a war anytime soon.
Let's make some friends (20 turn friends anyway)
Persia for Engineering, 90 gold and 18 gpt. He's still annoyed, but now
I get an extra laugh in if he attacks.
I look around and see Theology and Chivalry are the passed-along techs,
so buy Chivalry and switch us to Invention. Who from? Germany sounds good,
in case their mad at our new impinging towns. Plus if Persia or England
attacks, we team up with Germany. Rommel takes 60 gold and just 7 gpt.
That only leaves England as a potential bad boy. Maybe buy Theo? Ah,
even better, Montgomery has furs (and a road to us). 27 gold and 9 gpt for
peace. (If Zimbawbe gets a Marketplace we can even cut back out lux slider).

Uncle and Nephew both sleep a little easier, for the next 20 years.

550 AD (5) - An Impi stands NW of Hlobane in the middle of the desert.
We're running short of land to grab and although the terrain is awful,
it's a good spot.

560 AD (6) - The settler for said spot is ready, and we prepare one more
for a fishing village behind Zimbabwe at the one spot where we can
still reach the whale. That will fill in the "hole" nicely.

570 AD (7) - Iro's and America come to terms of peace.
Ha!! This is cute. Last turn England told me to "move my troops" away from
Hastings. It was a worker on a road on a grassland mine, started when that
square was in my territory. This turn... our culture expands and we get
back THAT square. Not the one next to it on either side, just that one.

American settlers do an about face with the war over. They're not even THINKING
of taking one of our last two planned spots, are they? I call on a buddy
of Sgt Impmeister to see if interference can be run... He reports he can do
even better - get workers to hold the 3 'free' spots and start improving the
city before it's even founded :P

580 AD (8) - Persia gets uppity. They demand 27 gold.

General Charis flies into a rage. He orders the sacrifice of 100 workers to
rush build the Military Academy, and ALL able bodied men to be drafted to
fight this plague on society!! He orders that the lips of the envoy who
brought this vile message to his ears be cut off, sauteed in pork fat,
and sent back to Xerces. :hammer:

Major Charis, however, had not got these instructions, and paid the man off.
Three quarters of one round of gpt? No biggie. Then he adds Xerces to the
top of his new list: Civs to conquer. (Why? I've never known Xerces to
be bluffing when he DOES have a strong military advantage, and, well, he does.
We need this build up phase, and badly.) If it were not time to hand off but
the start, and if we had more than precisely one offensive unit and better than
one warrior defense in our cities, I would tell him to blow off. We're strong
enough financially right now to pull Germany in against him (or anyone) if
we *DO* go to war -- keep that in mind.

590 AD (9) - Hmm, those Americans ARE going after our fishing village spot,
but I'm not letting them on the road. (Impi shuffle blockade). Hmmm again...
they have an RoP. Still/why? Ah, expired, but no cost and they're keeping
quiet. I cancel that puppy.

600 AD (10) - Fort Mojave is founded in the desert :P

We have 235 gold and +48 gpt surplus. I consider rushing Rio Elephant's temple,
but it's due in 3 now, so can wait. Let's see, what else? There's a cat en
route to Rio Ferro, wake it if you have a better spot. There's a impi free
to head somewhere, currently blocking the road next to Bapedi. Keep him there
and use to blockade American if they continue to press west. The settler is
due from Gold Coast in 3, and should hit the whale spot just north.
No unguarded cities, and about 5 mil units in the queue.

Tech and wonder? Mil Academy is due in 13. If they've all gone "Education"
path in the tree, that's what we'll end up getting, and we won't see
Invention in time. But if they don't, start right up again prebuilding
Leo with something. Theology is available to buy is you need Sistine as
placeholder. Either Acad or Leo is great, both would be a coup.

Diplo? "The Persian Army fears our swordsmen" :lol: Our one non-vet that is.
He has extra horses but sheesh, no road. If you can get a gpt deal from him,
do so, and let him impale himself on his next threat. Germany has dyes we
need and we have incense for them - still no road 8-\
I pay to upgrade his territory map for 3 gold. Aha, he's NOT as negligent
as he seemed (like, no roads). The ball is in our court!! There is a square
one east of the worker above Umtata that is no mand land, and which would
connect us to the rest of the world! Gogogogo :hammer:
(He's done irrigating in 2 turns) In fact, I swap Umtata to workers, so
you'll have another one right there in 2 turns :D

Roster:
Jaffa
Melle
Charis
Smegged <<< up
Sirian <<< on deck
Ozymandous

We're still strapped, but I'm breathing a little easier. Still a loooong road
ahead, so good luck Smegged and future leaders!
-- Charis

Inherited turn

Looks like xerces is at war with the Iroquois. This is a GOOD THING for us. A very good thing. It means that the persians are less likely to come a-calling. The only problem is that they might take iron! But this is unlikely without their imortals.

I rearranged Zimbabwe for growth in one turn, to get the Mil acadamy faster.

610 AD

Animators hired
moved our impi and warrior so that they could block the stealing of our incense up north.

620 AD

some border expansion
I upgraded one of our warriors to a sword - we now have an offensive force of TWO :).
MMOW

Persians start JS Bach's Cathedral

630 ad

A granary started in Surfers Paradise.... errr... Gold Coast.

The Aztecs come demanding our territory map and 35 gold. I tell him.... to take his empty threats elsewhere, and he does.

Then they start the cathedral.

640 AD

not much happened

650 AD

We started on our first pikeman.

660 AD

The americans don't want our incence, and instead are heading to the jungle to the south via Whoop whoop (i.e. they are wandering about aimlessly in our lands). So I tell Eisenhouer to buzz off, and he oblidges.

670 AD

nothing much

680 AD

England have moved some troops into our land, and have a horsey waiting to come into our land next turn hmmmmmm.

So that England doesn't go nasty on us, I buy theology off them from 23 gpt and our world map.

690 AD

The English start the cathedral.
We found Weedton :)

700 AD

The iroquois start the cathedral.
We could beat them all to it if we buy the tech and swap zimbabwe to it - but I'll leave Sirian to decide that one :)

We have an ELITE unit - unfortunately it is only a galley :|.

Sirian, you have the option of going for the Cathedral at the expense of the military academy. However, might I remind you that we are going to need the academy at some stage.

With everyone working the religious lines, we won't be getting to mil tradition any time soon.

You may also consider upgrading all of our warriors and impis so that we can actually defend ourselves. We have a city cranking cats, which is a good idea :).

America are dead, and the Iroquois are less powerful than even us. England are huge, and should be conquered at the first available opportunity. In fact, America might as well be called Canada with the way their lands are :).

Some weed, and some sleep deprivation.
Jaffa: I did consider buying tech, but all I say was a price tag. I never thought to calculate how much it would cost me to research it myself :rolleyes:
The cancellation of the boat at least allowed me to get the well-timed settler produced. Weedy luck, there.
Charis: The swordsman had the intended effect: They fear our swordsman. I never intended him to attack anyone.
The libraries were a sleepy compromise: I want libraries, our research :rolleyes: isn't good. Yes, Melle, but everyone else wants military. And you know that you always have too little military. OK then, I'll build some of both. And Sirian wants courthouses, I remember that much. Melle, maybe you should go to sleep and let Sirian worry about that himself. Nono, I'll just build a courthouse here, I can't decide between mil and lib anyway. Melle, go to sleep.

smegged: Looks like some good results here. We're not really anywhere approaching ready to go on the attack, so I will likely try for a greater wonder if that's workable, since those are "get now or forget about it" while small wonders are local, and be cleaned up any time.

Climbing out of the hole is rough going, and we have to be patient. I'll keep us plugging along on that course.

Got it.


- Sirian

No conflicts on my turn, no threats.

* Swapped our wonder to Sistine.

* Swapped most cities to courthouse or granary.

* Swapped West Point to Barracks, then rushbuilt two vet Impi and a wall. Recommend continued rushing of more vet impi in this location. Seven would NOT be too many, IMO, and only 76 gold per unit every other round. This is our dyes city, and our most vulnerable point, I'd like to see massive buildup happening, to deter and to defend. Also... we really want that dye online sooner rather than later, so I have our workers moving in that direction.

* Made a concerted effort to get more mines going! It was probably wise not to do too much in the mountains and hills until there were irrigations, but now we're hurting on shields in some cities, so I built new workers and sent them to the mountains, and also some of our current workers.

* Rio Ferris is getting attention to its hills, but needs to run High Food a while.

* Luxuries got raised to 20% on my watch, once there were too many entertainers and taxmen sitting around. PLEASE DO NOT VETO THIS if it means adding more than three entertainers nationwide, we're really hurtin for luxuries.

* Built a lot of defensive units: pikes, impi. More are needed, but not on any kind of emergency basis. We have actually improved on military from "Kick Me" up past "Pathetic" and "Sorry" to now being merely "Weak". This is great progress! :goodjob: Steady building of more units is in order, and don't rush to get us gunpowder as we could stand to build more pikes before it comes to that.

* We still have no horses, or horse units. We're wholly on a defensive footing for now. More cata's might be in order, but not at all costs.

* Renewed the furs deal with England.

* Bought Education from X-man, then traded him iron and a few gpt for three more techs. He's now Polite! (After he got Invention, he could build longbows anyway, so what harm selling him iron. He Needs Us now, and should be happy to keep going after somebody else for the medium term.

* Did I mention that I rushed Impis at West Point? And that it would be Good Idea (TM) to build up a lot of forces there, to keep the AI's from getting itchy about grabbing our dyes? :)

* Watched the AI's trample all over our lands... on their way to punish Hiawatha. Everyone is polite with us as of the end of my turn, and if we keep our heads low and keep buying techs off them instead of doing our own research, we can probably remain on good terms with them all. Probably.

* Rushed a settler out of Bapedi for the red dot on coast, and settled there. Also had rushed the market there earlier, currently working on granary. Please don't veto. After the granary is in, we can crank workers out of there like no tomorrow!

* Persia finished Sistine! :eek: I swapped us to Bach. I PREFER BACH TO LEO in this instance, as Leo is just gold savings, while Bach is happiness, which translates to gold savings also. (We can save 20+ gpt by turning lux back down to 10% once Bach is done. Plus more income from more productive population, and doing better and better as we go). Of course, if they grab Bach's before we finish, then we want Leo's.

* WE ARE LOSING the cultural struggle with England. I rushed a library in Elephantos and it doesn't seem to have helped! We need to get a MASS of cheap units in there, to have lots of military bodies present in the city, to prevent it from flipping and also to try to hold it if we are attacked. Keeping that one ivory online would be worth at least 15gpt and growing. I'm certain we're going to lose that city to England via revolt if we don't put some priority on filling it with more troops. Some of our other aggressive settlements are in dire trouble, too, but I considered it a more urgent and prudent expenditure to spend in the south.

* Our extra iron is worth a LOT to Xerxes, keep selling it to him, he paid the equivalent (I think) of ~50gpt in techs for it, maybe more.

* Zimbabwe still doesn't have a marketplace, so I queued one up after the wonder. The Academy can wait, we're still climbing out of the hole.


- Sirian

Sorry for the delay. I thought I would be abl to get to this game but not this round. Please skip me this turn and I'll get back into the rotation the next time around. :)

0) 800AD Round up some 'spare' Impi to reinforce the garrison at Rio Elephantos.

Eisenhower gives us the American treasury (11g) and World Map in exchange for an RoP.

Tugela revolts to the English! Ack! :eek: :eek:

3) 830AD Persian horsemen are on 'manoeuvres' outside West Point. Hmmm. I guess they're just on the way to his war with the Iroquois.

We finish Bach's Cathedral :)

5) 850AD We stop giving away our incense to England for 1gpt (!) Trade incense+WM+15gpt for horses, and start building some knights. Germans finish Leonardo's.

6) 860AD An Impi out of West Point is dispatched to stand on the dyes, to keep them from being trampled by all the English and Persian horses. At least until we can get them hooked up.

7) 870AD Ibabanago founded. England finishes Copernicus.

8) 880AD Peace between Persia and the Iroquois.

10) 900AD We buy contact with the French, Indians, Romans, Russians and Egyptians from England for WM+180g.

Traded Astronomy to India for Gunpowder+territory map.

Most Civs now have Banking and Navigation ahead of us. Of the new Civs, Rome is significantly backwards (not got Education yet).

Established embassies with India, France and Egypt.

We have saltpeter at Fort Mojave, a spare at Rio Ferro (not hooked up yet), and one just outside our borders at Mpondo.

Germany has several saltpeter on their territory, but haven't bothered to hook them up yet. I sell Rommel our saltpeter for Banking.

Aztecs and Iroquois also have saltpeter they haven't hooked up. England and Persia don't seem to have any. Too bad for them :D

Mpondo is building a settler -- aiming to grab the nearby saltpeter.

Our iron deal with Persia expires in 4 turns.

Jaffa
Melle <<< up
Charis << on deck
Smegged
Sirian
Ozymandous

Got it

Another day, another leader. Lord M. Kazi is elected by a landslide after all other candidates died under mysterious circumstances. :slay:
In a fit of graciousness, Lord Kazi decides not to change anything and just hits the button known as enter to see what happens.

(1) Upon pressing the button, Lord Kazi finds that Rio Ferro has produced a marketplace. Now what to build? He considers the words of past leaders. "MILITARY" shouts General Charis. "No, a library is just what we need. and some more weed, of course." another voice argues. Someone seems to whisper "Courthouses, oops, no, we got that already." Then Kazi is struck by a great vision: A place where money can be invested instead of just lying idle in the treasury! For that, some economic infrastructure is required, so a bank is chosen.
Then something else catches the somewhat erratic attention of the lord: Hlobane. Our cities may need blue shields, but that doesn't mean they also need red wheat. A worker will be sent to deal with that. And as Kazi gets ready to press the button again, he remembers legends of a mythical unit known as the "Army", and finds some old reports that it just might be possible to create such units using modern technology. Zimbabwe is set to produce the military academy, to be done in just 180 years!
Kazi also ponders at length what grand plans the previous leaders (may they rest in peace ;) ) were hatching, as our nation currently only extracts rock salts from one of two possible locations, and all the salts from that mine are being given away. Another puzzler is the fact that an *empty* galley is headed towards an unclaimed goody hut. The salts are left as is, but the galley is sent back to pick up a passenger. Hopefully the delay will not mean losing the hut. Kazi then sees several units run about without his ordering them, but again trusts the wisdom of his pre-deceasers, er, decessors.
Another item of note is that even though Tugela is lost, other cities feel the pressure of the English borders. will the treasury stand the rushing of a few temples?

(2) The city of Swazi trains skilled workers, and the thoughtful leader once again worries over what to do. he choses to heed the voice telling him to build military, and chooses to train a pikeman. A message arrives, telling us that the English are building something known as "Magellans Voyage". Kazi briefly tries to understand how you can build a voyage, but gives up :confused:

(3) Many light green troops near west point makes Kazi very nervous, but according to past leaders, this is to be expected. Mpondo has trained some of its citizens in the art of desert settling. The next project is a pikeman. Our erstwhile opponents have found out how to make printing presses, but the illiterate M. Kazi sees no need for such technology.

(4) Bapedi builds a granary and is ordered to make a bank. The vision of the Street of Walls is near. It is also noticed that the Xman is annoyed. We are no longer trading him iron. This is remedied quickly, as the great lord Kazi is allergic to invasions. The deal nets us Chemistry, Navigation, Printing Press and 12 gpt, not to mention the politeness of Persia.

(5) Persia declares war against England. Maybe he could capture some of the culturally oppressive cities? Ulundi is done with a knight and starts a bank. Hlobane finishes courthouse and starts bank. Gold coast trains a knight and starts a marketplace. Izipezi, a city of desert and jungle, is founded.

(6) Intombe builds an aqueduct and starts constructing a harbour. Umfolozi builds a harbour and starts building a temple. The romans are also building a voyage, somehow :crazyeye: Battle report: so far, one wounded and one dead Englishman has been observed.

(7) Lizzie, er, Montgomery is unhappy with our gpt for furs deal. She is willing to renew it for a World map and 290 gold up front. Mpondo builds a pikeman. Some more are needed. The aqueduct in Ngome is done, and a harbour is next.

(8) Another two englishmen have fallen in the war (that we've seen), and now the Aztecs join in an alliance against the English. The English have one city in Persian territory. Is Exeter a colony or a conquest? Swazi trains a pikeman and switches to knight. Fort Mojave finishes a temple. They will have trained a knight in only 240 years.

(9) MMOV

(10) A musketman is finished in Isandhlwana. The slightly schizophrenic Consul Kazi sets a courthouse as next project. Umtata is done with its temple. A courthouse is started here also.

We have plenty of gold and quite a while to wall street. Feel free to spend.

Isipezi controls another source of saltpeter. To be or not to be connected, that's the question and so on.

Charis is up, smegged on deck.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RBD18-1000AD.zip

1000 AD (0) - It was the turn of the millenium and the world was at peace.
General Charis felt, in that, he had failed. Well, at least England was
duking it out, with Persia and the Aztecs. But there was no glory for
Zululand, not today. But things were looking up - the General would see
the completion of a new military academy on his watch. Compared to everyone
our military is weak... he shakes his head...

The histogram showed Persia was doing well, perhaps TOO well, in the war.
If the tide went too far against England, we would join in for our share
of the spoils.

I switch Rio to courthouse, and try to figure out where to get a fifth bank.
Mpondo rushes marketplace. Rax-less Mojave is switched from Knight to worker.

1010 AD (1) - Egypt joins the alliance vs England. Yup, it's feeding frenzy
time!

1020 AD (2) - Ah, Germany enters the war, on the side of England. They join
forces vs Egypt. A worldwide bloodbath would suit us, while we build up :P
With temporary swap-rush-swap via colloseum, five banks are now four turns
away. Gold Coast may even be pre-building the street.

1030 AD (3) - Now America comes in, with England vs Aztecs and vs Egypt. Who
has Sun Tzu by the way? We can capture that instead of building lots of rax
Oh yes, it's not available til Mil tradition. Then WE shall build it!
Next turn we buy Metallurgy and Spices from Egypt for Incense, 80 gold, 22 gpt.
Alas, without more marketplaces online, can't kick down lux slider yet.

1040 AD (4) - Persia and Egypt start Smiths.

1050 AD (5) - Aztecs want us to ally vs Americans. Oh Monty, we're a peaceloving
people, we would never do that (unless you can pay us MUCH more, cheapskate!)
England and Persia come to peace (oh shoot). Persia starts Magellan...

1060 AD (6) - Banks ready, but Wall Street won't be right away. Zimbabwe can
knock it out faster than Gold Coast even though GC has a head start.

1070 AD (7) - We finally SEE some of the action, as Aztec Knights attack Britain.
At the last second before mktplace finished in Gold Coast, we swap it to Wall
Street. Zimbawbe cannot restraint itself even one more turn to delay making
an Army. Besides, it's only about 350 gold of interest lost - Gold Coast is
due in 19 (vs 14 at capital). Let's swap a hill square. Now due in 15,
and Army due in 9! The people are so excited they build the palace wing...

1080 AD (8) - Looks like we'll get that Southern goody hut after all! (50 gold)
Yet after turning the ship BACK to get an Impi, I wish you threw a settler
on it as well!! :p There are Indian AND Roman settlers who just got there too.

1090 AD (9) - Russians start Smiths too. English longbow and Aztecs horses collide.
French complete Magellan and start Smith. Actually, this doesn't bode well
at ALL for Sun Tzu... we're going to lose it to cascade unless it's finished
before Mil Tradition is discovered by someone. Another goody hut, another 50g.

1100 AD (10) - Quiet turn.

After Wall Street is done, can get Marketplace or entertainer in Gold Coast
and kick back lux slider. Shortly after Army is finished we'll have cavalry
ready to fill it. Am making Knights now for upgrade. If we can stay neutral
while we continue Army/mktplace/Cav build up, a time will soon come to become
the top power.Hope that Smiths is finished real soon to kill cascade, or...
if someone starts it, get the tech around so all those building Smiths can
start SunTzu fresh in another city (I don't think they cascade to a new city
for a wonder, but not sure). (Also, rush-out the army and get Zimbabwe on
SunTzu right away if someone starts it, unless you prefer to capture it)

Jaffa
Melle
Charis
Smegged <<< up
Sirian <<< on deck
Ozymandous

Good luck,
Charis (btw, done for about 28 hrs, but forums down)

Originally posted by Charis
Hope that Smiths is finished real soon to kill cascade, or...
if someone starts it, get the tech around so all those building Smiths can
start SunTzu fresh in another city (I don't think they cascade to a new city
for a wonder, but not sure).

I think they do. I've many times seen the AI cascade to a wonder they were already building.

Don't be too eager about getting into a war with England. Remember, we're getting our horses from them.

Smegged, please change the marketplace at Rio Elephantos into a cathedral. We need more culture there. (And somebody turned the cathedral I was building there into a courthouse :P ).

Edit: we could also use some of our cash-abundance to finish off establishing embassies :)

Edit also: the warrior and impi parked in no-man's-land outside Weedton shouldn't be there. Only elite troops get to hang around outside our borders, remember.

looking interesting :D.

Improperly trained and untested troops outside our borders?? :eek: :spank:

Don't you people READ the Zulu histories?? We tried that once and got our palace burnt down, our leaders butchered, and entered a 1000-year Dark Age! Only proven, battle-tested troops should go on the attack unless they are massed into huge armies or else we will simply be doomed! DOOMED!

- Sirian

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

:eek: :eek: :smoke: :smoke: :suicide:

This applies to myself:

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we
say in Texas, you couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions
printed on the heel. You are a canker, an open wound. I would rather
kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You took your last vacation in
the Islets of Langerhans.

You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little
worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk,
a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a
stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared
richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth
into a hostile world. You are an insensate, blinking calf,
meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling
beasts who sired you and then died of shame in recognition of what
they had done. They were a bit late.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same
species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf
at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut.
Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You
are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention
that you smell?

Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting
to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a
nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be
able to access it ever so much more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up,
drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set
you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the
frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the
queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid,
nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an
ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with
you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost
in a land that reality forgot. You are not ANSI compliant. You
have a couple of address lines shorted together. You should be
promoted to Engineering Manager.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important
statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us?
What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your
tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous
desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of
the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and
obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living
emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a
loathsome disease, a puerile slack-jawed drooling meatslapper. You
make Quakers shout and strike Pentecostals silent. You are the kind
of person who would remove this reference to Version 5.40 and to
http://www.guymacon.com/insult.txt so people will think that
you wrote this. Your mother had to tie a pork chop around your neck
just to get your dog to play with you. You think P.D.Q. Bach is
the greatest composer who ever lived. You prefer L. Ron Hubbard to
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Hee-Haw is too deep for you. You
would watch test patterns all day if the other inmates would let you.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are
deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality
of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted.
You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and
sorrow wherever you go.

You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off,
pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john.
You clouted boggish foot-licking half-twit. You dankish clack-dish
plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You bloody churlish
boil-brained clotpole ponce. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup
pratting naff. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You gob-kissing
gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted
clapper-clawed flirt-gill.

You are so clueless that if we stripped you naked, soaked you in
clue musk, and dropped you into a field full of horny clues, You
still would not have a clue.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are
degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing
you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go
away.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard
stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it
goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension
of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid
collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed.
Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity
stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more
stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year.
Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our
universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial
fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence
of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the
laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an
epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me
again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride
your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant
trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have
snipped away most of your of what you wrote, because, well...
it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a
creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together
a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective...
Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell,
and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary
skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that
everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget
that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these
things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then
I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been
"right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the
best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be
placing such a demand on you.

P.S.:
You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful,
cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable,
belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal,
fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic,
brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented,
lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic,
fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant,
clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb evasive,
double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative,
paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical,
cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant,
deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring,
plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious,
secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant,
self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, and
Generally Not Good.

( http://www.guymacon.com/insult.txt )

.... so look for a report tomorrow morning sometime (probably around midnight or something US time :P)

Jeepers, Melle :eek:

Whoever wrote that has Too Much Time On His Hands. :)

Inherited turn - Pretty good job done by the previous zululords :)

England and Aztecs make peace
Persia declares war on Germany


1110 - MMOW. Embassy established with Rome. Embassy established with Russia.

Between turns, the iroquois come and offer us economics for a mere 90 gold. To improve relations I take it!

1120 AD - MMOW. I'm continuously checking the foreign powers to see if mil tradition has been discovered. I buy two German workers for world map + 60 gold.

Rome and Egypt ally against Germany.
Rome declares war on Germany.
Iroquois and Germany sign alliance versus rome.
Iros declare war on rome


1130 AD - France start Sun Tzus. Mil tradition from Joanie for world map + 230 gold. It looks as if we will Loose Sun Tzus unless we swap zimbabwe to it, so I did. The next leader can change to an army if he wishes. I'd prefer a military wonder with the power of Sun Tzus than an army a tiny bit sooner. I upgraded six knights to cav. By sacrificing 3 turns on wall street, I gained three turns on Sun Tzu's. It is now due in 23 turns.

Persia and Egypt sign alliance versus America.
Persia declare war on America.
Persians building Sun Tsus.
We loose our supply of horses!
England will NOT renew at all.
The reason being that they lost one of their horses.
England start Sun Tzus.
Romans start Sun Tzus.
Egyptians start Sun Tzus.

1140 AD - Persia want Saltpeter, we want horses. Sounds fair to me :D. Hmmm, I can see the military protection pact option in the foreign minister screen. So some civs are already in the industrial age. Joanie wants incence for Democracy and Physics. So she gets it. Magnetism + TOG from Russia for Saltpeter + 350 gold. We hit the industrial age :). Russia has nationalism available, but at such an exhorborent rate that it isn't worth buying.

1150 AD - Russia starts Sun Tzu. Russia starts Newtons. I notice that Rio Ferro is STARVING. And so I irrigate one of the mines that are on the plains. I rushbuild a courthouse in West point.

1160 AD - England have been stockpiling troops near our borders. Furs + 2 English workers for 23 gpt. Physics, Metallurgy, Democracy to America for world map. We can now see the rest of the world. Looking at the Histographs, we are the fifth civ power-wise in the world.

Russia and Persia ally versus Germany.
Russia declares war on the Germans.
Germany starts Sun Tzus.
Egypt starts Shakespears Theatre.

1170 AD - MMOW

Germany and Egypt sign peace treaty.

1180 AD - Rio Ferro is no longer starving. MMOW. I don't have enough time for more turns, so I'll pass it off to the next leader.

Jaffa
Melle
Charis
Smegged
Sirian <<< UP
Ozymandous << on deck

* Upgraded our troops. (33 Rifles, 11 Cav, 4 Cannon).

* Major infra push. (Granary, Market, Cathedral, some Libraries in pressured towns).

* Sold X-man another 20 rounds of Iron for Nationalism and 300ish gold (1500 total value). We MAY NOT want to renew after this, since if nobody else can or will sell him iron, it would be a Big Deal if he never gets rails built.

* Bought Lux from someone (Russia?) for 25gpt.

* Rio Elephantos is now SECURE. And as long as it stays in WLTGD it won't flip, not with THAT garrison! :lol:

* 10000 nations declared that it's "Otto Season" :lol: Too bad we can't join in because, ah, somebody misplaced our army unit. ;)

* Wall Street built.

* SunTzu due in 5. We are not even trying for anything else. (If by the odd chance someone steals it, grab Smiths instead).

* After 18,000,000,000,000 days at sea without making port, our ship was finally ordered home. It's on Jaffa Brand (TM) Long Goto orders. :)

* The lux traded for tech on smegged's turn will come free in a few more turns, at which point they can be traded again for more techs. The AI's have communism on hand but I held off as we had no immediate need.

* Our economy is FLYING. With all our troops now upgraded, and no real need to spend money buying lots of tech (because now we can trade for it), we're either going to rushbuy some stuff, or build up a savings, or both. We are "rich rich rich" sire!

* We could use more cavs and cannon.

* I would have swapped us to research, but um, we have about two libraries nationwide -- the ones built just now on my turn! :lol: So no sense bothering with that.

* As many workers as we now have, we will want more more more once railbuilding is an option. Considering skimming some more off the moment we get steam AND coal.

* If we are ever going to swap to democracy, now is the time. We are eons away from having the requirements (based on our variant) to go offensive, and democracies can stand up to defensive wars quite well, if players are wise about not overdoing bombardments and attacks. Why would we want to swap to democracy? Mainly for the 50% worker speed bonus, which translates to all kinds of other bonuses as rails come online sooner and sooner. Just a thought. I would have revolted on MY turn, but I needed the income to fully modernize our military. That is now done.


Good luck.


Zulu Armies - 1275AD Save File (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-zulu-armies-1275ad.zip)


- Sirian

Ah, skip me this turn again. I *do* like and want to keep playing this game but tonight I will be packing for a vacation trip that lasts all of next week and won't have time to play.

Keep me in the roster please (but skip again if my turn comes up before next week) and I'll get this one next time or the time after. Thanks! :)

I can't play till friday. Too much school.

> can't play til Friday

Uh... it IS Friday? Do you mean next week? :P

In either case, I think Jaffa is up. Assuming he finishes before next Friday, I would become on deck, unless I misread that.

Good luck with school,
Charis

0) 1275AD Hmmmm. Steam power is available, but still a bit expensive for my tastes. Let's wait a bit and see if the price comes down.

Squeeze a few gold from various rulers for RoP agreements.

We're paying 22gpt to Egypt for a luxury swap. I don't think so. Here you are, Cleo, you can have 3gpt instead. And that's only because I'm feeling generous.

Rio Elephantos still hasn't got a cathedral?

1) 1280AD The Aztecs raze Leipzig. Oooh.

2) 1285AD Switch some cities to settlers to go after bits of ex-Germany.

Rio Elephantos finally gets its cathedral. Yay :)

India and Egypt go to war with America. Tough luck, Eisenhower.

Rio Elephantos revolts to the English. Ohhh, umm, ack :( :eek: :( Guess they didn't like the new cathedral.

3) 1290AD Persians finish Smith's. AI Civs cascade all over the place! Fortunately we just have 1 turn to Sun Tzu's, so we should still get it.

4) 1295AD Incense trade to France has expired. Joan gives us steam power for incense+WM+200g.

We have coal in mountains near Bapedi and a spare (unconnected) in jungle at Umtata.

Russia pays 110g+24gpt to renew saltpeter deal.

Persia wants an MPP. No thank you, X-man.

We build Sun Tzu's [party]

5) 1300AD First railroad tracks laid :)

Persians finish Newton's. French finish Shakespeare's.

6) 1305AD I remember to go round and sell off our unneeded barracks. For a whole 2g each. Whoooo!

7) 1310AD Russia and Egypt sign an alliance against England.

England raises the prices on furs (from 23 to 25gpt).

8) 1315AD Amatikulu founded near Nuremberg. Rush-build a temple (via worker, so total cost is just 280g).

Rome and Russia sign an alliance against England.

Gandhi wants an MPP. Hah.

9) 1320AD Rush-build a library at Amatikulu (again by way of worker).

Russia and Rome sign an alliance against the Iroquois, as Cathy continues her pointless wars with everybody on our continent.

Amatikulu pushes Nuremberg's borders back, and we get horses! [dance]

10) 1325AD Zunguin founded in the jungle. Entirely coincidentally it happens to be adjacent to Persian coal :D

We inform X-man we no longer wish to trade our saltpeter for his horses, since we now have horses of our own (and, it turns out, Persia now has their own saltepeter).

There is a settler with unused movement in West Point -- I was thinking he should head somewhere into the unclaimed jungle, but will leave that up to the next general.

England has masses of troops in our territory around Amatikulu, but they all seem to be heading to one of the numerous wars.

Persian iron deal expires in 2 turns. Persia now has iron in their territory, so there's no harm in renewing if X-man is stupid enough to give us anything for it (he has medicine...)

Mzilikazi of the Zulu, 1325AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/Mzilikazi_of_the_Zulu,_1325_AD.zip)

Charis up, Smegged on deck.

Elephantos revolted with NINE troops in it? AND it was still on WLTGD???

Dayum. I guess I need to UP my estimate of the dangers of city flip. (Anybody out there who thought my estimation was already high - take note :p ).

- Sirian

Jaffa
Melle
Charis <<< UP and in danger of being skipped
Smegged << on deck
Sirian
Ozymandous

Plan was Vikings and Army last night, starting PLENTY early to do both...

Come 2am and the Vikings still have a few turns left, smack in the midst of a flurry of activity. On a good note, there will be a NICE surprise for folks there :P

Alas, Army got delayed. I'll get it tonight. Thanks for the bump.

BTW, if I'm late and don't say got it, the next person 'on deck' should feel 100% ok in taking the game if I've exceeded the time in the rules - I have no problem with that :P

Charisoslow

Well with no war going on that took less time than I thought...

1325 AD (0) - The General took so long in the bathroom at the inaugural
ceremony the people felt sure he fell in or came to some bodily harm,
but apparently he was reading a gripping tale about Vikings...

He finds it amusing (but sad) that our great glorious military nation is
the ONLY nation NOT at war!! Since last time, Germany has all but disappeared,
Persia has grown quite a bit, and France is not doing so bad. Egypt and
England hanging on. Ah, we're about to hit industrialization, no time to
start a war, but building time!

We get Communism (for Police stations, not govt) and Medicine from weaker civs
for cash and some gpt.

1330 AD (1) - You're right, England IS moving a ton of troops around :p
Amazon Preserve is settled down in the jungle.

1335 AD (2) - The puny Americans, about to be wiped out, offer us an RoP if
we will ally with them vs Persia! lol!!

Instead the Aztecs join Persia vs America. Bye bye Abe!

Start to build some police stations, continue Impi production in spots like
West Point. Gosh, not even a whiff of a discussion about an FP site in this
thread? It's past nationalism and we're in a hole. Together that means the
chances of wiping out a civ and planting an FP far from the homeland are
nil in the next millenium. If we want the best city, surrounded by a
bunch of other cities, at least some distance from capital...

that looks to me like Umtata. Otherwise Rio Ferro (real close to Zimbabwe)
or Intombe (coastal, not too central) I may queue up an FP this turn, but
if folks want to wait, just veto it.

Lol! That coal that was in Persian land, we just snagged it with our temple,
and now their worker ended up clearing OUR land for us :P
Better check on him. Whoa! Annoyed. I'll buy his ivory for 27 gpt. Polite.
(Hmm, they DO still have their own coal supply, btw)

1340 AD (3) - Rampaging Joan has destroyed the Germans. Gosh, too bad, we owed
the Germans another 17 turns of payments for Communism :D

Persia has both Industrialization and Electricity, vs nothing last turn.
Let's look around for prices. At 710 gold it seems already sold around.
Iros lack coal, and have electricity. Everyone else who is a player has both.
We get elec for coal and reduced cash, and Industrializ from Xman for good gpt.

1345 AD (4) - Now that's interesting... the AI governor agrees? It suggests
Forbidden Palace in Umtata of its own accord. Factory first, but ok :P

French, Indians, Egypt, Romans, Russians, all start to Suffer. Must be age.

1350 AD (5) - Persia and Russia sign up against England. That's going to be
a bloodbath. I see some horse vs archer battles already. Then India joins in.

To our next leader - with an Army due to (finally) arrive, you might want
to consider getting in on the English action and reclaiming some of our
cities :P

1355 AD (6) - Iro and Rome come to peace. (There goes Nuremburg... Persia rolls
over that English town)

1370 AD (9) - Aztecs have wiped out the Americans. They sign on with Persia
vs England too!

1375 AD (10) - Gentlemen... may I present... (with good timing to turn over)

Our first CREATED Army! :hammer: (Amatikulu has 3 vet cav if u like)

Zimbabwe is crankin' on shields - if you like a wonder, go for it, if you
want it to crank a dozen armies, great. Just quickened coal plant, so it
will have close to 60 shields/turn as of next turn (over 60 once more Rails)

Country-wide rail net to connect all cities is almost complete.
Umtata needs more jungle clearing, it was hit with disease recently.

Steady as she goes... :P

Roster:
Jaffa
Melle
Charis
Smegged <<< up
Sirian <<< on deck
Ozymandous

Good luck,
Charis

As it is late at night, I will have to play tomorrow.

Having waited this long for an FP, I would urge holding off on building one. It's too late now for "early" benefits, and there are lands aplenty all around us, into which we can and will expand. Sure it will take a little longer, but we only have to take out one close rival to have lands worthy of a full second core.

This presuming we're going for a conquest win. If so, there is a LOT of game left to be played, and building the FP in a sad spot now just to have one would be a crime.

What victory conditions are enabled again? And which one(s) are we shooting for? Jaffa?


- Sirian


PS: now that communism is at hand, any cities we capture are going to be beyond useless. What is our razing policy again? Jaffa?

Conquest is the only enabled victory condition. And razing is unrestricted. The rule for captured towns is "at least one army unit must remain on garrison duty until resistance is ended."

Well there you have it, folks. Only way to win this is game to conquer every civ, and that is going to take a while under our rules. I would urge holding off on the FP until we can raze our way across part of England, Persia, or former Germany, then use one of our leaders on the FP in a prime location to better enable us to press onward. It would also be a good idea to plan ahead for the other army-building small wonder (Pentagon?) to be in a location with very high shield output, in or near the FP site.

- Sirian

Holding off on the FP is fine by me. I was just surprised when I thought about it that it wasn't discussed at all. It's just now started, so no penalty to switch off it at all.

Two things prompted me to consider starting it at Umtata.
i) It's not a lousy site actually, what I like best about it is that it's literally surrounded with cities. It's already got its core built, and the benefits would be real and immediate. As noted, the numerical benefits would likely be much larger later in a "better" more productive area

ii) I can't think of a single game, not one, where I built a "late game" FP that made ANY signficant difference in the outcome. The latest one I can think of where it WILL make a very big difference and wasn't a "early" FP is.... the Viking game.

A few differences between there and here. Vikings are the dominant world force, able to choose their opponent and go after the civ of their choice with full expectation of victory. NOT so here, or even close. There really was no good choice at all for a nearby FP in the Viking game. Our 'goal' there is to get the FP online early enough to "enable" a late-industrial push, likely Marines. There we had two weakish civs with a dozen towns on an isolated contient begging attack, here the areas near us are all Persian, which is the game superpower. In the present game, I don't see us even starting a war, much less conquering and holding "prime" lands in far off places, until tanks. And with rails on line and tanks, we will crush our foes with or without the FP. So numerically it will be superior then, but in terms of impact... I'm not convinced it will be higher utility later and further.

Umtata seems more like Bombay than Panama City, to use inside references :P

The significant factor in factor of waiting for an FP is that here we ARE likely to generate a great leader to rush it (with Epic, Academy, and a mil civ). In Vikings, our conquest of France came AND WENT with no leader, and we had no good prospect for one until we conquered Egypt. That was until they decided to land a war chariot on OUR new land outside a stack of elite cavs :lol:

So I'm fine with wait, but unconvinced it's best. I know you've had more games than I, can you give me an example of a late game FP, rushed, that had a significant impact on the outcome (or at least our effectiveness in achieving the outcome) ?

Or... is it worth considering joining the feeding frenzy on England, specifically targetting a city/location where we want to build our FP, then gogogo after them right there? That would be interesting :P

Charis

can you give me an example of a late game FP, rushed, that had a significant impact on the outcome

First point. We're nowhere near the late game. You do understand that, right? Because of our rules restrictions, our biggest enemy is going to be... the clock. I presume that if we reach 2050 and have run out of time without conquering the world, that we will consider it "a loss" even if the histogram says we win.

The question is whether we will get more total benefit from an FP that comes sooner but offers less corruption reduction, vs one that comes later and offers more. How much later... we don't have to conquer and secure an entire core, just conquer and fully secure the FP site. We can clean up the rest of the area around as time and resources permit.


can you give me an example of a late game FP, rushed, that had a significant impact on the outcome

Infantry Variant. Nuff said? :)

RBD6.

RBD5 -- wasn't rushed, but did come "late". We'd conquered a whole neighbor and secured almost all the no mans land by the time it came online.


Too much delay on the FP could push it over into "we shouldn't have waited". However, I don't share your assessment about how long its going to be before we're into wars. We first need some defensive type wars to be fought in OUR territory in order to "train" some elite units. If we send armies out without stack support, I fear we'll lose them and then where will we be?

As soon as we have foot infantry, we seriously need to pick a fight by then, if not sooner. With somebody on our continent. We have to be careful not to bite off too much and lose cities, but we can't just sit back and build up the usual force and go at it, either.

RBD5 had no good close-to-home FP options and we waited, and it paid off. It is my thinking that this situation is similar. A whole lot depends on the victory conditions and game goals. Conquest games, like RBD5 and Infantry were, run longer.


- Sirian

Inherited turn - lookin good people, but soon the bloodthirsty cravings of our peoples will be indulged :hammer:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our first army of cavalry!

Since we still owe seven turns of gold to England, they will not feel the wrath of our armies. However, Bremen looks to be sitting in a very nice spot for our Cavalry army to hit. Mr Montezuma, Your time is up :lol:

Our glorious nation enters it's very first war. And we take our very first city! Bremen is captured without losing a hitpoint from our army! Furthermore, there are no resisters. That means that our army can focus it's attention ... elsewhere. We also pulled the other dye that we didn't snag earlier. (still inherited turn). We garrison Bremen with a vet rifle.

We lose Bremen to two vet cav. grrr this makes me mad. The Aztecs will pay with their blood.

We lost a vet cav, who didn't retreat, and didn't take a single hitpoint off his attacker. The Aztecs will not survive.

Bremen is ours - but there is a resister, so our army will have to stay put for this turn.

We have an elite Cav!

Persia will ally versus the Aztecs, for dyes... which used to be under Aztec control :lol:

Persia razed the only other Aztec city within reach :O Oh well, looks like we will be sending our army to some of their other cities. We clean up an aztec elite cav on the way. Cleaning up pollution is killing us.

Our second army is created! It will be filled with non-elite cav methinks.

Egypt starts the TOE in 1400 AD. To go for it we'd have to forgo war. We do not have the economic might to stay ahead in the tech race, so we might as well wait and start prebuilding for Hoover when it looks as though electronics is near discovery.

A knight beat one of our Cav, when we were attacking it inside our own borders. Repeat after me: The RNG sucketh.

We now have two armies heading for Aztec territory, and an elite who can operate outside our cultural boundaries :hammer:

WE HAVE A GREAT LEADER!! What a unit! Two combats, first was a promotion to elite, and the second gained us a great leader! Woohoo! Oops, I forgot, leaders cannot rush improvements anymore :(.

He creates an army for us. With a third leader, I think that it is time we tried for Hoover by going TOE, then beelining Electronics.

I get replaceable parts from England for Incence. I get Scientific method and Sanitation from Joanie for 890 gold. I start Zimbabwe on the TOE. I upgrade all of our rifles to infantry, which should help secure our borders a bit more.

Umtata switches from forbidden palace to the heroic epic. We should get TOE, IF we don't lose it to cascade. Egypt are the only ones that are building it currently, and are building it with max 24 sheilds per turn :lol: Compare that to 50 odd in Zimbabwe and you will begin to see the picture.

It looks like Joanie is going to get suffrage, because all of the others are building it in low sheildcount cities. In fact, I'd hope that France gets it, because they are most likely to cascade and beat us to TOE. If any of the other cities cascades, we should beat them (unless they have been building sheilds for a large amount of turns.

Egypt comes a-callin demanding 100 gold and our territory map. How rude! I appease them (accidentally, I clicked the wrong option). Let the world know that Egypt has chosen unwisely :hammer:.

France start TOE in 1405. We agree to a ROP with Persia, and they send in an Immortal. Russia starts TOE in 1405. Persia has a couple of immortals in our territory that look as though they are beelining somewhere. France looks like a serious contender in the TOE race. Eep! I hope we can beat them (I've improved the land and rearranged the tiles as best as I could).

I was wrong, there is only one immortal in our borders, but it is zipping about everywhere on our rails.

England come a-calling wanting saltpeter for their furs. So I get them to throw in espionage and we throw in twenty gold and it's a deal!

We take our second Aztec city, and the first in their territory. It was guarded by... two spears :lol:. They obviously don't have coal either, and their rubber is not likely connected up. They had a very jungley start.

On my last turn, I bumped lux up to 10% as war weariness started to hit. It isn't bad yet, but it made West point revolt.

We SHOULD get TOE, nobody has finished Suffrage yet, and we are a mere five turns from Evolutionary theory. We also have another two armies stationed outside the next future zulu city, which is defended by - spears.

Good luck Sirian, and may the RNG be with you ;).

EDIT: This zip file should have the correct game in it. I cannot get the uploads system to work. Nothing happens when I click upload. EVER. Maybe it is due to the fact that I'm running windoze xp. I don't know. This method will suffice for now until I can get it sorted out.

Smegged, that zip file is coming up empty. Also would be a good idea to use the file server for uploads instead of the forum server: no extra work once you get used to it (if you keep a shortcut handy for pasting in to the addresses).

- Sirian

> "Rush improvement" ability removed from Great Leaders.

Is this going to cause a problem for *building* the forbidden palace the old-fashioned way? That is, 300 turns if beyond 18 or so squares, or 150 turns if a two-shield city.

:rolleyes:

Charis

Hmm. I guess I missed that in the rules... or more likely, forgot about it, with so many irons in the fire and nothing to remind me of that point.

Well, the FP is 200 shields now, but that's 20 turns at 10 shields per turn. In light of this, I haven't given it much thought. I'd be in favor of moving it as far away from Zimbabwe, and as far inland, as reasonable, in a well-enough secured spot, and still get it built soonish. Heh, and I may also want pigs to fly. :)

- Sirian

The zip file should work now

Nope, no worky worky. Could be too large. Try again using the file server?

EDIT: I'm an impatient &^)%$

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-1425_AD.zip

I'm an impatient

You? YOU???

smegged = impatient ?
impatient = smegged ?

You think anybody's gonna BELIEVE that?

Who would embrace that concept?

I mean... what evidence exists to support THAT notion?

You? Impatient?


Well... maybe a teensy tiny bit in there somewhere. :) Now and then. :)


Got it.


- Sirian

IT1425AD: :hammer: Vetoed a few things. New emphasis on hospitals in any city with a factory already in place.

With the rush ability removed from leaders in this mod, Umtata gets to host our FP after all. Due in 8 turns, but I'm going to shorten that for sure.

Bought lux off the Romans for... cash.

1430AD: Capture another Aztec town.
1435AD: Capture another Aztec town.
1440AD: Capture another Aztec town.

Persia conveniently razes Manchester for us. I rush settlers to plug that hole and another to its north.

1445AD: New Zimbabwe founded in desert where borders of England and Persia meet. (Site of former English town).

1450AD: Theory of Evolution figured out in Zimbabwe. Starts Hoover Dam. Forbidden Palace constructed in Umtata.

Temples rushed in first two Aztec towns captured.

New Ulundi founded just beyond former site of Manchester.

1455AD: Tenochtitlan razed. Aztecs wise up and train some infantry in their remaining two core towns, halting our invasion against any further progress. I'd make peace now, but... we have that alliance thing with Persia going on. So too bad Monty.

1460AD: France achieves Women's Suffrage. No cascade.

1465AD: Been rushing impis at every chance in the new Aztec towns. Final round of that action will net four more vet impis next turn. Rushed three more settlers to do some land-grabbing in the holes left by the rampaging Persian armies.

1470AD: Spend 1540 gold to upgrade 11 impis to infantry in the former Aztec towns. Anybody who wants a piece, COME AND GET IT.

Our settler escorts discover... a stone age barbarian tribe deep in the jungles. Our vet cavalry clear them out and net 25 gold in loot. Another "war party" of "dangerous" axe warriors is rumored to be nearby.

1475AD: OMG! Those axe warriors actually killed some of our cavalry! (Musta been the losers in the bunch, as the rest promote to elite after the battle!)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-elitevsbarb.jpg

"Our People Want to Build Facilities to Support Battlefield Medicine. Maybe We Should."

Bapedi starts the Heroic Epic.

Three more new towns founded in the jungles all around New Berlin. If we ever capture that and the other former German town in the region which we have surrounded, we'd do better to raze them, IMO. Of course, if they flip to us, I guess we would take them, but no idea how badly whipped they are.

The Aztec towns have been whipped, but not too badly. Their main problem is too far from civilization to operate without mad corruption. So I have them all on walls now that they are well defended and the most important two already have temples.

Hoover due on next player's turn.

I renewed a couple deals at the end of my turn. Also note, that some of our lux deals I paid for IN CASH (to get better prices). Did not have any concerns about being attacked, so why not. This means when time is up, however, that the deals will expire without an offer to be renewed, so if you forget to renew them on that turn, could be riots somewhere.

Our cav armies can't hope to take out infantry -- too risky -- and for some reason they can't pillage either. So our current war is stalled, and we don't really need another right away, as there are plenty of open lands we could grab if we concentrated on doing so. I did more of that on my turn than warmaking.

Remember, to avoid chance of flipping, must leave decent garrisons in those Aztec towns even though they only have one aztec citizen apiece.

We have a whopping 17% disease rate and are ranked dead last in that category. Been a while since I have heard anything about disease, but Umtata (our FP site!) got hit with a plague for two turns and lost two population points. :( I'd have done more jungle clearing, but cleaning pollution and getting rails to enhance vital cities was a higher priority.


ARMY MEN! 1475AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-zulu-armies-1475ad.zip)


- Sirian

Did I mention that the Aztecs butchered their own people rather than let them serve as our slaves? It's true, after I razed Tenochtitlan, the workers from that were left unguarded as I ran our troops back to town to heal, and the Aztecs rushed a cav unit out of one of their cities and captured and disbanded the workers. Um... oops. So... no workers in that area at the moment, nor really anywhere near it.

Here's a look at our colonial territories after my turn.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-colonies-1475ad.jpg

Did this game run away from me or what?

Jaffa << on deck
Melle
Charis
Smegged
Sirian
Ozymandous <<< UP

Ozy, are you back from your vacation? Post something today, or I'll assume you're not and grab the game myself.

Still have to wash stuff and recover from the vacation. Looks like I'll be out one more rotation, have fun Jaffa. :)

(Wow, this game seems to be taking off now!)

0) 1475AD Upgraded all our remaining impis (and warriors).

Diplomacy check. Three turns of alliance vs Aztecs with Persia.

Buy an American slave from the Iroquois for 30g, then charge them 33g to renew RoP.

Ceasar pays 450g for dyes. Russia pays 3gpt for RoP.

Hoover Dam completes a turn earlier by working desert instead of floodplain.

Persia moves cavalry around. And around. And around....

Disease strikes Umtata.

1) 1480AD Artillery dispatched towards front lines by a very circuitous route (using Persian railroads).

India and France ally against Aztecs. France makes peace with Iroquois. Tugela (English) razed by Persians.

2) 1485AD Tugela founded :)

Aztecs make peace with England.

3) 1490AD England and India sign a peace treaty. Persia razes Liverpool.

4) 1495AD MPPs signed between Russia and France, and Persia and Rome.

5) 1500AD Rio More Elephantos founded :D

Two turns to Hoover. Trade Electronics to France for Steel+430g. Trade dyes to France for 640g. Trade incense to France for 35gpt.

Trade Electronics to Persia for 470g+60gpt. X-Man considers that a fair offer, and is all gracious and stuff :)

Trade Electronics to India for 120gpt. Trade dyes to India for 30gpt.

Trade Electronics to Rome for 90gpt.

Trade Electronics to Russia for 80gpt.

Trade Electronics to Egypt for 1200g. Trade our new ivory to Egypt for 45gpt.

Iroquois and Russia sign a peace treaty. Rome and France ally against Aztecs.

6) 1505AD North Intombe founded.

Russia and India ally against Aztecs. Poor Aztecs :( :)

The Aztecs sign a peace treaty with France.

We build the Hoover Dam!

7) 1510AD Our steadily growing artillery stack bombards Texcoco, without managing to hit the defenders.

England and Persia sign a peace treaty.

8) 1515AD Artillery finally manages to hit the infantry defender, and our mighty armies capture Texcoco!

France declares war on the Aztecs. Such treachery by dear Joan :)

Our artillery moves on towards Tlaxcala.

10) 1525AD Buy refining off our good friend Xerxes for 180g+60gpt, to keep him honest.

Hmmm. We don't have any oil. There is some near Teotihuacan, which we will get (eventually) when borders expand. And there's oil just outside our territory near New Ulundi, which we could grab with aggressive city placement...

Mzilikazi of the Zulu, 1525AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RBD18-1525AD.zip)

Melle, you're up. Charis on deck.

Jaffa
[ Melle ] both out for now
[ Charis ]
Smegged << UP
Sirian << on deck
Ozymandous

Smegged, you can play in 1.17 if you want to delay patching for RBD23.

"Smegged, you can play in 1.17 if you want to delay patching for RBD23"

woohoo!

got it, but won't get a chance to post/play for a while.

I do apologise, I am unable to play anything for the next couple of days, so it is time to skip me (It was only by chance that I even got to spend four hours back with D2 tonight - and it was far longer than I expected to be playing for).

Four of six players were skipped and I'm back Up again? I don't think so. Somebody, anybody, play a turn here please.

- Sirian

alright, I can get it I suppose. :)

Inherited turn - hmmm, this is interesting. Bremen has one unhappy German citizen, who is complaining about aggression against his mother country.... yet Germany does not exist. They are gone, wiped out. Useless info, but it is interesting. I also note that we are trying the "forty turn" gambit to get radio first. England has rubber and coal in their territory but has not connected it up.

So I swap rubber+coal for furs. That gives us seven luxuries. I find it a bit disturbing that we have no oil in our lands even though we control so much desert. There is TWO sources of oil ONE SQUARE away from our homeland.

As a final "inheritted turn" note, I notice that Xerces is gracious :). Well done whoever got him to that stage.

1530 AD - We complete the pentagon and start battlefield medicine, due in ten.

We take Tlaxcala and destroy the troublesome Aztecs :hammer:

I rush the temple in Teotihuacan. Getting oil connectable and under our control is one of the things that will be necessary to our survival. HOPEFULLY we will get some oil move into range of our capital due to the AI exhausting it.

I also feel the effects of some residual gotoing by our previous leader grrrr.

I decide against revolting to Democracy. While it would help our worker speed, it could cost us too much in terms of lost production. This is a crucial stage of the game.

1535 AD - our ROP with Persia expires. X-man goes to polite and wants 4 gpt to extend it.

I think it is a wise move. We DON'T want X-man coming after us. I also give England a right of passage.

I rush a temple in Tlaxcala

1540 AD - HAHAHAHAHAHA. Global warming turned some jungle into grassland. HAHAHAHAHA.
I get radio from X-man for dyes+550g at diplo. Interesting. X-man will trade us oil for a mere one gold. Does this mean he is preparing to declare war on us next turn? Well, I'm going to find out soon enough. Just in case, I decide to fortify some mil units on workers that are near Persian soldiers.

1545 AD - well, we weren't attacked, so I'm assuming that the reason we got oil for one gold is that there is no use for oil yet.

I rush temples in all our colony cities that don't have them or won't build them forever, and I start settlers. We have a lot of land to grab, but no settlers being built!

1550 AD - I found new Isandhlwana. I also notice that oil has crept into weedton's borders.

1555 AD - Settlers are all on their way to various new city sites.

Red dot is off the river (unfortunately), but captures a jungle (future grassland) and two resources. The other two dots are self explanatory and the best that I could come up with.

I expect a veto :hammer: ;).

Save is here.

NOTE: I uploaded both files, but neither appeared on the file list. This has happened before and I could not find a way to get it to work.

Originally posted by smegged
Save is here.

NOTE: I uploaded both files, but neither appeared on the file list. This has happened before and I could not find a way to get it to work.


Thunderfall has been notified about this, and will fix it at some point.

If you game is GAME.SAV with a capital .SAV, it will NOT upload.

no, it was .ZIP

Nothing uploads if the letters after the period .

are capitalized.

IT 1555AD: Raving Lunatic with a Veto Stamp. I changed just about... everything. :) I also traded 20 turns of saltpeter to the Iros for three of their workers.

1560AD: Oops, make that ONE turn of saltpeter. Iros conquered by rampaging X-man. :lol:

I figured out what I wanted to do with the settlers I inherited. Probably not what was planned for them, but then... looks like Cleo jumped in there and grabbed all the lands these were PLANNED for. Ah well.

With 12k in the bank, I decided to spend spend spend (about 1k per turn) on temples, courthouses, granaries in our colonies. I wanted to see for myself some of the new "so called" improved performance of courthouses in the new patch. (RBD18 Patch Guinea Pig Turn!) Well well, not too shabby. Some colonies that woulda been destined for 1-1ness can now pull out a few shields. I think this is great, since it will mean larger cores and more interesting development for managing additional cities. The game has been steadily evolving from the first patch, more and more and more toward decreasing the severity of corruption effects in distant cities, and this is another step in that direction. No idea yet what this means overall, but... I'm on my way to finding out.

1565-1585AD: Not much newsworthy. I built infra, infra and more infra, all over the place, especially libraries and universities. We needs to get ourselves some culture! Also, coming up on modern age, might want to do some of our own research there, like... beeline to Genetics and grab the three remaining Good Wonders (because this game has a LONG way to go yet) and continue to buy any AI research at low prices.

1590AD: Big Oopsy at one of Jaffa's recently founded colonies.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-riverbend.jpg

X-man rejected our pathetic little town (and he's been RAZING everything else, too, I think he's capped on how many cities he wants to be controlling, for the moment). Still, Jaffa has gotten into the habit of Cy-grade aggressive settlements, and I'm not sure that's a good habit to form. We lost Rio Elephantos despite a serious stack of troops in it and well over 1000 gold invested, and now this one, with just five tiles of overlap to it. I added more troops to the garrison, but it still may not be wholly safe. We have other cities with some pressure on them too, all along our borders, so everyone needs to be mindful of keeping enough garrison in them.

1590AD (cont): bought a few techs. Oh, did I mention that the AI's are going at one another now? France has had several civs declare vs them, and Egypt and Persia are going at it too. All of Egypts colonies in the corner of our land I mentioned at the start of my turn... are gone. X-man wiped them off the map, so I'm building more settlers to grab the land for us. Going to use our RoP to race a few to the distant south as well, and grab some area down there too.

1595AD: founded several more new cities. Infra push is just about caught up on major buildings. Lots of libraries, cathedrals, colleseums, uni, and some police stations built in our cores. Zimbabwe is starting an Army now. Umtata is wrapping up its last few infra before it starts to crank armies.

Trained one of our cav to elite vs a barb camp at one of the new city sites.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-newumtata.jpg

1600AD: bought Motorized Transport. It's official: we're all in the modern age now, all eight of us who remain in the game. I pump research up to 90%, Computers due in 5 turns.

MASSIVE barbarian uprising in the region of former Egyptian towns on former Aztec lands. Heh. Ooh, I'm scared. :lol:

1605AD: Aw shucks. Dreadful combat results. Not that we LOST any units :lol: :nono: as that didn't happen, but I wiped out that whole stack of 25 barb horsies and only about five of our troops promoted! Bah. Some sorry training mission that turned out to be. :(

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-uprising.jpg

We have an elite tank though! Our first.

Overall, founded NINE new cities on my turn, massive upgrade of infrastructure, bought about five techs, and only spent down a little bit of our huge surplus.

One turn of research has been done on computers and I turned down to 80% research with us still bringing it in in four turns.

I did build a few troops on my turn, but not as many as I used to garrison new cities, so our forces are now spread a little thinner.

SPECIAL CARE needs to be put in to returning most of the troops used to attack the barbie SOD back to defensive positions on all our borders, ESPECIALLY in our home core, where I pulled most of those from.

Next player should be able to crank some armies and plop some vet tanks or mechs into them. Unfortunately we have ongoing agreements with every civ, so we need to select an opponent (France looks juicy) and stop doing business with them, so we can get to some war soon.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-1605ad.jpg

RBD18 Zulu Army Variant - 1605AD (Hey who took an extra turn here??) (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-zulu-armies-1605ad.zip)



- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
IT 1555AD: Raving Lunatic with a Veto Stamp. I changed just about... everything. :) I also traded 20 turns of saltpeter to the Iros for three of their workers.

1560AD: Oops, make that ONE turn of saltpeter. Iros conquered by rampaging X-man. :lol:




This is just pure evil - I love it :love:

I should be able to get this one tonight.

Hrm, since only armies can assault enemy cities I guess we'll be building a ton of them, eh? Or has that rule now changed so that as long as an army attacks a city once other units can then pitch in to help? If the rule hasn't changed then how about artillery, does bombarding count as an attack? :)

The rules are exactly as written in the first post. It says, right there, "only armies can assault enemy cities", and "bombardment is allowed". So yes, only armies can assault cities, and bombardment is allowed :)

Ah, are we using version 1.21 yet or not? I have already patched but don't want to "corrupt" the game if everyone wants to stick with 1.17.

Go with 1.21.

Certain persons may still be living in the dark ages, but we must drag this game kicking and screaming into the Glorious Light of the ONE TRUE PATCH !!

Or something :)

Edit: also, I think Sirian already patched the game anyway :)

I took only take 9 turns to even things out. I noticed we were in a Republic one turn or so in and decided to go for a Democracy. Well, eight turns of anarchy later we emerge.

The next leader can re-arrange everything how they want, I did get some worker stuff done at least but that's about it.

Just a reminder that I'm unavailable for this game until completion of rbd23-a.

Democracy??????? :(

If we were going to go there, we needed to do so a long time ago. Now we're on the verge of entering an UNENDING string of wars toward our only available victory option of complete world conquest, with tanks and armies rolling off the assembly lines, and now we go to democracy? :) And we took eight turns off our burgeoning tech lead in computer research, and our push to get the rest of the wonders, and after I worked so hard to build UP our culture so we can reduce our flip risks, we go without any at all for eight turns... :eek:

[pimp] :smoke: :crazyeye:

Oh well, make the most of it. Stay there, until we reach a point at which weariness collapses us, then go to Monarchy. Our workers will get more done in the mean time.

I figured that in Republic it would take longer for weariness to push us under, so might as well stay there until we couldn't hack it any more. I also figured this was self-evident? Guess not. My bad for not saying anything.

smegged is still unpatched, so... who's up now? Jaffa? Good luck!


- Sirian

"I figured that in Republic it would take longer for weariness to push us under, so might as well stay there until we couldn't hack it any more. I also figured this was self-evident? Guess not. My bad for not saying anything."

Actually I think I said something in my six turns. Guess I didn't make it clear enough.

Oh well, now that we are there we should make the most of it. And hopefully get ourselves suffrage before war ensues.

Smeeged, I looked at your turn report and it seemed pretty clear to me why you didn't swap to Democracy. The only thing I don't understand is why Ozy DID choose to swap governments. Care to enlighten us, Ozy? :)

Suffrage? smegged did you doze off and miss an era or two? :) We're researching Computers. Suffrage was built centuries ago, by somebody else.

More Police Stations will help a little, and so might rotating through opponents, but at some point we're going to have to go all out and bite the anarchy bullet one more time.

- Sirian

I think I was smoking some of the pungent weed with my comment about suffrage [pimp]

EDIT: I thought about my mistake as I was driving somewhere earlier :).

:yinyang:

Two reasons for Democracy that came to mind...

1) Since our empire is pretty darn sprawling with our FP relatyively close I thought Democracy might give us a little less corruption to deal with and help clear out some of the relatively bad terrain quicker.

2) We did have a tech lead, and I thought that we'd get an even bigger lead under Democracy. Since we weren't currently at war with anyone, I assumed we'd have time to research and build under the best government before we started more wars, since we had 3 whole armies (we'll need a lot more) in the empire at my turns and a lot of smallish cities. (I obviously didn't count on an 8 turn anarchy either.)

That's about it. Since everyone was busy fighting other people and except for 4-5 of our cities, we're relatively undeveloped I thought this would be a good choice. Obviously no one else thought so, so I apparently made a :smoke: choice, but I thought that's why the SG format, so different styles would be ok. My style is to optimize research and reduce corruption. For what it's worth, yes we lost 8 turns of research and building, but even at less science allotted we still had more research funding just because of the commerce boost. (Computers went from 3 turns before anarchy to 3 turns after with about 20% less spent on science.) Oh well, hope this doesn't mean we automatically lose (my bad choice). :p

By the way, an earlier suggestion was to attack France... Why? France is mostly across the ocean from us, with only a few isolated colonies on our land. Why would we want to declare war on France, and then have the AI take over their lands on the other continents before we could move all of our armies and support units over?

If we take a vote on who to attack I would say England, because i) they are next to us and the logistic's trail is easier, ii) I'd rather have our territory near-by to counter X-Man's empire, and iii) England has fur's and isn't that much bigger than us.

But what do I know? :p :)

EDIT: Spelling and stuff.
EDIT2: Removed a line or two. Never post when you're having a bad day at work. :)

The General pondered the sudden and unexpected outbreak of Democracy in the Zulu nation. "Well," he decided, "if the people wish to have a Democracy, I shall give them a vote."

A referendum was called, and the citizens were given the choice:

1. Glorious war!

2. Abject surrender and destruction of our great nation at the hands of the foreign infidels.

--

The General was pleased. It had only been necessary to "misplace" a few of the ballots to achieve the correct result. A unanimous and resounding call for war! He consulted his map, and picked a likely target. England, yes, they would do just nicely...

--

Three turns of consolidation and troop-building. Brought many of our workers back from the colonies to work on improvements around our more important core cities.

In 1665, we discovered the secrets of Computers. And mech infantry. I got bored of all this peaceful stuff and declared war! Yay! Also upgraded 70 infantry units to mechs, and planted spies in England and Persia.

Our cavalry armies have razed Birmingham. Our tank armies have razed Oxford, Hastings and Reading. And Rio Elephantos (that'll teach 'em!).

We lost one near-full-health cavalry army to a 1hp infantry defender.

I tried setting most of our low-production cities to building impi, thinking they could then be upgraded to mechs. Well, that was the plan. Unfortunately it doesn't work. The game won't let us actually build impi, despite them appearing in the build list -- they get auto-swapped to mechs on the turn they're supposed to finish.

Our people want to build the Iron Works! Whooo! In .. umm .. New Isipezi! It'll just take 295 turns to complete :)

I started an air force, and a fleet. England was sailing an unguarded transport past Intombe just as we finished our first battleship there. Hehe.

We have several elite tanks and mechs, where England has been kind enough to send their forces into our territory to help with our training exercises.

Founded one new city (New Zunguin).

Started seeing war weariness on the 1700 turn. Democracy won't hold out much longer if we stay at war.

We just finished researching Miniaturization. Everybody else has Fission.

1700AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RBD18-1700AD.zip)

Jaffa
Smegged [skipped]
Sirian << UP
Ozymandous << on deck

Melle, Charis - will be reinserted in roster when/if they reappear.

Yay! We are at war! Glorious razings! TRAITORS AT RIO ELO WIPED OUT! :hammer:

I'm still unpatched. I'd love to play, but without the latest patch I'm not going to get too far! Skip me until further notice.

Well I am glad Jaffa follows me to fix (sort-of) the mistakes I made. Sorry about the government shift, I probably cost us 4-5 times the anarchy period becaue of the delay in production (since it amplifies and all).

I am glad that the England suggestion wasn't totally off base. :) Did we get the furs?

1700-1750AD: I spent the whole turn building infrastructure and clearing jungle. We are due for a few world wonders early for next player.

Oh, and also, war weariness rose to oppressive levels on the last turn (I did a bit :satan: of attacking England). I adjusted everything and we're good to go a bit longer at 20% lux and entertainers, but would be a good idea to bring the war with Lizzie to a close soon. :)

Zulu Armies! 1750AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-zulu-armies-1750ad.zip)


- Sirian

Sorry for the late reply, but I have it and should be able to play tommorrow some time.

Well the war is over and so is England. :D

Built mostly infrastructure my turn as well. I tried to get some of our "extra" troops compiled into one central location.

We built Cure for Cancer and Longevity and entered our Golden Age. :) With Nuclear plants in a few key cities (traded Genetics for Space Flight and Nuclear Power when we built the wonders), we are pulling over 100 shields a turn in at least 4 cities. Two cities can build a Modern Armor every turn (one of these cities has to build armies however).

We should have roughly 17-18 turns of the GA left from what I can tell.

Oh, we're also researching Laser, done in a turn, and should be able to get 4 turns per for anything else. 2k+ in the bank, making 600+ per turn now.

Have fun! :)

So, I was just going to consolidate and build stuff. Make the most of our democratic golden age, right?

Well, that was the plan...

X-man wanted lasers. I said no. X-man declared war.

Mechs and modern armor and radar artillery, whoohoo!

1790AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RBD18-1790AD.zip)

Have a look at the map :D

Sirian up next, unless Charis or Smegged are back.

I'm back, rbd23-a has finally finished :D

Jaffa
Smegged << UP
Sirian << on deck
Ozymandous

We need to finish off Persia, secure our continent. And build a fleet. We have, iirc, one transport, two battleships and a carrier.

With all eight luxuries, and 20% entertainment, we're still doing okay in Democracy. Hopefully we can hang on at least through the end of our golden age.

Some ex-Persian-ex-Iroquois towns down south are being callously and ruthlessly starved into submission. Up north in the Persian homeland I've just been razing everything.

Persia has some bombers. Out jet fighters have seen much action :)

Rome (I think) started on the Manhattan Project.

What is the point of a stealth fighter if it can't run air superiority?

I like them, they can bomb and shoot down enemy fighters MUCH better than Stealth Bombers do.

Guys, I'm positively swamped at the moment with work. Unless you are prepared to wait until next weekend for the save, someone else should pick the game up.

Up to Sirian. Sirian, if you want to grab the game in the next couple of days, we'll skip Smegged again this round.

I'm not going to be able to play again until next Wednesday (29th). If Sirian and Ozy get their turns in before the weekend, skip me next round.

Smegged? Are you intending to play your turn this round?

Smegged? Are you intending to play your turn this round?

I have pulled five solid twelve hour days on my assignment, and it's still not finished. I also have another assignment to do before Wednesday. So the answer to that is "no". Unless you are prepared to wait until Thursday/Friday for me to play.

It's cruchtime at uni now. I can't wait until this symester is over.

I played eight turns.

* Mopped up remaining Persian colonies, they're locked in their homeland now.

* One great leader, which replaced the one army I lost being overzealous with using wounded armies.

* Picked up two techs, just two left in the whole tree.

* Took us back to Monarchy

Next player needs to play the rest of the inherited turn and perhaps fiddle with tax rates.


Zulu Armies - 1806AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-zulu-armies-1806ad.zip)


- Sirian

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't picked this game up yet but due to RL circumstances it looks like I won't be able to play any more succession games. *sigh*

I will be posting this in all threads in which I am participating.

Sorry everyone, but these games have dragged on much longer than I anticipated and the break I had from major projects at work and in graduate school have swarmed in to rob me of free time. :(

Good luck all, I hope I can at least read (while at work rebuilding PC's, etc) of the great exploits that everyone else is able to do... :D

-Ozy

Smegged, you up for taking a turn now?

yeah, I'll have it done by lunchtime Monday my time (Sunday night your time).

It appears that I cannot even download the latest save due to an internal error. I'll check back daily to try and pick the game up.

got it

Smegged, any progress? If you can post something by Sunday afternoon (GMT) I can pick it up and play it while I'm stuck in a hotel next week.

<gripe>Was their any reason for them to move the date and user buttons to the bottom of each post, other than to confuse people?</gripe>

Jaffa: Have you ever used Kali? This reminds me very much of Jay Cotton and his endless tweaking and reworking of the Kali interface, often when nothing at all was wrong. Jay would move button, change graphics, defaults, options, over and over and over again, seemingly just to have something to be doing. He was never satisfied to let any version stand.

There were changes/versions I liked and ones I hated, but it didn't matter, a new version would come along. You could keep older versions for a while, but eventually he'd change some core code and everyone would be forced to upgrade to continue to use the program. Best $20 I ever spent. Ever. But these guys here at CivFanatics seem to be infected with the same "tweak" itch. Yes, it's confusing and annoying and the changes MAKE NO DIFFERENCE other than to be annoying. But... what are we going to do? It's their house and they've made clear they're not going to stop reordering it any time soon. Like the girlfriend who moves the furniture around once a month, just to have a different look, you have to decide if the annoyance is worth it or if you need to be picking up and moving on. :)

As for smegged, he recently indicated that he is about ready to drop from SG's after the current ones wrap up. This game here is won already, and the only reason to finish it out is for the fun of fitting the last few jigsaw puzzle pieces into place and enjoy the doing of that. If smegged drops, I don't want to swap back and forth between us two on the mop-up. Sometimes mop up can be fun and cool. But if you have your fill, it can also cross over into "chore" and if it does, I'm not sure it's worth pushing through. That time could be better spent on a new game.

If you are of a mind to do so, then whether smegged posts or not, go ahead and grab the game and play as much as you like, even to finish it off. Pushing through Persia has an inevitable result, but it will also take a lot of work to complete and some good planning if it's to be done quickly. Up to you.


- Sirian

Go ahead and pick it up. I have meant to play the game, but have not had the time (I'm in the middle of exams). And I won't have the time until at least Tuesday, so go ahead and play it.

Got it

Partway through 1814 turn. Persia is a little bit smaller, and Russia volunteered to have all their colony cities on our continent destroyed.

I'm going to be in Alaska and not playing Civ3 now until 25th June. Smegged, Sirian, if you want to pick this up to play some while I'm gone, feel free :) Otherwise I'll carry on when I get back.

1814AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RBD18-1814AD.zip)

Now that you're back, JT, you can pick up where you left off. :)

:) haha nice call Sirian :P

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-a.jpg


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-b.jpg


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd18-c.jpg

!! Future Tech.
I don't think I have ever had a game go long enought to see future tech.

Can this bad boy end by domination?

It's conquest only. Every last AI must be squashed.


Who's still alive in this game, besides Jaffa?

- Sirian

I thought it was just me :)

Well, it MAY still be just you, JT. :) I'm not sure I have the energy/time/interest for the mop up here, as armies don't fully recover in a turn at a barracks, so it's a little slow going, yet wholly a foregone conclusion.

I'm of a mind to start a new Deity SG, though. Under the new patch, after I finish Epic Seven. Plunge on in and see how the waters are. Question is, who would want to play on Deity??


- Sirian

hmmm, I said no SG's damnit. But what better way to be introduced to deity than to play last in an SG. Hmmm. Tempted. Very tempted. I'll get back to you, but you have about a 70% chance of me wanting to join a deity SG. Provided I get to go last of course :).

Oh, and btw Jaffa, if Sirian ain't helping out you are alone on this one. If I want a mop up operation, I have about 10 solo games sitting on my hard drive waiting to be mopped up. Not to mention Epic 5, and Epic 7 (still undecided on epic 6).

I'll join a Deity SG if you start one, although I've hardly mastered that difficulty.

@all -
Has anyone started a new game with Emperor and patch 1.29?

I just started a game, and have Greece declare war on me in 2750 BC! The took a defended Memphis, and the game was effectively lost. You can't survive a lost city that early at emperor.

I am wondering - fluke - or has the game gotten nastier. I had 2 cities, with 6 warriors - but was still considered weak vs. Greece.

I'm playing a SP game of Deity and had no troubles with aggression that early. Emperor AI is MORE aggressive at starting wars than Deity, though. So I don't know. I drew a DISMAL starting location and am playing it out, but my land is so sad that it may mark my first loss on Deity. I'm having a blast! :)

I did read from someone on the Epic board that "farmer gambit type games are in trouble". So that's at least one other bit of evidence in your support. There seems to be SOME kind of change, so I'll keep my eyes peeled.


- Sirian

Originally posted by Jaffa Tamarin

[B]Only armies can assault enemy cities. Only units properly trained and grouped into armies have sufficient power to be able to attack enemies entrenched in their city defenses. Whoever heard of a city being stormed by a single tank? :) Bombardment is allowed.


Here is how it goes, the Units are NOT just one unit as the pictures show in fact there are only 2 units which only has one vhiecale:Tactical nuke and ICBM. In the way I see a single unit ranges from 400-500 vheicles, men, planes, ships. Its pretty obvious I mean how can a single infantry defend agianst multiple attacks from different angles?

Is anyone gonna finish this game off?

Oh, and Obsessed Nuker, this is what's called a "variant" game. The idea of variant games is to impose additional difficulty to oneself so that you get extra challenge and enjoyment from the game.

In this game, the idea was that we would use our initial army to start assaulting enemy cities and eventually get more armies via great leaders and the millitary academy. But those plans kinda went out the back door thanks to a very weedy move from a certain someone (wonder who that could have been :P).