This special spoiler discussion is a special topic technical discussion about features of the Gotm19-Ottomans game.

This is not a thread for posting general reports about game progress and other aspects of the Gotm19 game that are not listed as the focus of this discussion.

This is also NOT a thread to use to express what you don't like or do not like about the game setup for Gotm19 unless you can base those comments on the RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS of features about the game that are the intended focus of this discussion.

The Special Topic of this discussion is for use to discuss the game progress of ROME (the Red Civ) in Gotm19-Ottomans. You must have played and submitted the game to have a clear foundation and perspective for this discussion.

There will be many different observations and experiences here because the playing style and approach of almost every player is different:

If you can, post sized down screen shots of Rome from the earliest point in the game where you have full map visibility of their territory??

What do these maps of Rome (mostly uneffected by contamination from your evil Ottoman and Human self) tell you about the early game choices that the AI brain will make when un perterbed by external forces?

Where were the key city placements?

How many cities did Rome have when you met them and how did this number compare to the other three most powerful civilizations in you game at that time??

If you attacked had conflicts with Rome either at home or on the Roman or far off continent, document when these conflicts occured and how the Romans performed militarily??

When you first met Rome how did you obtain as much information about Rome as possible and what were your impressions of Rome? How did these impressions effect you emotionally? How did these impressions effect your game strategy?

Based on your experiences in Gotm17 and Gotm18, what would you have expected Rome to look like if they were totally isolated and alone on an island continent while other cives where in free contact with neighbors on continental landmasses??

What type of military did you use against the Roman landmass and what did this expose about the status of unit upgrades and build priorities for the Roman military??

If you captured or investigated Roman Cities or if you have saves available where you can go back and aritificially investigate Roman cities, how does the status of their infrastructure and population compare to comparable Cities in the Ottoman empire at a similar time in the game?

With these sorts of technical investigative answers, what sort of role did Rome play in Gotm19-Ottomans game and how did this role effect the overall progress and final results of the game. If you think that Rome slowed you down on sped you up try to say how and by how much??

If you feel that Rome had a negative impact on your game, can you now look back at the game and identify any standard features of the game that were available to you and that might have changed your assessment of Rome in adance of the negative impacts?? Did you have any other choices that you might have made in the game based on the information you could see from the in-game advisors and other tools that were available to you??

I met Rome near the end of the QSC period, and was surprised by their large number of cities - significantly more than Carthage or the Keltoi. Soon after, I was surprised by their large cultural lead, given tha this is usually a Roman weakness. I had expected a more spread-out expansion pattern, much less culture, and an inability to stay current in tech, but Rome never lost their solid culture, or their ability to research. I was happy to see this, as it gave me someone else with whom to trade techs. While I had no first-hand knowledge of their infrastructure, I do know that it was hemorrhaging gold, because they probably paid more gpt for tech than any civ I have ever encountered. Consequently, Rome greatly contributed to the speed of my spaceship launch.

Rome sensed my military weakness late in the ancient era, and continually declared war on me, even though each war consisted of a galley or two unloading units to be slaughtered on my home turf. Rome stopped only after I upgraded my swords to Azap infantry (which says something about the currecny of their military), but remained unhappy with me for the rest of the game, and declared war one more time at the start of the industrial era. In this last engagement, they shipped over a few cavalry and riflemen. Their fleets also clogged the seas between our two lands, but again, this was no factor, as I had no ships. I never took them seriously, as the AI is pretty bad at overseas invasion, and never attacked their island, as my plan was to solidify our continent, then go for space.

About Rome's city placement: it seems they prioritised building on the coast, to get a maximum number of harbor cities. However, there was lots of room inland, and a human player with a wide city spread would easily have built double the number of cities (not to mention ICS-builders).

Anyway, the Romans were pretty quick researchers, and had lots of money. Like in Txurce's game, they repeatedly sneak attacked me, but I suspect the reason were that they couldn't afford to pay me the huge gpt payments, not that they thought they had a chance against me.

I believe that were the specs of Rome:
Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Rome got 4 free settlers at the start, couldn't build wonders, and couldn't build any settlers from the time they got mapmaking until they entered the middle ages. Their build priorities were also changed (navy was prioritized)

What did I notice and how did this affect my game(play)?
Since I’m playing by intuition I did not observed during the game that something was artificially modded in the Rome game. But I must say that I was always surprised by the Romans.
First they built harbors like crazy. I did not have any and they had 5 in circa 500BC. As a consequence I built a harbor to trade for Ivory and thus had access to 6 luxuries from circa 10AD (could had been faster).

Then I noticed their culture (atypical for a militaristic civ). They had 50% of the world culture around 10AD. This had no impact on me, just a sign that they had a lot of shields to burn, and probably were pretty powerful in military.

I misinterpreted their refusal to build on the island to the east, and the southern peninsula, previously settled by Chartage. I thought that they reached optimal city number. That was good ‘cause it took some time until I settled that peninsula. Actually, they never build any cities apart from their original core of 9.

Rome declared war to Chartage and razed 4 cities on the peninsula mentioned above. They also left a contingent of about 6 legions and horses, which they later disbanded? I was warring Chartage in the same time but was indifferent on the tundra cities razed by the Romans, so no influence there.

Roman navy was pretty large in hindsight but that did not occur to me during the game. They lost a couple of galleys to squids but they cleaned them from the seas (never met one myself). During my first and second war with Rome there were some limited naval battles where I lost about 4 galleys during sea battles but also 3 more when the Romans unexpectedly took my bridgehead city on their island. One galley had three Azacs and I only attacked because the Roman galley was redlined-I lost. BTW, in the final turns of the game I lost a muslim caravel packed with Siphai to FOG.

The Roman wars. I knew Rome had a powerful military as told by my advisor. I could not attack the weak Chinese or any other civs on the second continent as I lacked astronomy, and lighthouse (the lighthouse would have been an excellent wonder in this game. I estimate it would have saved me 20 to 30 turns to domination, had I owned it). I intended to get the siphai and rule the world with them and overpassed chivalry to build more cheap horsemen. They were so cheap that I ended up with 50 of them as well as about 10 Azacs and that started to hinder my research (in Republic). So I figured that 40 horses and 10 Azacs would be enough to break Roman ranks and get a town or two before siphai. I sent a settler and built a bridgehead on the NW jungle in Roman lands. I declared war and advanced cautiously towards the closest Roman city. Immediately about 7 Legions counter-attacked and I retreated to a hill and charged unfortified units in the open ground. But they kept coming. I wasted about 10 Roman units in two turns with minor losses but I was now surrounded by 10 other and I had about 10 horses healing in the back with reinforcements pouring in at a slow rate of 4 units per turn. Now my losses increased and had lost most of my Azacs so I retreated further on a hill near my beachhead. They pushed in and I had killed some 5 more Roman units with probably the same number of losses on my side (but only due to horses retreating into the city). SO I retreated into the city and sent my three muskets towards the city (I was a slow thinker and should have done that from the start, yet I was late and got there in the 25th hour). All my units retreated into the city and counter-attacked the advancing enemy. My first two Muskets were close but 1 turn before they arrived the Romans killed 6 fully healed horses. My muskets landed and I thought I would have the time to heal my 10-15 redlined horses. The muskets held two turns and scored the last kills of that war. My counterattacks redlined the enemy and I thought those units would go back and heal. But as my muskets fell they attacked my redlined horses with everything they had (including redlined spears!!!). While my third musket fortified, the Romans sent everything in and killed like 10 units with no losses, took the town, auto razed it and took my only 3 galleys that had just unloaded. I had lost the war (WW was also over 50% and Romans would not sign peace). The Romans never landed on my turf but I could easily defend there. They signed peace after a couple more turns and I hag to pay them some 15 gpt for the damage. But the disappearance of the WW only exceeded that cost.

It was a massive setback of at least 10 turns in my domination strategy, and was the most important aspect of my game.
By the time I discovered siphai I had like 40 horses (what if I also had the 30-40 that I had lost in the first war). I landed in the same spot, tricked the Romans into declaring and spent three turns chopping them off. It was a massacre where I destroyed like 30 units loosing only two. The last offensive action of the Romans was reconquering Rome the turn after I got it but then I finished them easily.

The Roman units were a mix of legions (40%), Med Inf (30%), Archers, Horses and Spears (10% each). The sheer number of units was twice the amount in my worst nighmares, about 3 times more than the Romans would have in a similar game. The good part is that I prevailed but had I knew some conditions I would have acted differently. Overall I slightly dislike the changes to the Romans given the fact that they influence the game too much. (room for luck with Romans resulting in high scores).

I met Rome aroud 1000 BC and took the opportunity of some free land in the NW of their island to settle there in order to have later a port of entry for invasion.
However Rome was stronger than me and took the ooportunity to declare war so I lost my city easily. I did not even wanted to defend it since it would have been a lost battle with galleys to bring reinforcements and Rome being so strong at sea.

I was surprised of Rome addictions to produce boats and after my first attempt to sub-due the island never tried again. Apart from patrolling the seas and bombarding when at war. I did not see much of real war with the romans.

Excellent comments Yndy!!!

Have you previously engaged in a horseman style war against Legionaries and Medieval Infantry where you had positive results??

Roman galleys were sailing around our continent after I took out the Celts and prepared for war with Carthago. The military adviser told me, that they have a strong army compared to us. So I made them my ally in the war against Carthago.

I was wandering, why the Romans never settled the large island to their east and why they did not settle on my continent in the south. There was plenty of room.
I also was surprised, that they were only researching the lower half of the tech tree in middle ages. They almost kept pace with me and I was straight going for military tradition. Normally the AI would go for the whole tree. During the game although it did not occur to me that this is influenced by external settings. I thought that is just coincidence.

Romans were quite helpful against Carthago and they declared war against me just the turn after I had upgraded all my horsemen into Sipahi. That was really great timing for me.

The military adviser told me, that they had a strong military compared to mine (I had about 35 Sipahi and 10 musketmen adn a few other units).
When I landed at the Roman continent, they kept sending armies consisting of legionries and med. infantry in stacks of about ten.

After destroying 4 of them with amost no losses (Sipahi rock!) the military adviser said for the first time they have an average army, and three turns later their army was weak. After loosing several cities, they all of a sudden started to settle on the island so I was wandering if they had a restriction on the numbers of cities.
In hindsight, I was lucky to wait for Sipahies before fighting rome. Knights would have been quite difficult.

The replay at the end showed, that Rome had some free settlers available )probably to make up beeing alone on an island.
Personally, I would have liked more, that their isalnd would have been a bit larger and it would have been settled with 3 civ's as well instead of artificially strenghten (and then weaken) the Romans

Notes on Rome from My game.
I opted for conquest fairly early in the game (I had never played emperor, and when I saw the chance to win this way, I grabbed it), and Rome was the 3rd victim of my ruthless ways.

Rome made contact with ME in 875 BC. I had never built boats nor saw his units at the point, so presumably, they bought contact to me through Carthage/Celts. From the get go he was annoyed with me..and simply huge. I was dumbfounded at how large (both in power and culture) he was at during this point of the game...and from here on out, he became the 1 civ I feared, his military was always larger than mine, he was always ahead in tech and he was constantly either demanding stuff from me or declaring war for the hell of it while I was trying to dominate my starting continent. To me, he represented what I thought a Emperor level AI would be like in the game...after being surprised at how easy the Celts and Carthage were.

In my game - as far as I know, Rome never went to war with anybody but myself.

Only once during the early wars I had with Celts/Carthage did he mange to land troops (2 legion) on my shores..both were dispatched..but not before he triggered his GA. Most of the time, his galleys would be sunk by the squid swimming around my coast. :)

In 10 AD Rome had 10 cities on his continent. By comparison, India (#2 in score at the time) had 15, I had 18 (#3) and the other civs (except Celts) had anywhere between 10-14 each. All but two or three were on the coast. Surprisingly, he did not control his continent. Both India and Celts had a coast city on his continent. I believe the Indian city culture flipped to him at some point, but the Celt city stayed there until I took it in 710 AD - giving me foothold onto his continent. This surprised me greatly, as he clearly had the resources/time to have his entire continent to himself. Watching the replay, it looks like he just didn't bother..he was too busy building culture/military and Navy.

In 830, I declared war on the Romans. At this point, the world was towards the end of the middle ages. Military Tradition was known by all..and I had about 30 Siphahi and 10 elite Knights in his foothold city. I razed his city of Hispalis on turn 1 of the war and killed about a 20 units total, including Cavalry, MDI, Pikes and Musket men. After this brutal round, I checked my military advisor and found he was STILL stronger than me in military..uh oh. Turn two, I change my mind and decide to go on defense...and expect a huge counter attack. I move all my units back into the foot hold city...losing maybe a half dozen on the retreat to a few of his Cavalry/Knights/MDI.

...and the counterattack I was (not) expecting came. I expected tons of Cavalry..he had plenty of time with Mil Tradition to create a ton. Instead, what I got was MDI and other out-dated units. Over the next 4 turns or so, he sent wave after wave of MDI, Longbowmen, Pikemen and Legions..with the occasional Knight/Horseman. Overall, I think I destroyed about 40-50 MDI, nearly half as many Pikemen, a dozen legion and a handful of the rest. Once the waves stopped...my Military advisor finally told me I was strong compared to them...and off the Siphai went to raze all his cities in about 10 turns. The cities were heavily defended, but contained maybe 1 or 2 musketmen..the rest being pikes or even spear..which the Siphahi did not even break a sweat over. I am thankful now, after reading Yndy's post, that I elected to retreat right away and let him try to take my musket defended walled city (which he did not even dent with his MDI) rather than press the attack ...where my Sipahi would have suffered major losses...just due to the sheer number of units he had.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the other spoiler threads..he had nearly a dozen or more navy units (galleass) bombing my coasts and my foothold cities. I never bothered to attack him, opting to slip my loaded caravals past them instead. There seemed to be no reason or logic behind his bombing..other than annoy me...he never bothred trying to land troops on my continent.

Rome was clearly my biggest obstacle in the game. It was all dowhill from there. He posed more of a problem for me than the 4 civs on the other continet combined (yes..I went to war with all 4 of them once Rome was gone)...even when they had Nationalism/Riflemen.

I never did capture and hold a Roman city..opting to raze them all, so I never saw what he constructed. At his downfall, he was still the culture leader in the game...yet...he never once produced a single wonder. I don't think I was notified that he even bothered to start on one. In hindsight, I find this very odd as well. All of the other civs, even the ones I was actively at war with, would start/finish wonders. Rome never bothered.

Originally posted by cracker
Excellent comments Yndy!!!

Have you previously engaged in a horseman style war against Legionaries and Medieval Infantry where you had positive results??
Thanks, I thought that was a rather lengthy description of my first war but it was really tensed.

I had used Horsemen as attackers in deity games against Rome, when they had Legions and Pikes (v 1.29 back then). If you have the number on your side it is doable. On a rule of thumb average, attacking a legion or pike on open ground with 3 or 4 horses will have you lose 1, damage/retreat one or two and win with the last one. I did not expect to encounter more than 20 Roman offensive units to counter my attack, and I expected to take at least one city using the element of surprise.

Yndy,

Did you use even one "investigate city" option to get a perspective of what you might face?

Also, how did you gain contact with Rome?? Did you have access to the view of their capital via the "establish embassy" information?

The AI also tends to build defensive units in pure ratio to the number of towns. Using your view of the Roman Territory compared to your Ottoman territory (or Carthage) could you use the power histograph to predict the offense/defense ratio of their forces.

My curve matching in these calculations indicates that the AI values a swordsman at a power of five relative to the valuing a spearman at power 3. Does anyone else have observations in this area?

Also, for all players, "When Rome attacked you, where were these attacks located and why do you think those locations were chosen?

My experiences were very similar to those posted above. I didn't meet Rome until after the QSC period. When we did meet, Rome was the leader of the world. He had nearly double the internal score that I had, and was superior militarily, scientifically and culturally.

In the late BC's, I started a proxy war with the Celts against Cartahge. I wanted to set both civs back alittle bit while I finsihed expanding. I enlisted Rome in the war as well, simply to prevent Carthage from doing the same. A few turns later, Rome landed some legions near my core. I asked them to leave and they declared war. I gave them their GA, but destroyd the troops. That was the last time Rome declared war on me.

After I controlled my entire continent, I need more room to expand, and I erroneously chose the Roman lands. This was shortly after I had gotten Siphai, somwhere in the 1000 AD range. I landed like 6 riflemen and maybe 12 Siphai. I should have paid more attention, because I nearly got obliterated. I took over a poorly defended, former Spanish city. Then I proceeded to get assaulted by wave after wave of Medieval Infantry, Longbows and riflemen. If I did not have all of those riflemen, I would have ben easily eliminated form the island. I estimate that I killed over 70 Roman units. It was unreal.

My goal for this game was 100k culture, and my only real adversary was the Romans. Since they were so high in culture early in the game, it was nearly essential that I eliminate them. This took me WAY longer than it should have under normal conditions.

The signs of the Roman power were many: Early leaders in science and culture. Obvioulsy large military, including a very large navy. I havn't seen a navy like that since before the vanilla civ3 patches. Watching the replay alone was a real eye opener. Never quite seen anything like it before.

In summation: The juiced up Romans did cause me some delay in my game, but probably not a whole lot. My strategy was not really changed, because I would have eliminated them even if they were the weakest civ on the planet. Do I want this to be prevalent in future games? Doesn't matter to me - everyone is in the same boat.

P.S. - I don't think the Romans built any wonders in my game either. strange behaviour indeed for the AI.

Hergrom

I also noticed how powerful Rome was in the early game. Their galleys kept sailing up and down the coast fighting fog and squids.

I also wondered why they didn't completely settle their island. Spain founded two cities on the NW jungle of their island, and the Romans later captured them. Carthage settled the small island to the East.

Rome became a non-factor from the late middle ages on because of constant warfare with Carthage and/or Spain. When I invaded Rome it was in the industrial era. We both had tanks, but I had many more! I captured instead of razing their cities. I also found no wonders.

Just to help the process along here.

The Romans did have their governor preferences to build wonders turned OFF. This choice was developed during play testing the game because the AI players place an extreme high priority on building wonders even if those wonders have no strategic applicability to the map situation where they are located.

Unfortunately there is no slider or semi-random game adjustment that lets the AIs give variable priority to building wonders versus implementing some other game expanding strategy.

You might have even seen that the weak and whimpy Celts would even build wonders instead of doing things that might have lead to their survival in the games.

Hmm people don't realize how significant having a monopoly on a luxury is. The civ with a monopoly on a luxury will always be a strong research civ in any game. It was the same case with GOTM18 and the Aztecs. They had a monopoly on silks. This is one of the reasons they built the Pyramids in most people's game. But as long as you didnt' conquer them early they were very powerful researchers because selling luxuries at monopoly price does amazing things for your income, and yes the AI's will pay the monopoly price even if it's not good for them.

As for Rome's military might I didn't really notice. They sneak attacked me in around 200BC or so when I had Entremont undefended. But in the next 10 turns they only dropped off 2 more units in my territory and then I made peace with them. They didn't bombard my coast or anything really. Although a couple of their galleys got sunk by squids so maybe they would have dropped more units off if not for that. Late in the game they did have a lot of ships that were going around busting the fog. Also about 10 turns before I launched my ship they signed into the war on the other continent with an MA. Fortunately they all made peace on the last turn so I was able to sign MPP's without upsetting anyone.

When I first made contact with Rome I was quite surprised. Carthage actually made contact first and sold my contact to them though. But what surprised me is they learned Construction before anyone else. I figured maybe they had beelined to Construction and traded for all the other ancient age techs from Carthage before I contacted them. But I doubt that's the case now. They probably did all their research themselves. Also their culture was just astounding. Even with their large number of cities I hardly expected them to be so far ahead in culture.

Here's my histograph for culture:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/shillen-culture-histograph.jpg

You can see where my culture hits rock bottom and then starts shooting up, that's when I learned literature in the Middle Ages. This also answers the question other people had about building temples or not. I didn't build any temples before I got literature. But since libraries give 3 culture and universities 4 I was able to make a strong comeback culturally.

edit: Oh another point this brings about. Even though Rome wasn't building any wonders they still had this incredibly large cultural advantage. I always see people who are going for 100k culture victories talking about wonders, which ones they missed and they actually think that missing a wonder sets them back so much. Wonders mean almost nothing to a 100k culture win. You can spend 400 shields on the Great Library and get 6 culture per turn or you can spend 140 shields on a library + university and get 7 culture per turn. Wonders are just a little bonus culture in your cities that already have all other culture improvements. But missing wonders isn't that big a deal if you're going for 100k victory.

Rome was the most powerful civ in my game, and turned out to be very helpful in Middle Ages tech aquisition. In fact, they were so far stronger than the other civs that I gave up on the others for tech research and traded techs exclusively with Rome (and later Egypt). Therefore Rome became the primary tech broker to the rest of the world, and became very wealthy. They never declared war on me, perhaps because I kept 1 token soldier in each rear city (usually a warrior) to avoid having a tempting target. I also always had gpt and luxury deals with them, and maintained a Rite of Passage.


While checking a small Roman city to see how many luxuries they were getting, I stumbled upon the alteration to Roman settlers.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/alternatesettler.jpg
At first I though that cracker gave Rome half price (1 population rather than 2) settlers which would explain their rapid expansion to the OCN limit without drastically shrinking their cities. Judging from Bamspeedys remarks I gather that they were instead prevented from building settlers during a certain time period, and given bonus starting settlers. This goes a long way to explaining Rome's peculiar strength in GOTM 19 since normally civs will produce hoards of settlers until all available land is taken, regardless of how valuable the resulting cities will be. The drain on population often results in size 1-2 AI capitals until late in the Ancient Era, and core cities with low production and commerce potential. Without the need to make more settlers, Rome instead built up troops and infrastructure resulting in high early culture and scientific output.

The limit on wonder building also could have been quite helpful for Roman development. Usually a civ will waste early production in the capital on a wonder which will provide little or no benifit to long term strength. Under the right conditions, the Pyramids or Colossus can be benificial, but most of the AI civs will end up cascading to a useless wonder (Great Wall/Oracle) or one which they mishandle (Great Library/Great Lighthouse) or end up with nothing at all. This tendancy toward early wonders also makes them vulnearable to an early rush since production is diverted from defence.

Having access to 2 extra native luxuries in addition to their monopoly on ivory also helped to strengthen Rome. Most randomly generated islands will have only one luxury although it is often the exclusive source of that one luxury. Without the extra luxuries Rome would have run entertainers in all their cities, wasting growth and production. Later on, all that extra ivory probably let Rome trade for all of the other luxuries to avoid entertainers and make a sizable profit on the side.

Originally posted by cracker
My curve matching in these calculations indicates that the AI values a swordsman at a power of five relative to the valuing a spearman at power 3. Does anyone else have observations in this area?
[/B]


When I originally built my embassy before say 600BC they had 4 legions in their capital. I did this to bring them in on my Celt and Carthage wars.

I tried to settle twice on the Roman island, the first time a stack of at least 10-15 units, (~1-2 archers and 1-2 spearman) took my single swordsman.
My second landing consisted of about 20 Sipahi in total (3/4 of them landing on the east coast and the rest with a settler on the west) and the unit makeup was quite a bit more mixed, a few cavalry, macers, muskets and riflemen (macers seemed to be the most populated). One small difference I also noticed was that they were attacking me with units that are generally defense, this is pretty rare IMO for the AI to do, and they were attacking successfully which is even more rare.
Both attempts were defeated within two turns. They had a *lot* of units. Had they been part of a regular landmass they may have actually been a real opponent.

I got contact shortly after the QSC period and they had a comparable number of cities, however they were double my score and in fact more than all the rest of us combined. At the end of my game Rome was in IA by itself, and they only settled the little island to their east in all that time. And they only settled it after cities there were destroyed.

just my 0.02 € here, with some observations :
- Ottomans had a monopoly on dyes
- there was only one source of gems; in the Celtic jungle
- Rome had a monopoly on Ivory
- Egypt had wine, China had furs, but those were not monopolies
- Spain didn't have any luxuries

I never tried to sell the gems...must have been worth quite a bit. Hmmm... (doing some experiments) ... they ARE being valued higher than other luxuries.

When Roman troops landed on my continent, they did so near Mohàcs, where the dyes were. They could just as easily have landed near the silks, so apparantly they make a distinction based on availability - uhm, right ?

In my game Rome also was powerful, but they never contacted anyone besides me. The first city I put on their island(by the ivory able to get 2 ivory in radius) caused a prompt war, and they killed my spearman and razed the city. Upon making peace I made another city in the same spot, landed several pikes, rushed a barracks,walls, library, a few spearmen, and a harbor. I built a fortress on the northern ivory and put several defensive units.

In my next war against rome, the killed a few of their units on my fortress, then they completely ignored this city. They occasionally would drop a unit from a galley into the city radius, but that is all.

I landed about 40 sipahi, and promptly took a northwest city. They sent several stacks of 5-10 units lots of maces/legions with a few longbows mixed in. I think in total they had just a few knights. If they had sent all their units in one large stack they probably could have beaten me. Needless to say, at the end of the Rome war most of the sipahi were elite. They seemed to have around 5-6 defenders in each of their core cities. A few of these were muskets (they culturally flipped a mainland saltpeter city immediately before the war).

What I noticed immediately in this war was that any sipahi I left in Roman territory was killed, without exception.

I also had the Romans that never settled the large island to their east. This actually worked to my advantage as I kicked Carthage off my continent and those island cities let me keep them alive to gain multiple techs via pointy stick research.

There shear number of Legions and Medieval slowed down my domination push at least five turns of killing unit stacks before I could advance on their cities. If this had been cavalry and knights I might have ground to a halt and forces to declare peace that would have delayed my domination 20+ turns.

The sheer size of their navy again slowed me down several turns, as I didn't want to chance sending the transports to my future target of Carthage island cities until after the Rome navy was dead.

I can't offer any comments on when Rome attacked me, as they never did. We stayed at peace the whole game until such time I used my captured Carthage city as a base of war vs. them.

I think I can sum up Rome with one phrase - P.I.T.A.

The big question with Rome is what in the world were worker1 units? Instead of capturing workers as expected, they where killed as if they were scouts. I also razed a couple of Roman large towns and Did NOT get any workers . That was what told me that something was atypical with Rome.

Originally posted by LKendter
... I also razed a couple of Roman large towns and Did NOT get any workers. That was what told me that something was atypical with Rome.
Lee,

You may be misinterpreting the signals that the game is sending you. The fact the tou got no slave from the large cities that you razed has nothing to do with the "worker1" staging.

When you raze a city that you have captured from a civ, there is a calculation that takes place to determine all the civilians that would be resistors and/or unhappy due to draft/rushing. I know that all the resistors are destroyed when you raze a city and this is plrobably appropriate because if they became slaves they wouldn't follow your orders anyway.

The factor that control the resistors and lost slaves equatiosn will use the ratio of cultural power plus and RNG draw. In this game, Rom was a diliberate cultural threat and every ingame signal that you had available to you would clearly let you know this risk. No reall surprises there.

The "worker1" staging effect was just used counterbalance the extra worker and settlers that Rome began with so that they would be a balanced standoff challenge but without letting them run away with the game unfairly.

I will have to watch more closely, but I am use to getting from the following formula: (Population - 1) / 2. This has held pretty well for me.

Maybe I didn't notice before, but I don't remember razing a city before and getting nothing from a large city.

Arrghh computer ate my post. Too tired to redo. Will come back and edit this when I get a chance.

Edit: Ok here we go. Here's Rome after founding their first four cities. (India's second city is from a hut - it was founded ~ 3600 BC. Quite likely the reason India wound up the bully on the other continent, too.)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/renrome1.jpg

Here's them with 10 cities, apparently just after they had built their last allowed initial settler. Two of the cities on the map (one Indian, one Celt) were founded after the Romans' tenth.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/renrome2.jpg

Rome was very strong in my game, particularly for an initially isolated civ. They declared war on me twice in the early going when I refused tribute demands (them being so far away and all ...), although both times I was able to sue for peace before my cities were directly threatened. I brought them into the war against the Celts and they razed a Celtic city on the very next turn - they were probably about to sneak-attack themselves. I didn't catch up to Rome on the histograph until after I had swallowed up the Celts and was halfway through Carthage, and even then they still showed up stronger than anyone else remaining -- even India, who had conquered Spain --- so I never actually attacked them. They definitely did slow down after that huge starting advantage, though.

As far as city placement goes, I'm not sure what if any conclusions I can draw that I wasn't already aware of. Here's a screenshot of Rome's starting island at the end of the game. You might have to increase screen brightness to see it well.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/renrome3.jpg

I cropped off Ravenna on the southeastern peninsula in the interests of not having to scroll - hope it works - and the two southernmost city names aren't displaying. It's fairly easy to see some of their priorities. After Rome, the next city is Veii - located at the site of future horses. After that, Antium - in the middle of the ivory patch. I have no idea what their fourth city, the right-hand one of the southern pair, was supposed to capture. Interestingly, though, they didn't really lock up the spices with their first 10 cities. IIRC, I could have settled on a nearby unoccupied patch of jungle and gotten both spices with a culture expansion if I'd wanted to. (I didn't, deciding to go for the ivory I didn't have natively instead as a priority, and not really wanting to provoke Rome at that stage either.) It's also fairly easy to see that the AI doesn't really prioritize fresh water *or* coastal access very highly -- just look at Antium! -- and that they settle their cities very far apart with many wasted tiles. I think I can count 7 or 8 south of Lutetia alone, although it's possible they would have redeemed some of them if I hadn't interfered with Bolu.

Their worker development is also horrendous, much worse than I would expect from an emperor AI at that stage of the game, especially given the fast start. Did you say that their workers were modded in some fashion to slow them down? It seems to have worked - despite having more cities than anyone else early on in my game and despite getting fairly early contact with my continent due to the naval prioritization, Rome sufferered from the same early-middle-ages research slowdown as everyone else.

Renata

In my game, India was the big powerhouse. Don't know why Rome didn't have as dramatic a lead in my game as others who have posted.

I played on PTW 1.21f if that makes any difference. I'll try to attach the histographs -- hope this is the right way to do it... As you can see this wasn't pretty, but I lasted longer this time than last month, and on a higher level. Progress, I guess...

Cracker, A complete set of autosaves through 1635 AD is available if you need to look at any for debugging purposes. (I have a monster hard drive and some programming skills, so a background copy is made of every turn's autosave...) ;) Of course if you need a strong human player involved, it definitely won't help... :cry:

Culture graph
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/gotm19-d8575-histo-culture.JPG

Power graph
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/gotm19-d8575-histograph1.JPG

Yup, India was the most powerful in my game as well. Rome shot out to a lead but then fell back.

Rome was armed entirely with infantry (Legionaries, MDIs, Pikes, Longbowmen...), and though they had lots and lots of troops, I slaughtered them all with the loss of only three sipahi.

I couldn't capture some Roman workers, they dropped dead instead...

-Sirp.

My game also had a monster India who took all of Spain by himself. Monster India also seems to be the trend with the games.

Hmm India was very weak in my game so I decided to go back to the replay and try to figure out why.

Surprisingly, India popped a settler in my game as well, or perhaps they were given one I don't know. My map at 3150BC looks exactly the same as Renata's.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/shillen-3150BC-minimap.jpg

Here is the turning point though. Spain must have just gotten really lucky with the RNG or something. In 2270 BC they captured India's free settler city.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Shillen-2270BC-minimap.jpg

In 1350BC Spain razed one of India's core cities as well. India hadn't captured any cities during the war yet. In 530BC the war was still going and the Spanish razed yet another Indian core city. In 250BC the Spanish raze another city, but this one was far from their capital at least. In 150BC they raze another city fairly close to Delhi. Wow AI-AI wars usually don't last this long especially when one of them is getting the short end of the stick.

Around 10AD seems to mark the end of the war for now. India would get finished off later in the game though. Notice all the Spanish cities surrounding Delhi. Kind of hard to do anything when your core cities are all controlled by another civ.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Shillen-10AD-minimap.jpg

In my game, rome had an early gain culture and strength. They did not keep the lead however

Here is the culture graph. At the end of the game, India, Rome, and myself are about equal. I am nost sure why Rome failed to maintain a lead over India. I would have thought that they would have kept their early advantave, especially with their early doubled cultural buildings. Tech advancement for all civs was fairly even, with only china falling behind by 2-3 techs.

Rome did have a huge army and navy, but other than attacking the fog, he did not do very much with it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_culture.jpg

China's poor start must have been due to losing their first settler. They don't create their second city until 2190 bc:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_replay_bc2190.JPG

So a bad start for an AI seems to hurt them culturally, but an early start does not help. I thought my game a good test case due to its incredible stability. On the mainland with the 4 civs no city changed hands for the first 5230 years! Rome killed a few indian cities on its home continent and the island to one side of rome changed sides, but those were pretty minor

Here is 230 BC when the last city on the mainland was founded by China:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_replay_bc210.JPG

And 1230 ad when war broke out:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_replay_ad1230.JPG

Even then the same cities went back and forth as it was 2 vs 2 + rome and I on opposite sides not doing much. The same 2-3 citys switched back and forth and by an odd coincidence the final result is identical.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_replay_ad1360.JPG

(Minor spelling edit and added the following on the AI war)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_replay_aiwar.JPG

The simple explanation is that although Rome had a very good head start, it really is a dismal civ for building culture. It builds very few cultural buildings, and against religious India it just fell behind.

Rome had a huge army in my game too, but my sipahi made very short work of it :)

It did cause me a little more trouble at sea though, since the best ships I got were caravels.

-Sirp.

My game played out very differently to many of you.

I don't recall the date but had an early war with Rome who bought contact with me through one of my neighbours. Rome invaded on the northeast near my silks.

Spain and Egypt struggled for supremacy on their continent with Egypt becoming a monster in terms of area. The Ottomans establshed a four city bridgehead of Egytpian controlled Spain which brought peace with Egypt and India (the Sipahi were amazing). Egypt launched a sneak attack and drove the Ottomans off the continent. I was able to bring Rome in as an ally (Celts went early'ish and Carthage much later both a result of the sipahi but both were gone for this).

It was at this point that I really started to notice the Roman behaviour. They were not as nearly as aggressive as they usually are and their culture and science were amazing!

More desulotory struggles with Egypt reduced them to thier Chinese possessions and Indian expansion was never an issue.

At this point (late industrial era for the Ottomans) I was starting to wonder if the Romans were going to go for space. I mean they were so technologically advanced and they were staying put... there assistance in fighting Egypt was an intense shore bombardment.

Anyway, with Egypt gone and all but a small 6 -7 city independent India, I finally got espionage from India and successfully placed a spy in democratic Rome. As I was not in the modern era I could not check on the space race but my spy announced several Roman components almost immediately and Rome had been in the modern era for some time.

I guess I panicked! I brought my transports home and declared war on Rome and bribed India to help. Rome destroyed my coast nearest their continent (bombers). I did not initially have tanks and suddenly Roman mech infantry and modern armour were landing in the south of my home continent. India lost their city on the island east of Rome and my efforts at landing were frightening. My army was penned in beside the Roman northeast city (shades of Anzio.) I could reinforce about as fast as I lost, but all my artillery was elsewhere and Rome was raising the southwestern part of my continent after running amock with modern armour.

I was not making any significant head way as Rome was so technologically advanced. After clearing out their invasion with loads of tanks (if they had landed a few more transport loads it would have been very bad as opposed to horrible... (NB., if you shell trnasports and the covering ships, the AI will call off the invasions so artillery can be a real life saver)) I sought peace which they gave, again that was unexpected.

However, to fight me Rome swithched from democracy and lost a huge productive edge in building the space ship, so I declared war on India who was still at war with Rome and the result was a domination victory but Rome had about eight (8) or nine (9) of the required components (replay is currently not working on my system so I cannot trace this as well as I wish I could).

So, in conclusion, Rome's technological and cultural lead worried me for some time and when I finally took notice it scared the bejeezus out of me. Modern armour and mech inf versus infantry and sipahi?

Roman control of the sea did not matter too much except that it ensured that I never could mount a serious invasion, and the AI's inability to really pursue amphibious warfare was a blessing.

Cracker asked about emotions, well I was pretty stressed at parts and I really figured it was all over when my home continent was invaded.

Hope this is useful.

Renata,

The Roman workers were not modded to slow them down. The Romans had 4 eqWorkers to start with.

The location at the far southeast was an iron source.

In the testing replays, it was amazing to see the Roman AI always target the resource locations. The resource locations you see on that large island were randomly generated by the original map seed.

I tested just to see what would happen and regardless where I moved the horses and the iron, the Roman AI would always settle on them.

The settler that went to the far southeast position for the iron seem like it was on the magical mystery tour at first because I could find no reason to spend 10 turns hiking that far while bypassing a number of good city sites.
The ingame RNG effects could effect some decisions but notice how consistent the city placement is due to being isolated from other human influences.

@ Cracker - knew there had to be something! Should've done a clear-map before commenting; thanks for the input. Veddy veddy interesting, btw.

@ Greebley - I think the Celts lost a settler in my game like China seemed to in yours, accounting for them having only two cities by the time Rome settled their 10th. Carthage got a golden age very early on that wasn't wonder-triggered; bet they took a pot shot at a Celtic settler pair.

Renata

Tought to share few screenshots too about the Roman process.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/3450copy.jpg

Seems like the Romans always built their 4 first cities like this, as they have done so in all the other spoilers too so far.

They must have had those 3 additional settlers from the beginning in addition to the starting one.
I dont think its otherwise possible to expand so fast, unless there were huts that always gave settlers to them.
Seems like the Indians had one too, or popped from hut, but that didnt help them in my game.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/1700copy.jpg

The early cities helped them somewhat in expansion, but not so much, as after they had these 10 cities,
they didnt build new ones for a long time, but only focused on infrastructure & military.

I contacted the Romans at 1150 BC, but unfortunately had a save only at 1400 bc and 1000 bc,
so here's the 1000 bc shot of their lands. (bad image quality due the downsizing)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/romans1000bc.jpg

Their power, culture and score all were roughly double of what Ottomans had at that time.
They were about equal in tech, what is unusual for a civ in isolated island.
Usually those civs are far behind. But their heavy investment in infrastructure after the 10th city rather then expansion must have helped on that.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rome_attack_470bc.jpg

About Roman wars: they unloaded a single horseman as seen above at 470 bc, and declared war turn after.
War lasted around 500 years, but nothing really happened, romans unloaded few units now and then either to the location shown above,
or then they sailed round the whole continent, and unloaded their units there, to exactly same height :) Maybe they were aiming at Sogut, my capital,
what was undefended, since it was safely far from borders.
They were not a very serious threat at any point. AI just cant threaten anyone overseas.
They dont know how to mass unload units from 10 galleys into mountains/hills etc.

I had no other Roman wars, and Rome had only one other war with Carthage, razing one Carth city on Roman continent, but thats about it.
I didnt need the Roman lands, and didnt have the resources to build big enough army, since efforts were in going to space quickly,
and my continent was big enough to give tech @ 4 turns in industrial and modern eras. But thats off topic already.

Few screens about events on the other continent.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/600adcopy.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/990adcopy.jpg

Even tho Spain was equal in tech with me, and Egypt was way behind in tech and broke,
they managed to wipe Spain off the planet in only 330 years. Unusually good war performance for AI. (or very bad performance from Spain)

And here's the Culture and Power graphs.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/powercopy.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/culturecopy.jpg

As seen here, my game differs from many others by India being the weakest civ troughout almost the whole game.
That leads me to post yet another screenshot, about India, even tho bit off-topic (sorry).

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/india_unimproved.jpg

India strangely had loads of unimproved tiles in their territory (roughly half),
even tho they had NOT been in any war for atleast in hunderds of years.
(screenshot taken in 1465 AD, final turn, unimproved terrain marked with red U, city radius drawn with blue)
If they had improved all their terrain, they would certainly been more powerful.

(BtW sorry about using the Skanky Burns resource mod as seen in screenshots, but as i can see they were not prohibited in this GotM yet as the announcement was given at 10th, and i had played the current GotM game almost to the end at that date.)

Well, Rome certainly affected my game in a very unintended sense, probably...

When I saw the general layout of the world and the huge cultural lead AND tech parity that Rome kept, I simply decided to go for a Diplomatic win--whereas on a small map I may have normally tried for a Conquest or Domination.

There was one demand from Rome that I DID not give into that provoked my only war with them. I believe I got EVERYONE else in the world allied with me against them. I think it started right before I got Siphai and that Rome made one minor troop landing on my soil that was quickly eliminated.

I managed to take and hold a Roman city where Brundisium is in Renata's pic--I had a LOT of units in it to keep it from flipping and it held off a fair stream of attackers. I got Walls and then a Library for some culture, but I did not notice anything unusual when I built those...

I plopped one more city down North of Neapolis (on the hill on the river on the coast in Renata's pic) and then we made peace after it withstood a couple of assaults. I never really went and attacked Roman units.

Spain was the powerhouse--probably because I made her some gpt deals to get her techs. Then she would extend the favor back when I had the new tech in the other tree. Rome seemed to keep up with us both--so Spain was probably dealing with him on the side. I think I DID make one tech deal with Rome after our peace.

I think I lost two galleys trying to get to the 'new' world and then built only two galleys to get to Rome--and I was really up in the air as to whether to invade the Roman island or just sit tight.

So anyway, Rome just told me what type of game to play--I never really bothered to wonder how they had gotten to where they were--I just lived with it. ;)

Originally posted by cracker
Renata,

The Roman workers were not modded to slow them down. The Romans had 4 eqWorkers to start with.



What exactly are eqWorkers? I noticed several Roman Workers that died instead of being captured. I'm guessing that was them. What was so special about them?

The several workers that died were "worker1" workers.

There is really no difference in what "workers", "eqworkers", and "worker1" units do. These different unit names just let us control some of the equalization features between the different game versions.

As an example, the eqworkers appear in the Civ3v1.29 version to adjust the purchase/trading cost for early workers to be in the 110 to 130 gold per worker range just like for the "workers" in PTW.

The "worker1" was just an offshoot of the extra settler balancing used to keep Rome in the game without having Rome eat you alive.

The odd things about Rome had little effect on me due to the way my game played out. Nonetheless, I had an emotional reaction.

They puzzled me a bit. I didn't understand how they'd grown so quickly, why they weren't building wonders, and why they left land for the Celts and Carthage to settle. When I attacked them I found that they also had a surprising amount of infrastructure and military units. Their culture and research seemed unusual but didn't surprise me, I assumed these were just a side effect of Rome's fast growth and resulting power.

I never investigated their cities. I seldom investigate cities (other than what I learn when I establish an embassy of course.) I figure that the guesses I can make about a Civ are good enough that it isn't worth spending gold for more exact info. Perhaps that isn't the case if a Civ has been modded but I never considered that possibility. I guess I should have, there were enough odd things about Rome to clue me in, it just didn't occur to me.

I think that the largest impact Rome had on me, strategically and emotionally, is not on GOTM19, it is on future GOTMs. In future when I see something odd about a Civ I'm likely to think "I wonder what may have been changed about this Civ." That is a rather large impact, it will change the game that this thought will now start popping up when I see something odd.

I honestly didn't notice anything so special about Rome. Sure Rome was big and strong, but they had their own island and there was no where else for them to go, so I didn't pay much attention to them. Toward their end, I had about 50 Sipahies and they didn't even have knights; so talking Rome was like taking candies from the baby; it was a very sad day for my Ottoman empire, but it had to be done.

I left Rome pretty much to their own devices for the whole game. I made an early mistake in expecting the Emperor civs on my continent to behave like Emperor civs. I carefull constructed a barrier to keep them out of the north then settle it at my leisure but found to my horror that the Celts were pretty much crippled from the start. I had just wasted a large chunk of my early time so I dont think my QSC will be a thing of beauty. I made up my mind fairly early to go for a dom win this game, then changed it to go for space then changed back again for the fun of it :evil: and because I couldnt spend any more time on the game so swept the board.

My game fell very naturally into distinct expansion phases. Horsemen and swords took care of the Celts. Sipahi took care of the Carthaginians and established a large foothold on the big continent. Tanks finished the game. I could see that I would need a large part of the main continent for a dom win so focussed on establing my bridgehead there and left Rome alone. They had a truly amazing number of ships at one point. It was hard to sail anywhere without hitting them!

A fun game but my dom will be centuries behind most and a millenium behind SirP!

Originally posted by LKendter
I will have to watch more closely, but I am use to getting from the following formula: (Population - 1) / 2. This has held pretty well for me.

I actually thought it was floor(Population/2) - basically the same thing. I can certainly never remember razing a large city and getting nothing for it before...

-Sirp.

I had never realized how much a civs different priorities could affect its growth. I suspect that I should learn what the civs emphasis are. It would improve my game.

It occurs to me that one could use resources to direct an AI civ's growth to either make it "historically accurate" or to make its placement more intelligent. Might be a useful technique.

Since a settler can change into 2 workers, can you make a worker1 turn into a single normal worker in a similar manner? That would allow one to avoid workers that just died.

I stated this elsewhere, but I think the changes to Rome was a good thing. I feel flexibility to handle the unexpected is part of what makes a good player. I personally liked what was done and would want to see this trend continued in future GOTM's.

Originally posted by col
I left Rome pretty much to their own devices for the whole game. I made an early mistake in expecting the Emperor civs on my continent to behave like Emperor civs. I carefull constructed a barrier to keep them out of the north then settle it at my leisure but found to my horror that the Celts were pretty much crippled from the start.

I took the same course that you did. Blocking the other civs and then developing the northern end of the continent.

However, I seem to be the only person that played the game this month who had trouble invading the Celts. Things got so bad after Rome invaded me at the same time, that I lost Sogut and Iznik (with my Forbidden Palace) to them. I managed to survive and eventually took over my continent and ended with a diplomatic win in 1590.

I take comfort from the fact that I suffered such an embarassing loss and still managed to win the game. :rolleyes:

Cracker asked at the beginning of the thread how we handled the special attributes he gave Rome. I think that you can see that a lot of people left Rome alone. Col seems to have summed it up when he says that in order to get a domination victory you would have to conquer the main continent. Therefore, it made sense to bypass Rome. In doing so I think a lot of the special attributes cracker built into Rome went undiscovered by many players.

I stated this elsewhere, but I think the changes to Rome was a good thing. I feel flexibility to handle the unexpected is part of what makes a good player. I personally liked what was done and would want to see this trend continued in future GOTM's.
Greebley

This is one reason that I likd to shadow the GOTM and finally made me decide to submit my first one #19. If I wanted to just play normally I can fire up the PTW cd anytime. I enjoyed the special challenges that Rome brought. They were the dominant civ in my game in terms of power and culture, until I was able to out research them.

In my game, Rome was a nuisance, not much more. Okay, I founded a city on their continent and they broke a deal by declaring war. And their legion SOD captured the city.

This added to their prior extortions and marked them victims for my Sipahi once Celts and noeCs were history. Beginning of Industrial Times, I started a dog-pile against them and invaded. Capturing their continent by sipahis with rifles for defence did not create any problems, because they mostly had legions and only about 5 muskets/rifles. And the war gave us 2 Great Leaders for ToE and Hoover. Regrettably, Rome did not built any wonders (now we know why) to conquer.

PS: Most of their ships were eaten by the squids and thus their navy made no trouble at all.

I seem to remember being puzzled as to why Rome was not building wonders. The rest of thier behavior i attributed to being alone on the landmass.

I invaded them after i had infantry. There was a hill i dropped a transport full onto and then added saphi and a worker for a fortress. After dropping off plenty of saphi and killing many bypassing medievil infantry i attacked and razed a very large metropolis and founded my own town in its place. Some quick culture allowed normal border expansion and a safe place to base operations from.

OK, here's something odd.
Rome in 875BC (roughly my first contact)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/875BC-rome-sm.jpg

Rome in 490BC:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/490BC-rome-civ-sm.jpg

And Rome in 10BC:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/10BC-rome-civ-sm.jpg

I note the following:

City----------------875BC-------490BC-------10BC
Antium--------------3-----------------3-------------4
Cumae--------------3-----------------2-------------5
Hispalis-------------3-----------------2-------------6
Lutetia--------------3-----------------3-------------5
Neapolis------------4-----------------4-------------6
Pisae----------------2-----------------4-------------6
Pompeii-------------3-----------------3-------------4
Ravenna------------2-----------------1-------------4
Rome----------------5-----------------4-------------5
Veii-------------------4-----------------5-------------7
Vironconium--------2-----------------4-------------6

TOTAL POP--------34----------------35-----------58

Something odd is going on. Between 875BC and 490BC there should have been 17 turns by my reckoning. Rome, for example, has 5 improved grassland squares it can work, so there's no reason it shouldn't be at +2 fpt. Yet it loses a population point, rather than gaining a couple. An 875BC city investigation shows Rome was working those 5 tiles, with +2fpt. Furthermore they had 3 luxuries, so they had 3 happy and 2 content people. Where, I wonder, did the population go?

I would suggest that of the 11 cities, only Pompeii and Lutetia should be at less than +2fpt, and perhaps Pisae, depending on how the AI split tiles with Rome. If one makes allowance for the bonus foods present (two cows, for instance) then an average of +2fpt per city is reasonable. Rome should have generated +22fpt overall, which for towns should average to just over one population growth per turn. Yet instead of growing by 17 (875BC-490BC), the total population grew only by one! I don't believe they made 16 workers, surely.

Between 490BC and 10BC the population grew by 23 - almost exactly the predicted 1 per turn (24 turns) - and there is little or no irrigated grasslands, so I don't think that explains the delta.

What I'm wondering is...was the AI trying to build 'banned' units, and then losing the population somehow? Or is this just indicative of the AIs dreadful population/food balancing skills.

:hmm:

The only explanation I could see is the :whipped:!

Originally posted by hotrod0823
:hmm:

The only explanation I could see is the :whipped:!

I bet you're right. They were pop rushing units.
Where there's a whip, there's a way.

My experience with rome:

At first I noticed the fact that they were very very strong both militarily, culturally and scientifically. I traded with them to get on par, but later they actually outreseached me to MT when I was waging expensive wars against carthage. I think this was mainly because they had a very compact empire with lots of lushy meadows and rivers.

Some other strange things:
- They had lots of galleys floating around. As my first emphasis was on capturing my own continent I did not really care, and they nicely killed all squids around the continent :-). Later on, however, when I was at war with Rome, they did have the annoying tendency to have lots of galleys around the "Corinthian Gulf" between the two continents, but for some reason they seldom attacked my galleys.
- They did not have saltpeter, so by the time I went to war with them it was a very unfair MI / Sipahi+riflemen battle. Even though they never really had a chance, I was surprised by the strong counterattack after my first invasion. As I was overconfident due to my tech lead I actually grabbed fout cities in the first turn of my invasion (after landing, of course) including Rome. However this did mean that my defenders (riflemen by then) were unable to get to the two inland cities and I had to defend with my sipahi. I must have lost more than a dozen sipahi in their first counterattack, which really annoyed me. After mopping up all their units, however, only their 2 pikemen per city remained and it was a lost battle
- they were really aggresive, even for an emperor AI. I was in an alliance with them and they declared war on me to drop six units and rush to my capital, and later when we had killed Carthage together (and he even managed to capture the Carthagan saltpeter city) he declared war on me again, allowing me to kick him off the continent with my leftover army and capture their new saltpeter source before they had it hooked on.
- I think they actually had more workers than normal, I have captured at least 12 workers which allowed me to build two RR tiles a turn (before I was democracy) allowing me to move my armies around very efficiently during the invasion.

In short, they were a worthy opponent initially, but their lack of saltpeter made them less of a threat later on, even though this is when Lepanto should have occurred. I first thought that saltpeter-hunger was the reason for their initial agressiveness, but as they also declared war on me after capturing the carthagan saltpeter (but before defending it properly, as far as the AI ever defends anything properly) it might just be a matter of character.

My thoughts are that Rome would have been more significant if they had more luxuries, perhaps a monopoly, or had the other continent been more difficult to reach.

As it was I simply worked around them until later in the game when they were a pushover.

And, IIRC, they had horses but no mounted units at all. Not complaining, it made this emperor game even easier. :D

Like several others I basically left Rome alone. I fought a couple non-conclusive wars with Rome.

I finished off Carthage a bit late in 800 AD or so. I then debate attacking India or Rome. I'm glad I chose India.

After I rolled through India (while I was mopping them up) I made the mistake of trying for Rome.

I figured that with 10 Musketmen and a dozen or so Siphi that I would be able to take and hold a town. Then I would pick off his knights (Rome had no Saltpeter).

Unfortunately, I was greeted with wave after wave of Mideviel Infantry and Pikemen. The hoardes of Roman Frigates soon showed up to sink my ironclads and transport ships. All in all, I lost probably 12 muskets and 14 Siphi.

After that I decided that Rome didn't matter, and I went on by ignoring them. By this time I had at least a two tech lead on them, and by fermenting wars for them, I kept them slow.

I think that Rome's lack of wonders kept them out of the game entirely. Once they had covered their own island, they stagnated.

The other side effect of the Roman wonder setting was that for the first time ever in a game over Regent, I got every single Mideviel Wonder for myself by building them. This was because I kept the wonder enabled civs embroiled in wars and forced them to keep building units.

For my game I would say that the wonder settings caused the game to be probably the easiest Emporer level that I've played.

Emotions:
Surprize - first meeting revealed they had many more cities, were ahead in tech and culture.
Fear - Embassy revealed 10-12 legions in their capital.
Disappointment - Rome was a worthless ally, opting to just bombard improvements rather than landing an assault force that could have better occupied the Carthaginians.
Respect - Being so productive, yet lacking saltpeter they made a very profitable trading partner. India, Spain and with a little help from me China and Egypt all turned out to be good profit makers, accepting my techs for large GPT.
Love - Being able to trade so much (first in an attempt to avoid Sneak Attacks, then in an attempt to make a lot of money.) made the Romans "gracious" enough to vote for me.

Having such a strong Rome made be abandon any thought of conquest. I didn't want domination as that was how I won last month and it was the obvious choice with the powerful Sipahi. I would have gone for the spaceship had I not run out of RL playing time.

My navy never had the chance to test the Romans since my first galleys were all sunk by squid, I opted not to build anymore, even after the completion of the GLighthouse. The Roman navy did make me turn off "Show friend moves" as this added 2-3minutes to the in between turn.

I'm glad Rome couldn't build wonders because I would have been tempted to mess with them and probably would have been handed my head.

Originally posted by jeffelammar
The other side effect of the Roman wonder setting was that for the first time ever in a game over Regent, I got every single Mideviel Wonder for myself by building them. This was because I kept the wonder enabled civs embroiled in wars and forced them to keep building units.

For my game I would say that the wonder settings caused the game to be probably the easiest Emporer level that I've played.
FYI, from the 4 or 5 version of the game that I played on the raw setup, Rome would have never gotten any wonders in the game if they started with one settler, with wonders on, and alone on that small continent. In all of the raw test versions, "someone" attacked Rome early because they were so weak and so far behind in tech.

Originally posted by cracker

FYI, from the 4 or 5 version of the game that I played on the raw setup, Rome would have never gotten any wonders in the game if they started with one settler, with wonders on, and alone on that small continent. In all of the raw test versions, "someone" attacked Rome early because they were so weak and so far behind in tech.

That is interesting. I can see the inherent weaknesses of Rome's start position. They would have been crushed.

My main point was that the Roman inability to build wonders made it much easier to embroil the AI's in in war. This made few differeces in the game.
1. Tech advantage. I was able to stay in Monarchy and still lead the tech race. I did this by making sure that Rome was at war with other nations.
2. Minimized wonder cascade. Once the Celts and Carthage were out of the way, there were only 4 opponents even trying to build wonders. Egypt was down and out, India was in expansion mode, Spain and China behind in tech.

What it boils down to is that by being that Powerful, Rome was not absorbed by one of the other AI's. This allowed more opportunities to play relatively powerful AIs off each other.

Originally posted by jeffelammar
What it boils down to is that by being that Powerful, Rome was not absorbed by one of the other AI's. This allowed more opportunities to play relatively powerful AIs off each other.
Yes, ;) ;) .

What I remember about the Romans:

- After watching the "history of time" playback, I was wondering how Rome had 6 cities before I had 2. Now it makes sense.

- Rome had a huge navy, which I sunk in almost one turn with my more than huge navy (20+ BBs, 20+ DDs, 10 transports).

- Rome kept invading the eastern coast of "my" island. Brilliantly, they keep landing on Mt or Hill tiles (until I put units on all the coastal locations).

- Rome nuked me at least 8 times. They nuked both my worst main-isle city and my Capital, but never the same city twice.

I was wondering why Rome was the only Civ without a wonder.
Very interesting game. Rome in my game:
http://home.adelphia.net/~z0dd/GOTM19_z0dd_maps.JPG

My main emotion about Rome was FEAR!!

I normally run a very lean military game with just 1 garrison per city (no walls) and 15-20 unit invasion force. If Rome had ever landed 30-40 units (legionaries early or cavalry late), I would have been toast!!

After realizing that they were the 800lb gorilla of the game, I just kept giving goodies (cities, money, tech, etc) to them to make them an ally in all of my other wars. I was glad to win (via domination) before needing to have to invade their island.

I kind of attributed the lack of wonders to being behind in tech for the early part of the game. Their early, huge lead in culture, was a major influence for me away from a culture type victory.

I was also a little surprised how weak the Celts were. The jungle slowed them down a bit, but I was expecting more Gallic Swordsmen (they had iron, but never hooked it up).

I can't remember EXACT details until after 1365 AD (didn't know to keep notes! :eek: ). version 1.29f

Ironically, I played this game to survive. Roman galley's contacted me after a few failed attempts at killing squid and sailing through all of the FOG gods. I purchased contacts with the civs on the other islands through them, then sold these to the Celts and Joan's evil twin.

I NEVER had a war with Rome. In fact, they were GRACIOUS with me throughout the game! Up until the time when I had my 5th spaceship component built.... then they were upset.

We signed (about 5 turns after meeting) a MPP which was kept in tact until 1710 AD. Although Rome got me in a few wars with the other island (and the celts, which was welcome.... ;) ), there wasn't ever a bad period in our relationship. We traded techs and luxuries. And, heck, at the end, even if they DID want to declare war with me, I was the one supplying their saltpeter and oil? (or whatever big resource they didn't have).

The first war in the game (other than pre-ancient times) occurred in 1365, where Spain (with 3 cities LOL) declared war on the powerhouse Egypt (#1 in histograph throughout the AD's). Rome eventually signed an alliance with India and attacked Egypt. Celt's attacked Rome. Celts died (with a little help from their "brothers in arms" :goodjob: ).

Rome was a VERY useful trading partner. During the industrial ages, they kept me in the game. I then took the lead in the Modern Age, and Rome lost its usefulness..... EXCEPT that neither Egypt nor India had made even one spaceship component (India ended the game with one).

After losing a few cities, they finally built new ones in the extreme NE corner of the other continent (growth was apparently not a priority).

The key to my strategy was to not fall too behind in tech, and to not lose my sorry behind in a war. Because I had build enough Dragoons (Siphai), Rome didn't mess with me when push came to shove (I guess?!). The 500 years of MPP didn't hurt either.... :D

Personally, I am very glad for the modifications.... it gave the game some spice (and, in Rome's case, I couldn't beat 'em, so I joined 'em!). I suppose the #1 reason why Rome didn't attack me was because I didn't try to settle on their island. In fact, I don't think I purchased a galley or transport the entire game. I knew Rome would take care of the seas, which was evident when Egypt was at war with me with 120 modern land troops and NO NAVY..... ;)

Thanks to Rome for my 1782 launch on Emperor Level! Here, Here!!

-- From The Cellar :cooool:

Rome – a Summary

My earliest recollection of Rome is their galleys working up our eastern shores against fog and squids. At one awkward moment they landed two legionaries near an unprotected city on our northeastern peninsula, necessitating an expensive peace treaty. Perhaps that set the tone for all our future dealings with them which were always positive and friendly.

They always had a large naval presence off our eastern shores where the three continents came together and at times this was a source of unease. I generally went out of my way to meet their requests and do business with them. They backed us unfailingly in confrontations with Carthage and Egypt. They paid me so generously for resources, it funded all costs except research.

Twice over the years when their affections began to fade I gave them a city and each time you could feel the room warm up. Were they playing me or visa versa?

After the fall of Carthage I was about to rotate my pumped up military into the jumping off point prepared in an ex-Celtic city I had on the Roman continent. I agonized for more than a week and mutual good history of the two countries and their financial interdependence held me in check. I also realized I would be all alone without Caesar coming around to buy and sell. Much later when only three nations remained Rome voted for us in the UN.

Rome always seemed like a big puppy dog, easily dissuaded from serious violence and eager to please. Rome missed the hard, nasty edge of Egypt, the other definite personality in my game. This Caesar was the most personable AI I have encountered – my distracted early good humor seemed to play into the special early developmental circumstances of this particular Rome - and here I thought it was my innate charm.

kiregh

My notes on Rome:

1700BC Spot red border off SE coast, that'll be the Romans. Unable to make contact yet.

1675BC Can now rule out land bridge with Roman land, there is however a coastal bridge which means trade will be possible.

1350BC Send first galley towards Rome, it is immediately destroyed by squid

11000BC Second galley. Ditto.

750BC Finally contact Rome with galley, they are behind in tech, but have a huge lead 619 vs 365. Trade code of laws for world map and all their gold (117g). They have 13 towns to our 12, so not sure why they rate so high. Perhaps they have a huge military. Met one of their galleys, just off their coast, so it was only a matter of a turn or two before they contacted Carthage or the Celts. They have almost filled their island but their is an unoccupied island to their E. Looks like it must have started with free settlers as it dominated the histogram from a very early stage. Trade contact with Rome to Celts for 2 workers and to Carthage for world map and 135g.

650BC Gain all contacts, ranking is: Rome 653, India 498, Ottomans 394, Egypt 378 ... Establish embassy with Rome. The city of Rome has 3 legions defending.

430BC Build first harbor. Trade monotheism to rome for 1g, world map and ivory.

50AD Rome threatens us for dyes. We laugh at their audacity.

110AD Trade theology to Rome for ivory. Found Bolu on NW coast of Roman island.

150AD The evil Romans sneak attack and sack Bolu. We lose our ivory as we are now at war. Egypt and China declare war on Romans in exchange for engineering. Spain declares war on Rome for 210g. India is Rome's only ally.

This is where my notes end, but I ended up taking a Roman coastal city with knights, sued for peace (Republican war weariness was kicking in), built a barracks, moved all my knights to that city (about 20-25) and then once military tradition was discovered upgraded them to Sipahi, and took out the remaining Roman towns between 460AD and 560AD.

Rome did build a few galleys in my game, but not much more than would be expected from an island nation. They didn't establish contact with the northern nations until I gave it to them in 350BC, in an attempt to speed up research. When I was at war, I managed to build more galleys than them, and was able maintain control of the sea by attacking their galleys. Rome never managed a landing on Ottoman soil.

After securing my home continent I considered attacking India first, but Rome had the advantage of being closer and connected by coastal tiles. Their high power rating was also a bit flattering as their early cities gave them a big rating boost, but their real strength was limited by their island status. They built quite a few legions and medieval infantry, but these were beatable with knights, and dogfood against sipahi. I think I took them out before they had a chance to trade for saltpeter, having only just gained gunpowder, so I missed out on seeing galleases.

They certainly made me sit up and look! After taking out the Celts with swords just after my QSC I got to Knights and decided to take out Rome before Carthage as their culture and tech was powering along. I had settled two cities in the NE jugle and and landed 15 knights and 10 swords to declare war with (Yes no decent intelligence gained prior to this event). Two things struck me as out of the ordinary.

1. The shear number of units I faced. A real mix of ancient and medieval units that by weigh of number overwelmed my attack, which withdrew into my towns to defend. I can now see what an AI gets up to with no wonders or settler building being done. When I realised that I was not going to be able to keep my towns I then was surprised by the second point.
2. I asked for and got peace! Iwas not expecting this as I was on the back foot and had not taken any of Romes cities. It was only a couple of turns into the war. Normally an AI in this situation would not even accept your envoy.

After that I went for domination by bypassinf Rome and using them as a trading partner. Their massive cultural and tech lead did not bother me as my domination came shortly after entering the first mellinium.

Originally posted by denyd
If Rome had ever landed 30-40 units (legionaries early or cavalry late), I would have been toast!!

This was also another interesting point. As I was progressing in my domination of the second continent with my suped up cav my home continent was mainl undefended. According to my advisor Rome always had the larger army even up to the point of my domination victory. They could have made my life hell but were easily bought for luxuries.

Originally posted by denyd
If Rome had ever landed 30-40 units (legionaries early or cavalry late), I would have been toast!!


This is part of what I was trying to get at earlier. (Or at least what I was thinking)

The fundamental issue was that Rome was left with a huge army that could have been used (by a human) to overrun any other tribe. Instead they expanded and stagnated.

In my game, in the hands of a human Rome would have rolled me under. In the "hands" of the AI, I didn't even have to appease them. The most painful part of war with Rome way the loss of shoreline improvements. But most of Rome's navy was near my most corrupt cities on the starting isle. (I had my palace in Sogut and my FP in Carthage, so the middle was quite corrupt)

I may be mistaken, but the biggest effect of Rome's "special" settings was to equip Rome with a huge army that it didn't know how to use. This is always a problem for the AI, but by pushing the issue, the settings put Rome into an even more laughable state.

I am not saying that the settings were a bad thing. I am just trying to understand all the implications.

At 1000 BC, Rome is the power on the block, but doesn't know any other civilizations yet.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Replay_1000bc.JPG

In 880 BC, I meet Spain and Rome on the same turn, obtain a mpa, and react with the following mental notes:

1) Make sure I keep at least 1 good defender in every coastal city. The Romans are infamous in my games for randomly landing groups of legions, which is sometimes :eek: and sometimes :smoke:.

2) With all that culture, and that development, I suspected that Rome was rigged from the beginning. Caesar doesn't usually build culture, and with no bonuses Rome would have to be both severely isolated and pop a free settler or two early on to get that high. Rome was easly over 2x the culture of anyone, including India, early on. I quickly managed to catch up to just over half with cheap libraries from Literature, but was wary of taking Rome on early in the game- too much flip risk.

3) Workers needed. Seeing Rome so powerful already prompted me to build my 'worker pump' faster than I usually do, in order to catch up in cash and tech.

4) Tech trading bonanza, as Cracker intended- once I realized that Rome didn't know, or was likely to know, the AI on the large continent, I set about brokering for most of the Middle Ages.

In 550 BC, most AI civs, and the Ottomans, are in either Monarchy or Republic. Rome goes for Monarchy, and starts a relative slide in the power rankings from then on.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Replay_510bc.JPG

270 AD:

By now, the Celts have settled on Rome's island, had their cities taken, and lost one of their main cities. Rome has declared war on me as well as the Celts, and is about to lose the city they just conquered to knights. Also, a minor skirmish between Rome and Carthage has occurred, setting off Golden Ages for both civilizations. Rome is attempting to fight NuMercs with Legions, and failing miserably. Carthage has the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens, and a well-developed core. Rome turns to the Celts instead... and I go hunting.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Replay_270ad.JPG

At this stage, I'm waiting for legions to arrive and create trouble for my coastal cities. The most I ever see are 6 landing to take the Celtic city... unusual in most of my games, where Rome is traditionally very annoying in landing random legions to annoy cities. Rome should be picking on me, as the 8 knights I have are the only non-spear or warrior units I have, but instead Caesar's running into the Carthagnian NuMerc shield wall. Building up Rome's navy didn't help it that much- Rome spent a lot of time killing fog, and didn't launch many naval expeditions.

570 AD:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Replay_570ad.JPG

I've taken all the Celtic cities, and Rome has obtained one small, tundra-choked Carthagnian city for their troubles. Isolating Rome allowed it to be used for a brokering opportunity, but it also put the 'maritime invasion' jinx on it that tends to confuse the AI.

980 AD:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Replay_980ad.JPG

I'm about to take my first Spanish city. Why Spain and not Rome?
Rome is technically stronger, but the powergraph doesn't show that Rome is far behind in tech, and will not get rifles for some time. Also, Rome has high culture, making flip risks possible. The victory type dictated attacking the larger continent at some point, and I chose to attack sooner rather than later. Rome continued squabbling with other civs, but remains stagnant from this point on.

The endgame:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Replay_Lastfewturns.JPG

Edit: The endgame shots are supposed to show the inability of Rome in the late Middle Ages/early Industrial Age to sufficiently counterattack in a short time, despite their ability to sit and build a nice army on their own for quite some time. My Sipahi didn't roll through Rome as fast as the other civs due to my desire to silence rebels and rush libraries, giving Caesar time to get his units out. He sent some longbows, and a few Cavalry, but otherwise the response to my invasion was decidedly lacking.

Originally posted by zagnut
Cracker asked at the beginning of the thread how we handled the special attributes he gave Rome. I think that you can see that a lot of people left Rome alone. Col seems to have summed it up when he says that in order to get a domination victory you would have to conquer the main continent. Therefore, it made sense to bypass Rome. In doing so I think a lot of the special attributes cracker built into Rome went undiscovered by many players.

Agreed. First priority was home continent. This took forever as I am still learning the game. By the time to decide between 4 civ continent or one civ Rome, India and fast rising China were higher threats than Rome. Not that Rome was a pushover, but since they were strong militarily and India was average and both were equal in techs, it made more sense to first take care of India, and then while over there China and then come back to Rome.

Also since Rome was so strong during most of the game, I was the civ trading and in peace with Rome.

It was amazing how little gold it took to restart a war with Rome on one side or other. Every AI civ hated Rome.

-- PF

My decision to bypass Rome was based on luxuries. Rome was willing to trade ivory. If I had taken them out I would have still had to depend on getting wines and furs from someone on the main continent. So, I took out Spain to secure those first. I guess my thinking was based on my objective, to go for a phased expansion in milk as you go mode towards the domination limit and eventual space race.

If I had be less focus on this particular goal, I might have attacked Rome earlier and stubbed my toe a little.

I bypassed Rome, but mostly by coincidence. My first thought about overall strategy was just to conquer the big continent, and bypass Rome. Then, when I got my first Sipahi, I didn't have Astronomy yet (I didn't control the timing because I got Military Tradition from the Great Library), and I was already at war with Rome, so it seemed obvious to attack them with some Sipahi and trigger my golden age. But immediately after I landed, Rome got Spain to ally against me! And then I noticed that Rome was willing to make peace with me cheaply, and ally against Spain! So I switched targets back to Spain.

After I had control of most of the large continent, I went back to attacking Rome, and I was surprised at this point by the large number of Medieval Infantry (especially) and Legionnaires. But still it wasn't a problem for my Sipahi, by then.

I did notice that many of the Roman workers would die when I overran them, instead of being capturable. I found this mildly irritating, but the game was about over by them so it wasn't really significant. I never razed any Roman cities, so I don't know if I would have seen odd results from that.

The galleass was interesting but not too hard to adapt to. One caveat: I noticed the Romans leaving their vessels in "unsafe waters", which normally the AI will never do: I think this is because they expected to be able to move 3 spaces in the computation of whether they could reach safety, and then were left in unsafe waters when they ran out of movement points. This wasn't a big issue in my game, but I can see how it could be. (One of the things that I don't like about the GOTMs is that the oceans are so skinny.)

I strongly agree with Greebley (post #40): the tweaking of Rome is a good thing. Who wants to fight exactly the same opponents every time? Keep mixing it up! I'd like to see even more variety of opposing civilizations and AI settings in future games. In addition to adding variety, it also helps balance the advantages of the people who've played dozens of full games and know exactly what to expect from every one of the standard opponents.
I'm fully supportive of things like civilizations that get extra advantages at start but handicaps later on, or civilizations that get a slightly less favorable start but advantages that kick in later.
(As long as they don't totally ignore basic game rules---which the Romans didn't.)

I know we've started GOTM20, but I've only just now gotten time to read through this thread, and wanted to add a few comments.

Firstly, I too like the idea of tweaking an AI civ to change the mix abit. I feel it's very easy to get into a 'play civ by the numbers' mode, and any chance to change the equations around and wake the players up is a good idea. From the discussion it sounds like Rome needed the help, also.

When I first came across Rome (just after the QSC period), I had as many cities as Caeser and a pretty sizeable army, so I wasn't real concerned about Rome. My focus was to control my initial continent, Celts first and then Carthage. By the time I was ready to invade Rome (mid to late 700's AD), my F3 advisor said I was strong against every army, so again I wasn't too concerned.

My first war with Rome was shortly before I'd eliminated the Celts. I'd taken Richborough at the South end of the large interior Lake, so a lot of my forces were there. We'd entered the Middle Ages, and a 8 high stack of Barb horsemen popped up near Entremont. I needed to rush some of my forces to defend Entremont, and this stupid Roman worker was sitting on my only road. Even though I was in the middle of a 20 turn deal with Rome, I declared war and attacked (all Roman workers died in my game, but I was able to capture other civ's workers). A few turns later the Romans landed 3 units near Entremont, were beaten back and peace was declared. A few turns after that, they landed a few more troops, and was was redeclared. Of course I killed this stack. I watched a flotilla of Galleys go North, and eventually drop off 5 units to attack my Forbidden Palace (Aydin, near the Game space.) My defenses handled them, and peace was redeclared. My reputation was soiled, but you can still deal if you've got the cash.

Rome's Galleass's are a nice touch, but had little effect on the game. I was focused on my continent initially, and I had Ironclads before I invaded Rome. The Galleass might have more impact on an archipelago style map. Rome's large navy did take planning for eventually, but was not to difficult to manage. I was at war with Rome for a long time before I invaded their continent. Rome's navy spent most of that time bombarding my SouthEasternmost city, a hopelessly corrupt city in the tundra.

While Rome had a large cultural lead and point lead, my many cities, most with Libraries, quickly chiseled into that lead.

When I did eventually invade Rome, I found out that Ceasar had Riflemen. This slowed me down, as I decided to wait until Replaceable Parts to continue the offensive (we were still at war, though.) So I sat in my one founded city, on the Rome continent, and soaked up a bunch of Cavalry and MedInf attacks. He might have been more successful if the attack was focused, which it wasn't; rarely were all 7 cannon used against the attacking units. The first city I razed (Virconium, I think) gave me 4 workers, but they might have been captured units hiding in the city.

I didn't use the Investigate City function; I was very confident that my style of invasion would whittle down Rome's attack capability at little risk to my invading forces. I'll usually only use the Investigate City key to check on civ's progress on a Wonder.

That's it. The game was fun! I'd like to see more tweaks in the coming months.