Version: PTW 1.27
Difficulty: Deity
Civ: Random
World Size: Standard
Geography: Random
Terrain: Random
Barbarians: Random
Victory Conditions: Everything activated. Diplomatic is off the table for us ("I mean, come on.").

(Signups Closed)
Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley
T_McC

Other Mechanics:
We'll do the traditional 20 turns for the first player, then 10 per round. We'll keep it there till the Modern Age, at which point we'll turn it down to 5 turns per round because my attention span starts to drop off rapidly in the face of modern warfare. 24 hours to claim, 48 hours to play. If this is a problem for any specific round, please talk to us about it.

I feel comfortable playing on Deity, but not so comfortable that I feel a need to make up variant rules to make it harder. Anyone else interested in such a boring, easy game for whatever reason is welcome. Previous Deity wins are helpful but not required (I'm not committing ritual suicide if we lose, but this is not a training day so at least don't expect to not be yelled at).

I'm willing to negotiate any settings except difficulty level and civ. Of some concern to me is the possibility of extreme barbarian activity. But only some.

I'll spin us up a map once the slots are full.

Standard rules for fair play are in effect. Please don't use:
--Ring City Placement
--Corruption-Due-To-Rank abuse
--RoP Abuse
--Scout Resource Denial
--Declaring or inciting war to escape 20-turn payments
--Reneg on military alliances
--Abusing spies or demands to incite war
--Negative science spending exploit
--Chaining transports
--Using trades/disconnects to build obsolete units for upgrading purposes
--Free Palace Jump
--"Worker farm" breeding programs

I'm with you, JustBen. I'm also comfortable on deity but not that comfortable that I need extra challenges...

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
OPEN
OPEN
OPEN


Sign me. I have deity wins and extra challenges are welcome.

Excellent! Now there's three of us! 2 more needed... C'mon people....

What are your feelings on the barbarian setting? I'm not as frightened of Raging barbarians as much as I am of being Expansinionist and getting No barbarians.

Though it would be a shame to wreck to game's theme...

I will join you all if you would have me. My diety experience is somewhat limited, but emperor has become pretty easy recently.

I figure if I am unsure, I can always stop and ask.

I prefer totally random. I like playing totally random games and so have some experience with that. Expansionist with no huts is a bit of a bummer, but the ability to get first contacts is still useful enough that it isn't a total loss (unless you also get archipeligo but that is getting pretty unlikely).

Sounds good, G. We'll hang out for another day or so to see if we get any takers on that 5th spot, but I'd rather get started and accept a 5th sometime into the game than wait around till the weekend for "game on".

Why don't you just keep everything random and we'll just see what we get. I like surprises (somewhat... ;) )

Hi folks :wavey:

I'd like to play. I usually play on Deity, and win more often than I lose. I usually win by space, as by the time in the game military victories are possible, space is by far the path of least resistance.

It may be better to specify the landform (I figure continents), rather than leaving it as random, to limit the possibility of lousy Civ-Map combinations. But it's not a big deal either way.

If the game starts soon, I am not available this weekend. Shouldn't be a problem if I'm late in the rotation.

Thanks

I like the concept of purely random. Not knowing the pangea/continents/archipeligo setting does add a bit of a challenge though.

Oddly enough, expansionist on archipeligo does have some value. You find out quickly (usually by the time you get pottery) if you are all alone on an island and know to to bee-line for map making at max research.

Might make it tougher or easier than your usual set up deity game. Certainly tougher to begin with. I played one expansionist game in which the four other closest civs were all expansionist as well, so almost zero huts and behind everyone from the get go.
You will have to play somewhat cautiously to start out. I think random civ is the most "natural" and a great challange. Tougher than many of the "beyond deity" varients where players know evey last detail of the set up IMO.
Best of luck! I will be reading with interest.

well if this is open, I shall play, but it looks like its full, I cant find another REGULAR diety game on this forum thats just starting, I was going to sign up last night too. I am trying to get back into SGs. :D

4000 BC
I couldn't decide whether I should mine the grassland first or risk chopping the forest into something suboptimal. I decide to pop the hut first, and get no help. I decided that we could do worse than going Warrior-Barracks, so I head to the forest first. Pottery, blah blah.

3700 BC
Forest chops, irrigation starts.

3650 BC
Our Warrior makes contact with a Babylonian Settler pair to our west. For Masonry and Warrior Code, we can score 10 gold, Ceremonial Burial, and Pottery, the last which means my preemptive chop goes toward our Granary instead of our Barracks. Science switched to Bronzeworking so we can... y'know... defend ourselves.

3600 BC
Beijing grows to size 2. Time for Granary drops to 21. I decide that having more than 1 Warrior in the field would be the polite thing to do for our next player, so I opt to go back to the Barracks. Was this correct? This is the sort of extremely subtle early play that I just don't have enough experience to judge properly.

3500 BC
Border expansion. We can take in a rivered bonus tile.

3450 BC
I've been skirting his border for a turn or 2, but suddenly we have contact with the Persians. I squeeze BW and 12 gold out of him for Pottery and CB. With 2 civs to trade from, hopefully we can avoid monopoly price, so I set science to minimum on Ironworking.

3350 BC
Beijing Warrior -> Warrior

3200 BC
Beijing Warrior -> Granary (at last)
Luxuries get turned down.

Nothing much more happens for the duration.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-3000BC.zip

JustBen
Darkness (up next)
Kuningas (on deck)
Greebley
T_McC

Our position as I last saw it:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_3000bc.jpg

I think you can go either way on the barracks vs granary.

The granary leads to getting better sites as you make towns earlier. I would build less military in this case and spew out settlers as fast as I could.

The barracks leads to losing races for prime land, but gives you veteran warriors. With any luck you have iron. Thus this strategy lends itself to upgrading warriors and :hammer: the good city sites.

I myself would have chosen the granary, but then I am a better builder than warrior.

I am thinking we should seriously consider building up cash for upgrades and some veteran warriors over the next 1000 to 2000 years in the hopes we get iron or can trade for it (especially if that annoying babylon settler takes OUR silks by settling on the lake).

Kind of neat actually. One could (should?) base the entire early game strategy on that single decision.

I am hoping we can get some good spots in case we don't get iron however.

Edit: By the way, I assume you chose totally random? I am going to step out on a limb here and use my advanced civ knowledge to predict we didn't get archipeligo :crazyeye:

Also a minor point: I have always felt that using F10 to find all the other civs without meeting them seems against the spirit of the random game. How do ppl feel about not using F10? Anyone else have an opinion? (or already looked?)

Yes, we do have a completely random game. I even covered my monitor so as not to get a sneak peek at the terrain settings.

I always forget to look at F10.

When I had to make the call on the Barracks, the green borders of Persian were just beyond the fog, so I had a sense that we may have been put onto a 20% landmass. I'm still not sure if strengthens or weakens the argument for the Granary, but I have absolute confidence that we'll get our money's worth out of that Barracks.

Of course, knowing that we're next to Immortals and Bowmen doesn't exactly fill my heart with warmth and joy.

"got it"

Will play it tonight and post tomorrow.

PS: I would also have gone for the granary, but I think that's just a matter of personal preference. I may not be the best judge in this case though, as I played the fist 80-100 turns of GOTM20 (deity level) almost like a farmers gambit. I usually build barracks only if I know I'll be going to war soon...

I too would probably have built the granary first, but building the barracks now only delays the granary by ~4 turns. After the granary, I think Beijing can settle into a settler-spear cycle, so we'd have wanted an early barracks anyway. (Not enough food for Beijing to do continuous settlers)

Some good news ( :confused: ) from the save, as the pictured Bab units are a spear-warrior pair. Was there a settler pair that already moved out of view?

I think we should have some discussion about city placement. On a standard map I figure we need 4 or 5 cities that can have access to 20 land tiles to allow for 1/turn tank/MA/MI production (or for SS parts). Usually this would be the capital, FP site, and 1 or 2 neighbors for each. Unfortunately, in this game our capital can't be one of them. So I'd suggest we think about an FP 1st ring to Beijing, and plan for a leader-jumped Palace elsewhere.

For the other cities, I think our goal should be to use a high percentage of the tiles in our territory before hospitals. I usually found cities with 5-6 tiles of overlap, so most could reach size 15, but one could arrange tiles to get a 20 and two 12s.

The only early war I see us in is a war against the natural jungle habitat. :lol:

On a serious note, with so much jungle around us, Beijing will have to produce the settlers and the military for our entire civ, at least for a little while. However, it looks like we can expand north unencumbered, so war may not be necessary until much later in the game.

Originally posted by T_McC
[B]I too would probably have built the granary first, but building the barracks now only delays the granary by ~4 turns.
Well, it actually delayed the Granary by the length of time it took to build 2 Warriors and the Granary itself. But I wanted recon and a "garrison".

Some good news ( :confused: ) from the save, as the pictured Bab units are a spear-warrior pair. Was there a settler pair that already moved out of view?
I'm... hm... 90% sure there's a Settler running around there.

I think we should have some discussion about city placement. On a standard map I figure we need 4 or 5 cities that can have access to 20 land tiles to allow for 1/turn tank/MA/MI production (or for SS parts).
Bah! Homer-cles cares not for Modern Armor production! I have never, ever lost a game after I've built a single Modern Armor. Not even after building a Tank. I'd rather pack 'em in for the push through the Middle Ages and abandon cities later if you're that concerned about having cracked-out Metropoli. But this is a call that's probably going to go to whomever happens to be building the Settlers.

The only early war I see us in is a war against the natural jungle habitat. :lol:
I know the pacifistic nature of the Persians when they're sitting on Immortals and right next to a civilization with 1/3 their score is legendary, but don't you think we just might get into an early scuffle? :rolleyes: I see an early war as a good chance to pick up a little bit of land and maybe some technology, but only time will show how much war is feasible. I agree that we should focus on grabbing whatever land we can via Settlers first, though.

Anyway, at least we pulled China. Jungle is a lot less scary with Industrious. For being pinned against 2 hostile ancient civs and a vast expanse of jungle, we did as well as could be hoped.

Ya, I don't worry much about sizes over 12 either. If in the end game if one city is more important, I simply give it more resources at the expense of other cities (I tend to not put cities within the workable squares of another).

Also I find building warriors much better than building spearmen. You get two warriors for one spearman. With barracks like we have, for 40 gold we can upgrade them to veteran warriors. Two warriors also save money as it supresses 2 unhappy ppl in despot instead of 1 for a spearman so you don't need as much Lux.

In actuality, I just guard my settlers with 1 warror as I can output more settlers. 1 is usually sufficient, though there is some risk when barb horsemen appear.

Once I start getting several towns, then I start building spearmen (making sure they are veteran for the long term).

The only exception is when my town is making 7, 8, or 9 shields as you can get a spearman every 3 turns and warriors every 2.

Edit: I am thinking we should try to make a dot map and discuss city placement at some point.

Edit: You are right. I assumed the spear was over the mentioned settler, but when I looked at the save it is a warrior instead. And here I thought our silks were doomed.

Inherited turn: We appear to have an interesting name ;) And we’re in a pretty bad position. Challenging, eh? ;)

1 – 2950 BC: Persians start building the Pyramids.

2 – 2900 BC: Nothing…

3 – 2850 BC: Bejing grows to size 5. Sliders adjusted to prevent riots the next turn.

4 – 2800 BC: Babylon starts building the Colossus. A Roman archer appears outside our capital. Ceasar has some gold Alphabet and Iron Working, but he lacks Masonry and Ceremonial Burial. He’s, however, not willing to trade. :(
Persia’s got the Wheel now, but we can’t get it.

5 – 2750 BC: Nothing…

6 – 2710 BC: Nothing…

7 – 2670 BC: Granary finished in Bejing, settler started. We meet the Americans. They have all the techs we have and Alphabet. The Americans will meet Rome soon, so we’ll try to trade with Rome again, to at least get something for masonry and ceremonial burial, which they’ll probably get from the Americans in a few turns in exchange for iron working. And Ceasar is willing to trade. We get Iron working for masonry, CB and 36 gold. We trade IW to the Americans for alphabet and 19 gold. Babylon now also has the Wheel, but not alpahabet so we get the wheel for alphabet and 13 gold. We sell alphabet to Persia for 89 gold.
The result of this trading round: Tech parity and we made 59 gold. :)
We start researching mathematics at 10% (40 turns)

8 – 2630 BC: The Americans start building the Pyramids.

9 – 2590 BC: Bejing grows to size 6. We meet Korea. They have writing and contact with the English and the Iroquois. They don’t have IW and the wheel. We get writing and both contacts for IW, the wheel and 106 gold. We proceed to sell the contacts around, otherwise the Koreans will do so…

10 – 2550 BC: One stupid move of mine moves an exploring warrior into Roman territory. :blush:

We’re in a tough spot as there is only jungle remaining to settle… :(

I didn't make a dotmap (sorry, not time), but I generally prefer close spacing in cities. I'll leave this up to you though, as I'll be away for four days (workrelated :( )

Good Luck, we're gonna need it....

The save:

Oops. I hit submit reply and I realized I'd forgotten to attach the save... :crazyeye:
Second try...

Could post the save file and/or a screenshot, Darkness? I want to see what I can do about a dotmap.

Edit: Too quick for me. Thanks, Big D.

The immediate surrounds of Beijing:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/dotmap2550.jpg

We lack recon to the SW; that's unfortunate. I still feel pretty confident about the purple dots. Green dots are "maybes"; I fully expect one of our neighbors to bag the Dyes before we can get there. The jungle makes it a problematic early destination. Yellow is the only way I can see getting access to the Whales, but the coast may wrap back around to the east under the fog. Might.

The blue dot is definitely aggressive. Too aggressive for Deity. There's Iron far to the north that we might be able to get peacefully, but why take Iron peacefully when you can get Iron and Incense after a bloody war with a horde of Archers? If we can take/burn Susa, our ring around the capital looks a lot nicer and the Blue Dot suddenly makes sense. I'm in no hurry to get there; we obviously need a few cities down first. And if we can seriously score Iron with a Settler, by all means go for it... but we'll need Susa eventually, so we might as well get some mileage out of that Barracks.

After we get another Worker or 2, that forestland should be transformed into useful things like Archers and Settlers.

[Edit:] Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
Kuningas (up next)
Greebley (on deck)
T_McC

Got it.
I don't have time during weekend. I'll submit save in next 3 hours. I'll settle to closer purple mark first.

OK, but don't forget the yellow dot! That should be first/second, IMHO...

1 - 2510BC:
Beijing: Settler.
Slider: 7.1.2

2 - 2470BC:
Shanghai founded. Shanghai: Temple (or barracks next player can decide.)
Slider: 6.1.3
Persians and Koreans have Horseback Riding.

3 - 2430BC:
Babylons, English, Persians building The Colossus.
Koreans, Iroquois, Persians, Americans building Pyramids.
Babylonians settled near whales :(

Warrior going through Persian territory -> A hut in sigh.

4 - 2390BC:
Romans got the hut :( I think they got Mysticism.

Established embassy with Babylonians for 33 gold. Babylon: The Colossus 16 turns left. 2 citizens. Growth in two turns. Slider 10.0.0 (5 science breakers). Babylons are polite.

5 - 2350BC:
Beijing: Warrior.
England: Writing for Mysticism. England are Cautious.
Babylon: Writing for Horseback Riding. Obsoleting Chariot to Riders upgrade as there isn't horses available without early wars. Tech parity with 6 civs. Iroqois are down The wheel, IW, Writing, Mysticism. Slider: 7.1.2

6 - 2310BC:
nothing.

7 - 2270BC:
Beijing: Archer. Slider 8.1.1

8 - 2230BC:
Slider: 7.1.2

9 - 2190BC:
English completed The Colossus in London. Maybe they got GA.

Established embassy with English for 66 gold. (picture) English are Polite.
Canton founded. Canton: Worker.

10 - 2150BC:
Silks connected.
Beijing: Archer.
Slider: 8.1.1
Demanded Iroquois to remove forces inside our borders.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01_london.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01_2150BC.jpg

JB01_2150BC save is here (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-2150BC.SAV)

I got it and hope to play tonight.

I may try to grab resources if I can. I don't have the game here at work so I can't see if this is practical. Do you think Ben's green dot NE of the dyes would be too aggressive? I am thinking it probably is with 5 squares overlap?

Persia is looking like the best first target with the iron, incense, dyes. The green dot does make more sense if we think we may go to war sooner rather than later.

It looks to me like we are preparing for war ASAP, hence we may not want to build a settler at this point. With all the jungle in the way, it may be tough to link the dyes back to the core before the war starts.

If we are going to war ASAP, I think it will come on my turn. I'd like opinions on force size requirements: figuring two spears in Susa, I would bring 1 spear/6 archers to definitely win on the first turn attacking. Too conservative? Overconfident? I definitely would have a vet spear in the stack, as the Persians should get an attack at the stack before we can attack the city, so we'll have 20 shields playing defense.

If we have the forces to attack Gordium during the first war, I'd like to see it moved to one NE of the blue dot in the dotmap (on a hill, across a river, immediately claims one dye and probably at least 3, gives a free cultural expansion at two of our other cities).

Maybe we'll catch a break and Susa will be the only source of Iron for the Persians. Hopefully the AI's weedy settling will bypass the source closer to their capital.

Preturn: Things look good. I buy a worker from Rome for 1 gpt and 102 gold. I will be going with the plan to build up archers to take suza.

2110 BC (1): Shanghai: barracks->archer, Foreign worker will improve and connect Canton, Our other worker to cut some forest. Lux 20%
2070 BC (2): Korea has map making. We can't afford it of course.
2030 BC (3): Beijing archer->archer; MM Beijing to make an archer in 2. Persia has map making too.
1990 BC (4): Zzzz
1950 BC (5): Beijing archer->warrior. I do this because the tree chop is in 2, so I want the tree chop to be meaningful. I have Beijing working the square. I read that this should give it the wood. I can't get shanghai to use the wood and still build an archer.
1910 BC (6): Beijing warrior->archer. Both code of laws and map making are owned by several civs. We could get a 2fer as england has only maps, but we can't afford it.
1870 BC (7): Well the chop went to Shanghai & totally wrecked my plan. A total :smoke: as a result. I thought the source reliable; sorry about that. I switch Beijing to a woker to keep it size 6 for now (we need more workers).

Note: This is the first turn that Persia is roading its iron. We will want to attack before this is finished if we can

1830 BC (8): Beijing worker->archer Re-MM to 10 shields to build archer in 2. It is really too bad. If we had a bit more money we could try a 3-fer as persia and the koreans have philosophy. Our math gambit is still good, though I am not sure it will last.
IBT: Persia demands 20 gold tribute and TM. I give it as I don't think we are ready for war quite yet.
1790 BC (9): Zzzz
1750 BC (10): Beijing archer->archer.

There are trade possibilities still available if we can afford them. We could afford Philosophy, but don't think we could then get code of laws even with philosophy to trade. With both philospophy and COL we could get map making from England.

We have 5 archers now and some warriors. Persia has been roading the iron for 4 turns now.

I feel bad about the messed up tree chop. Does it always go to the closer town? Anyone know?
The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1750BC.SAV)

From Kuningas:
Demanded Iroquois to remove forces inside our borders.
Whoah! What for? Did you want a war or something? :smoke:

From Greebley:
I feel bad about the messed up tree chop. Does it always go to the closer town? Anyone know?
No idea. Just the way the chips fall, sometimes. Since our actual "loss" is +10 shields to the wrong place, I wouldn't be too concerned. More grassland is its own reward.

It looks tough, but we'll cope. A big enough horde of Archers can dig you out of quite a deep hole, Immortals or no. I wouldn't want to go in with less than 10 Archers, and 15 with a couple Spearmen to escort would be preferable. Money will become a problem, so that needs to be considered.

TMcC, use your best judgment. If your trigger finger gets itchy, go smash 'em. If you want to save the pleasure for me, I'll be more than happy. Don't foget to peel Workers on the turn Beijing tries to grow to 7 -- an extra population there won't speed up our Archers, but dropping below 6 will slow them down. Good luck.

JustBen (on deck)
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley
T_McC (up next)

I investigated what it would take to attack them before connecting the iron.

It only takes an industrial civ 5 turns to road a mountain. We would have to wake up the archers immediately to move then so we could attack next turn and capture the worker.

Not getting immortals would be really big but attacking next turn would be rough (perhaps suicidal?) I lack enough deity experience to judge if this would be really stupid or not.

Fortunately, TMcC sounds more experienced :jump:

Note that I haven't traded for Persia's territory map, so the capitol might be connected even though it doesn't appear to be.

I am away from my Civ computer this weekend, and will claim and play the game Sunday night. (This thing is moving fast!)

@Greebley - I have no idea how the forest chop works when two cities can each work the tile, I just know it always seems to go opposite where I want it. :lol: Of course, when it goes the "proper" way I don't notice it.

@Kuningas - A withdrawal demand when the units are next to an empty city?!? That's insane. I like your style. :p

I don't know about more "experienced", I can do math but I can't influence the pRNG. I was hoping the Persians would be tardy about hooking up the iron, but what are you gonna do. Next we'll hope they were lax about rax (I rhymed! :goodjob: ), and have to build Immortals from scratch. Even if we do attack soon, I'll figure they get the chance to build a couple of Immortals, and be more conservative on the # of archers needed to attack Susa. Not so much to capture the city, but to hold it. No point starting this war until we can win it.

Slight change of plans. I can't guarantee I'll be back to my Civ computer tonight. If JustBen wants to swap with me and play his turn now, that would be fine. Otherwise I'll get the game and play on Monday. I feel bad holding the game up.

On another note, I have a guess on how the forest-chop shields work: Since the worker action completes "between turns", and then production is calculated for all cities, the shields probably go to the first city in the production cycle that can claim the tile. I think the production cycle order is in order of founding. So in this case the shields should have gone to Beijing. Just a theory, I haven't tried to verify this.

The shields went to shanghai. It may be distance based. The forest was closer to shanghai than Beijing. If it is distance based and it was a "tie", then your guess is a good one for that case.

Edit: I found the reference that led me to believe it was the town working the square: Cracker's forestry article. No wonder I thought the source reliable. The article is a bit old. Maybe it has been changed since it was written.

Okay; I was out of town yesterday, too. I'll play TM's 10 today, and he can play mine tomorrow. I'll post sometime before sundown PST.

1750 BC (0)
Looks pretty good. I mean, as good as can be expected.

1725 BC (1)
Sell World Map around to all but Iro (who lack MM, like us). Romans have Math; c'est la vie. Included in our trades is a TM of Babylon, which turns out to be very interesting not for the Babylonian territory it shows us, but the Babylonian coastline. When we go to war with Persia, the Susa/Gordium line is the only front we'll face. Very important.

1700 BC (2)
Beijing: Archer -> Worker (to keep it at 6)
I swap Shanghai from an Archer to a Spearman (someone's gotta build 'em).

1675 BC (3)
Beijing: Worker -> Spearman

1650 BC (4)
Shanghai: Spearman -> Spearamn

IT: Americans finish Pyramids, start Great Library.

1625 BC (5)
Beijing: Spearman -> Archer

IT: Caesar extorts 23 gold and our TM. I guess that's half a Swordsman less for Xerxes to cope with. Rome starts the Big Library, London builds the Lighthouse.

1600 BC (6)
Rome & USA have Math, CoL, Philosophy, MM, and Literature. We have no money to spend on such frivolities.

1575 BC (7)
Beijing: Archer -> Worker

1550 BC (8)
Shanghai: Spearman -> Archer
Beijing: Worker -> Archer
Shanghai got a forest chop to finish its Spearman. This will give us a highway to Susa and its precious, precious Iron. The change to our map is also worth 6 gold on the trading table.

IT: America extorts another 23 dollar bill with our map written on the back. They go up to Polite. A harsh price for another half-Swordsman.

1525 BC (9)
Canton: Worker -> Barracks (they got a jungle cleared in there somewhere)

1500 BC (10)
Beijing: Archer -> Spearman

Okay, so here's the gory details:
Canon: 1 Warrior
Beijing: 1 Warrior, 1 Spearman
Shanghai: 8 Archers, 2 Spearmen, 2 Warriors (all veteran)

Beijing is building a Spearman intended for Canton. The idea is that we need to declare war on Persia and then march our entire force of Archers (with 1 or 2 Spearmen escorting) to seize Susa. This will cover the support of a few of our units, kicking our income up above 1 gpt. We'll also instantly get Iron, and we have enough cash to upgrade the 2 Warriors sitting in Shanghai to Swordsmen. Where we go from there is up to Mr. T.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1500BC.zip

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness (on deck)
Kuningas
Greebley
T_McC (up next)

Got it.

JB1

1500BC (0)
Swap Beijing to warrior. This will yield us 3 or 4 more proto-swords before we have iron. After we have iron, then we'll build spears. (I'm assuming we're not going to be pillaging our own resources.) Leave Shanghai on archer.

Also note Roman worker in stack clearing jungle. Being layered with 4 of our workers, he's not doing any good. (24 base turns for jungle clearing, 4 industrious workers will finish in 3 turns (24/(4*2)). Adding 1 non-industrious worker still finishes in 3 turns (24/(4*2 + 1)). Will split stack after this tile is cleared. Only the Great Library is under construction, but not by Persia.

1475 (1)
Beijing warrior --> warrior. Send Vet Spear from Beijing to Shanghai. Move attack stack (2 spear, 8 archer out of Shanghai). Korea moves spear-warrior pair next to Canton. :confused: I'll let it slide.

1450 (2)
Beijing warrior --> warrior. Attack stack moves to neutral mountain NE of iron. Score 6 gold + Iro TM for our WM. X-man looks PO'd, like he knows what's coming.

1425 (3)
Double extortion, Liz gets 24 gold, the Hammer gets 22. The iron-less Babylonians will get theirs after we finish the first Persian war. Beijing warrior --> worker. Dial up X-man, tell him to kiss my big, hairy, white ..errr... declare WAR! :hammer:

Capture Persian worker on mountain, move rest of stack so as not to be attacking Susa from across the river. Persians begin Great Library in Perseopolis. :smoke:

1400 (4)
Lose 2 archers, promote 1, capture Susa with 3 workers. The whole attack gang piles in to suppress resistance. Susa starts walls. Beijing worker --> warrior, Swap Shanghai from archer to spear, upgrade 1 warrior to sword.

1375 (5)
Two Immortals (1 vet, 1 reg) arrive across the river (in a forest) from Susa, I'm not attacking with archers. Susa has 4 spears, 1 sword, 6 archers defending it. Beijing warrior --> sword (as we're not exactly flush with cash). Shanghai spear --> spear.

1350 (6)
Win 1, lose 1 against Immortals. Iron-less GA for Persia. Additional Immortal arrives in forest, so one healthy Immortal will attack next turn. Get 6 gold for WM.

1325 (7)
Lose another spear to an Immortal. One Immortal remains across river, rest of the stack is spears and warriors. Mathematics discovered. Research turned off, to gain an additional 2 gpt. Now at 39 gold, making 7 per turn. We will get technology for peace from Persia, no sense pouring money down the research hole.

1300 (8)
Lose another spear in Susa, kill 2 spears and 1 warrior. Two Immortals can attack next turn. Beijing sword --> worker. Upgrade another warrior to sword.

1275 (9)
Lose spear, archer at Susa. Walls finally built. Susa walls --> catapult. Canton barracks --> Spear. The Persians will talk to us, but won't give any technology or even their WM for peace.

1250 (10)
Sword successfully defends against Immortal at Susa. Persia will now give us Philosophy or Literature for peace. Our WM nets 5 gold.



JB in 1250 BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1250_BC.zip)

Notes for next leader:

There are 3 swords (1 elite), and 5 archers (1 elite) defending Susa. Unfortunately, the terrain around Susa basically precludes defense-by-offense, so we're taking some defensive casualties. That will slow with the walls in place, as I believe a vet spear/sword behind walls across a river has a better than 50/50 of defending against a vet Immortal. Persia has no native iron (Babylon poached their other local source), and I believe they have at most 3 Immortals.

So far in this war, we have traded 3 archers and 4 spears for iron, a luxury, a city, and 4 workers. We can stop now and get a technology also. If I were to continue playing, I would want the war to last 6-7 more turns, as Gordium is still a wide-open target. In about 5 turns, we can have 3 vet spears in Susa, freeing up an attack force of at least 3 swords and 3 archers to go after Gordium. After capturing Gordium, we could immediately make peace and probably score two technologies out of the treaty. The validity of this plan is highly dependent on the outcome of the Immortal attack on the next interturn. Up to Darkness.

If/when we do capture Gordium, I stand by my earlier opinion it should be moved two tiles SE, to better fit into our first ring.

Darkness should also review the worker stacks, as chances are they aren't optimal. The worker W of Beijing is roading the forest. I think when that finishes Darkness will be able to time the chop to complete a unit. If I had started the chop on my turn, I think we would have had a 20-shield worker.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01_1250BC.JPG

Originally posted by T_McC
If I were to continue playing, I would want the war to last 6-7 more turns, as Gordium is still a wide-open target. ... After capturing Gordium, we could immediately make peace and probably score two technologies out of the treaty. ...

If/when we do capture Gordium, I stand by my earlier opinion it should be moved two tiles SE, to better fit into our first ring.[/B]

I'm inclined to agree wholeheartedly with our triumphant general's analysis of the situation. It'd seem a shame to get Swords and not be able to push beyond our Archer assault. Moreover that Gordium is in a really obnoxious location, and I'd like to see us in a better position to seize those Dyes.

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness (up next)
Kuningas (on deck)
Greebley
T_McC

got it! Will play tonight and post tomorrow....

Looks like the war is going well. I agree that Gordium would be a good target before peace. A third luxury would really help us. If we capture Gordium instead of razing it, I wonder if it would be good to keep the city until we place our new one(s). I would hate to have that area poached by some random civ.

The city you suggest is a better spot, but Gordium is better placed for anti-poaching. With only 1 citizen it is unlikely to flip. Once we have our cities in that area, we just abandon it (or better; worker it to non-existance).

I think we have three options with regard to Gordium: (1) Let it grow to size 3, whip out the settler and move to the tile NE of the gold hill, re-found. The city will technically be Persian, but I wouldn't worry about a flip. (2) Found a city ourselves on that tile, and disband Gordium with workers. (3) Found a city ourselves on that tile, disband Gordium with a settler, and found a new city somewhere else. (3) probably makes the most sense, although I don't know where the settler would then go. (Might go into ex-Babylon!)

One thing to note from the screen shot: The blue guys NE of Susa are a Korean settler pair. They were wandering around my whole turn. If we were to raze Gordium on our attack, they'd poach the silks. So if we go with (1), they have to be accounted for, or else they will found someplace awkward and stupid to screw us up.

After Gordium and peace with the Persians, I believe we will be preparing for a war with Babylon to claim horses. We will probably need to build a settler or two for that war, as we may want to raze the culturally-rich Babylonian cities. (Neither Persian target had any culture, and were closer to our capital than theirs) Doing (3), and moving Gordium into our south 1st ring seems the most efficient way to proceed. Up to Darkness and/or Kuningas.

Oh, two more things: The Iroquois are the laggards in technology, so we may want to check with them before we make peace with Persia. Maybe we can get something that's not @last for peace, and trade for more. If Persia is sitting on a pile of GA cash, that might be better than tech, as we still have a handful of swords to upgrade. We could then use Babylon for tech.

I'm sure Darkness' best judgement on peace will be correct.

OK, I'm very sorry but RL prevented me from going to my computer last night, so I'll have to play it tonight, if that's OK with you guys? Sorry about this. :(

BTW, I read all the posts and will try not to disappoint you... :blush:

BTW, I read all the posts and will try not to disappoint you...

I'm sure you'll do fine. Besides, the joy of playing succession games is that if you lose, you can blame everybody else. :lol:

Gordium is currently size 2. If/when we move an attack stack next to it (no two-move units, we have to spend a turn next to it), the city will very likely whip either an archer or spear, dropping to size 1 and auto-razing on capture. I think we need to have a settler ready to found a new city within 1 turn of the attack. Building the settler out of Beijing after the spear finishes, and using cash to upgrade a vet warrior in Shanghai will still allow us to have three 2-defense units in Susa while freeing up 3 swords for the attack on Gordium.

Sorry people, I wasn't able to capture/replace Gordium.
Here's what happened in my ten turns:.

IT: Immortal attacks and kills a veteran swordsman. He has only 1 hp left. And then he gets promoted too…:( Rome completes the Great Library.

1225 BC (1): Bejing builds settler and starts swordsman. Our only elite swordsman attacks the 2/5 Immortal near Susa. And kills him. And gives us a GL!!!!!! :D I decide to save him (maybe get the Hanging Gardens or an early MA wonder) ‘cause we only have one other elite (no immeidate other GL chances), so I don’t see any immediate reason for an army.

IT: Persian forces approach Canton.

1200 BC (2): Shanghai builds spearman and starts spearman veteran swordsman gets promoted to elite. We move a pair of warriors and a spearman towards Canton as support against the Persian assault.

IT: Our veteran warrior defends Canton successfully.

1175 BC (3): We kill another immortal.

IT: Persia attacks us with a warrior, an archer and an Immortal. We lose some hp, but we kill all three without the loss of units.

1150 BC (4): Bejing builds swordsman and starts another.

IT: 2 Persian horsies approach Susa

1125 BC (5): Nothing…

IT: One of the horsies dies…

1100 BC (6): We start our march on Gordium with 4 swordsman and 2 archers. We also kill the second Persian archer.

IT: Canton is attacked again and we lose a spearman. :( The Persians definitely have another source of iron, because a stack of 6 immortals just approached Susa. :eek:

1075 BC (7): Bejing builds swordsman, Shanghai builds spearman. Both cities start building swordsman. Another vet swordsman gets promoted. We get construction (the only tech with trading value) and 88 gold for peace from Persia. The Iroquois get construction and 19 gold for Map making and Code of laws. We trade construction to America for Literature and 7 gold.

1050 BC (8): Troop movement to start positioning for a war against Babylon…

1025 BC (9): Bejing builds swordsman and begins another. Canton builds spearman and starts another…

1000 BC (10): Troop positioning finished for our assault on Babylon.

For the next player:
- I decided to save the GL, but if you want to go with a (soon obsolete) swordsman army, that’s your call. I would prefer to save the leader for the Gardens or an early MA wonder.
- MM is adjusted so that Bejing completes another swordsman next turn, after that you need to rearrange it to be able to turn the sliders back to 8.0.2. (it’s now 7.0.3.)

The save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1000_BC.zip

Originally posted by Darkness

For the next player:
- I decided to save the GL, but if you want to go with a (soon obsolete) swordsman army, that’s your call. I would prefer to save the leader for the Gardens or an early MA wonder.


Got it. I may save the GL. FP in center of Persian territory would be nice.

I'll post tomorrow.

Originally posted by Darkness
Sorry people, I wasn't able to capture/replace Gordium.

Good job Darkness!

We'll get it next time, when we have Riders and Immortals are just cheap MDI. You got four techs and a Great Leader! :goodjob: The only bad luck is we missed out on the Great Library. (By one turn! :cry: )

As regards the leader, it sounds like the Great Wall is available, but I doubt we want it as it would trigger our GA. An FP sounds good to me (can you even build an army with less than 5 cities?). Hanging Gardens is also good.

When it comes time to place the FP we may want to consider that it's likely we will leader-jump our palace out of Beijing later in the game. (This would make Susa a viable location)

@Kuningas - Even with all the talk on this board (mostly by me :rolleyes: ), don't feel pressured to attack Babylon right away. We'll start the war when we can win it.

I don't think we want an army. There are some good wonders coming up. I wonder if it is worth holding the leader for Sun Tzu's? Hanging garden would be worthwhile too as we are going to have few towns and so probably want big towns.

I am not suprised Gordium was beyond us. Persia was one of the biggest fish in the sea. With immortals, he is nasty.

Getting the iron and lux and leader was a decent haul I think.

Looked at the save, and have a few thoughts. We have two nice stacks to attack Babylon early. Ur is across a river and on a hill, so we'll need to be careful how we approach it. Secondly, Babylon does has Iron, so don't be suprised to see swords. Also means striking before they get Feudalism is prudent.

If we do strike early, we have a lot of exposed workers on the Babylon border. When they finish their tasks may dictate when we can attack. Also gives us time to build up even greater forces (or settlers to raze/replace).

Finally. @JustBen: Are we playing on a standard map or a small map? It seems that every civ is accounted for, and nobody really has any land. May just be the effect of 80% water. England is playing an OCC!

Yes, we're on a standard map (can you even have that many civs on a small map?).

It's been a long time since I've had the Hanging Gardens; that would be neat. And as sweet as Sun Tzu's would be, as a Militaristic civ, it's worth half as many shields to us. Forbidden Palaces, on the other hand, are awesome. I haven't looked at the save yet, but if we have a good place for the FP, we should probably rush it as soon as we can build it.

Take your time on Babylon. I want to take over more Babylonian land, not sooner Babylonian land. Without Iron, they're not getting any stronger any time soon.

[Edit:] Go ahead and pretend like I'm literate and didn't make the comment about Babylonian Iron reserves. This seems to strengthen the argument for careful preparation, though. We can still do plenty of research via peace negotiations with Hammurabi.

Originally posted by JustBen
Yes, we're on a standard map (can you even have that many civs on a small map?).

You could, but you'd have to have used the editor and created a custom scenario. This must be what 80% water looks like (don't think I've ever chosen that in any solo games). It's actually good for us, as this will make the tech pace slower.

0 - 1000BC
Babylons: WM and 5 gold for TM.
Sold WM to everybody for 1 gold (+6gold).

1 - 975BC
Beijing: Sword -> Sword

war declared to Babylons. I don't want them to cultural dominate us.
Sword stacks move next to Ur and Ellipi.

2 - 950BC
Shanghai Sword -> Sword

Ellipi:
Lost: sword vs 3/3 spear
win: sword (hp 3/4) vs 3/3 spear
Lost: sword vs 2/3 spear
win: sword (hp 5/5) vs 2/4 spear
win: sword (hp 3/5) vs 3/3 sword
Ellipi and 2 workers captured
Ellipi -> Library

3 - 925BC
win: Babylon 3/3 sword vs sword (hp 3/5)
Susa Catapult -> spear

Ur:
Lost: archer vs 3/3 spear
Win: sword (hp 1/4) vs 3/3 spear
Lost: sword vs 2/3 spear
win: sword (hp 3/5) vs 3/4 spear
Ur captured
Ur -> Library
Incense and horses connected

Shanghai switch to Horseman
Beijing switch to Horseman

Win: sword (hp 1/5) vs 3/3 bowman
Win: archer (hp 5/5) vs 3/3 warrior


4 - 900BC
Win: 3/3 Bowman vs archer (hp 1/5)
Persians completed The Great Wall.

Beijing horseman -> settler

Win: sword (hp 4/4) vs 3/3 warrior

5 - 875BC
win: Sword (hp 4/5) vs 3/3 bowman

6 - 850BC
Canton spear -> Horseman

withdraw: Horseman (1/4) vs 3/3 bowman
win: sword (hp 4/4) vs 3/3 bowman
win: sword (hp 3/5) vs 3/3 warrior

7 - 825BC
Shanghai Horseman ->horseman

Nineveh:
Win: sword (hp 1/5) vs 3/3 spear
Lost: archer vs 3/3 spear
Win: sword (hp 1/5) vs 3/3 spear
Lost: archer vs 3/3 sword
Lost: archer vs 3/3 sword
No more units to attack Nineveh this turn.

Win: sword (hp 3/4) vs 2/3 spear

Trades:
Koreans: WM, 12gpt and 51 gold for Currency
English: WM, 2gpt, Currency and 26 gold for Polytheism and Philosophy
Babylons: Peace treaty for Monotheism, 5gpt and 15 gold
Persians: Monotheism, WM, 1gpt and 17 gold for Monarchy
Americans: Monotheism for WM, 2gpt, 30 gold
Iroquois: Monotheism for furs, WM and 55 gold

For 154 gold 5 techs. We are only two techs behind rivals (Engineering and the Republic)
Research set to Thelogy

Switched Beijing to Marketplace
GL rushed Hanging Gardens in Shanghai

Revolution

8 - 800BC
Shanghai HG -> Horseman

9 - 775BC
nothing

10 - 750BC
Monarchy formed
Fast revolution 3 turns ^_^

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01_babylon_cities.jpg

I rushed HG. IIRC FP needs 8 cities and sword army wasn't a good choice.

For next player should build some culture and a lot of horsemans.
Mayby starting a prebuild for the Leonardo's workshop?

EDIT:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-750BC.SAV

If you would, Kuningas, please post the save in a .zip file. Corruption, etc.

Two questions to Kunie about our situation:

1. Is a 40-turn run on Theology really worth our time? Right now we're doing it with a Scientist in Beijing that could be put to work on a hillside to cut our time to the Marketplace by a turn; our Hanging Gardens allows us to keep luxuries at 0% even with this move.

2. Why haven't Ur and Ellipi been starved to 1 each? In Ur, I count 5 foods, 0 garrison units, and 3 Babylonians. Babylonians. :smoke:

Greebley may want to consider measures to pare down the size of our newly annexed land; Worker/Settler production may be appropriate at this point, since we've got a fair bit of food in both cities' boxes already.

Now's a good time to start cranking out Horsemen. It would be really cool if we could snag Leo's at this point for just that reason, but I'm not going to hold my breath. We need cash which means Marketplaces; it's also hard to judge which path the AIs will be taking along the tech tree. Sometimes they beeline for guns, but sometimes they just want to take care of Democracy before bridge building.

Republic would be nice, but I guess there's no pressing hurry now that we're clear of the Despotism penalty. But money is good. Especially when you want to be able to upgrade your Horsemen into Riders so you can sweep the filthy, heathen Persians into the sea once and for all!

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley (up next)
T_McC (on deck)

Originally posted by JustBen
If you would, Kuningas, please post the save in a .zip file. Corruption, etc.

Two questions to Kunie about our situation:

1. Is a 40-turn run on Theology really worth our time? Right now we're doing it with a Scientist in Beijing that could be put to work on a hillside to cut our time to the Marketplace by a turn; our Hanging Gardens allows us to keep luxuries at 0% even with this move.

2. Why haven't Ur and Ellipi been starved to 1 each? In Ur, I count 5 foods, 0 garrison units, and 3 Babylonians. Babylonians. :smoke:



Ok. I make .zip file next time.

1. I was thinking that Theology could have some trading value. We can't research faster even feudalism is 31 turns at 100%.

2. They were Babylonians :o I believed the resistance was over forgot to check.

Oh, getting Theology for free is certainly cool, and we definitely don't want to be researching ourselves at this point. The question is if it's worth even the 3 spt + 1 fpt + 1 gpt to gamble that we won't buy/extort the technology outright over the course of the next 40 turns. I guarantee we won't be selling it to anyone 40 turns from now.

I'm not claiming this is necessarily a bad move, mind you. We may be running down the lower tech path ourselves, towards the Workshop, so grabbing Theology for 120 shields and 40 gold might be worthwhile. I suppose I should've directed that question more to the group than to you specifically.

I stand by the criticism of the conquered cities, though. The resistance is indeed over, but with 3 foreign nationals and no garrison units whatsoever, they're still significant flip risks. I haven't checked our relative culture, but it's Babylon we're talking about -- that only makes it worse.

Did I compliment you for slinging us out of Despotism and into the Middle Ages? I think I forgot the positive half of my comments in that last message. Right on :goodjob: ; definitely good news. I think the Hanging Gardens was a good choice, too. By the time they go obsolete we should have a really solid grip on the game, assuming we haven't locked it up entirely by then.

Very nice kuningas. :goodjob:
I won't start critisizing anything (already done by others :blush: ). Other than the theology thing and starving the babylonian cities it was very nice! Especially the trading and getting us out of despotism. :D

@Kuningas - Terrific job on the war. :) And the peace. Two cities, two techs, a luxury, horses, and a wad of cash in exchange for a handful of archers and a couple of swords.

[Edit] Theology as a research target may not be optimal. (See discussion in following posts)

Minimum science is a good move, although running the lone scientist out of Beijing is rather expensive, especially as the city will not riot by having the citizen work the fields. Greebley can look into "alternative" sites for the scientist. As far as Theology, I suspect we can acquire it by other means .... :hammer:

I took a look at the save, and Greebley can also check that our workers are improving tiles we can actually use. ;)

Even with our lousy start position (I think Perseopolis and Rome each had 6 food bonuses!), we are in this game. If our recent conquests don't flip, Babylon's only remaining purpose is to add to our empire, England is going nowhere, and the Iroquois are behind us in technology. I don't care what the histograph says, it's between us, Persia, and the Koreans.

Well played.

I got it and will play either today or tomorrow.

Another possisibility for research is actually republic. Republic is very expensive to buy from the AI's with its mark-up in price. If we want to stay in monarchy for 40 turns, then this could save us some cash. The advantage of Republic over Theology is that we have a decent chance of buying Theology for a 2fer or to get to Chivalry which means any research would be wasted.

The real question i: "Can we wait 40 turns to switch to republic?"

What do ppl think? If ppl think we republic want it sooner, I will try to figure out if Theology makes sense. My gut feel is that we are not going to want to wait 40 turns for such a key tech especially with our UU dependent on it.

Originally posted by Greebley

The real question is: "Can we wait 40 turns to switch to republic?"

I think we can, and more critically, I think we must. Without looking at the editor, I'm confident Republic is more expensive than Theology, so we couldn't research it ourselves in much less than 40 turns no matter how hard we try. As such this makes it a more appealing min. sci. run than Theology.

I also think the next 40 turns are likely to see us involved in more warfare. I can certainly see another dose of "pointy-stick" research on Babylon, and maybe another go at Persia. Since we only have two native lux, Monarchy will probably be a better government for us than Republic. The lesser economy being partially balanced by MP, and the lack of research strength overcome at the point of a sword.

So if your question is whether to switch the research target to Republic, I agree that is a good idea.

Originally posted by Greebley

My gut feel is that we are not going to want to wait 40 turns for such a key tech especially with our UU dependent on it.

The prerequisites for Chivalry are Monotheism and Feudalism. However, I agree with your original point about Theology being easier to trade for or extort, again arguing for a min. sci. run on Republic.

I always get Theology and Monotheism mixed up.

I will be switching our research to Republic.

I have seen it mentioned the the price of government techs and nationalism are increased 50% more than other techs. So even if a tech like theology and republic took exactly the same time to research, republic would cost 50% more than the other tech to buy from the AI.

Anyone know for sure if I got this right?

Going to start playing now....

I took a look at the save, and have a couple of thoughts about short-term strategy.

We have 4 elite swords, 1 elite* sword, and 4 vet swords. We also have an elite archer. I propose we use them on the Romans. The city of Ravenna has both horses and iron in its radius, while Virconium would give us a third native luxury. Both cities are only approachable by jungle or hills, so any units coming from the Roman core could only move 1 tile at a time. If everything went smoothly, Ravenna would fall on turn 2 of the war, and Virconium on turn 6. I don't believe any units from the Roman core could reach either city (or any of our cities) before turn 6. I believe we would be fighting local forces only.

Pros for the attack: According to this world map (and diplomatic espionage) the Romans do not have their iron hooked up. So the local forces are spears and archers, at best. With 5 elites to attack with, we have a decent shot at a leader (Leonardo's). If we do take both cities, the Romans will give us tech. Since the Romans have the Great Library, we could get Engineering+. They may even give us Hispalis.

Cons for the attack: Besides "We might not win", the only con I see is if Rome can buy the Persians in against us. Best way to mitigate against this is to buy a tech on credit from Persia right before we declare.

Best possible case scenario: Right before the war begins, our economy is strong enough to buy Feudalism @ 7th, and we can trade for Engineering @ last. We take both cities, and pop a Great Leader. Rome concedes Invention for Peace, we rush Leonardo's and trigger our GA. None of this is far-fetched.

Worst possible case scenario: We take Ravenna and have to scramble units back to defend ourselves against the Persians. We would probably still come out ahead in the Peace.

Most realistic scenario: We fight Rome alone, take both cities, do not pop a leader, get Feudalism and Engineering @ last for peace. We can muster too much firepower for a city defended by spears to withstand our assault, and I believe Rome cannot get a counter-attack going before we can sue for peace.

@Greebley - If you agree with this plan, you can start the attack, or you can set me up. We have no ongoing deals with Rome. The best way to set this up is to mix spears into the infrastructure builds to relieve our swords from having to be MPs. Might also think about creating a settler from one of the Bab cities. I don't think we will have to raze-and-replace, but there is some open territory N of Canton, and the city spacing around Virconium is horrible as usual for the AI.

Well I got to turn 7 (630 BC) because there is another possibility. It is almost the exact opposite for your plan TMcC :crazyeye:

For techs R= Republic, E=engineering, F=Feudalism, T=Theology, M=Monotheism:

+ means they have it, - means we have it.

Rome and Korea: +R, +F, +E, +T
Babylon and Persia: +R, +F, +E
America: +R, +E
Iroquois: +R
England: +R, -M

So if we could afford Theology, there is a huge cascade and we get a 4fer plus can gain back some of what we spend. Right now we have +31 gpt + 175 gold which if we spent all of it we would barely get Feudalism.
Now for the alternative: Rome has no iron. We CAN get Theology for about 21 gpt plus our ONLY iron from Rome. This allows us to keep some gpt at the cost of not only giving Rome iron, but also depriving it from us. Additionally the trade route is a bit precarious. We would be going through a persian harbor to get to Rome (we could build roads to Rome in several turns though). One nice thing is that if we do get attacked by anyone that matters, there is a good chance we will get our iron back, though it might ruin our rep if it was persia.

So, which way do we want to go? The method I mention would be with the plan of trying to build up our infrastructure cash & building horsemen for 20 turns with the hopes of a goodly force of riders at the end. I would probably also switch to republic immediately.

Or we can take the warriors path and I can try to get some work done on TMcC's attack plan.

Edit: Ok this is the post I intended to send. I will also look up the current gold amounts for civs. Some might also have small amounts gpt they could give us but I can't easily determine that.

[Edit] Irrelevant post based on incomplete information

Ok, I looked and there is not a lot of gold in the AI hands. We might be able to get 100-150 or so plus a minor amount of gpt (maybe).

Edit:
Oh, I think I will try to give ppl a bit of time to reply. I will hold off continuing until tomorrow afternoon or so.

Tough call. We won't need the iron unless we're attacked, but ... the trade route can go through a Babylonian harbor as well as a Persian harbor, so if Persia comes to get us, its spears and archers for the balance of 20 turns. Only a remote possibility, but worth mentioning.

What makes it more difficult is that Theology is not really a critical technology for us. But we can't start the cascade with Feudalism because our only customer for iron is Rome.

Trading iron to Rome not only precludes us from attacking them for 20 turns, it nearly closes the book on our swords being high-probability attack units. But if Rome is making any progress on its road network, they'll have their own iron hooked up within 20 turns. Leverage (and a tradable asset) is only valuable if used.

And we can leverage our iron into a 4-fer in technology, and that's something we really can't pass up. Without being one of those folks who memorizes the tech values in the editor, I can't say for certain that the cascade will fall our way, but it sure looks good to me.

So it is with a heavy warriors :viking: heart that I say, we should take the 4-fer starting with Rome, and spare Caesar. :(

Like so many older Americans, our glorious warriors shall retire south. As their days fade away they can only look forward to the eternal release of ...



kicking the ever-loving crap out of Babylon when our peace treaty is up in 10 turns! :hammer: :hammer: :hammer:

Seriously, a second go at Babylon would still give us a good chance at a leader. I'm sure those peaceniks will be very busy building cathedrals instead of swords or pikes. We're paying for those elite swords, might as well use them. Plus with the Oracle expired, there will be no hesitation to burn Babylon to the ground. Hopefully they will have researched Invention for us by then, and we can still trigger our GA with Leonardo.

I also think we should stay in Monarchy even if we do obtain Republic. We've got heavy unit costs as it is, and we may have to run a hefty lux tax to make up for 3 MPs. It would not surprise me if we were to be losing money to maintain happiness in a Republic.

Especially when we are preparing for a war. :)

If that is the plan, the only prep we need is some spears (maybe a couple catapults?) and a settler to replace Babylon. Since the war couldn't start until my 7th turn, I can do my own prep. Or everyone can tell me I'm crazy :smoke: and I'll stick to the builders path.

P.S. Kudos to Caesar for going all out to research when he has the Great Library! :rotfl:

I will also see if I can switch some towns to swords before I do the trade. They will finish up the sword even though we don't have iron. That will probably give us about 10 swords plus some horses. Enough for a Babylon war. I would think.

As I say, I will play tomorrow afternoon just in case anyone else sees this and has an opinion.

I will check this thread before I play.

Good call on the Monarchy > Republic, too. It's been a very long time since I made my civ collapse by sending it into Republic too early; I'd almost forgotten that can happen.

I'm really, really edgy about trading a resource for tech when we're relying on someone else's trade networks to do so. Is there any way we can take out an insurance policy on this deal? Rome is unlikely to give us gpt for the Iron straight up (always the unattainable ideal), but can we build a Harbor (half price!) anywhere? Or at least seize one from the Babylonians? Failing all that, please at least try to buy something on credit from Persia.

I really, really liked the sound of TMcC's Roman adventure until I scrolled down to read about the brokerage opportunity. As you can tell from my opening paragraph, I've been burned on such deals before; I also think I won my first Deity game by doing the exact same thing, so I can't in good conscience ask you to forgo the deal on principle.

From where I'm standing, it looks like the Roman assault is our low-risk/return option and the 4:1 is the high-risk/return option. If we really can swing a 4:1, losing credit may even be "acceptable losses".

And hey, as long as we're selling off our only source of Iron, this might be the perfect opportunity to bolster our Horseman corps.

We're choosing from a couple really strong moves right now. As long as we pull the trigger on any one of them, we'll be fine; pick up the pieces later.

There are only a few squares that need roads to give us a direct connection to Rome via road. I will delegate some workers to the task. Unfortunately, the terrain is hilly & mountainous. Edit: and partially in roman territory.

In any case we probably don't have to be at risk for all 20 turns. Once the road is in place, we will be completely safe.

I will look into the harbor option. If it can be done fast enough to make a difference, I'll try to build one.

Needless to say, I will give in to any Persian demands. I think they also like our incense. I could trade that to them as well if true.

Originally posted by JustBen

I'm really, really edgy about trading a resource for tech when we're relying on someone else's trade networks to do so. ... but can we build a Harbor (half price!) anywhere?



Ahh, one of the few benefits of a coastal capital on a pangaea map. Once Beijing finishes its marketplace, a 4-turn harbor could be its next build. I still think we should complete the road link to Rome, just so no 3rd party wars screw things up. (Like Korea declaring on Rome, or Persia mixing it with someone other than us)

The Roman adventure was low-risk, but still needed some things to fall into place for it to really be useful, like having the money to buy Feudalism and Engineering to open up Leonardo. Plus the cities would require a lot of worker turns to be useful, and create a long, potentially problematic front to defend in subsequent wars.

Going with the trade package and subsequent smackdown of Babylon could almost win the game for us. We'll have overwhelming force against the Babs (no early-Medieval era city is going to stand up to a stack of 12 offensive units in the hands of the human). Plus, we can really concentrate that force, as I know Babylon city is going to burn, and I wouldn't be surprised to create a second pile of rubble from the southern-most Bab city. I'd have to look at the save again, but the AI usually does quite poorly at placing tundra cities. Not having to garrison means even by the third city we'll have a sizable force. I strongly believe Invention will be known by the conclusion of the second Babylonian conflict, so the only thing left to the RNG is whether we get the leader. The Bab cities (or the ones we build to replace them) should require less labor, and reduce the front we have to defend in subsequent wars.

Preturn: Changed research to republic.

Some other minor changes: One of the incense is outside our lands. I investigate to see if we are going to get this square or do we need a temple? Turns out things are fine due to hanging gardens. Good choice in picking a city to build it in. We will get this incense in 3 turns.

The flip chances are pretty small for the babylon towns. Still we can use more workers. I switch Ur and ellipi to first build workers. I also move the scientist out of the capitol and into Ur. In general, it is better to have our scientist in a more corrupted town. In addition, Beijing can cut a turn off its market place by working the hill. Ur is building a worker (possibly a foreign one at that) so is a lot less important. I also decide to move our catupult out of Suza so if it flips we don't lose it. I can move it back easily enough if an attack seems likely.

730 BC (1): Ellipi builds a worker and is size 1. I start a temple. This can be changed. My idea is to provide culture and expansion to get the whale & land.

IBT: Rome extorts 30 gold from us.

710 BC (2): Ur builds a worker and starts another. MM it a bit to keep the scientist. WM trade reaps 15 gold. ppl have feudalism but even with all we have the civs are insulted by the offer.

IBT: Rome starts Tzu. Note that I rejected the wonder idea as we simply don't have towns to spare on such a venture.

690 BC (3): 2nd incense is in our radius, but the workers are still connecting it.

670 BC (4): 2nd incense is connected. Shanghai builds a horseman and starts a marketplace. I check if adding incense to the deal would get us a tech. All techs are still too expensive (we are up to "I doubt" though).

650 BC (5): Not much. Sell the WM for small change. Korea has theology. Not that we can buy it of course.

630 BC (6): Beijing finishes its market place. It is at 12 shields after corruption. It would be able to go to 15 shields after it grew but only if it can stay happy, which doesn't seem likely. So I switch to building a temple in the hopes that when it is done and grows to size 10 (happens on the same turn), we can MM it to get a horseman every 2 turns. Decide to hurry the worker in Ur for 24 gold. has gone up from 18 to 31 gpt. Time to see if we can wing a deal.

After realizing we can get theology if we sell our iron and discussing this idea; the decision is to go for it.
First I switch Canton and Shanghai from horsemen to swordsmen. We will have plenty of time for more horsemen builds.
The trades:
Rome: I trade iron, 17 gpt, and 84 gold for theology.
Babylon: I trade theology for feudalism
America: I trade theology for Engineering and 20 gold (They wouldn't do the deal for feudalism).
England: I trade monotheism and engineering for Republic and 61 gold.

We are at tech parity with the leaders (Babylon, Rome, and Korea). Everyone else is behind (Persia lacks only Theology).

We have nothing to trade to Korea or Rome who are the ones that have gold

I establish an embassy in Rome. This is because it might be easier to build roads in Roman territory and that way we can choose an ROP instead of getting kicked out. The cost of an ROP was 60 gold, but I didn't pay it. We can get one if we need it. If they don't kick us out, then we save the 60.

Rome is at 90% science (probably due to the gpt we are giving them). Their capitol will build the sistine chapel in 33. Their capitol has 6 spearmen and a settler. They only have the 84 gold we gave them so won't be doing alot of upgrades.

I consider gifting Persia Incense, but decide against it. We can build a harbor in 4. Hopefully they won't attack in the next 4 turns.

I will start moving extra troops toward Babylon. I agree they are the best next target.

610 BC (7): Shanghai builds a swordsman. It starts a spearman to free up some of our offensive units from guard duty.
For science, we are working on the printing press. This is a good 40 turn tech. On the diplo front, Persia got Theology. Must have traded a luxury or resource for it. Ur builds a worker and starts a temple

IBT: Very bad new - Ur flipped to babylon. This was really bad luck and very bad timing. Ur was size 1 with several troups in it with little or no overlap with Babylon territory. If I remember my flip-calc % the chances were probably 1/1000. We lost some swordsmen, and a horse I think. We have 7 swordsmen left(total). I have some swordsmen right outside it, but they can't attack without hurting our rep. Will retreat. This is going to make the war much harder. I guess I should have put the troops outside the city, but I honestly thought we had enough to keep a size 1 city from flipping.

590 BC (8): Move troups out of Ellipi. It now has a lot of overlap with Babylon now that they own Ur. We now don't have horses either.

570 BC (9): Troops are out of Babylon territory, but have used their movement. Spearman built and sent to Beijing. Start another. War can start next turn when all our units can move and we have finished the harbor.

550 BC (10) Harbor completed in Beijing. Start a catapult.

We can buy horses from Korea if we want for 100 gold that would allow us to build horsemen again. I didn't move any units this turn or declare war. I leave that for the next TMcC to decide on. I do think we want to go to war.

The loss of Ur at that particular time was a heavy blow for us. It delayed the start of the war and lost us 3-4 swordsmen, our one catapult, and our horses.

TMcC, I hope your luck is better. Remember I didn't move in the last turn, so your preturn is a full turn!

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-550BC.zip)

Got it. Will see what the situation is on the ground before committing to a war with Babylon right away.

Originally posted by Greebley
IBT: Rome extorts 30 gold from us.
Maybe their border towns were more ready for a war than we'd suspected.

IBT: Rome starts Tzu. Note that I rejected the wonder idea as we simply don't have towns to spare on such a venture.
Good call. Leaders or bust!

We are at tech parity with the leaders (Babylon, Rome, and Korea). Everyone else is behind (Persia lacks only Theology).
:thumbsup:

IBT: Very bad new - Ur flipped to babylon. This was really bad luck and very bad timing. Ur was size 1 with several troups in it with little or no overlap with Babylon territory.
I couldn't help but laugh at this one. After I flew off the handle at Kuningas for not starving the population and leaving the town ungarrisoned thus exposing us to an easy flip, Greebley dutifully reduced the town to size 1 and gave it a heavy garrison. At which point it promptly flipped. :lol: :cry: :lol: :cry:

It'll take a little more than a "popular uprising" to save Babylon's hide at this point. We got slowed down; the worst this can do to us to foul up the timing of our inevitable Rider war.

Long story short, we razed Ur and replaced it. Added a little culture, and are now under token pressure from the Babs at Susa.

JB01

550 BC (0)
Quite a pickle. We have 138 gold and are making 11 per turn. Beijing will grow to unhappiness next turn, so swap to a worker. Only requiring 10 shields allows some MM to get income to 16 per turn. Now we don't have iron, or horses to build units to attack Babylon.

In 7 turns, Hammer will want to renogiate our peace treaty (since he's paying us). The war will restart then, as I am not clear whether agreeing to a straight peace treaty will bind us to 20 turns of peace. Our current offensive military is 7 swords, an archer, and 3 horses. We don't have either iron or horses to build good units to augment that stack (just not keen on archers at this junction).

On the diplomatic front, we'll gain back 8 gpt and lose furs in 7 turns, and our iron is gone for 16 turns. Our lone scientist is in Susa, we have 8 native workers and 8 slaves, most of whom are building a road to Hispalis. Shanghai is undefended for no apparent reason. Ellipi is also undefended, due to flip fears.

Pre-turn: Garrison Shanghai with sword. Swap Canton to warrior (we can now go warrior-MDI upgrade after iron returns). Also serves a warm body to garrison. Complete road to Hispalis. Disband vet Warrior in American territory. I don't think we are getting any new information from him, he's costing 1 gpt in upkeep, and would take many turns to get him back to our cities. Since we can't upgrade anything for 16 turns, rush Temple in Ellipi for 76 gold. I think we need some of our own culture there to decrease the flip risk. Plus, I worry that some of that cash would just get extorted away.

IT - Give Abe 1 gold to swap WM. Just to be social. Caesar starts Leonardo, so Invention is in play.

530 BC (1)
Beijing worker --> settler (Smoldering piles of rubble do not flip). Shanghai spear --> warrior. Canton warrior --> catapult. Move some workers back from Hispalis.

IT - :wallbash: Caesar kicks out our workers. Yeah, I wouldn't want free labor either. (At least he has workers in the area)

510 BC (2)
Shanghai warrior --> catapult. Warrior to Ellipi for MP. Merge native worker into Canton. Short-rush Canton catapult (via walls) for 24 gold to save two turns. Oddly enough, this rush will allow that catapult to just reach the Babylonian border when Hammer comes to re-negotiate peace. :D

490 BC (3)
MM Susa to get an extra gold since forest chop will complete temple next turn.

470 BC (4)
Susa temple --> catapult. Also that contemptible forest across the river is gone, so defense should be easier. Beijing settler --> warrior? Shanghai cat --> cat. I do like my artillery, especially when we are going to have to do an infantry assault on the Bab territory. They'll also be useful to defend the new cities we found to replace the Bab cities.

450 BC (5)
Beijing warrior --> warrior (warm body theory of defense). Ellipi walls --> cat (+ a border expansion). Persia purposefully parades :) (:rolleyes: ) two reg. Immortals + reg archer around in the mountains. They may be going for Canton, or possibly Ravenna. With this crew, it could go either way. Do some unit shuffles, and Ellipi has two vet spears + a vet warrior for defense. Merge native worker into Susa.

430 BC (6)
Beijing warrior --> warrior. Shanghai cat -->spear. Want spears in Susa for defense, in case Babylon attacks from Akkad. Chivalry and Invention are in play. Start clearing jungle in squares Canton will work after border expansion. Raise lux tax to 10%, due to impending loss of furs. Treasury 100, making 3 gpt.

Final chance to look over the precipice: With Ellipi well-defended (and with walls), we can muster a single attack stack of 2 elite swords, 4 vet swords, an elite archer, 3 vet horses, and 3 catapults (primarily for defending the stack). And a settler. That should be more than enough to raze Ur, and maybe get a start on something else (Babylon city). I will re-found a city where Ur is standing, allowing for it and Ellipi to be a common-defense front. Separated by 3 squares, we should always be able to get sufficient forces to defend either city. Also, between Shanghai and Beijing, with a 1-turn lag, we can dump 2 bodies a turn into either city. So when Hammer comes a calling in the interturn, it will be breaking loose in Tulsa.

IT: Lose furs, gain some gpt, Hammer doesn't show. :confused:

410 BC (7)
Beijing warrior --> spear. Buy wines for 6 gpt from Rome. Lower lux tax to 0%. Treasury 103, +15 gpt.

Fortune favors the bold: Dial up Hammer. Heh, he wouldn't even take straight peace. Honorably declare war and move the SOD next to Ur. That Persian stack is still in a non-committal position relative to us and the Romans, but leaning towards the Romans. Or they might just be out for some exercise.

IT: Persians declare on Rome. Has no effect on our trade routes (phew, we needed that harbor/road) Korea mugs us for 23 gold.

390 BC (8)
Babylon move an "attack" force of a spear and a warrior towards Susa. Susa cat --> cat. Shanghai spear --> warrior. Spear goes to Susa. Went for warrior and not archer because I don't trust the RNG (attack of 1 against 2, fortified behind walls, not likely but no reason to take chances) We'll have three bodies in Susa when they can only attack with 2 units.

The Second Battle of Ur
Three cat shots, three misses. Did I say something about using these things on offense? Elite Sword v reg pike: loss, but redlines pike. Re-think strategy, try Vet Horse v. reg pike: retreats, taking one HP damage. Try 2nd vet horse vs 2/3 pike: Win. Elite Archer v. reg MDI. Win. Elite Sword vs. 1/3 pike: Win, Ur burns . We get 1 slave.

Nanking built on the spot. We have our horses back, and a second Incense to trade. Nanking starts on walls.

Now to bait the AI. Pile everyone into Nanking, except the cats and a 2/5 archer. Pretty vulnerable, but the Babs can't reach it on this turn. I want units on flat ground to try to get a leader.

Buy Rome's WM for 5 gold, sell it for 5. So we get a free update. Rome now has both of its iron hooked up, so we had to take the 4-fer while we could. Of course Caesar hasn't completed the road to Hispalis from his side (our trades are relying on our harbor and Korea's harbor)

370 BC (9)

Heh. Stupid AI. Bowman dutifully moves down off the hill, allowing me to take a GL shot. Move cats and injured archer into Nanking, two cats hit, and attack with Elite sword ... no GL. In the North, the Babs are parading around a slew of crap units (reg spears and warriors) The have three potential targets: workers, Shanghai (currently defended by a reg warrior) or our Iron supply. [B]Must not allow them to pillage our Iron[B]. Shuffle troops to defend Shanghai, and the iron. Wake up workers clearing jungle and will run them down to Beijing.

I don't see a need to swap Canton off of its temple.

Oh, that's just lovely. Checked how much it would cost to rush it, and accidentally clicked OK. :cringe: Well 100 gold circling the bowl. At least now it can get started on horses 4 turns earlier.

IT: We swap WM with England, England allies with Rome against Persia.

350 BC (10)
Well, Canton is now an excellent candidate for a native worker merge, as it would be happy at size 9. Canton temple --> horse. With the workers moved, the Babs turn back to Susa. Best unit is a vet sword that will attack across the river, after being subject to two cat shots. We now have two spears, two warriors, a horse and a catapult in Susa. Cat shot misses sword.

To next leader: No special advice. Don't think it is likely that Susa will fall, but we should have a few horses available to defend the core. Both of the southern cities are well garrisoned, I think we could probably burn Babylon city to the ground, as I haven't really seen any units from the south yet.




JB01 in 350 BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-350_BC.zip)

Got it. I'll do some damage. Disclaimer: Direct object deliberately omitted from the preceding sentence.

Should get it posted while it's still Saturday because, well, it's Saturday.

I am glad we were able to deal with Ur and get our horses back. Looking at the save, I noticed that there is a single piece of road that we could cut to isolate the Babylon main towns, slowing them down. It might be worth doing.

I suspect Rome is in its golden age. It will be nice that it is using it up against Persia and not us :)

350 BC (0)
I've seen happier situations and I've seen scarier ones. Susa is indeed safe for now (as promised). I see a long march across relatively unprotected Babylonian territory to get to Ninevah or Babylon City; that's the most annoying thing. I find that Korea is willing to pay us 7 gpt for our extra Incense, but it's below market price. Since everyone else is pretty much broke, I want to ship it but decide to hold off to make sure that we can hold onto our new source safely.

IT: "Iroquois and Rome have signed a military alliance against Persia." I'm not going to worry about our west front for a little while. Our Spearman offs a Bab Warrior at Susa, and their Swordsman pillages an irrigated/roaded plains square. A Medieval Infantry creeps into view.

330 BC (1)
Susa Catapult -> Settler
Shanghai Spearman -> Horseman
Babylonians begin Sun Tzu's.
We double-Catapult a lone Warrior north of Susa and a Horse kills it without loss. Beijing's growth to 9 allows a bit of fidgety MMing to get Beijing to 15 spt at 0 growth (any more people will send it into disorder) and Shanghai to 15 spt (with 2 fpt to boot). I go ahead and melt a Worker into Canton; this shaves a turn off of its Horseman production. Korea's up to market price of 13 gpt on Incense. I can't pass up the opportunity to double our income; I pull the trigger.

310 BC (2)
Beijing: Horse -> Horse
A Spearman tries to descend upon our Iron from the north; I fortify one of Shanghai's Spearmen there to nip that potential catastrophe in the bud (a Horse from Beijing replaces it as MP). I send our Elite Sword up in that direction anyway; I don't plan on rushing into Babylonian territory until our Settler is closer to completion, anyway.

IT: "America and Rome have signed a military alliance against Persia." Hey, save some for us!
Susa defends against a Bowman successfully, but is threatened by a MI.

290 BC (3)
Shanghai: Horse -> Horse
I pick off a stray Spearman thanks to more of our fantastic Catapults (did I just say that?).

270 BC (4)
Beijing: Horse -> Horse
Ellipi: Barracks -> Spearman
Canton: Horse -> Settler (New Babylon, I hope)
Gringos start the Workshop. I pick off another Spearman in our territory in a similar fashion. I'm starting to edgy for having deferred serious assault on Babylonian lands, but I continue to patiently wait for my Settler to finish and for our Iron to come back online, allowing our Swordsmen to upgrade to MI and put some serious hurt on the Babylonian army.

IT: Our Spearman in Susa defeats a MedInf, and a Galley lands another one near Beijing. Good thing we have Horsemen!

250 BC (5)
Nanking: Walls -> Barracks
Shanghai: Horse -> Horse
Our Horseman slays the MedInf losing only a single HP. Go, team! I move all our Swords and a spare Warrior into Ellipi in preparation for a big upgrade after our Iron comes back online next turn.

IT: Babylon cashes its check outside of Susa. We kill its Bow, Sword, and MI without loss; a Spearman promotes to Elite.

230 BC (6)
Beijing: Horse -> Horse
I upgrade 5 Swordsmen and 1 Warrior to MedInfs. We still have a single Elite Sword and 6 gold when it's all over. Income shoots up to 36.

210 BC (7)
Susa: Settler -> Granary
Shanghai: Horse -> Horse
Apparently Sun Tzu was Korean; he finished his book in Seoul. Everyone cascades to Sistine or Workshop. Our barbarian hordes (F8 culture check: yup, our hordes are definitely barbarian) begin to descend upon Ninevah, because it's easier for the infantry to get there. Horses have been collecting in Nanking, since the clearer terrain around Babylon will make it easier for them to move there while the infantry march south to finish Ashur.

190 BC (8)
Beijing: Horse -> Pike
Ellipi: Spearman -> Pikeman
Canton: Settler -> Granary
Persepolis builds the Sistine Chapel. Too bad we're not religious. Everyone else cascades to the Workshop.

IT: The force outside Ninevah repels a MedInf. Unfortunately, our elite Sword has to get redlined to make it happen. *sigh*

170 BC (9)
Shanghai: Horse -> Marketplace (due in 7)
Korea starts Copernicus's Observatory. Ugh. We've got a lot of units now, but could use a lot more cash. I hope I didn't wait too long to start this, but I wanted to have a big mobile force to throw at Babylon City. Assault on Ninevah: we lose 1 MedInf to kill 2 Pikes and burn the city to the ground. Tsingtao is immediately founded 1 tile north of Ninevah's remains, so that we can use the food bonus 1 tile further to the north. Set to build a Granary. Our armies march so that they'll be able to assault Babylon City on Darkness's first turn. No one can pay more than 3 or 4 gpt for our new Incense source. A pity.

150 BC (10)
Beijing Pike -> Pike
3 MedInfs, 6 Horsemen, a Spear, and an elite Archer are outside Babylon. Could be better, but it's plenty to take the city. The main problem is that our Settler is a few turns away still. Burning Babylon to the ground would make it easier to use their roads, though. :evil:

Summary:
Went a little slower than I'd hoped, mostly due to me not wanting to see a wasteful slaughter of Swords and Horses against Pikes. I would have liked a little more infrastructure, but I'm happier with a comfortable military situation lending itself well to future conflicts. Korea's latest project suggests a pretty grim tech situation. That's part of the price of a Monarchy -- speaking of which, we should be considering a switch to Republic once we've wrapped up the Babylonian conflict. This could be as soon as when Babylon City falls, or it could wait until we've secured Ashur (note that Akkad's presence in the north allows us to capture the whole peninsula and still get a peace settlement from Hammurabi). Try to find a buyer for our new source of "incense"; we'll get another source when Babylon City's cultural radius withers.

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness (up next)
Kuningas (on deck)
Greebley
T_McC

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-150BC.zip

A look at The Nation Formerly Known as Babylon:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_150bc.jpg

Good job. :goodjob: We're making progress, and we'll soon only have one front to be concerned with.

Originally posted by JustBen

290 BC (3)
Shanghai: Horse -> Horse
I pick off a stray Spearman thanks to more of our fantastic Catapults (did I just say that?).

Hehehe, just wait for the Industrial age. I really begin building artillery then. :hammer:

Originally posted by JustBen

Summary:
Went a little slower than I'd hoped, mostly due to me not wanting to see a wasteful slaughter of Swords and Horses against Pikes. ... Korea's latest project suggests a pretty grim tech situation. That's part of the price of a Monarchy -- speaking of which, we should be considering a switch to Republic once we've wrapped up the Babylonian conflict.



Yeah, having to do infantry charges before rails can be tedious. But the biggest advantages the human has in combat are patience and knowing how to conserve troops.

I clipped it out of the quote, but the Babs have another city way to the west, so we could take Akkad and still get something for peace. I would argue against this, as it would prolong the war (and delay our entry to a Republic) by at least 10 turns.

Where do we go from here? I think there are two possibilities. (1) Peace with Babylon, and revolt to Republic, trying to use our new-found size to compete economically. (2) Assuming we do not get a GL in the next couple of battles, our GA will be kicked off with a Rider victory. By checking the save, I know Chivalry is in play, and I know we can buy it. We can start the (Monarchy) GA with a Rider victory against some straggling Bab unit. Then use our (Monarchy) GA to prepare for war with Persia, attempting to strike while the dogpile still exists.

I can't see a scenario that allows us a Republic GA at this time that doesn't involve fighting someone other than Babylon, or a GL. If we revolt during this war, I can't guarantee our economy will be able to afford Chivalry and upgrading any units. Not to mention if we get into Republic before the war ends, we'll have some serious issues with weariness, again likely crippling our economy. So I think we have to make peace with Babylon before changing governments, making it rather difficult to kick off our GA against them.

Before Ur flipped I was prepared to have the GA in Monarchy (GL-rushed Leo's) where in addition to basic infrastructure we would build enough horses/riders to blitz Persia on the first turn after the GA ended. We still have that possibility, by buying Chivalry and finding some Bab unit to kill. Make peace and start to mass our forces on the Persian border. A few drawbacks in this scenario: we don't get the full economic benefit of the GA, and we could no longer build horses to upgrade. The latter is only a minor problem, as we already have 12 horses, and I was eyeballing a figure of 24-30 Riders for the initial assault. Beijing and Shanghai could build at least 6 Riders from scratch in our GA. The other drawback is that if we wait until the end of the GA to attack Persia, the dogpile will be gone, and X-man will be sitting on a big stack of battle-hardened troops. If we went early in the GA, to take advantage of the dogpile, Persia will attack us nearly to the exclusion of all other civs, making us fight a defensive war against knights while the other civs steal the outlying Persian cities.

So to (finally) reach a point from the rambling paragraph above: If we are committed to attacking Persia before Gunpowder, we have to strike soon, and can use a few turns of GA (in Monarchy) to lay the final groundwork for the assault. Maybe not the textbook ideal GA, but if the plan works, we'll be the largest Civ in the game, with a fairly narrow border to defend, and can probably run a serious blitz campaign with Cavalry. If we wait until the end of a GA induced by the Babylonian war, we'd very likely be facing an undistracted Persia with muskets.

So what do we want? Hit Persia while the getting is good, or try to use our new-found size to compete economically?

In either case I propose we build the FP in Susa. It is nearly central to the entire southern landmass. I figure we will want to do some more fighting, and will want to jump the palace out of Beijing, likely north and west. (Around Antium) (Yeah, I'm already trying to get us in 3 more wars.) :rotfl:

I swear, I'm a builder.

Took a look at the save, and have a few thoughts.

Chivalry and Invention are both in play, and using the incense we can afford either. So if we get a GL, we can definitely get Leo's. You'd have to figure out whether we could wait the anarchy period to kick off our GA in Republic though.

You may want to restart lone scientist research on PP, as we've put 20 turns in and no AI has it yet. Not something we need, but we may get lucky.

There's a MM opportunity in Canton with the granary completing on the turn Canton grows.

The AI has badly spaced its tundra cities again, we can squeeze 3 cities where Babylon had two. My take on a dot-map.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/South_Penins2.JPG

JustBen left you a settler to replace Babylon (which I moved to redeem a wasted land tile, at the expense of two water tiles and two tile of overlap with a city we don't own (yet :groucho: ), could go either place). It may not be necessary to raze Ashur, you should be able to disband it by rushing two settlers to fill in the other dots.

Good Luck!

Shutting off Printing Press research was an error; sorry. The dance of troops around Susa kept me moving their laborers around a lot; I kept up for most of my round, but I obviously got sloppy at the end.

I like the dotmap too; Babylon City's current position was wasting tiles, but I hadn't actually decided where I wanted the Settler.

Now, on the the hard question: that of government.

Waiting for Gunpowder to make the rounds is obviously going to be very bad if we want to make serious gains against Persia. I think the key point to realize is that our Golden Age gains us the exact same amount under Monarchy as it does under Republic -- it's not like the Despotism/Republic difference. It's just that we're making a more money overall as a Republic. As a result, the question becomes one of being willing to remain in Monarchy for the next 20 turns.

A Republic produces an extra commerce point in a square that already produces one; that is, we're gaining about 1 gpt per population point. By an extremely rough calculation, that's a matter of 35-50 gpt for the next 20 turns (hard to account for the effects of rising population), neglecting the role of MP on our cities' happiness. That's the cost of remaining a Monarchy.

So what's the cost of going Republican? Time, mostly. You could claim that the Anarchy period is a cost, but we're going to incur that cost eventually no matter what. The effect of our MP is a cost, too. War weariness might be a cost, but it seems "slightly" insane to go Republic before we're done with Babylon.

The benefits of being a Republic are seriously dissipated by the fact that (1) we have exactly 1 Marketplace built and (2) we're going to be cranking out Riders for quite a while anyway. The benefit of staying in a Monarchy is that we get our Riders up in Xerxes's face faster.

Thanks to TMcC for mentioning the Gunpowder issue. Making me think it through like that has now convinced me that we're just not ready for a "tyranny of the masses" quite yet.

Summary: :hammer: Persia. Remain a :king:. Trigger a [party] Age.

We're China on a small, narrow pangea. I see no reason to not aspire towards a military victory of some sort. We have Rome acting as a buffer state until we've annexed all of Persia, at which point conquering the world will be an exercise, not a problem.

'got it'
OK, I'll try to take out Babylon and resettle their land. Then move on to Persia, and try to get a GA (in monarchy)...

[Edit] I'm getting very good at posting these mathematical analyses about 5 minutes after the next guy claims the game.

I agree with JustBen. Our UU has a fairly short time-span where it can be really effective, and we're nearing the end of it. Also, we can only use the main advantage of the Rider (3 moves) against the Persians, as it can't fight any faster in the jungle than a regular knight.

So if we want to attack Persia after the war with Babylon, we can go two ways: (1) Buy Chivalry before the end of the Bab conflict, trigger our GA, use the first 5-7 turns to amass a force to strike Persia. This would be kind of tight with our economy, as we don't have enough money to both buy Chivalry and upgrade many horses. I figure we would make ~+50 in our GA (we'll grow a little, and add more cities for unit support, but have to pay out for Chivalry), so we could upgrade about 1/2 horse a turn (unless Darkness does his magic and pulls us a leader again). Combined with what we could build from scratch, we'd probably have ~8 riders after 7 turns of GA. Decent stack to go on a burning rampage on Persia's southern cities. (I don't think we should even consider keeping those cities. As JustBen said, we are barbarians.) (2) Hope Babylon had Chivalry to give us for peace, or at least something we can trade for it. Acquire Chivalry on the cheap at the end of the Bab war (which I think will last 5 or 6 more turns), leaving us with enough money to upgrade 3 horses right away, and then 1/2 every turn. After another 5-7 turns, we'd still have ~8 riders to attack Persia and trigger our GA. We'd get more out of our GA this way, both in cash (not paying gpt for Chivalry) and with larger cities. It also means the second wave of riders comes faster, since we should be making enough cash to upgrade a horse every turn.

So I guess (2) is the way to go, unless we get a GL to rush Leonardo. Interesting things for Darkness and Kuningas to decide.

Either way, I don't see how we'll have enough Riders to send them after two targets at the beginning of the war. We could, however, use our infantry stack against Gordium simultaneous to the cavalry rush in the south. And as much as I'd love to hold Gordium, we should have a settler ready to build on the hill NE of the gold hill. We can't afford another flip. "Raze and replace" also allows the bulk of the infantry stack to slog N through the jungle to harass other Persian cities, and hopefully tie their forces down in pointless fights of attrition.

Did you know Susa can hand-build the FP during our GA? :)
Although I'm not sure that is such a good idea, we're going to need it training troops if we're going to attack Persia.

We are making slow but sure progress against the AI. Go Team! :)

I think using our riders soon is a good plan. The only problem with getting chivalry for peace is then we can't enter our GA before our war with Persia. It might be bettter to buy Chivalry and go for invention if we make peace with babylon.

Also rushing settlers is expensive. We may want to build them in our main cities? A rushed settler is 100+ bucks so what is that - 2 riders? It might be better in the long term to keep our main cities big, but given our tight window of opportunity, a quick trim of the main cities may make sense. It also may not make sense to move Ashur. True it is not optimal, but is it worth the price?
It will cost rushed settler price or loss of pop in a main city or waiting 15 or 30 turns to found it depending on how we chose to found it. It is never going to be a great city.

Doesn't republic also have less corruption? We are a long thin civ so we may get a bit more than the listed amounts. Also that will cause a difference in our GA amounts. I don't think that we have time to make a switch to Republic, so its probably moot, but I don't think the statement that we will get the same shields in republic and monarchy is entirely true.

Totally off the wall, but is it worth considering a switch to Democracy rather than republic? My guess is no. The worse war weariness offsets the small bonus in corruption and the worker bonus (especially on this small land map). I mention this because we will get PP before our golden age ends. It might be possible to get Democracy not long after.


BTW, we lost 3 turns off our printing press research if it is at 20 turns. I remember it was 27 turns after TMcC's turn.

Originally posted by Greebley
... The only problem with getting chivalry for peace is then we can't enter our GA before our war with Persia. It might be bettter to buy Chivalry and go for invention if we make peace with Babylon.

It will work either way, but we have to tie up most of our economy to buy Chivalry now. If Darkness bought immediately, I can't guarantee we will have enough money to upgrade even 1 horse before the war with Babylon could end. I didn't haggle for prices, but it could be close. We'd be making ~50 gpt in our GA even with a payment for Chivalry, so we'd we able to upgrade 1 horse every other turn. The advantage to this is we start GA production sooner.

The alternative is getting Invention from Hammer for peace, and trading it to America for Chivalry. At worst, we'd have to include a little bit of our economy to make the trade. If we could do that, we'd be able to immediately upgrade anywhere from 2-4 horses, depending on how the cash works out on the Chivalry trade. A disadvantage is that we wouldn't have GA production until we attack Persia, but I think we can get to the same number of riders in 6-7 turns of normal production (+upgrades) either way. The advantage of this plan is that we would be making ~25-30 gpt more for 20 turns. That would allow the second wave of riders (upgraded horses) to be ready sooner. It will work either way, I just hope Darkness had a chance to read this thread before he plays, so he can consider all his options.

Originally posted by Greebley Also rushing settlers is expensive. We may want to build them in our main cities? A rushed settler is 100+ bucks so what is that - 2 riders? It might be better in the long term to keep our main cities big, but given our tight window of opportunity, a quick trim of the main cities may make sense. It also may not make sense to move Ashur. True it is not optimal, but is it worth the price?

You're right, straight cash-rushing both settlers will be expensive. The thought of capture Ashur rather than razing was based on it being the last target of the war, and us not having a settler ready to replace. (If we raze, I think one of the AI will float by and poach an oil/rubber/uranium down there.) The city is a minor flip risk at a large size, so we will want to starve it down by some means. I think it can make 2-3 shields a turn, so disbanding via settler is a viable option. Maybe the best solution is to capture Ashur, pop 1 settler out of Beijing in the next ten turns to found on the blue dot (the pop in Beijing could be replaced by native workers), then after sufficient time disband Ashur with a settler. So I think it comes down to whether the improved location for Ashur is worth a couple of slaves that Ashur could produce while being starved to size 1 + ~50 gold (since the settler would need to be built no sooner than the turn that blue dot is founded, this is not a high-priority task). In those terms, probably not.

But blue dot is definitely worth having. That's a fishing village that can pull 16 shields before corruption (without taking any tiles from Tsingtao), so once it gets a courthouse it can probably build all of its own improvements.

Originally posted by Greebley
Doesn't republic also have less corruption?

There is a corruption thread somewhere on this board (Strategies?) (maybe search board for "corruption calculator"). IIRC, republic and monarchy use the same formula for distance corruption [(2/3)*something] whereas Democracy has [(4/9)*something]. Not sure about rank corruption, but I suspect it is not too critical as we aren't too close to the OCN.

I think that once we have control of the southern landmass we will have 4 native luxuries, with extras to trade for more. That should allow us to sustain a Republic in war-time (pre-hospitals), but I don't think that is possible under Democracy. With non-religious civs I feel it is quite important to minimize the number of gov't changes. When we go to Republic/Democracy, it would be nice if we could stay.

BTW, we lost 3 turns off our printing press research if it is at 20 turns. I remember it was 27 turns after TMcC's turn. Hm... 3 turns sounds believable...

210 BC (7)
Susa: Settler -> Granary And now it all makes sense. I knew I supposed to be watching when Susa built that Settler, too.

Bah.

You are right - I did get that wrong. I went and looked at the article There is a difference between republic and monarchy but the difference is in the OCN calculation rather than the distance part of corruption. The OCN has a 0.1 factor added to it for republic that monarchy doesn't have.

Inherited turn: science slider to 10% (PP)

IT: Rome builds Leo’s :mad:

130 BC (1): Our elite archer spawns a GL (unfortunately there are no trades available to obtain techs leading to wonders, so the GL goes to Bejing and to await wonder opportunities. Babylon is razed.

IT: Persians conquer the Babylonian city of Akkad.

110 BC (2): Movement…

90 BC (3): We capture Ashur. Xinjian founded where Babylon used to be (this is our eighth city, so I rush the granary in Susa, to use the GL to rush the FP the next turn). Only one Babylonian city remains, on the other side of the Persian territory. So we make peace for invention, chivalry, 2 workers and 3 gold.

70 BC (4): GL rushes FP in Susa.

IT: We spot 2 Roman cavalry’s :eek:

50 BC (5): Susa completes FP. Chengdu founded.

30 BC (6): 1 horseman upgraded to rider.

10 BC (7): Last settle built to fill the formerly Babylonian lands.

IT: We lose our supply of wines. I renegotiate (and unfortunately Ceasar has incresead his price to WM, 7 gold and 9 gpt) Romans capture Persian city of Gordium.

10 AD (8): Bejing builds rider. Another horseman upgraded.

IT: Rome and America sign an alliance against Persia.

30 AD (9): Nothing…

50 AD (10): Another horseman upgraded. Settler reaches position for city…

We haven’t had a GA yet, but we should be able to trigger that when attacking Persia. I think our main objective should be upgrading as much horseman to riders as possible and then attack Persia, but I didn’t dare that with only horseman and med. Inf. We now have 5 riders, so war becomes increasingly more appealing…


The save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-50AD.zip

Great job on the leader and the peace! :D
Now we just have to get Caesar to play better with others.

Originally posted by Darkness

IT: Rome builds Leo’s :mad:


Caesar is getting really annoying. We missed out on the Great Library (although The Hanging Gardens has worked out well for us) and Leo's by two turns!

Originally posted by Darkness
IT: Persians conquer the Babylonian city of Akkad.


When did they start fighting? Looked at the save, they are still at war, so expect Hammer to "leave the building" during Kuningas' turn. Good for us, no more flip risks, and we get closer to last-civ tech prices.


Originally posted by Darkness
GL rushes FP in Susa.

IT: We spot 2 Roman cavalry’s :eek:


This is the fastest tech pace I've ever experienced. FP was the best use for the leader, but I'm sorry for talking up Susa so loudly. I based the choice on the assumption that the Persian-Roman war would stay a stalemate, but I've changed my opinion. Not your fault, and our 4 largest cities are now essentially corruption-free. Plus, Susa will work well with our Persian conquests.

Originally posted by Darkness
Romans capture Persian city of Gordium.


Now it's starting to hit the fan for X-man. Given the standard AI stupidity, he will be sending his main body of forces to attack the Bab city behind him, so I fully expect the Roman Cavs to capture Akkad in the next couple of turns, and then we will have to race Caesar to pick over X-mans carcass.

I check the save, and I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that Printing Press still hasn't made the rounds, and we only have 10 turns to go. A monopoly tech with 6 (or 7) live civs would do wonders for our economy, and probably get us back in the tech race. More good news is that Persia is probably completely gassed by this point. Which is also the bad news, and I expect that since the Roman Cavs now have flat ground to run on they will carve the Persians up. (The Persians have also lost Tyre in the north.) We should have a (some) poaching settler(s) ready [we could do that settler-native worker merge trick with Beijing again], although I've noticed the AI is less likely to raze sites that are close to the human.

Bad news also comes with Persia knowing Gunpowder. X-man is broke, so this may do him more harm than good since if he has salt, he'll have to build 70 shield defense units. I'd love to be patient with our attack, but I think we have to go soon if we want to take anything before it belongs to Rome. Hopefully, Persia will re-take Gordium, but I doubt they can. Akkad makes a nice target, especially because those are Bab citizens, not Persians, and we could hold the city instead of razing. It should also be in the line of advance for the Roman troops, so X-man's counter attack should meet 3rd party resistance.

When we do go for the Persians, an MA with Caesar could be considered. Pro: We should get something (cash, discount on tech) for attacking X-man, which we would do anyway. Con: We would have to stick it our until Rome makes peace, which might not be until X-man is dead. This severly limits our ability to hijack tech at a peace treaty. I do not want to ruin our MA reputation, for reasons to be made clear.

We are in a good position to attack a gassed AI, and trigger our GA. It is not unrealistic to think we could gain 3-4 cities is a 10-12 turn war (plus tech with the peace treaty). Our short-term strategy could be to capture Akkad, and raze-and-replace Pasagardae and Antioch, then sue for peace or continue pushing into Persia, depending on the situation on the ground, land is more important than tech@last. I would not expect the Persians to be capable of generating much of a counter-attack. Devote what resources we can spare during our GA to infrastructure, and revolt to Republic at the conclusion. Kuningas can decide on the timing, we don't have to go right away, but I think we do have to go on his turns.

In the medium-term, we should do all we can to get chummy with Korea and America, because we have a war with Rome coming. (Odd to think, but how different would this game be if Greebley didn't have the opportunity to start a 4-fer with Rome on his last turn.) We will need to start a dogpile on Caesar to complete the first ring around our FP, and to narrow our front. This is the primary reason I would argue against an MA at this time. We need to have operational flexibility.

Other thoughts: The timing of our attack on Persia may also be determined by when we can get our workers off the Persian border.

After all the riders are upgraded, the leader-generating Archer should also be upgraded (probably not until Greebley's turn).

We get PP just as fast with a lone scientist as with tech at 10%.

City builds should be carefully considered. I'm not sure we want all of those pikes. Kuningas should decide which cities need real defense, and which just need warm-body MP's. Maybe we do want a few more pikes. :confused:

Good work Darkness :goodjob:

Rome must have gone straight up the Mil trad. path to get Cavalry that fast. They are definitely going to be the monster this game.

I think we could get several techs for peace with Persia so an MA with Rome would have to be very lucrative to be worth it. On the other hand if we were planning on extinction of Persia, it would be the way to go.

I am hoping Kuningas knows he is up. We have been flying through the turns.

So is everyone getting Conquests :D

I ordered mine with "slower but free shipping" so it may be a bit before I get it.

Originally posted by Greebley

Rome must have gone straight up the Mil trad. path to get Cavalry that fast. They are definitely going to be the monster this game.


Yeah, and the other problem is that sometime during Kuningas' turn we are likely to hear "Seoul completes Copernicus' Observatory". Just what we need, the two large AI's going different branches of the tech tree. One game, during the Industrial age when the tech tree has three branches at most points, myself and two AI's couldn't have coordinated research projects better. I think we were effectively discovering better than a technology every two turns. The fourth large civ went from tech parity to ~8 techs behind in 20 turns.

Originally posted by Greebley
So is everyone getting Conquests :D


Good point, since we have two Yoo-row-pee-ans in this game, and it sounds like Conquests has some significant changes to the game mechanics, I vote this game stays as PTW.

got it.

Originally posted by T_McC
Good point, since we have two Yoo-row-pee-ans in this game, and it sounds like Conquests has some significant changes to the game mechanics, I vote this game stays as PTW.
I think a change mid-game would be inappropriate even if this were a purely gringo game, mostly due to the mechanics they changed in Conquests.

Originally posted by Darkness
IT: Rome builds Leo’s

130 BC (1): Our elite archer spawns a GL (unfortunately there are no trades available to obtain techs leading to wonders, so the GL goes to Bejing and to await wonder opportunities. Babylon is razed.
I can't believe that happened to us twice in the same game.

IT: We spot 2 Roman cavalry
That's ugly. I found myself in a similar situation once before, but that time I won the war using Ansar Warriors instead of Riders. And this game we may even have the luxury of waiting till we get to use Cavalry ourselves! (Hope springs eternal...)

I think the FP in Susa will work out just fine, but it increases the pressure on us to make big gains on the border with Persia. It may suit our purposes to jump the gun in our war against Persia rather than waiting till we're "ready." We're racing Rome to Persepolis, 1945-style, and a GA is the only advantage we might be able to gain on them.

Do any of the AIs have enough liquid cash that we can take out a loan? This is not something I've ever done before, but I've never had such a desparate need for cash that I was willing to damage my income for an up-front payment. Anything to hurry the invasion of Persia improves our chances of getting to Berlin first. I mean Persepolis.

Edit: Small, annoying typos fixed.

Actually, I was more asking as "Off topic chatting" than an actual suggestion to change to it. I would want to hear that such a change was really good by someone reliable before really doing it. I am also guessing that if it did work, it wouldn't change much in terms of things like unit attributes and cost. In other words, you would get the code changes but the "data" (anything you can change in the editor) would stay the same.

So until Bamspeedy gives it a two thumbs up, the point is moot.

I read a nice report on Conquests from one of the Beta testers.

Sulla's Conquests Review (http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/sullla/CQ.html)

If I read between the lines, even if we wanted to switch these save files would not be compatible with Conquests.

0 - 50AD

Trade WM (+7 gold)
I asked a loan from each civs. None were willing to help us.

1 - 70AD

Shanghai Rider ->Rider
Koreans, Romans, Iroquois have PP.

Hangchow founded -> Temple

Susa ->Settler

2 - 90AD
Roman musketeer and cavalry are going without permission through our lands.

Trade WM (+12 gold)
Beijing Pikeman ->Rider
Susa Settler ->Rider

1 horseman upgraded

3 - 110AD

Nanking Pikeman ->Pikeman
Ellipi Pikeman ->Rider
1 Warrior upgraded


4 - 130AD
Romans demands 19 gold + TM. We agreed to give them.

Revolution 5 turns
:hammer: War declared to Persians :hammer:

5 - 150AD

:sleep:

6 - 170AD

There it goes. Romans captured Akkad. We're 1 turn late.

7 - 190AD
Win: 4/4 Knight vs Pike (hp 2/5)
Koreans built Copernicus

Win: MI (hp 1/4) vs 3/3 Pike


8 - 210AD
Another lost. Romans took Bactra
Lost: 4/4 Knight vs 4/4 Horse

Lost: 4/4 Horse vs 2/4 Knight
Win: horse (hp 5/5) vs 2/4 Knight

9 - 230AD
Republic formed

Win: Rider (hp 4/4) vs 3/3 Pike
GA started :worship:
Lost: Rider 4/4 vs 3/3 Pike
Win: Rider (hp 4/4 vs 3/3 Pike
Pasargrade razed. 2 workers.

10 - 250AD
Tsingtao granary ->settler
Shanghai rider ->rider

2 Horses upgraded

Can't decide were to build city. Left it to next player.
Stopped PP research. We could buy it from Americans for 11gpt, Incense and WM.

At the Dawn of the Golden Age we are gaining 131gpt. Slider 9.0.1.

I went war in the middle of anarchy period. I saw Roman stacks of 3-4 cavalries and knights so I had to do something.

Next player may reorder workers cause can't remember if forest chop -plant -chop -plant cycle produce shields.

Here is my suggestion for city placement:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_cityplacement.jpg


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01-250ad.zip

We gotta focus on the positives. I don't see any Musketmen in Persepolis, do you? ;)

Besideds, when the problem is we can't conquer that one civ fast enough, you know you've at least something right in the game.

I have no problems with the dotmap presented. Everything else is a tactical decision best left to Greebley. Happy hunting! :hammer:

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley (up next)
T_McC (on deck)

Lets just hope we can take a good bit of Persia, before Rome kills Xerxes...

Wow, I didn't think we could handle a Republic in our GA. Shows what I know. :rolleyes:

Another good set of turns Kuningas. :)

I'll second an agreement on the dot-map, I don't care about culturally pushing the snot out of Akkad, it'll be ours eventually. :devil2:

No need to buy PP, the only one who doesn't have it is Hammer, and he can't pay us anything for it. I think we only have 5 turns left on lone scientist. Greebley may want to consider buying another lux, so we can set lux tax to 0%.

Greebley gets to make the big decision: Do we keep Perseopolis? Since we are short on lux, and are going to build cathedrals in most cities, Sistine would be real useful. We'd also get some use out of the GW, since we don't know Metallurgy. Obviously, it would be capture, garrison with 1 unit, flip, re-capture, garrison with 1 unit, flip, re-capture and eliminate Persia. But we could use those wonders. This also directly impacts whether we want to buy Education from someone, to open up more tech from X-man in the peace. This is a gamble, he might not have anything beyond Education, and requires us to either let the Romans capture a city in our back lines, or allow Persia to live. If we keep Perseopolis, we can't make peace with X-man, and if we can't make peace with X-man, we don't have to raze any of his other cities. We just have to lightly garrison and be prepared to re-capture after flips. [Edit: I wondered if we had to consider the turn-order for the AI, in case a city flips would it be possible for lagging Roman troops to capture it, but the player always moves first in a round, so this shouldn't be a problem. i.e. Everybody moves, the flip occurs on the IT, then the player gets to move]

I like the "friendly" congestion around Perseopolis. We should be blocking Roman troops from reaching any of the southern Persian cities, those are ours. Let the Romans take Arbela, and we can take Tarsus, Sidon, and Antioch after Perseopolis. By the end of Greebley's turn, we will hold X-man's future in our hands. Or maybe this will go quick and he'll eliminate them. I'm leaning towards not razing Persian cities, cause X-man's on his way out.

After Persia is eliminated, Hammer has got to go. If Greebley doesn't get a chance to do it, I will. (We have 3 turns left on our latest cease-fire with him).

On the lumberjacking point, I believe only the first chop gets a shield credit. Since our workers have nothing better to do, chopping all the arctic forest, and then re-planting it, is a good use of their time.

One last point: Since warm-body MP doesn't apply in a Republic (and we don't need more bodies in larger cities), we really should try not to have any undefended cities.

I got it and hope to play tonight. I will read any further comments before I play.

I tend to keep wonders (actually, a more accurate statement is that I can't think of a single instance where I destroyed a useful wonder). I don't think the flip chance will be that huge. 5-20% would be my guess.

What I intended from my comments was that the only thing that can slow down our assault is a city flip while it has a large garrison. Persia doesn't have iron or horses anymore, so they shouldn't be able to mount a competent counter-attack on any city we capture, which removes almost all the danger of a light garrison.

If we capture all Persian cities without razing, I would expect we have a flip somewhere in there, since we have such a low culture relative to Persia. But we may not give them time to flip, it's not out of the question Persia could be gone halfway through Greebley's turn.

Greebley also gets to set our course for the balance of the GA. We've either been at war or preparing for war for the last 100 turns. I figure this is the time for infrastructure. But if Greebley gets a yearning to smack Rome ... :hammer:

Preturn: Minor MM of a few cities. Scrounge up 2 gold so I can rush Ashur's pikeman. Ashur will get a tree chop in 2 and was going to build his pikeman in 2. The rush will allow Ashur to use the chop. Thx for the heads up on that. Move settler to one of the dots (I hope to keep Persian cities).

IBT: Immortal attacks rider. We retreat.

260 AD (1): Beijing: Rider->Rider, Build Tientsin in the dotmap position near Akkad.

Attempt on Persopolis. There is a Roman army nearby BTW. Here goes:
v Med Inf vs v Pike loses but redlines pike. (1)
v Med Inf vs v Pike wins and promotes to elite.
v Med Inf vs r Pike wins.
Cat that somehow got skipped in the first round does a pt of damage to a pikeman (2)
v Rider vs r Pike retreats doing minor damage (3)
v Rider vs r Pike wins (2 hp pike shows up so there are 3 defenders).
e Med Inf vs 2pt Pike wins (no leader).
v Rider vs 2pt Pike wins.
v Rider vs 1pt Pike wins and takes city. 9 resisters.

Also I kill the immortal that attacked last turn.

Upgrade Horseman and archer. I block the Roman army from Sideon and Antioch. There may be serious competition for these even so. Iroquois knights are also incoming.
I have a 1 hp rider guarding a catapult with no more units to help. I decide the rider is more valuable and move it to safety. The cat may be lost.

IBT: Roman army does terribly and is redlined (and I think retreats so the defender has 2+ hp). We get a palace upgrade.

270 AD (2): Suza:Rider->Rider

Attack Antioch:
v Rider vs r Pike wins.
v Rider vs r Pike loses with no damage done and the Pike promotes.
v Rider vs v Pike retreats. Calling off the attack as we are not doing well enough to continue.
----------
Elite slightly injured e Med Inf attacks a longbowman fishing for a leader. Wins but no leader.

Sideon is surrounded by troops now. Bringing up the catapults to attack next round.

More upgrades

IBT: Persia now just has Sidion and Antioch. JSB is built by America in Boston. Roman cavalry head for Antioch. Not sure if I can get both these cities, but I will try.

280 AD (3): Nanking: Pikeman->Pikeman, Shanghai: Rider->Rider, Canton: Market->Catapult.

Attack on Sidon:
Catapults damage 2 r Pike
v Rider vs r Pike wins revealing the damage pikeman (so 2 damaged pikes left).
v Rider vs 2pt Pike barely wins but promotes.
v Rider vs 2pt Pike wins and premotes. Sidon taken.

Move riders to Antioch. More upgrades

IBT: Romans advance. I have blocked most of the ways to the city so I think I can win (I didn't want to block ALL the ways in case that angers Rome). Korea joins dogpile on Persia. Magellan is started.

290 AD(4):Tsiango builds a settler starts temple. Beijing: Rider->Rider. I check the diplo but we don't get enough to make peace with persia worthwhile (ie give rome the city)..

Attack Antioch:
v Rider vs v Pike loses (2hp left).
v Rider vs r Pike wins (1hp but promotes
v Rider vs r Pike loses
v Rider vs 2pt Pike wins
v Rider vs 2pt Pike wins and Antioch falls.

Persia has been destroyed.

Note that we can buy some techs, but at 2nd to last as Babylon doesn't have them either. I think I will wait until Babylon is no more to get them at last place prices.

Switch Suza to a Marketplace.

IBT: Roman and Iroquois head back out of our lands. Everyone is building Magellan now.

300 AD (5): Ellipi: Rider->Marketplace, Canton: Catapult->Catapult, Chengdu: Temple->Market, Sidon quells 8 resisters (I piled in some troops).Chengdu: Temple->Market,
Mostly troop healing and trying to keep an eye on the Roman and Iroquois intruders.

Gold is up to 205 per turn.

Notice we might be able to grab some spices. Switch Persopolis to a settler.

310 AD (6): Shanghai: Rider->Temple, Persepolis: Settler->Temple. Gather forces for attack on babylon.

Iroquois Embassy: Iroquois have 1 of each resource and 6 luxuries currently. Seoul/Korea - they are democracy + healthy resources. America is republic with all resources 5 luxuries.

We now have embassies with all nations. Also investigate Babylon city to check on offensive units. They have a single longbow and 3 spears.

320 AD (7): Most foreign troops have left now. Beijing: Rider->Rider, Nanking:Pikeman->Market, Canton: Catupult->Courthouse, Hangchow: Temple->Harbor.
Build Tatung at the final dotmap position. Declare war on Babylon.
Build Macao to grab spices (between 2 Roman cities (distance 3)).

IBT: Wine deal ends with Rome (we don't need as we now have the spices).

330 AD (8): Susa: Market->Rider. Move outside Babylon city but they sent out a boat. they may build another city.

340 AD (9): Shanghai: Temple->Rider. Attack on Uruk. Two elite units win but no leader and Babylon is destroyed. They put a spearman and longbow on the boat to deprive us of Leaders. The Meanies!

I consider buying Gunpowder, but decide we can't both pay for the tech and upgrade, so I hold off.

350 AD (10): Beijing: Rider->Rider

I suggest buying some tech. Prices are as low as they are going to go we probably have enough to both buy gunpowder and also upgrade most pikemen without needing gpt.

You can also mega-micro-manage Beijing if you want. On one turn it makes 26 shields, on the other two 23. This gives a rider and 2 food for growth every 2 turns.
Research is currently turned off.

Everything is upgraded except 2 spearman (one elite), and regular warrior.

The riders are currently in the Jungle near Uruk. We also need workers over there. There aren't any yet.

Finally, I was thinking we may want to resettle that town on the westmost point of land. I was thinking Antioch could do it after it finishes its temple. It has lots of food.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB350AD.JPG

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-350AD.zip)

Excellent turns Greebley, you got two kills! :worship:

I've got it, but won't play until tomorrow morning (~12 hrs) so people can weigh in on our future direction. I noticed one troubling thing when I opened the save. Caesar is in the industrial age. :cry:

I expect him to have rifles by the end of my turn. I think that makes our path clear, we need to concentrate on infra, because we won't be making a go at Rome until we can get to cavalry. I think our GA will end on my 9th turn, so I'll try not to spend all of our money. :lol:

We're 2nd in land area, but we're rather vulnerable. My initial thoughts on my turn is to be as nice as possible to Rome. If they let us survive until we get cavs/rifles, then we should be able to outproduce the AI and steamroll them in the Infantry era.

Odd question: Why does everyone hate us on the F4 screen? I don't think we have broken any deals, and I don't believe there is any diplomatic penalty for wiping out another civ. :confused:

Why does everyone hate us on the F4 screen?
If you don't mind me fielding that question, there is a slight deterioration in diplomatic relations every time you raze/abandon a city and every time you declare a war. There has been a fair amount of both in this game ;).

Originally posted by Zwingli

If you don't mind me fielding that question, there is a slight deterioration in diplomatic relations every time you raze/abandon a city and every time you declare a war. There has been a fair amount of both in this game ;).

Heh, there's plenty more where that came from! :tank:

@JustBen - Do you have any particular feelings on worker farms? With a granary, Antioch will do 2 turn workers forever. We could bump up some of our cities population this way, but some folks see this as an exploit.

Braaaaaavo, Greebley. We finally have something that looks like an empire.

@TMcC: We didn't need to see Caesar change clothes to know that we're not starting a war anytime soon; we already saw his Cavalry. After our GA runs out, go ahead get us started on our Republican revolution -- if you don't, I will. We very clearly need to get Marketplaces and Banks up and running before we can accomplish anything more in this game.

@The Team (re Zwingli): No kidding! But I guess that means everything is going according to plan. No one seriously thought we were going for the 100k win once you found out we'd spun up China, right? ;) But is our credit still good? I haven't checked the save for a round or two. We won't be getting any 2:1s for quite a while, so Banking is the only thing that would be worth buying on credit in the near future. Nevertheless, it is annoying to have options taken off the table.

@TMcC (again): Worker farms suck. We've used Worker merges in this game a little bit, but it was in the spirit of the game. You've all heard the arguments, so I won't repeat them now. I apologize for neglecting to list it on my exploits on page 1, but please refrain. I don't know what our Worker count is right now, so feel free to crank them from Antioch if we need to get projects started; just don't meld them into cities/metropoli.

Note that I have been working on Marketplaces. They are the one item many ciities have. Only our new or small cities should be missing them. We may want to consider going for banking before cavalry. Right now we are still building troops that just cost money. Bank and then troops is better than troops then bank, I think.

As far as I know our rep is fine. I checked to make sure there was nothing between us when I attacked babylon. Note that we haven't been trading recently (since I was waiting for Bab's elimination), which seems to lower your standing. We can probably get to banking with without too much gpt needed. When I last checked we could buy gunpowder for around 750, so we can afford education straight up and have some cash left for buying our way to banks.

I have been using the workers to create more irrigated land to grow our cities faster. We probably want to continue this and emphasize food over shields. While a "worker farm" is an exploit, I think what we can do is put a granary in antioch and popping of a worker every time it grows to size 12. Too me this is not an exploit, but the way things should work. The exploitive part to my mind is when you use a size 6 city to make a size 12 grow or a size 12 to make a size 20 grow, etc.

The first thing I would do though is to rebuild that penisula city that was razed in the wars by having antioch build a settler after the temple. It might have a resource, and even if it doesn't, then someday it will produce a decent amount of gold from all the coast squares.

Oh one other thing. All tundra squares have used their tree chop (once the current chops finish). I simply replanted the forests. Don't chop trees in tundra squares and expect to get 10 shields.

The only other square that I planted a forest was the one E of Ellipi. A worker got bored and planted it and is now chopping. I tend not to do the forest chop, as I am not organized enough to really do it. Since I inherited the game with the Tundra forests being chopped, I kept that up and replanted afterward.

Edit: If we are planning on being peaceful for a while you could make ROP deals. I didn't want to tie us up to any commitments as I was unsure when we wanted to attack the romans.

Note that I think the Iroquois would make a good ally when we do go against Rome. They seemed to have a good amount of troops

Originally posted by JustBen

But is our credit still good? I haven't checked the save for a round or two. We won't be getting any 2:1s for quite a while ...

Our credit is still fine, and we'll catch up to the English and Iroquois rather soon, so I suspect we can 2-fer our way into the Industrial Age.

I was just surprised to see no one was at least Cautious with us. My previous understanding was that razing cities only incurred a diplomatic penalty with the razees, but you learn something new every day. There's no one in the game who can (credibly) attack us besides Rome, and as long as they hold off for 30-40 turns it'll be downhill from there.

:goodjob: Greebley

I agree with banking path. Currently we could buy education for 450 gold and incense.

On my 9th turn, Rome declares war on us ... :eek: :cry: :nuke:

JB01 - 350 AD

Lousy Builders Turns (or was it?)

What a difference 50 turns makes. I think when I last played, we had 5 cities, now we have 18. Body count: 15 Riders, 18 Pikes, 8 Cats, 10 Misc. We have 6 native workers and 23 slaves.

We are running 10% lux tax, costing us 37 gpt. We are not researching anything, nor should we be. Our only ongoing deal is Liz paying us 1 gpt for 15 turns. Everyone is annoyed with us. There are no wars going on.

Our GA expires on my 9th turn. Guesstimate that will cost 110 gpt, so don't spend all the money.

Pre-turn diplomacy:
Start with Korea: Trade Wang Incense + 19gpt for Wines + Ivory, with a WM swap thrown in. Allows us to lower the lux tax to 0%, and fire a couple clowns. Income goes to 277 gpt (+24 gpt). Being able to run 0% lux also means cities won't riot just because the GA ends. Wang goes from Furious --> Annoyed. To try to bolster our reputation, sign ROP with Korea (he'd pay, I let him have it for free).

Next, England: Liz gives 7 gold for a WM swap. Buy Education for Incense + 33gpt. I will try to get a two-fer on Gunpowder farther up the Education branch. Also, I'm not big on the pike --> musket upgrade, as 60 gold is a lot to pay for 1 add'l defense. Give Liz a free ROP (she'd pay). She is now Cautious. She is also lacking Astronomy, so the two-fers can begin immediately.

On to the Iroquois: Give Hi 7 gold to swap WM. Also give a free ROP.

Hangin' with Abe: Abe gives us Music Theory and 1 gold to swap WM (12 gold value). Abe also gets a free ROP.

Liz gives 11 gold for updated WM, as does Caesar. Have a strong internal debate over whether to ROP with Rome. He'll be coming through anyway to get to his cities, and I'm not going to demand he leave. Only once have I ever been attacked by a civ with whom I have an ROP. This is a literary device known as "foreshadowing". In a solo game I'd do this, so we pay 24 gold to Casear for an ROP. Caesar goes from Annoyed to Cautious.

Might as well strike while the iron is hot: Incense + 50 gpt to Abe for Astronomy. Astronomy is worth a discount of 16 gpt on either Banking or Gunpowder from Liz. Astronomy + 24 gpt to Liz for Gunpowder. We have three salts, all hooked up. No one needs any. (I took Gunpowder instead of Banking because (1) We don't have that many markets yet. (2) Banking can 2-fer with Chemistry or Metallurgy, and I think we only want the required techs. Buying Democracy to 2-fer doesn't seem worth it)

So we got ROP' s with everyone, a full WM, two lux and three techs. We still have 1044 gold in the bank and are making 162 gpt. We've traded away all 3 incense, and if war breaks out in the East, we may be in trouble. If you're gonna break one deal, might as well break a lot. (Only a minor concern, we have a harbor, and at least some of the AI have Navigation/Magnetism)

Change a few builds (mostly in cities where temples were cued, but the city didn't need the happiness anytime soon, or wouldn't benefit from the border expansion) and MM cities, income goes to 174 gpt.

Wake Rider from Susa and garrison Hangchow.

360 AD (1) - Nothing completes

370 AD (2) - A few AI start Smith's. Susa Rider --> Musketman, Shanghai Rider --> Granary, Canton Rider --> Musketman, Antioch Temple --> Courthouse,

380 AD (3) - Swap TM with Abe. Liz had both Chemistry and Banking, so no 2-fer available there. Beijing Rider --> Temple. A few folks are approaching the ruins on the western tip of the continent. Alas, one of our commanders got lost and mistakenly positioned our troops on all the eligible city building tiles. :blush: Sidon Marketplace (rushed) --> Courthouse.

390 AD (4) - Liz offers to sell us Navigation for 660 gold. I decline. Baking would be 880 gold, but I also declined, as I want it in a two-fer with Metallurgy. Tientsin Temple -->Barracks. Macao Temple(rushed) --> Walls. Ashur Harbor --> Courthouse. Ellipi Marketplace --> musket. The worker hordes have made their way west to the jungle.

400 AD (5) - Don't think anything completed. Chemistry from Hi for WM + 970 gold. Consarnit! The 3-fer isn't there. Oh well, Liz doesn't have Metallurgy or Physics, so I'll take Metallurgy. Metallurgy from Abe for WM + 68 gpt. Metallurgy to Liz for Banking + WM + 24 gold. Physics can 2-fer with Military Tradition, and we are only 3 techs from the Industrial Age. I think I'm done spending money on my turn, I've tied up most of the next two players economies. Treasury at 565 gold, making 143 gpt.

410 AD (6) - Beijing Temple --> Bank (While I wanted our larger cities to have at least 1 musket, and we are short on defensive units, muskets can wait for banks.) [Cue foreboding music] Persopolis barracks --> courthouse. Xinjian courthouse --> marketplace. Susa Musket --> bank. Tsingtao Market --> Harbor. Canton Musket --> Bank. No one besides Rome is industrial, but a whole bunch just started Shake's. Upgrade all 8 cats to cannon. Stupid Roman cav stopped in the jungle square I had a bunch of workers on goto to. No one besides Rome is availing themselves of our ROP.

420 AD (7) - Tiensin Barracks --> Market. Hangchow Harbor --> courthouse.

430 AD (8) - Nanking Market --> Granary. Shanghai Musket --> Bank. Macao Walls --> Cannon. Macao Walls --> courthouse. Redistribute cannons to border cities.

440 AD (9) - And then the sh*t hits the fan. Our GA ends, and the Romans ROP rape us to capture Tatung. Tientsin is attacked and is in danger for the next turn. We also lose a stack of slaves. Good thing the AI doesn't know how to properly perform an ROP rape, or we'd be in serious trouble.

I don't believe the ROP was [pimp] The ROP only allowed the Romans to choose a soft initial target. I don't believe the presence of the ROP made it more likely they would attack, and should have made it less likely. I guess the AI doesn't like aggressive settlements. Where I think the ROP hurt us is that once the AI says to itself, "Hey, lets attack", the ROP allows it to choose from a broader range of targets.

I don't know what our real income is, but buy MA against Rome with Korea for 29 gpt, and MA with America vs. Rome for 19 gpt. Kill Roman cav outside of Tientsin. Lose Rider attacking Longbow outside Tientsin :cringe:.

Recapture Tatung, gain 315 gold in the process. Upgrade pike in Perse' to Musket. Buy Military Tradition from Iroquois for 300 gold + 48 gpt, we need cavalry. Attack Roman Cav near Macao with Longbow. Retreat the Cav, will lose longbow on interturn. Found Anyang on western ruins.

Ellipi musket --> cav. Upgrade 6 riders to Cavalry. We currently have 724 gold, with an income of +107 per turn (?) Swap Susa from bank to musket. Swap Canton from Bank to cavalry. Shanghai from bank to musket. Tientsin to walls. I have a big stack of workers to bait Cavs out of Tarsus. (That's not intentional, the workers couldn't run into a city in time). The workers the Romans stole are tucked under a Cav army. If Caesar can sign anyone else in against us, we'll be out from under some gpt. Empty Sidon of defense, the Romans can't reach it. Trying to hide workers in cities.

450 AD (10) - Press return and hide under the desk ... No cities fall. The Romans like Canton, but thanks to our cannon brigades, don't even kill one unit. More bad news: I see Roman rifles. Rome and England sign an MA against America. We are losing 10 gpt, with a treasure of 707. In 10 turns we will recover 102 gpt and our 2 incense. Swap Beijing from Bank --> Cavalry. Kill two redlined Cavs outside of Canton. Swap Perseopolis from Courthouse to musket. I don't see any other soft Roman targets. Hopefully Wang and Abe can harass Rome's east enough to give us time to regroup. If we can reduce it to fighting local forces only, we can make gains from this war. For JustBen, I didn't move very many units this turn, so you can do some unit shuffling as you see fit. I put those Riders next to the western-most Roman city in the wrong square, but they can't be moved this turn. I wanted to check to see if Caesar would have muskets there, and to try to get the Riders back to the core.

I signed the MA's because I believed we would lose huge if we fought Rome alone. If we only have to fight local forces, we should easily be able to withstand 20 turns of war. Korea and America are Industrial, but Korea did not draw Nationalism as its free tech. None of our outgoing gpt will end on your turn, JustBen, so this is going to be a tough round. The first round of gpt ends on Darkness 1st IT (turn?), the second round on his 5th, and the MA's on his 9th.

Before Rome attacked, I was working on a paragraph talking about us being 2nd in land and population, and definitely in a winning position so long as we were left alone for about 20 more turns. Be careful what you wish for ... :mad:

Duck and Cover (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-450_AD.zip)

A couple of more notes: We did build the city on the western end of the pangaea, I think on turn 9. I think you can surmise why I didn't take note of that.

I also have to apologise, if we are playing by LKendter rules. I think my tactics on turn 3 constitute 'ROP Abuse'. This wasn't a flagrant violation, more of a "hold my place while our settler moves", but still... The settler started moving on turn 3 from Perseopolis.

Well, the host of the game gets the most important 10 turns. If we don't lose any cities on JustBen's turn, we should be able to generate some offense on Darkness' turn. Or at least get a peace with the status quo.

Also on the happy front, there is a Roman cav army running around near Macao.

@JustBen - If the war isn't distracting enough, there are some good MM opportunities for growth in Susa and the surrounding floodplains cities.

Good luck! :help:

I definitely agree that MA were a good idea. I would much rather face few units for longer than Romes entire force at once.

I agree the ROP didn't make it more likely to attack. Probably less. From experience, I don't think our towns were close enough to lead to a direct attack at least not the primary cause. What is much more likely is the fact that we are doing well in score and land while having being outnumbered by Roman forces. Betazed's peaceful game show that this is important consideration:

Betazed's post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1046625#post1046625)

There's conflicting opinion on whether aggressive settlement causes wars, my personal belief is that is does.

We have plenty of land, but we are still behind Persia on the F8 screen. I'd actually be impressed if the AI "go to war" algorithm included something like:

human score=low, gradient=low; aggression=medium (probably not worth attacking)
human score=low, gradient=high; aggression=high (kill before threat)

Caesar did what I would have done in his position, now we have to make him pay.

I think my turnlog overstates how dire the situation is. Even on a complete blindsiding, we only lost 1 city, and gained it right back. The Romans even paid 335 gold to rent for the 1 turn. We're not going to collapse anytime soon, unless the pRNG really hates us. I think we're just going to have to be content to trade units for a few turns, before we can consider going on offense. And even if we don't get to go on offense during this war, in about 30-40 turns we'll have the chance to show Caesar how to properly execute a blitz attack :satan:

On the AI attacking for close cities: They will definitely attack if the Civ distance is 2. For distance 3 - I have had games where I have placed a city and the AI has remained completely peaceful. Also they place their cities that close to me so my guess is the effect is minor to moderate (and I have gotten lucky) if it exists. I think running out of space will trigger AI aggression and seen at least one game where blocking the AI from settlable land seemed to anger them (I locked them in a small part of the continent and tried to take the rest - they attacked after running out of land).

It is hard to tell for sure though. A good way for the programmers to have implemented it would be to have a random chance per turn that is based on a number of factors. This makes it difficult to really know all the effects.

I am not really worried about the war since we have allies. The worst case is probably that we need to stay in war mode & make no progress with high War Weariness. The WW hit is probably already high with the loss of that town. We should be getting unhappiness soon I would guess (assuming we haven't already)

"Got it"; can't make any promises about when it'll be posted. Schoolwork just turned a teensy bit intense, and I have to do some time-juggling. I'll be on time.

The first thing I want to say is that I strongly agree with the decision to establish RoPs with everyone; so much so that I'm embarassed that I hadn't mentioned it to anyone before this round.

While I don't definitely agree with the choice to call in MAs against Rome, I also definitely don't disagree with the decision. My priority is going to be a holding position; if I can fight this war with one hand tied behind my back, I'll gladly build Banks with the spare resources. I also respect that we're into a 2-round conflict though -- I don't want Darkness to worry about being handed a sketchy order-of-battle.

Caesar has had a big, red target painted on his forehead for a long time now. Just because things are going a little ahead of schedule doesn't mean they're not going to go off as planned. The 1st war with Persia -- now that was scary.

All this is based on me not having opened the save yet. I won't be playing immediately, so by all means comment if you wish.

Cheers to your successful trading, TMcC. That was a great relief to read about. I'm far more worried about our economy than our military.

Oh yeah -- one last thing. It's meant to be just Ben, not JustBen.

The basic strategic sitation is this: Rome can harry us in the east by marching Rifles around and pillaging our territory, forcing us to rely on Cannon to scare them away when they get close enough to our cities, or on unfavorable attacks by our Cavalry. It takes 3 turns to move infantry from our productive core to the western theatre of battle safely (see picture below), and that's where Rome has concentrated their offensive armies against us. That means that only Cavalry can move from east to west fast enough to fight off Roman incursions, which they absolutely must do to prevent us from losing Spices and sending us into pandemic-level starvation unless we crank our luxuries up to the point that we're at about -60 gpt. Thus we have no reliable mobile force in the east, forcing us to keep the infantry have where it is -- i.e. in the east, not the long road to the west.

In short, this is the most brilliant strategically offensive campaign I've ever seen the AI mount against me. To make things more exciting, we're locked into 20 turns of war. Here's my real-time log of events:

AD 450 (0)
I don't really see the need for Tatung to have Walls, so it gets vetoed to Barracks. Anyang goes to Courthouse. The aesthete in me wants Tarsus first, but the Iron that Akkad has access to me makes it more appealing as a first target. But as I said, priorities are in a secure defense. England offers 7 gpt and Navigation for Military Tradition.

IT: Rome and the Iroquois ally against USA. Iro start Newton's. Our Rider kills an attacking Cavalry (!). Korea and the Iroquois ally against USA.

AD 460 (1)
Bejing: Cavalry -> Cavalry
Tsingtao: Harbor -> Cavalry
Shanghai: Musket -> Musket
Canton: Musket -> Musket
3 Roman Cavalry stray into the open. We get 2 elites doing the obvious thing. Upgrade a couple Riders, count my Workers... Oh. That's ugly. I get 18 slaves and 5 natives. We're developed enough right now, but the rail net will be really slow in coming. Oh well; not the problem right now.

IT: Iro and Rome embargo us. Rome feeds stuff into the meatgrinder; we lose a Cav and an elte Spear but kill a Cav, a Longbow, and knock 1/2 the life off of a Cavalry army (that was our Spear, btw). The bad guys disconnect a redundant Saltpeter and a very non-redundant Spice source.

AD 470 (2)
Persepolis: Musket -> Musket
Susa revols; scroll ahead. After all my hard work, I then go to the city screen to find that WW has ratcheted up and we now need to run a 65 gpt deficit to keep our cities from starving. Great. This is a bad enough situation that I have to sleep on it. After careful consideration, I decide an all-out assault on Tarsus is the best way to get our Spices back online.

AD 480 (3)
England is about to discover Cavalry by research, so I sell it to her for a pittance (I'm penny-counting here). I hold off on assaulting Tarsus in favor of picking off Rifleman who unwisely strayed into the open. It costs us a Cavalry, but we nail 4 of them.

IT: Gringos start Newton's. Washington builds the Trading Company. Rome makes several disjointed attacks on well-defended cities; we pay a Musketman for a Cavalry, but force 2 more to retreat.

AD 490 (4)
Assault on Tarsus: We lose a vet Cavalry, fail to spring a leader once, but secure it after taking out only 2 Rifles. Our pop growth is still a little stunted, but at least we're back up to -1 gpt instead of -45.

IT: Salamanca finishes Newton's. Rome builds the Theater. Cascade is terminated. Rome lands a Cavalry pair behind the lines at Tarsus; they're still next to our road net, so it could have been much worse.

AD 500 (5)
Nanking: Granary -> Cavalry
Shanghai: Musket -> Musket
Canton revolts; bad mistake by me. We smash the expeditionary force in the west.

IT: Iro and Korea ally against Rome; that terminates the Iroquois's embargo against us. :) England finally joins Rome against us; I almost care. Caesar continues to hemhorrage Cavalry against use, making sure that each full-strength, fortified Musketman with a city defense bonus gets a chance to kill one. Their army kills 2 in Macao, though.

AD 510 (6)
We take revenge on the Cavalry army, slaughtering it in the open plain north of Macao without loss. WW ratchets up again; fortunately, we can ship Hiawatha Incense and 14 gpt for Furs thanks to Korea's cunning diplomacy. He won't sell us Gems for less than the cost of 10% luxes, so we stop there. But it still lets us fire most of the specialists, which makes me relieved. I should've rushed Macao's Barracks a long time ago; I rectify that error now. Our lack of infantry in the western theatre of battle is starting to hurt in a serious way. I swap Nanking off of its Cav to a Musket.

AD 520 (7)
Susa: Cavalry -> Cavalry
More leader fishing and harrying of Roman forces intruding on our territory.

AD 530 (8)
Beijing: Cavalry -> Cavalry
Tatung: Barracks -> Musket
Antioch: Courthouse -> Barracks
Canton: Musket -> Cavalry
Tienstsin: Musket -> Musket, hire a specialist (badly needs a Market, but needs defense worse)
Ellipi gets swapped from Cavalry to Aqueduct; we need more people. Physics remains prohibitively expensive, but America will now buy Horses from us. Since this is due to Iroquois gains against them, I'm unwilling to ship them for fear of our credit rating.

IT: America and Korea make peace. Rome offers peace, but we cannot accept.

AD 540 (9)
Persepolis: Musket -> Musket
Shanghai: Musket -> Cavalry
Chengdu: Musket (regular; oops) -> Aqueduct
More partisan-style attacks on Roman invaders. I can't seem to muster enough full-health Cavalry to assault Akkad decisively.

IT: My luck runs out. Persepolis falls to Roman Cavalry, setting off a new round of debilitating WW.

AD 550 (10)
Tsingtao: Cavalry -> Barracks (oops again; this is getting embarassing)
We get a palace expansion, but I'm just not feeling the love. I fling the Cavalry I have at Persepolis; it should've been a giveaway assault, but of course their last veteran Cavalry kills off 3 of ours.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

And that's the way it is. Our strategic situation is slightly worse than when I picked up the game, and there's plenty more of this war to go. Our tactical situation in the west is nothing less than catastrophic. I had no idea that retaking Persepolis would be a problem. I was wrong, and now Darkness is going to pay for it.

With the benefit of hindsight (and only that benefit; see my comments in previous posts for a more faithful analysis of TMcC's choices in that regard), I wish we didn't have those alliances. It would've been better to eat whatever Rome had to throw at us for only a few turns than to expose ourselves to their long-term production advantage. I think the real problem was that no one realized what an amazing strategic position Rome had, and so there was no appreciation of how important it was to quickly terminate this war. As it is, our entire economy is devoted to pouring out forces that are being fed into a meatgrinder for absolutely no gain to our civ. The world is at war (we can't downplay the importance of this; it's definitely a big point in favor of the MA network TMcC set up), but our facade of strength is beginning to collapse.

The Caesarian Wars (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-550AD.zip)

The pink dots show where infantry on the way west can't stop. Use your mathetmatical skills to figure out why this is such a serious problem in the war.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/akkadproblem.jpg

Tough turns. We traded cities with them, and came out on the short end. When I signed those MA's, I knew Korea and the US had cavalry. With that long border they share with Rome, I figured they might actually be of use. That border hasn't budged in 11 turns, so I hope they are at least eating up most of Caesar's production. I honestly expected Rome to peter out by the second half of your turn, with most of their production devoted to attacking Korea or the US. Obviously not. I don't think breaking an MA affects our ability to buy tech on credit, only our ability to gain other MA's. Since we won't ever have to fight a two-front war, it is something to consider. I'd prefer not, but it is up Darkness to do as he sees fit.

The one bright note is that we start to get our money back on this turn. We'll regain more gpt on turn 5, and the MA's end (as does one other gpt payment) on turn 9. Hopefully we can hold the status quo, and maybe have a shot at attacking Perseopolis on turn 9. I wouldn't be surprised to see Korea or US make peace before us. At least the Iro's are in on our side (I assume you meant Iro and US make peace, not Korea and US). All three viable eastern civs attacking Rome have to do some damage, right?

So, are all of the attacks coming in the west now, or are the Romans still assaulting Canton?

Darkness got leaders the last two times, can he do it again? Playing defense for a few turns then unleashing a Cav army might be nice.

We could cut the road next to Akkad. That way Rome can no longer reach your farthest pink dots which would help alot.

It is hard for me to judge the effect of the MA. If we had been hit by 20-30 cavalry, our entire west might have collapsed & the price of peace extreme as we get beaten back to our core cities. Or maybe not.

I think things would have been rough no matter what we did. We just weren't ready yet.

I think you did well all things considered.

@TMcC: They continue to harass Canton, but it's not under heavy assault. Their main strength is in the west. No renegs on MAs, either. It's considered exploitive; this one actually is listed on my initial post.

@Greebley: Cutting the road outside of Akkad is something I wish I'd thought of. Dang. But you are right about the judging of the MAs; we can't know what might have happened. The problem now is not how much armed might Casear can fling at us but our war-weary population. We're essentially impoverished with no succour visible any time soon, unless all of our allies settle with Caesar.

And once you see what my reckless assault on Persepolis has made of the western front, you may withdraw even your "all-things-considered" compliment.

Beijing and its surrounds remain secure. That much, at least, we have going for us.

This is why emotional reactions to the loss of a city have no place in competitive Civ play. In my defense, we do desparately need the road line to our Spices hooked up again; that +50 is going to turn into a negative number once Darkness finishes managing the unhappiness I just laid on him.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/550ad.jpg

I consider 3 cavalry losing on attack to 1 cavalry more bad luck than poorly played. Well maybe if your cavalry had 1 hp each it would be overzealous. I think most ppl would have also done what you did with those odds in your favor.

I will have to look at the save. You make it sound very grim.

Yeah, the dominos might begin to fall. Do you think abandoning Macao would be the right move? It could save a WW hit, and free up a cav to move/defend elsewhere. Since we captured Tarsus, we have spices even without Macao.

We only have to hang for 9 turns, so I'm not afraid of going bankrupt. We are also only 1 level shy of the max WW allowed in Republic.

A few bad RNG rolls and it all went to heck in a handbasket. Starting with Caesar deciding to attack. If he had just waited out the ROP, I think we would have been safe.

We don't get spices in the above picture do we? There is no path from the spices to our capitol that I see.

The next player should definitely check for revolt possibilities.

Originally posted by Greebley
We don't get spices in the above picture do we? There is no path from the spices to our capitol that I see.


I meant that while neither Tarsus nor Macao are hooked up to our core, they both claim spices. Tarsus is actually easier to connect, with a harbor.

As I am unable to play this weekend (I won't be home), please skip me this turn... Sorry! :(

Looks like this game is officially a hot potato! Kuningas, can you find an excuse to not be the one responsible for the next 9 turns of defeats?

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness (skipped)
Kuningas (up next)
Greebley (on deck)
T_McC

Originally posted by JustBen
Looks like this game is officially a hot potato! Kuningas, can you find an excuse to not be the one responsible for the next 9 turns of defeats?


:lol: :lol:

I'd love to play the next ten turns, but I'll be spending the weekend in a different city, so no computer/no civ... :(

Originally posted by JustBen
Looks like this game is officially a hot potato! Kuningas, can you find an excuse to not be the one responsible for the next 9 turns of defeats?

I will play those turns. Probably I screw everything but if we are still alive after 9 turns I'll conclude peace with Romans.

Preturn:

Win: cavalry (hp 3/5) vs 1/4 cavalry
Rider upgraded
Lux to 20% ->13gpt
some MM for troops and cities.
Harbor rushed in Uruk

Renewing luxuries trade with Koreans: Incense, WM, 22gpt and 3 gold for Ivory and Wines.
America and Iroquois signed a peace treaty.

1 - 560AD
Nanking Musket ->Cavalry
Uruk Harbor ->Musket
2 WLTBP messages

Persepolis have vet Rifleman.
Attacked Akkad instead.
Lose: 5/5 cavalry vs 3/3 rifle
draw: cavalry (hp 1/5) vs 2/3 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 3/4) vs 2/3 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 5/5) vs 3/3 cavalry GREAT LEADER :goodjob:
This leaves Macao undefended. Akkad's strategic location is better so hopefully I manage to defence it next few turns.


WW really starting to hurt us.
Iroquois: Gems for 25gpt and 12 gold.
lux to 30% -53 gpt.

Macao defended. Roman Cavalry marched to city.

2 - 570AD
Susa Cavalry -> Cavalry
Antioch Barracks -> Cavalry
Ellipi Courthouse -> Cavalry

Musket rushed in Tatung (-92 gold)
Lux to 20% -28 gpt.
Courthouse rushed is Sidon (-40 gold)

Lose: 4/4 cavalry vs 3/3 MI. (was trying to cut road) draw: cavalry (hp 1/4) vs MI (3/5) on mountain.

3 - 580AD
Tsingtao Barracks ->Musket
Sidon Courthouse ->Temple
Tientsin Musket ->Musket

Win: MI (hp 3/4) vs 1/4 cavalry

2nd battle of Persepolis:
draw: cavalry (hp 1/5) vs 4/4 rifle (2/4)
cannon fire missed
cannon fire shotted -1 hp to 4/4 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 3/5 promote) vs 4/4 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 1/5) vs 3/4 rifle
Lose: 4/4 cavalry vs rifle (hp 1/4)
Win: cavalry (hp 35) vs 1/4 rifle
Persepolis captured.

Barracks and Marketplace in PP.
Persepolis ->musket

Caesar is rushing units 2000 gold left. At least he rush them in cities with barracks.

Lose: cavalry (hp 2/4) vs 4/4 pikeman. Lose: cavalry (hp 4/5) vs 5/5 Mi. We lost stack of 6 workers but they didn't disband them.

4 - 590AD
3 WLTBP messages
Shanghai cavalry ->cavalry
Spices reconnected

Win: cavalry (hp 2/4) vs 2/4 cavalry
win: cavalry (hp 4/5) vs 4/5 cavalry. workers taken back

Deals: no worry about bankrupt next turn 68gpt deal to America will expire.

Ashur courthouse rushed

lux to 10%

lose: cavalry (hp 2/4) vs 4/4 musket. draw: cavalry (hp 1/4) vs 4/4 pike. lose: cavalry (hp 3/5) vs 4/4 MI. Romans captured Akkad.

5 - 600AD

Beijing cavalry ->musket
Ashur courthouse ->temple
Canton cavalry ->cavalry

2nd battle of Macao:
win: cavalry (hp 2/5) vs 4/4 rifle
lose: 5/5 cavalry vs rifle (hp 1/4)
win: cavalry (hp 3/5) vs 4/5 cavalry
win: MI (4/5 promote) vs 1/4 rifle
Macao captured

Macao ->musket

Arbela:
lost 4/5 cavalry vs rifle (hp 1/3)
win: cavalry (hp 1/5) vs 2/2 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 4/5) vs 4/5 cavalry
win: cavalry (hp 4/5) vs 1/3 rifle
Arbela +9 workers captured

Arbela ->Marketplace

win: cavalry (hp 3/5 promote) vs 3/5 cavalry

Let's help our friend Abe: Horses, salt, 32 gpt, WM and 5 gold for Physics.
Slider 9.0.1 -> 90gpt.

lose: 3/5 cavalry vs rifle (hp 2/4). Romans western parts going to collapse. Korean and Iroquois landed cavalries.

6 - 610AD

Susa Cavalry ->musket

win: cavalry (hp 4/4) vs 2/4 rifle
Akkad:
win: cavalry (hp 2/5 promote) vs 3/3 rifle
lost: 4/4 cavalry vs cavalry (hp 2/4)
win: cavalry (hp 3/4) vs 2/4 cavalry
Akkad captured
Akkad ->Barracks

Thanks to Koreans they killed 2 cavalries and injured one. win: 4/4 cavalry vs cavalry (hp 3/5 promote)

7 - 620AD
Gordium riots.
Ellipi Cavalry ->harbor
Hangchow courthouse ->Aqueduct

win: cavalry (hp 5/5) vs 2/4 cavalry

Koreans have captured Hispalis.

8 - 630AD

Gordium:
draw: cavalry (hp 1/4) vs rifle (hp 3/4)
lose: 5/5 cavalry vs rifle (hp 2/5)
win: cavalry (2/5) vs 4/4 rifle
win: cavalry (3/4) vs 2/5 rifle
Gordium + 4 workers captured
Gordium ->marketplace
Dyes connected now we have all 8 luxuries.

Caesar made a cavalry drop.

9 - 640AD
Tsnigtao musket ->aqueduct
Shanghai cavalry ->musket

win: cavalry (hp 3/5) vs 4/4 cavalry

Bactra:
lose: 5/5 cavalry vs rifle (hp 2/4)
draw: cavalry (hp 1/5) vs rifle (hp 3/4)
win: cavalry (hp 3/5) vs 4/4 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 5/5) vs 3/4 rifle
lose: 5/5 cavalry vs rifle (hp 2/5 promote)
win: cavalry (hp 3/4) vs 2/5 rifle
Bactra captured
Bactra Marketplace

Slider 10.0.0 +214 gpt.

lose: cavalry vs 4/4 MI.

10 - 650AD

Persepolis Musket ->Cavalry
Tatung Musket ->Marketplace
Susa musket ->Cavalry
Chenghu Aqueduct ->Granary

Tyre:
draw: cavalry (hp 1/4) vs rifle (hp 2/4)
win: cavalry (hp 2/5) vs 3/3 rifle
win: cavalry (hp 2/4) vs rifle 2/4
Tyre + worker captured.
Tyre ->marketplace

win: cavalry (hp 2/4) vs 2/4 cavalry


This is the turn we can make peace without reputation hit (oops it was last turn). But I don't know if we want to. Romans are weak two front war is too much
even for Caesar.

Ended all ROP treaties -> Iroquois/Koreans won't able to use our roads anymore when attacking Romans.
Ended all MA vs Romans -> We won't lose gold every turn. But didn't conclude peace with Romans it's up to next player.

Left GL Qianlong in Susa. I got it turn 1. I planned to make army with it. Maybe I should had as there were many other opportunities for 4th GL.

I made this summary. It's nice to see how units changing in 10 turns etc.


Summary

550AD 650AD change

cities 19 25 +6
tiles 281 345 +64

Income 473 609 +136
to other civs 173 93 -80
from other civs 0 0 0

gpt +50 +266 +216
treasure 797 755 -42

luxuries 5 8 +3
slider 9.0.1 10.0.0
resources 3 3

total units 50 51 +1
workers 5 6 +1
pikemans 12 11 -1
musketmans 8 13 +5
cavalries 8 8 0
cannons 8 8 0
Medieval I 7 3 -4
other 2 2 0
slaves 20 33 +13

score 794 906 +112
(5th) (5th)

some wierd difficulties with uploading the save.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_650ad.zip

:worship: Kuningas :worship:

Spec-freaking-tacular!

The Romans have just about completely collapsed. In my gut, I agree not to make peace with Caesar, just to keep our boot on his throat. But ... we only have 8 cavalry, and 3 of them are playing defense.

The pros to staying at war are: It sounds as though Casear is completely gassed. I noticed a distinct lack of Roman attacks during the last half of Kuningas' turn, so our cities aren't really in danger with sustained war. (Heh, maybe those MA did pay off. :mischief: ) Caesar also is down to 87 gold. I can tell you that when the war started, he had over 9000. (I didn't mention it in my report, but I figured the Koreans and the US were coming into this war, might as well be for us rather than against us.) We are at maximum WW, so further war isn't going to enrage our poplulace any more. Also by doinking the ROP's, we are in by far the best position to capture Ravenna and Virconium.

Cons: We are still 2 technologies from the Ind. Age, (and the AI have at least Nationalism and Steam) and having to pour almost our entire economy into military, just to break even (our net gain in the last 10 turns was to trade 4 MI for 4 muskets). We are rather thin on defense at this time.

Our front has narrowed considerably. When the war started, we had 8 front-line cities, we now have 3. If I were up next, I'd at least investigate going after Ravenna. I don't think either the Koreans or the US can keep a force together to capture it, but we can. Guessing we need 4 cavs, more if we can spare them. Ideally we would take Ravenna and Virconium, making our core safe from land invasion, and establishing a fairly narrow front, which we could easily defend. Taking those two cities would also further cripple Caesar. The Romans would lose a luxury with each city.

As far as the GL goes: Making an army sounds nice, but we really don't have the units to spare. Might we consider a palace jump? Beijing is in a fairly awful place for a capital, but I don't have an immediately better suggestion. The GL also could guarantee us ToE.

Couple notes for the next leader: We are still at war with England. I see no reason to continue this. Not having an MA in place will make Caesar pay more for peace. (I can't see any scenario where we invade the Roman core at this time). Also, there are 3 workers in Sidon that have been hiding there since my last turn, so don't get fooled by the garrison. We also have luxuries we can sell. (May be a bit dicey until peace is struck.)

It's a Deity game, and we are 1st in Land Area and 1st in Population, early in the Industrial Age. Yeah, I'd say that's a winning position.

Holy, holy, holy excrement! Kuningas, how did you do that? For those of you playing along at home, compare my last screenshot of us circling the drain (note especially the minimap) to our current setup:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_650ad.jpg

As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we get back to a peacetime economy, the sooner we can start a real war with the AIs. But I defer to Greebley; fight for as long as you feel comfortable doing so.

I'd rather see the GL put towards a better Palace location than saved for the ToE. With minimal infrastructure in the empire, a better Palace could have a really strong influence on our game. Tientsin looks promising to me. Remember that the AI frequently (but not always!) runs down the top tech path before it heads towards Scientific Metod; I'd hate to stare at a leader fortified in Beijing for the next 40 turns or so.

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley (up next)
T_McC (on deck)

What a difference 10 turns makes!

By having a second look, I'd say we are in a good defensive position now, with Ravenna it would be better, but Virconium is probably more bother than it is worth.

If we're going to jump the palace, I agree that Tientsin looks like a good option.

Also note that if we do capture Ravenna, it will be the first Roman city we have taken. I believe all the others were ex-Persian cities.

Excellent work Kuningas :goodjob:

I got it. hope to play today

It sounds like I get to make several choices with all options being good.

For the Leader I guess there are 3 options.

1) Move the palace to Tientsin. I can't remember which city has our FP to judge this move. My guess is that this move would allow the cities in the NW to become "real" faster, but it might very well lower our total shields and gold rather than raise it.

2) Keeping the leader for TOE. The biggest problem here is that it may be a long time to wait. I wonder if it is premature to start a palace build now??? I am thinking this might be a good idea.

3) Get an army. The whole point would be to get at least 1 victory so as to increase our odds of a leader later.

My inclination is toward option 3 actually with a prebuild for TOE started in a town now. None of these grab me as "must have". Any further opinions on this topic?

As for the war, it is likely I will at least test the waters: re taking Ravenna.

Our FP is in Susa. So the palace in Tientsin gives us an elliptical empire with the two foci close together. We would lose a little production in Beijing (from capital to tight 2nd ring to the FP), Canton and Ellipi. We gain in Perseopolis, Sidon, and the four cities west of Perseopolis. I would guess we would have a small temporary decrease of shields, but an immediate monetary gain. I suspect a loss of shields due to our western cities being improved for growth (much more irrigation than mines), while our eastern cities have been improved for shields.

On pre-building for ToE: Of all the deity games I've played, this is the one where I think there is the least need for ToE. Yeah, we're behind in tech now, but we are significantly larger than any of the AI. I think we have 25 cities, US has 6, England 5, Korea 9, Iro 8, Rome 9 --> 8. With all the wars going on, I think the tech pace will be slow enough that our economy can get us caught up fairly quickly. If we're thinking about further war [and I think we are :hammer: :hammer: ], we can have ToE or we can have 10 Cavs. But, since a pre-build has to be carried over many people's turns, it has to be a group decision. I vote no pre-build yet, we have too many pressing infrastructure needs and we will need to re-build our military.

I have two minor concerns with using the leader for an army. The first is that we don't have very many units, although an army is probably an easier way to get two wins from three cavs than using the units indivdually. The second is that at the moment I'm not sure we have 200 shields to spare for the Heroic Epic. We should be able to do that fairly soon, but for right now ...

So I guess I lean towards a palace jump, with saving the leader for ToE being by far the weakest choice.

Hopefully Greebley hasn't started playing yet. If he did, oh well.

The proper choice for using the GL is heavily influenced by how you think the future of the game is going to play out. I see us going for a domination win, and probably getting there before tanks. If we capture Ravenna, we will control the vast majority of the (formerly) jungle tiles on the map. We will also have about 40% of the total land area under our control. I think this means it is very likely the other 5 civs will only have 2-3 rubber combined. There is a good chance we could achieve domination without ever having to face Infantry, regardless of where the AI civs get on the tech tree. If we are planning for this case, we really don't have to research any farther than RP and Industrialization (with Nationalism thrown in so we can mobilize). Our conquests would be Inf/Art/Cav combined arms groups, and done properly we really shouldn't lose many forces. (Cav charges against Rifles/Guerillas should be blowouts with artillery support) In this vision, we may not even research Sci.Meth, much less need ToE. I feel with this plan the proper use for the leader is a palace jump, in order to increase our economy/production (any newly conquered lands won't need to be productive to finish off a couple of the AI).

I don't think we will need an army to prosecute any future wars (Cav armies are useful against Infantry, though), and any further leaders would likely only go to form more armies. I suspect we won't be starting any war until we have some factories and can clearly out-produce the AI, so we may not have any other big-ticket needs to rush.

Just my 2 cents. :)

There are a lot of ways to play this position. My 1 1/2 year old son has been rather frustrating today. So my choice is based on my mood. Thus the fate of nations is determined by a toddler.

:hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer: :hammer:
Uruk, Bactra switched to worker.

Chengdu, Arbela, Gordium switched to barracks

Beijing, Shanghai, Tatung switched to Cavalry

Tsingtao, Sidon, Anyang, Tarsus, Macao switched to Cannon.

Alot of the previous builds seemed based on the idea that the palace was going to move which I have decided not to do.

Army built. Cavalry in Nanking, Beijing, and Shanghai rushed to fill it. Antioch, Canton also rushed.

Decide raising Lux to 10% makes sense.

Note that some towns are still building harbors and Markets. Farther high corruption towns are not.

Hit space...

IBT: One of our Cavalry not in a town is amushed and killed.
Beijing, Nanking, Antioch, Shanghai, Canton: Cavalry->Cavalry
Arbela:Barracks->Worker
Ellipi: Harbor->Cavalry
Bactra: resister suppressed & revolts even though it is balanced in terms of happiness??? Odd. I wonder how that can happen.
Uruk: Worker->Worker

660 AD:
Get the army win killing a rifleman intruder
Cav vs injured rifleman wins.
Cav vs Cav wins
Elite Cav vs injured Cav wins
I have a town with a single taxman/scientist. I switch science to Democracy on one scientist. Don't let this stop you from researching anything real.

Rush Market in Tientsin. It needs the happiness badly.

IBT: England lands a cavalry. I forgot to make peace.
Tientsin: Market->Cavalry
Xinjian: Market->Aquaduct

670 AD: Troop movement. Rush Cavalry in Canton. Make peace with England getting small change and world map.

IBT: All quiet on the Eastern front.
Tsingtao: Cannon->Cannon
Gordium: Barracks->Cannon
Canton: Cavalry->Cavalry
Akkad: Barracks->Cannon
Sidon: Cannon->Cannon
Chengdu: Barracks->Cavalry
Accidentally let Tatung riot.

680 AD: Bombard Ravenna doing a hp to an elite Rifle
Cavalry vs Rifelman loses
Cavalry vs Rifleman loses
Cavalry vs injured Rifleman wins
Elite cavalry vs injured Rifleman wins and takes town.

IBT: Cavalry kills pike.
Arbela:Worker->Worker
Bactra:Worker->Worker

690 AD: Bombard cavalry to 1 hp and kill with an elite unit (it was on a mountain).
Rush Cavalry in Beijing, and Persepolis
Rush Cannon in Anyang, and Tarsus

IBT:
Beijing, Shanghai, Suza, and Persepolis: Cavalry->Cavalry
Tarsus, Anyang: Cannon->worker

700 AD: Move troops onward. Upgrade pike that is near the front line.
Rush a Cavalry in Nanking

IBT: Korea and Rome Make peace
Nanking builds a Cavalry

710 AD: Troops are outside Pisae

IBT: Renegotiate fur deal.
Arbela:Worker->Worker
Tsiango: Cannon->Cannon

720 AD: Bombard Pisae to size 6.
Army kills rifleman
Cav vs rifle retreats
Cav vs rifle (barely) wins
Elite Cavalry vs injured Rifle wins.
Elite Cavalry vs Cavalry wins and takes the town.

IBT: Cavalry vs Cavalry barely kills us.
Bactra: Worker->Worker

730 AD:
Antium:
Army vs Rifle wins
Cavalry vs Rifle retreats
Cavalry vs Rifle retreats
Cavalry vs Rifle wins
Cavalry vs injured rifle loses (it was elite too)
Cavalry vs injured rifle wins and premotes to elite
Cavalry vs Cavalry loses
Cavalry vs Cavalry wins and takes Antium.

A med inf kills a 1 hp Cavalry

I accidentally hit the space bar a few times which means some units lose their move. This is not good as my defense of Pisae depended on moving them. I also cannot kill one of the Cavalry with 1hp.

Decide to jump into the industrial age buy the 2 needed techs for 97 gpt from Korea (Also defenses on the Korean border are a tad weak - if they grab Canton it will really cost them).

IBT: The 1 hp Cavalry kills the Med Inf and a healthy 1 takes Pisae.

740 AD: Cavalry vs Cavalry to take back Pisae wins.
Hurry Cavalry in Nanking, Beijing, Chendu, Antioch, Persopolis

Hey! I didn't know that. My army attacks and pillages twice in 1 turn. Cool!

IBT: A bowman causes a Cavalry to retreat
Beijing, Persepolis, Nanking, Susa, Antioch, Ellipi, Canton, Chengdu: Cavalry->Cavalry
Arbela:Worker->Worker
Tarsus Riots - oops

750 AD:
Change Tatung to a Market. It is getting pretty unhappy.
Elite Musket vs Bowman wins.
Pillaging and bombarding the "back door" to Pisae is complete. This included a Saltpeter and Iron - Checking Diplo they were Romes ONLY Salt and Iron. No more cavalry for rome.

My thoughts is to hurt Rome until they are willing to give us Industrial techs. They can only make Riflemen and we got just a few Cavalry (23) and a cavalry army.

I may have gone overboard on the Military. Our core is much the same as it was previously. We are industrial but have no industrial techs.

On the other hand, the window of opportunity of the "pre-infantry" years has been exploited to its fullest.

TMcC, you get to decide on the extent of the war. I would at least continue it until Rome is willing to pay big in tech for peace. They deserve it for previous transgressions.

Sanitation is known. There are several size 13+ cities. The Iroquois are the largest.

No wonders are being built so no industrialization yet.

I upped our worker count for the coming of steam power. We might want to buy it?

Domination might not be a bad way to go :D If the Romans fall you may want to consider America and England as well.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-750AD.JPG

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-750AD.JPG)

Well. I'm impressed. Considering I was trying to figure out how much of our western provinces we could afford losing 20 turns ago, I'm very impressed.

TMcC's analysis is probably correct; there's no need to wait for Tanks to wrap this one up. Replaceable Parts would be very, very nice, so any future tech buys should take us in that direction (is Industrialization a prerequisite? Pretend like it is.). Even if we could build Tanks, it would still probably be quicker to use the 3-movement of our Cavalry forces to conquer the world.

A 20% pangea should be a snap to score domination on. It'll be tougher with these Hosptial-powered cities springing up, but we were gonna burn those down anyway.

Roster:
JustBen (on deck)
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley
T_McC (up next)

JB01 - 750 AD

My first thoughts are Wow, have we made progress. My second thoughts are Oh, are we thin. Every city we capture from here is a 1/1 without a palace jump, and unless Rome is eliminated they are all at severe flip risk. But if we do eliminate Rome, we won't be able to extort tech, and will be 5-6 IA technologies behind the other civs. So Caesar has to stay. I have to assume Rome will be a really tough nut to crack, and given that Antium is on its doorstep, we have to plan for a flip. We have 3 empty core cities, and the front line is quite a way from our core. We are at max WW, running 10% lux to keep our people happy, and are are paying out 1/2 of our 352 gpt surplus.

Why is Wang annoyed with us? Oh, he made peace with Caesar. Militarily we are horrifically thin on defense, so if Korea gets uppity it could get real ugly, real fast. If I risk our entire cavalry force, I can probably take Rome, which has a lot of nice wonders. But it would be extremely difficult to hold against flip. If I run a proper seige, I have to assume Antium is going to flip, so it is dicey to try a 6-7 turn military operation. We are two turns from Virconium. My decision is to prosecute the war for two more turns, capture Virconium, and make peace. I'll take what I can get from Caesar and fall back to a defensible line, doing my best to close the last window of opportunity the AI has to prosecute an offensive war against us.

750 AD (0)
Renewing our lux deal with Korea costs an extra 46 gpt. (The price of being large).

IT - Tyre flips to Romans. This seals my decision to end this war. If a size 3 city with 1 Roman citizen flips, I have to assume we cannot hold anything in Caesar's core.

760 AD (1)
Kill two Roman Longbows leaderfishing, no leader. Pull troops out of Antium, to recapture in case of flip.

770 AD (2)
Renew lux deal with Iroquois (for extra 20 gpt). See some Roman Cavalry. :confused:

Recapture Tyre. Capture Virconium. Throw a little party on the retreat from Antium, a "last one out burn the mother:blush: to the ground" party. Abandon Antium {It was a 1/1 city for us, but would have been a real good one for Caesar}

Peace with Rome, we give 17 gpt, they give Steam Power. So we got a ~100 gpt discount on Steam. It was a tremendous run, but I felt we were just too thin militarily to blitz the Roman core, and if we had to lay siege to the Roman cities, the war might go on for another 20 turns. Fall back to a 3-city front line, and push infrastructure.

Cycle through our cities, swapping many military builds to infrastructure. Reduce lux tax to 0%, gaining 59 gpt. [Now I wish I hadn't bought the lux from the Iros, or at least read my own preamble :rolleyes:]

We have three coal. Susa (our FP) switches to Iron Works. (I'd have bet money Ravenna was the Iron Works site, but sometimes things just work out.) Shuffle nets an add'l 7 gpt. Will now starve Roman citizens out of our cities, and start the railnet.

780 AD (3)
Rome kicks our units out. Much resistance ends. I'm still starving Romans.

790 AD (4)
Iroquois and Korea MA vs. Rome. More resistance ends. Starting to get workers better organized for rails.

800 AD (5)
Nothing that interesting. We can supply America with Coal and Horses. I held off the deal, since combined they were worth ~30 gpt. I think we are the only potential suppliers, so we can use this when we are ready to buy a tech. Virconium and Tyre hit the magic size of 1, start temples.

810 AD (6)
Koreans pillage a coal in neutral territory. Ravenna goes to size 1. Set lone scientist research to Nationalism. No idea whether it will come in before the game ends, but you never know.

820 AD (7)
Shanghai completes our first bank. Pompeii falls to the Koreans. Pisae to size 1.

830 AD (8)
Bactra to size 1.

840 AD (9)
Nothing exciting.

850 AD (10)
The military railnet essentially completes. Shanghai musket --> Heroic Epic (highly vetoable).

I spent very little money rushing things, I leave Ben with 1714 gold, 215 gpt. Enjoy the Iron Works, and the beginning of the infrastructure completing. I did not MM the cities before saving the game.

Calm Between the Storms (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-850_AD.zip)

I gots it; I've been yearning for some peacetime since Rome declared on you, T. I'll post sometime before Sunday night; regardless of how much weekend is left when I do so, we'll wait for Darkness before moving on.

The bad news is: How much damage do you have to do to an AI to get them to cough up an IA tech? Caesar lost about 6-8 cities, and still wouldn't hand over anything good for free. [Although he did concede ~2000 gold]

The good news is: With the military railnet complete, and the terrain around our frontline cities, I think we are now unattackable. The AI either has to go amphibious, or stop short of our cities on a land-based sneak attack. I figure 20-30 turns of infrastructure/rearming and we can go back on the offensive. When we do go on the attack we should bring plenty of settlers, as I fear most of the AI population will be meeting a fiery death. civilization :eek: ] (Cultureless Conquerors Redux!)

Just a heads up to Ben: Since Caesar has been fighting for so long, we might get lucky and be able to pull a 2-fer with him. Even though you will likely be building almost entirely infrastructure, I think your trading is going to determine who we go on the offensive against.

I would definitely build the heroic epic. I got a goodly number of elite victories but no GL. We will want the heroic epic for the next war.

I was really curious which way you were going to go with this game, TMcC. Eliminating the Romans, Americans, then English would have been an interesting gambit to try, but would mean remaining very thin on infrastructure which could hurt us.

One thing you could have tried is to mass a lot of cavalry outside of Rome's capitol and then gone for peace. Large numbers of troops threatening a city/capitol seems to make peace worth more. I am not quite sure how much however (I have mostly tried this a lot earlier in the game).

The iron works in Susa is really nice. That is our highest shield producing city. Maybe we should start a prebuild for TOE after the iron works is complete. We will want to start that soon or we won't get it.

Note to next player:
We can trade steam power for medicine straight up with England. Seems well worth doing.

There is also a 2fer available as Rome doesn't have electricity.

Edit: It might also be worth placing a settler in the old Antium spot. We have the possibility of grabbing Romes coal.

A settler N of the coal just E of Canton would also grab that one. It is in our land now but won't be when Korea expands. This would be more to keep them from trading it than anything else. I think Korea is the real threat in terms of competition and research.

Edit2: Interesting - Universal sufferage is availabe but noone is building it?
Odd. Good for us though as the Cascade would go to TOE.

Originally posted by Greebley
I would definitely build the heroic epic. I got a goodly number of elite victories but no GL. We will want the heroic epic for the next war.


Agreed we should build the Heroic Epic. Veto was suggested for where to build it. Maybe we want two muskets and a cav from Shanghai, and let Susa (Iron Works) go Bank --> Heroic Epic in the same turns. It was more a statement of "no obvious next build" in Shanghai.

Originally posted by Greebley
I was really curious which way you were going to go with this game, TMcC. Eliminating the Romans, Americans, then English would have been an interesting gambit to try, but would mean remaining very thin on infrastructure which could hurt us.


Gambit is the correct word. From your turnlog and the save I noticed our entire treasury was being used each turn to rush units. It was working, but a couple of problems were going to arise: (1) For as long as we were at war with Rome, I thought we needed all 8 luxuries. Since we got so much larger in the intervening turns, I knew that would cost us (I think it ended up being an extra 66 gpt for the two deals, and now we're overhappy :rolleyes: ) (2) Steam was ~120 gpt from Korea. If we needed to buy the luxuries, we couldn't buy steam. We couldn't up the lux tax to buy steam, since we didn't have much of a nest egg in the treasury. Without rails, the front was going to get continually farther from our core. We may have 3x as many cities as the AI, but we were not outproducing them without rush-buying. [With the Deity discount, each AI had the equivalent of 10-12 cities, which is about how many productive cities we have. And they have factories.] And rush-buying was going to be more difficult as the war continued. Any further territory we gained would contribute nothing to our economy. I am not in any way criticizing your play, you did a great job, I'm just explaining my thought process.

Militarily I could have continued the war with Rome. It would have had to be a raze-and-replace campaign, since we couldn't jump the Roman capital far away from our conquests. In the core, I was figuring 4-6 vet rifles/city. With cav production slowed these were going to have to be seiges, and given the cultural borders of Roman cities we could only attack ~1 city every 3 turns due to having to move the cannons. I anticipated no help from the Americans, they've already had ~30 turns and haven't budged from their border. So we could have eliminated Caesar, but it would have probably taken until the end of Ben's turn.

Any attack on the Americans would have been the same slow seige. If the RNG gods were with us, we could have built up our cav force over time. But I felt the most likely outcome was for production to struggle to keep up with losses. Without rails the lag between production and combat would have prolonged the war ever further. By the time we finished off the Romans, the Americans were very likely to have RP (rubber or not is a different question). [Side note: I think I saw Korean Infantry on my turn.]

So I saw the following as my options:
(a) Continue the war with Rome to elimination, capturing cities as I went. This was a loser, as I would have had to re-capture flipped cities and gotten nothing from the peace. Plus it was spotting the other AI another 20 turns where we don't develop our economy.
(b) War with Rome until they only had 1 city, doing a lot of raze and replace. Could have gained some land, and may have been able to extract two techs for peace. [After the damage we inflicted, he wouldn't even give one for free :mad: ] Again, problem was spotting the other AI 20 undeveloped turns.
(c) War with Rome, immediately moving to war with US, hoping to transition to war with England. Bluntly, this was the only way we could lose the game. Our economy was such that we couldn't control the Alliance cascade after the fall of Rome. We had less than 1 unit/city in our productive core. Pre-rails that is a recipe for disaster. (Post rails its not such a great idea either). The Koreans would have only needed a stack of 6 cavs and some RNG luck to devastate us. Oh, and almost all of our offensive forces would have been farther from our core than our opponents would be!
(d) Cut a deal with Rome and fall back. In real-life warfare it is possible to out run your supply lines, and the results are usually not pretty. I felt we were just about at that point. The only thing we had left to gain from the Roman war was unproductive land, and possibly a tech for peace.

By choosing (d), we have a military rail-net, and our economy should perk up to the point where we can buy a second tech (for cash) sooner than the Roman war would have ended. We are also now almost 100% secure against invasion. In 20-30 turns, we can turn the steamroller back on, and its all-war, all the time. :hammer:

Originally posted by Greebley
One thing you could have tried is to mass a lot of cavalry outside of Rome's capitol and then gone for peace. Large numbers of troops threatening a city/capitol seems to make peace worth more. I am not quite sure how much however (I have mostly tried this a lot earlier in the game).


I've never expressly tried this. May have been worth a few gpt on the peace treaty.

Ya, I agree with your points (which is why I did use the word Gambit :) ). I think Rome would have been eliminated a bit faster than you state though maybe with more loss of Cavalry than we could afford.

To me the biggest reason not to try the gambit is the fact that you emphasized - we can build rails which greatly strengthens our nation. The biggest downside is that when we do fight it will be against infantry instead of riflemen.

Edit: I am thinking you chose the right thing to do (taking the sure win over the iffy one), but am really curious how it would play out the other way. Maybe someday I will play it out and see.

AD 850 (0)
England offers Medicine and pocket change for our Steam Power. I'll bite. It looks like the Bad Guys are closer to ToE than I'd expected; I'll put priority on getting Susa set for a prebuild (probably wishful thinking). Industrialization has made the rounds, but no one is building Universal Suffrage (huh?). We have some seriously over-fooded cities, but that's something that can't be fixed until the rails are laid down more fully. Nanking needs a Bank more than a Temple. Macao needs a Courthouse more than a Temple. Tech steals will run us around 2500. We don't have that kind of cash right now, and if we did I wouldn't spend it. I've got a wicked itch for that Heroic Epic, but with no other cities free to build units, I grit my teeth and switch Shanghai to Musketman.

AD 860 (1)
Gordium Temple > Market
Uruk Worker > Worker (corrupt town)
Hangchow Granary > Market
I spend this turn shaving time off of the construction of Banks. America will sell us Electricity for a bunch of resources, 1900, and 19 gpt. We can broker this to Rome for a discount on Industrialization. I find the offer too tempting to pass up (especially since it makes both Scientific Method and Replaceable Parts visible). Korea, Iroquois, and USA (the last 3 "real" powers) have Rep. Parts, but no one has SciMethod yet. Thus it turns out that all my careful MMing for Banks was actually done for Factories (except for Antioch, which has about 40 commerce and 10 shields). Wicked cool.

AD 870 (2)
Arbela Temple > Worker
The Corporation appears in Korea. I'm glad to see that RepParts seems to have wearied them of the Low Road. Our Workers continue the process of dragging China into the industrial age, largely at the expense of developements in the annexed territories to the northeast.

AD 880 (3)
Susa IRON WORKS > Factory (possible prebuild for ToE, depending on how the AIs research)
Shanghai Musket > Factory
Susa gets railed/mined until its Factory is due in 4. I can't do any better than that, so the rest of its railing is delayed in favor of other Factory sites being prepped. Most of our Factory sites will want to do their Banks when they finish, so I'm not anticipating a big move to military production in the immediate future.

IT: Ravenna flips to the Romans, taking a pile of units with it. *sigh* This is a really awful town to flip, since suddely Pisae, Viroconium, Tyre, and Gordium have big cultural pressure on them.

AD 890 (4)
Arbela Worker > Courthouse (oops; didn't notice this one already had an Aqueduct)
Replaceable Parts has made the rounds amongst the "real" powers, but it'll cost our whole economy to buy it. No hurry; I'm saving the cash for Scientific Method. I'm not sure how best to deal with the Ravenna Problem -- basically, I can either abandon each threatened city, rush its Temple, or heavily garrison it. Gordium is a no-brainer; its Temple is already done and it'll expand soon. Pisae is where our Army is, and I'm not sure I want to risk it being flipped to death. I think about this one overnight, and decide that I'm willing to gamble 400 gold (rushing Temples in Pisae and Tyre, the most threatened) on keeping a pair of towns. I know they can push Ravenna back after they expand. Nevertheless, I start marching our army the homelands. I also decide at this point to switch Tientsin (our #2 shield producer, with 160 stockpiled) to a US prebuild in case ToE shows up before Susa is ready for it (I want a power plant running there ASAP).

AD 900 (5)
Tatung Cannon > Factory
Pisae Temple > Worker
Tyre Temple > Courthouse
Anyang Worker > Worker
Palace expands. A horde of Workers descend upon Tienstin in response to the prebuild plan initiated last turn. I decide to go ahead and let England have Electricity, since having Democracy "looks cool".

AD 910 (6)
Tsingtao Aqueduct > Settler
Akkad Market > Worker
Changdu Granary > Settler
I decide to set a few of our low-population cities onto Settler building, even if you may think "Aque > Settler" is a little odd. I'm trying shave turns off of collective industrialization rather than any specific city's Factory (except Susa, of course), so we're going to see lots of Factories close together, while my turns will be pretty quiet. By the way, Korean Cavalry is getting really close to Ravenna; it looks like the culture push won't be much of a problem after all.

IT: Hiawatha scrubs our Furs fr Dyes & Incense; I let it die. Korea takes Ravenna; cutltural pressure is off of our annexed territory.

AD 920 (7)
Susa Factory > Coal Plant (due in 2)
Akkad Worker > Aqueduct
Workers zipping all over the map. Hiawatha and Wang Kon suddenly show up with Scientific Method. Danger! Danger! Looking at production times, Susa can outrun any cities with a "Factory prebuild" by at least a factor of 2, so the US in Tientsin gets scrubbed in favor of a Factory (5 shields + 28 spt wasted) and Susa's Coal Plant plans get scrapped in favor of US -- I don't want to buy SciMeth until we actually have a need for it -- maybe America will buy it and get the price down. We can afford it easily right now, though.

IT: England and America make peace.

AD 930 (8)
Xinjian Temple > Granary
Antioch Bank > Settler (there's a lot of extra food here)
Tientsin Factory > Coal Plant
Having finished optimizing Tatung for shields, I finally come to the conclusion that it's probably not quite time for a Factory there; it gets swapped to a Courthouse. I think better of my decision to hold off on Scientific Method, and decide to try to broker. After shipping a bunch of luxuries to Hiawatha and emptying our treasury, we only pay 55 gpt, leaving us around 220. I'd hoped to wheedle something out of Rome, but Nationalism is just too overpriced. We end up shipping Abe 66 gpt for Replaceable Parts. Hooray! Theory of Evolution is due in 6; I go ahead and cancel the Nationalism gambit so we don't get :smoke: and forget to get Hoover Dam. We have 3 rubbers.

AD 940 (9)
Tsingtao Settler > Courthouse
Canton Factory > Heroic Epic (due in 6)
Pollution strikes Susa! Yay! (Time on ToE is unafftected.) My Temple gambit towns expand their borders. Because I'm a scrub, of course I did my tech deals after my Worker turns in 930, so this turn I get to reorganize all the Worker crews. There's some open land between Pisae and Hispalis, so I send a Settler pair up to dig into the jungle out there. They won't be in a position to settle until Darkness's turns, so the precise placement I leave to him.

AD 950 (10)
Beijing Factory > Bank
Ellipi Factory > Bank
Chengdu Settler > Factory
More toiling in the fields. Nothing exciting.

Summary: The Republic of China has embraced the Industrial Revolution, but our financial system is not good. We still have +144 gpt but only a handful of Banks. Most of our cities that have completed Factories were set to Banks (in lieu of Coal Plants) in anticipation of the Hoover Dam, which is pending. I have no prebuild set for it, since Susa will probably do that job best after ToE completes in 4. Speaking of which, barring a leader we're guaranteed that wonder since the AIs _still_ have not started ToE or US. I'm not too concerned about US right now (possibly an error, but definitely not a big one); there are several large-ish projects that could be switched over if you so desire. Even though very little has changed in our position, I've gone ahead and attached a pic of our empire so that you can get an impression of the production queues without loading up the save.

Notes for Darkness:
A 20-turn deal with Korea has just run its course -- we gave Incense and 68 gpt in exchange for Wines and Ivory. Korea is probably going to cancel after you click next turn. This is the only deal we have with Korea right now. Geographically speaking, Korea is our most probably next victim. It would be nice to let our deals with Wang Kon quietly run out so we can smash him at our leisure. Here's the catch: only 1 other luxury is available for trade, Hiawatha's Furs. If you decide to let Korea's deal run out, cancel it yourself before you finish the "inherited turn" and set up a deal with Hiawatha so you don't get any surprise disorders. If you decide to stick with Korea's luxuries, I'm sure we'll be fine. I've produced absolutely no RepParts units due to the Factory/Bank push, and at 100 gold a pop we're just too poor to be upgrading our Cannon just yet.

|China| > |Korea| + |Iroquois| + |UK| + |USA| (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-950AD.zip)

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness (up next)
Kuningas (on deck)
Greebley
T_McC

Here's why I got so spooked by Ravenna:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_RavennaProblem.jpg

And here's what China looks like in the middle of the Glorious Revolution:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_950ad.jpg

OUr economy is looking very strong now. Amazing what rails and factories can do for you.

Some really minor points of things I noticed

There is a settler asleep in our capitol. I feel we should use it in the E to grab those resources near Rome I think we have enough time before we attack Korea to use it that way.

The jungle square with coal would be a good worker project. It could go from a 1 food 2 shield to 2 food 4 shield with a bit of love.

I think grabbing the junk techs from england might not be a bad idea. England is never going to be a threat so who cares if she gets a tech. Its true we don't need any of them, but I would hate to build a boat and try to take a "shortcut" only to then find out we can't cross ocean. Since it doesn't really cost anything having navigation means I don't have to worry about it (even though I will probably never actually have use for it). You can get all 3 for a single tech. Economics also offers a minor benefit by making wealth more worthwhile.

On upgrades, the shift-U upgrade of our pikemen was 720, of our muskets was 720, of our cannons was 1040 (cannon upgrade cost is actually 80). Musket to Infantry was relatively cheap. We could do 5 of them with the cash we currently have.

Is Tientsin really going to get use out of its coal plant to justify one? Even with a coal plant it is faster to build Hoover Dam in Susa than in Tientsin (one can MM Susa to build hoover in 9 turns if you want). I think a bank would be better. The iron works in our FP city is REALLY powerful.

The more I thought about what I have here at the end of my turn, the less happy I was about them. I still like the Coal Plant in Tientsin -- after it finishes, Tientsin should be set to Universal Suffrage.

All the Banks should be vetoed. When we finish ToE, we'll have all the tech/cash we'll need for the rest of the game. The entire economy can be devoted to Cavalry, Artillery, Infantry, and Settlers. We should be able to take over two thirds of the world like that. If everything goes perfectly I shouldn't even have to play again; if I do, it'll be my last round.

I've been obnoxiously optimistic this whole game, but this time I'm right. Our economy (both GNP and production) was #1 in the world before the Factory push. There's no need to belabor this game. Darkness may or may not feel ready to declare war, but Kuningas should definitely shred the Koreans. It's all an exercise in Artillery use from here out.

I'm very impressed with our progress against the Romans! :goodjob:

OK, I'll play this one tonight and see what I can do about getting ToE, Hoover and US, and also try to buildup some for a war in Korea (and maybe even start some... :evil:

JB: Thanks for the heads-up on the luxury deals! :)

I have a few thoughts on the save:

@Greebley - Magnetism also enables travel over ocean squares. Our primary use for Navigation is Explorers, but I don't see us needing to do much pillaging.

I disagree with Ben on the vetoing the banks. We have plenty of units left to upgrade, and if we're going for domination we'll have to rush plenty of temples. In short, cash is always good. We should also anticipate using the lux tax during our upcoming wars. The Korean luxuries are rather far into their empire. Each click on the lux slider is worth ~70 gpt.

We don't have to be in a hurry to start the next war. Everybody but Rome and England have RP, so we won't catch the bigger AI without Infantry. There is plenty of time before tanks hit the scene, so the opposing militaries aren't going to get any better. That and our military isn't that strong right now, at least to attack Korea.

I do agree that after ToE/Hoover, we don't need any more technology. But we can still use plenty of cash, and I wouldn't count on any of the AI having a lot of money/gpt to give us for tech, hence we shoud keep building banks. [Edit: The Iros have a bunch, at least on this turn.] One other point: when we get Atomic Theory, trade it to someone for Nationalism. I think we are going to want to mobilize. The neat thing is we can mobilize before declaring war on someone (which I think is a bug, but :rolleyes: ), and then smack someone down with a lot of raze-and-replace. The peace/extinction declaration allows us to demobilize, rush temples in the new cities, wait one turn and re-mobilize.

Unless I misunderstand what Universal Suffrage does, it's a waste of time. I believe it gives one content face from WW in each city, which is rather lame (a police station would give 3 for a size 12 city). If I'm correct about the effects there are a lot better uses for 800 shields (like 5 cavs/5 artillery, or 9 Infantry) The denial factor isn't that critical, I think we are going to kill an AI a turn starting with Kuningas and Korea.

Agree on Korea as the next target, geographic proximity is the only real consideration from here on out. When we lose the Korean lux we should look into buying Iro furs. [We don't have to attack the Iro if we are going for domination] Any deals for lux from here on out should be our gpt for their lux, no need to give any post-Hospital AI any happy factors.

On a completely different note, why am I not surprised to see Rubber in the city radius of Ravenna? I know what has been publicly stated about the mathematics of flips, but my personal experience makes me believe that there is a hidden "screw-you" factor that dramatically increases the odds of a city with a resource flipping away from the human. It has just happened too many times, with too unlikely a probability for me to believe otherwise.

I have also heard that it only makes one person happy. I haven't built it since {edit: US that is}

Thats good to know about navigation/magnetism. I think I knew that at one point, but had forgotten.

I agree with TMcC on the usefulness of banks. We have 2480+ gold worth of upgrades. Its probably closer to 3000 - that is for upgrades to infantry and radar artillary. Pikemen are pretty useless for anything but suppressing resistance.

We also may be able to trade tech for luxuries.

I had another couple of thoughts.

We shouldn't be bashful about cutting road connections in our (neutral?, not sure how we're playing this game) territory that would otherwise like Ravenna to the Korean core. No point giving them another rubber to trade, particularly to the otherwise rubber-less Americans. I'm not looking at the game as I write this, so I can't say which (if any) tiles we can pillage without hurting ourselves at the same time.

If we are going to mobilize, it may be worthwhile to build the Military Academy in Susa. [After Hoover] During mobilization it will pull >100 shields a turn, and can produce 4-turn armies. Probably isn't necessary, but at least something to consider.

@T: Military Academy and 4-turn armies are cool, but 1-turn Cavalry are cooler (cf. your argument against Suffrage); I'd rather be doing that with Susa. You're probably right about US; we'll save it in case we need a Leader sink later on. ;)

TMcC,
I think we can build armies in 3 turns without Mobilization. I don't think Susa has a power plant yet. Build Hoover, get Sanitation, and then pile in workers until it is over 133 production. With mobilization we should be able to get it up to 200 shields I would think.

This all assumes I am correct about the lack of a power plant. I looked at it but I might have gotten confused. If it already has a power plant then it will still be over 100 without mobilization. Getting it to 133 would require mobilization though.

I would get Sanitiation right away via trading atomic theory. We might even be able to 1 turn rush a hospital in Suza before hoover (using the trick of rushing a worker first) if we save our money.

@Greebley (really @all) - Don't know about Susa's power plant, if it doesn't have one, then it will pull 100 shields/turn without mobilizing, and 133/turn w/mobilizing. [At size 12] The argument of Army vs. n cavs/infantry becomes more complicated as n gets smaller. 4 Infantry or 1 Army? Take the Infanty. 1 Army or 2 Infantry? Now the Army might be better. 3 Infantry ... ? Hard to say. For this game, it doesn't matter. Our only needs for armies are to defend cities from counter-attack or to attack cities when we don't have sufficient artillery support available. We should be able to crank out enough units that neither situation will be very troubling in this game. If we choose not to mobilize, and Susa can build an Army in 2 or 3 turns, it may be worthwhile just for the shield transfer. (A disbanded, empty army instantly completes a Temple or a Library in a new city.)

On a more general note: If we want get sanitation and grow our cities larger than 12, we need to build Cathedrals. Susa at size 20 generates a load of shields, but it's counterproductive if we have to run 30% lux tax to keep it happy.

If I were playing the next turns, I would just build 1-turn units out of Susa until it became apparent we needed more armies. I would also forego hospitals unless it was necessary to get a city into the unit-a-turn rotation. (We had to build our core so tight, there are a few cities that can't get larger than size 12.) I don't think the AI will ever get to attack our core cities, so the metropolis defense bonus is pretty much moot. Might as well keep it simple and build all military, and fight until the game quits.

No worker farms! No changing 20 food and 10 shields into 60 food! It's abusive and exploitive! (Have we had this discussion before?)
Edit: Let's pretend like I said that a little more diplomatically. "Could we please not be merging Workers to jack our population above 13? We discussed worker-farms once before and I had hoped that we could avoid such 'gray area' uses of that particular unit. We've done a few merges into cities, which I'm only leery of, but using them to blast cities into Metropolis-land really starts to break the system."

And I do believe that I never had a chance to build a power plant in Susa.

In any event, I don't see a Hospital being a terribly worthwhile investment. It's a little handier if you're planning on cranking Modern Armor for a while, but I'd rather just have the Cavalry for now. But do as seems best on your turn, as always.

Ben,
Is the worker farm comment aimed at my comment about making Susa grow?

Whats your definition of a worker farm? Merging some pre-existing workers into a single town to get its production up is not a worker farm. Having one or more towns remaining small and spewing out workers for the sole purpose of building up big cities - that is a worker farm as far as I understand the definition. I don't think anyone suggested doing that.

I guess I am trying to understand your terminology. I am willing to play by your rules, but then what is the rule?

1) No merging workers into towns (disbanding only)?
2) No merging workers into metropolises (size 13 cities)?
3) No worker farms as defined above?

As far as I know the first two are not considered exploits - it is the third case that is. The difference is more one of intent and there are shades of grey here. But to me adding workers to get Suza up to 134 shields and then stopping is strategy not exploit. However if you want to play with 1 or 2 thats ok too. I just need to know so I don't do it.

Inherited turn: Settler from Bejing goes N. We buy furs from the Iroquois for 238 gold and 32 gpt.

IT: Our luxuries deal with the Koreans expires, but the loss of happiness is compensated by our furs deal with the Iroquois. Thanks JB! :D

960 AD (1):
Nanking: Factory -> bank
Antioch: Settler -> factory
Uruk: Worker -> worker
Shantung founded. Worker movement.

970 AD (2):
Tatung: Courthouse -> factory
Gordium: Marketplace -> factory
Tientsin: Coal plant -> bank
Hangchow: Marketplace -> bank
Worker movement

IT: Polution hits Susa. This will delay the production of ToE by one turn :(

980 AD (3):
Shanghai: Factory -> infantry
Akkad: Aquaduct -> factory
Macao: Marketplace -> courthouse
Worker movement

990 AD (4):
Tarsus: Marketplace -> courthouse
Worker movement

1000 AD (5):
Persepolis: Factory -> artillery
Susa: ToE-> Hoover Dam (after picking Atomic theory and Electronics) MM to get Hoover dam in 9 turns instead of 10, but we lose 3 food per turn in Susa now. This doesn¡'t matter, cause we can keep this up for 13 turns, without losing population.
Shanghai : infantry -> artillery
Pisae: worker -> settler
Canton: Heroic Epic -> bank
Tientsin: Bank -> artillery
Anyang: Worker -> worker
Trading round:
Rome: Scientific method for WM, economics and 461 gold.
Iroquois: Atomic theory for WM, 560 gold and 125 gpt.
America: Atomic theory for 983 gold, WM, corporation and navigation.
Korea: Atomic theory for free artistry, 359 gold, WM and sanitation.
England: Scientific method for WM and 20 gold.
Worker movement. We use the gold for a massive unit upgrade

IT: Korea eliminates Rome.

1010 AD (6):
Bejing: Bank -> infantry
Xinjian: Granary -> factory
Shantung: Temple -> marketplace
We assemble all nearly all our units in Canton, preparing for the strike against Korea. Only our border cities have garrisons now.

1020 AD (7):
Nanking: Bank -> artillery
Arbela: Courthouse -> marketplace
Elippi: Bank -> artillery
Shanghai: Artillery -> artillery
Pisae: Settler -> marketplace
Tientsin: Artillery -> artillery
We declare war on Korea! :evil:
We pay the Iroquois 27 gpt for an alliance against Korea.
We pay America 14 gpt for an alliance against Korea
We give the English industrialization for an alliance against Korea.
We capture the Korean city Ravenna. Chinan and Kaifeng founded.

1030 AD (8):
Tsingtao: Courthouse -> bank
Ashur: Temple -> aquaduct
Bactra: Temple -> courthouse
We capture Hispalis.

1040 AD (9):
Bejing: Infantry -> artillery
Nanking: Artillery -> artillery
Shanghai: Artillery -> artillery
Sidon: Factory -> artillery
Tientsin: Artillery -> artillery
We capture Pompeii

IT: Washington completes US

1050 AD (10):
Elippi: Artillery -> artillery
Shanghai: Artillery -> artillery
Canton: Bank -> artillery
Troops positioned to assault Canton the next turn.

We now make 433 gpt, which allows us to rush some artillery each turn. We are making slow, but steady progress against the Koreans, who are utterly unable to mount any counter assault whatsoever. The domination limit for this map is 759 according to mapstat, and we now control 469 tiles. 290 tiles to go people....

The save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1050AD.zip

@Darkness - Nice progress, and good job initiating the dogpile. It seems we will only have to conquer Wang and Abe to trigger domination.

However ...

Originally posted by T_McC

(c) War with Rome, immediately moving to war with US, hoping to transition to war with England. Bluntly, this was the only way we could lose the game. Our economy was such that we couldn't control the Alliance cascade after the fall of Rome. We had less than 1 unit/city in our productive core. Pre-rails that is a recipe for disaster. (Post rails its not such a great idea either). The Koreans would have only needed a stack of 6 cavs and some RNG luck to devastate us. Oh, and almost all of our offensive forces would have been farther from our core than our opponents would be!


Maybe I'm just an unfrozen caveman chemical engineer, but I have some real issues with the way the Korean war is being prosecuted. I just don't understand the fascination with not defending your own cities. Excluding Pompeii, our frontline cities are defended by a single cavalry each, and we have two infantry and a cav army guarding our core cities. ALL OF THEM COMBINED!! I guess this explains the turnlogs in some play-by-email games, which have statements like "I broke through his one fortress city and rode his rails to capture another 20 on the same turn". Yeah, I doubt the AI can figure out a proper strategy for dealing with this, but why take the chance? Yeah, the only city the Koreans can reach has mulitple defenders (albeit injured cavs), but I don't see the logic behind putting ourselves at risk of losing based on a hellish pRNG round. We're not in a hurry. A couple of more turns of patience would have eliminated any possibility of losing.

Next leader should check the build orders relative to our current military. I think we are getting a little artillery rich and cavalry/infantry poor. Also examine Perseopolis' build in light of us almost assuredly completing the Hoover Dam. We are so poor culturally that I think we have to raze and replace the Korean cities, just to avoid having to capture them twice (or thrice), so make sure the settlers keep coming.

It would also be nice to have Nationalism so we could draft and end my rantings about city defense.

I don't mean to be overly negative. This is just a clash of playstyles. Obviously myself (and possibly Ben) are the conservative players on the team. The game is going fine and it would take something really weird to stop us now. In fact, it is entirely possible that the game will end before my turn. [~290 tiles in only about 12 cities w/border expansions, I think we can do 1 city every other turn from here on out.]

Kinda funny. I briefly looked at the save and my thought was "wouldn't it be a good idea to use the army in the assault?".

It is true I didn't look closely at defense. A few infantry guards might not be a bad idea. Kuningas will probably look into it. I don't think we need a lot of defenders though. Once rails exist, 4-5 is probably the most you need for inner cities, though sometimes I like a defender in all coastal ones. I don't think we need that here though.

Got it.
I usually don't play with many artilleries. As I rarely start wars in the IA.

I'll post results tomorrow.

The fun game to play with artillary is to see how few losses you can get. In other words, try to minimize losses and not worry about how fast you are progressing. It is an educational "game" I have been trying out recently. I tend to rush my attacks too much and lose too many units.

Your objectives when using artillery should be two-fold:
(1) Reduce enemy cities to smaller than size 6, to remove the defensive bonus. (Artillery shots will kill population)
(2) Red-line all defensive units

A side-effect of achieving these objectives is that often you will wipe out any infrastructure the enemy has in the city. Since we intend to raze and replace, this in no big deal.

The key is to be patient. There usually isn't any reason to attack a city larger that size 6, or with full-strength defenders (everybody down to 2 hp is usually good enough to reduce your troop losses to negligible). Feel free to bomb a city for multiple rounds.

As a side note, you should probably shuffle another infantry on top of our northern artillery stack. We didn't build those things so Korea could use them. As it stands, I believe there is only 1 defensive unit on ~12 artillery.

Progress will be slow, but inevitable. On your turn you should be able to attack 4-5 Korean cities. By the end of your turn we may have enough artillery to attack two cities simultaneously. No rush, and it is pungent :smoke: to just charge into full-health infantry with cavalry.

1. On Worker Farms
I'm not even going to clarify or justify my position on this Worker merge issue. I failed to be clear about this at the beginning of the game, so we'll just say that whatever any individual player feels about this topic is the way he should be playing in this game. I just don't want to expound/discuss/argue about it anymore; the middle of an SG-in-progresss is just the wrong forum for that.

2. On Defense
Defending cities with Infantries = Good
Defending cities with Infantry = Satisfactory
Defending cities with Cavalry = Bad

3. On Nationalism
How did we not get this off of ToE? By which of course I mean our ToE trades. Rome has this tech; won't they take AT for it? It's okay to chip in cash for this technology; Mobilizing will get us oodles of shields, surely worth a thousand or two gold, which we'd just spend rush-building anyway.

4. On Artillery
Yes, Artillery are cool. TMcC just explained everything anyone could ever need to know about them. But do let's keep more than a single Infantry guarding our stacks. ;)

Happy hunting! :sniper:

0 - 1050AD
Trade with English: The corporation and atomic theory for Nationalism.
England, America, Iroquois have communism and espionage.

1 - 1060AD
Beijing Artillery ->Infantry
Nanking Cavalry ->Settler
Tientsin Artillery ->Settler

No casulties ->Pusan razed.

2 - 1070AD
Persepolis coal plant ->Infantry
Nanking Settler ->Artillery
Tarsus Temple ->Courthouse
Shanghai Infantry ->Artillery
Sidon Artillery ->Bank
Tientsin Settler ->Cavalry
Anyang Temple ->Settler

Ningpo founded.
Paoting founded.

Korean galley+frigate sailing. Iroquois deals with gems is expiring. I trade Coal and 1gpt for Gems.
3 - 1080AD
Tatung Bank ->Settler
Ellipi Cavalry ->Artillery
Canton Artillery ->Infantry
Viroconium Temple ->Courthouse
Chinan Temple ->Artillery
Kaifeng Temple ->Settler

4 - 1090AD
Beijing Infantry ->Infantry
Hoover Dam ->Hospital
Shanghai Artillery ->Stock Exchange
Uruk Temple ->Settler
Tientsin Cavalry ->
Paoting Temple ->Worker

Cheju razed - lose: 4 infrantry

Yangchow founded. (aggressive city wines and bombing range to Seoul and Ulsan.)

Korea and Iroquois signed peace.
5 - 1100AD
Persepolis Infantry ->Infantry
Tatung Settler ->Granary
Ningpo Temple ->Artillery

Trading Electronics:
America: Electronics for Refining, Communism, 110 gold and 18 gpt.

6 - 1110AD
Susa Hospital ->Cavalry
Arbela riots
Ellipi Artillery ->Artillery
Hispalis Temple ->Aqueduct
Akkad Factory ->Infantry
Uruk Settler ->Settler
Anyang Settler ->courthouse

Ulsan razed.

New Beijing founded.

7 - 1120AD
Susa Cavalry ->Cavalry
Arbela Marketplace ->Artillery
Gordium Factory ->Infantry
New Beijing Temple ->Settler
Bactra Marketplace ->Courthouse

8 - 1130AD
Persepolis Infantry ->Infantry
Susa Cavalry ->Cavalry
Shanghai Stock Exchange ->Infantry
Canton Stock Exchange ->Infantry
Kaifeng Settler ->Artillery

Neopolis razed.

Seoul razed and GL appeared :goodjob:
Inch'on razed

9 - 1140AD
Beijing Stock Exchange ->Cavalry
Tatung Granary ->Artillery
Ellipi Artillery ->Infantry
Yangchow Temple ->Artillery
Gordium Infantry ->Infantry
Akkad Infantry ->Infantry
Sidon Bank ->Artillery
Tientsin Stock Exchange ->Cavalry
Susa Cavalry ->Wall Street

New Shanghai founded

10 - 1150AD
Nanking Cavalry ->Cavalry
Shanghai Infantry ->Infantry
Canton Infantry ->Infantry
Viroconium Marketplace ->Courthouse
New Shanghai Temple ->Artillery


--------------------------------------------
I slowly advanced further. Koreans have 3 cities left.

Next player may accomplish the palace jump by using the GL.

1150AD savehttp://forums.civfanatics.com/images/attach/zip.gif

jb01-1150ad.zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01-1150ad.zip)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/jb01_1150mil.jpg

Very nice to see such a large slab of Korean territory in our hands. Cheers.

If you squint you can count up the little white dots in the big smear of light purple in the MilMiniMap. If you're mathematically inclined, you may notice that this number is significantly larger than the number next to our line of Infantry. This is not necessarily a Bad Thing (tm), but it's also not terribly good. In spite of my desire to blitz through this game, we really should take a breather after the Korean war and build some Infantry. If nothing more, it's good to at least have some sort of strategic reserve to call on if things don't go as planned on the front lines.

After said re-armament period, I think the Americans should be next on the chopping block. The Iroquois have some old Roman holdings that jut awkwardly into our territory, but Washington has Smith's Trading Company, the Pyramids, Bach's Cathedral, and Universal Suffrage. Compare that to the best the Iroquois can offer -- Rome with Leo's, Magellan's Voyage, the Theater, and Newton's University. With Korean territory under our control, Washington will be in easy striking distance.

Some micromanagement is needed. I know Persepolis at least still has a Coal Plant. We may be able to skim some Conscripts off of high-food cities, though I neglected to check that -- extra Infantry would be very nice to have right about now.

Who has thoughts about Mobilization? We're almost at the end of 1 war, so we'd only be taking a short break from Temples -- but what about future wars?

Roster:
JustBen
Darkness
Kuningas
Greebley (up next)
T_McC (on deck)

Re: nationalism: In my turns only Korea was willing to trade nationalism for atomic theory, but that required a gpt payment with it. Which I of course refused. SO I had to settle for other techs, as I didn't want to trade electronics (to be absolutely sure about Hoover).

Re: City defense: The reason I moved all our units to the front is fourfold
1- Undefended cities are a beacon to AI units, and any units they send by see weaken their core defense.
2- The terrain along the frontline was rugged enough to prevent AI access to our lands by land.
3- After railroads you can get anywhere in your teritory in the same turn, so you don't need any city defense (MP's not needed in republic/democracy)
4- Like I said, I couldn't get nationalism without a gpt payment to Korea, so I couldn't draft.

It's just a difference in playstyle, I guess...

Good playing Kuningas. It didn't seem we had much in the way of casualties. Greebley gets to kill off the Koreans.

The next target should definitely be the US. The rubber-less US. I do agree with Ben's thought that we should try to keep Washington if we can. I think we are going to have more of a problem with hitting the population limit for domination than the territory limit, so the Pyramids would be nice. Shouldn't be too difficult to hold for the 2-3 turns that will be required to finish the Americans after Washington falls. When we do go to war with the Americans, pay the Iroquois off to join us. We have a really long and awkward border with the Iro, and I'd like to keep them otherwise occupied.

If we do want to jump the palace (and I think that would be more useful than another army), Tientsin or Perseopolis are the best candidates. Since the game has so few turns remaining, all we're aiming for with the jump is to reduce corruption in our already developed towns.

If I'm reading things correctly, we only need to conquer the US to achieve domination. If we don't, England is certainly a soft target.

Oh, and just be sure to play your turns in PTW. I could open the save in Conquests, but a few things didn't look right to me. In particular the Army conforms to Conquest rules, not PTW rules.

I have done wars the same way darkness. Given our narrow front line and slow terrain along it we don't actually need many units to defend our core. It is pretty effective agains the AI, though it is a good idea not to have any ROP's :) As you say a different style of play.

Speaking of different styles of play; I have never used mobilization or drafting. What with the mobilization bug and the fact it isn't in GOTM's, I really haven't had the opportunity to try mobilization. As for drafting, I just have never gotten around to using it or learning the rules (Really dumb questions Do you need to be mobilized to draft? Does drafting work the same way as whipping in terms of happiness?).

I will play this tonight or tomorrow night.

Blech; I always forget about the mobilization bug. I use it so rarely. It's really sweet to get a baby golden age, but the cost is high.

Drafting can be done any time, as long as you have at least 7 population in the city. This one is definitely not to be overlooked. At the very least, you should use this in the same way you "peel" Workers off of size 12 cities that have a full food box. Conscripts are great for trivial core garrisons, suppressing flips, and putting down resistors.

I mostly like to keep all of my cities with units in them to discourage those random declarations of war. We could handle being at war with the whole world, but for now I'd really rather import luxuries from the Iroquois. The concern is not what we're doing with the units we have but rather how many of them we have to do stuff with. But we're working on that as fast as possible, I know. ;)

This difference in play styles is the difference between "Always Forward" [Greebley and Darkness] and "Never Backwards" [Troy and Ben]. They can both be effective, but they're usually not compatible. In a blowout like this, your way gets things done faster. In a game with a competitive AI, the choice is often not as obvious.

Drafting gives 20-turn unhappiness, like whipping, but it seems to be at a lower level. You do not have to be mobilized.

You might want to try mobilizing when the Koreans have 1 city remaining. (We'll return to normalcy when Korea is eliminated) If mobilizing means some cities go from 2 to 1 turn per unit (or 3 to 2) it may be worth re-mobilizing to attack the Americans. Eyeballing the save, I can't whether it is worth it or not. (Going from, say, 50 shields to 76 isn't really of any use.)

Preturn: Mostly look at everything to refamiliarize myself with our position. Our economy is a bit stronger than when I last played. I do trade communism for espianage, 8gpt and some small change with england.

America doesn't have iron, coal, oil, or rubber. Cavalry and riflemen - no infantry. They sound like they have a target painted on their backsides.

We have 7 turns of Alliance vs the Koreans. So we will be fighting them for a bit.
23 infantry, 28 artillary, 15 cavalry. Sounds reasonable to me boss.

Iroquois are the ones to avoid. They have a huge army. (Note to self: The Iroquois are a much bigger threat than the Koreans, so I should fortify any city they can reach). I suspect we shouldn't have any troubles getting domination without attacking them, though they may attack us. Hmmm... they are furious too. Our forces along the front could use some shoring up. Since the team has suggested drafting, it seems a reasonable to do this. I go through all size 12 cities (except Susa) and draft. Oooh I could build a 6 hp army! Nah. 9 fine defenders now guard against Iroquois atrocities.

I don't think I want to try mobilization yet as I have things to build that may not be military. I will have to think about it.

As for the leader, I suspect an army is best. We are currently in the wonder free era that is the end of the industrial age. The only other alternative is a palace, but it seems late in the game for that.

We now have all techs. I decide I like the intelligence agency more than wallstreet so Susa is switched.

No units seem in danger... Okies, time to start.

Our furs deal with the Iroquois runs out. I renew for 2 lux's and some cash. I don't think I need to worry about what they will do with the luxuries.

IBT: Some random movement. I may need to turn sound effects back on. Silent battles is just too freaky. Mostly America. and Korea fighting each other. Korea lands next to an undefended city.

Beijing: Cavalry->Artillary
Persepolis: Infantry->Infantry.
Gordium: Infantry->Infantry (MM Gordium for growth).
Tienstin: Cavalry->Infantry (sell a coal plant)
Notice Xinjian has no harbor. Switch it to harbor as it needs one.

1160 AD: Turn on sounds. If TMcC likes them off, I can turn them off at the end of my turn. Will probably try to remember to do so for the music.

Build a road [Edit: near the new towns] so I can get my artillary back and forth better.
Bombard the Korean intruders in our backlands. Damage their boats.
Attack first intruding infantry with an elite infantry and win.
Attack second intruding infantry with a Veteran (no healthy elite) and win. Invasion repulsed.
Bombard Wonsan with limited success
Build army with leader. Going for cavalry for the speed.

The govenor of Susa being open minded and enlightened decide to reward the people of civilizations of the past who have been toiling for hundreds of years for the Chinese nation. These peoples are given a place to live within Susa making Susa a melting pot of cultures and ideas. Unfortunately, the govenor fails to take into account the natural tensions between the peoples and the luxuries need to be raised as a result. The emporer has words with the govenor.

(Sorry guys, I thought it a cute way to make both Ben and me happy (merge only foreign workers) and got carried away. On the plus side we are generating 141 shields a turn - on the minus side I forgot to take into account that the city wouldn't be very happy without a cathedral and such. I have done this same silly error before; you would think I would have learned it by now. Lux only needs to be 20 thank goodness).

Rush a few artillery and switch a few builds to artillery (I need more for these big towns) and rush a few courthouses on the borders.

IBT: America and Korea fight a bit. England and Korea make peace.
Tatung, Nanking, Arbella, Canton, Sidon: Artillery->Artillery
Tsingtao: Bank->Cavalry
Ellipi, Shanghai, Akkad: Infantry->Infantry
Bactra, Tyre, Macao: Courthouse->Artillery

1170 AD: Bombard Wonsan down to size 3 with 2 hp guards [Edit: I attack and take Wonsan]. Also attack random infantry intruder. Sustain a total loss of 2 infantry.

Beijing and Tatung draft and fortify Wonsan.

IBT: America and Korea make peace. Minor movement from korea
Suza: Intelligence Agency->Colloseum
Antioch: Factory->Cavalry
Tienstin: Infantry->Cavalry

Another palace expansion.

1180 AD: Pound Hyangsan knocking defenders down to 1 hp. Attack city and take it with no losses. Kill two random infantry.

Fortify the cities on the border some more.

Rush a few libaries in newer cities

IBT: An infantry is attacked by an infantry. We win and promote to elite.
Beijing has pollution.
Beijing: Artillary->Cavalry
Persepolis: Infantry->Infantry
Nanking: Artillery->Artillery
Susa: Colloseum->Military Academy
Shanghai: Infantry->Infantry
Yangchow: Library->Wall
Canton: Artillery->Artillary
Chengdu: Courthouse->Cavalry

Another palace expansion????

1190 AD: Change to and rush an ironclad in new beijing to get rid of a pestiferous ironclad.
Attack on Pyongyang: Bombard to size 1
It is well defended and I cannot take it this turn. "An army that cannot hit" nearly loses to a 2 hp infantry. It survives with 1 hp (it had around 10-11 to start I think).

IBT: Korea does little.
Ellipi: Infantry->Cavalry
Other things were built but my record was lost

1200 AD: Bombard defenders of pyongyang to 1 hp and take the city.
Bombard Nampo injuring the defenders, but don't hurt the pop much.

IBT: A Korea infantry attacks our infantry and loses
Shanghai: Infantry->Infantry
Pompeii: Temple->Artillery
Canton: Artillery->Artillery
Sidon: Artillery->Artillery

1210 AD: Bombard Nampo from size 15 to 5 and units down to 2 hp, but it proves resistant and I do not take it. I do kill some units and lose a cavalry and an infantry (got a lot of retreats this round).

IBT: Korea infantry attacks an infantry in a city and loses.
Beijing: Cavalry->Cavalry
Persepolis: Infantry->Infantry
Pyongyang flips a few infantry lost.
Susa: Mil Academy->Army
Yangchow:Walls->Courthouse
Gordium: Infantry->Infantry
Tienstin: Cavalry->Cavalry
Chengdu: Cavalry->Cavalry

1220 AD: Bombard Pyongyang to 1 hp defender and retake.
Bombard Nampo to two 1 hp defenders and take. Korea destroyed. [Edit: America declared peace with Korea shortly before this. I don't know how I missed recording that]

We have a strong military vs America and some units have move left.
I plant a spy in America and steal their plans. successfully :)
26 rifles, 12 cavalry, 1 artillary. Yep - its a go. No suprise. War declared.

Bombard Philadelphia and attack with Cavalry and take city.
Pick off a few other units and workers

Hit space to see what the US can do back to us....

IBT: A bunch of attacks. Two conscript infantry become elite. One infantry and one cavalry killed. And somehow a very lost artillery is taken??? I am not sure how it got on the square that it was taken on.

Tatung: Artillery->Artillery
Nanking: Cavalry->Cavalry
Ellipi: Cavalry->Cavalry
Shanghai: Infantry->Infantry
Canton:Artillery->Artillery
Bactra: Artillery->Artillery
Akkad: Infantry->Infantry

1230 AD: America has 9 cavalry, 24 riflemen, and 2 artillery
We have 45 infantry, 41 artillery, and 21 cavalry

Bombard of Chicago gets it down to 2 hp defenders and size 10.
Start moving artillery into range of washington (31 of them)
Kill 5 of america's cavalry

IBT: America kills a cavalry.
Xinjian: Barracks->Cavalry
Shangtung:Marketplace->Artillery
Tsingtao: Cavalry->Cavalry
Nampo joins the americans. A bit annoying as there were 4-5 defenders. To much pressure from the border. Nothing major though. A bit ironic as it had no American citizens while Philadelphia is full of resistors. [Edit: It turned out a bigger deal than I thought due to the city being founded on rubber, but there was nothing we could do about this. Poor Nampo is surrounded on 3 sides by Americian culture. Just bad luck]
Gordion: Infantry->Infantry
Tientstin:Cavarly->Cavalry
Chengdu:Cavalry->Cavalry

1240 AD: Bombard Nampo until the unit has 1 hp and take it back. The saddest part is Nampo was founded on rubber so now there are infantry in american cities. Sigh.
Kill a rifleman
Advance washington SOD.
A few rushes

IBT: Attack on Nampo promotes a conscript to regular infantry.
Beijing: Cavalry->Cavalry
Persopolis: Infantry->Infantry
Pyongyang: Temple->Walls
Tatung: Artillery->Artillery
Nanking: Cavalry->Cavalry
Susa: Army->Pentagon
Ningpo: Settler->Barracks
Ellipi: Cavalry->Cavalry
Shanghai: Infantry->Infantry
Canton: Artillery->Artillery
Bactra: Artillery->Artillery
Hispalis:Artillery->Artillery
Akkad: Infantry->Infantry
Macao: Artillery->Artillery

1250 AD:
I try an attack on chicago but it goes poorly. I risk an army and get unlucky and lose it. This was a error on my part; I should have waited until it was size 6 or less.

The one turn Nampo flipped, America upgraded all its rifles to infantry. The flip couldn't have had worse timing.

I would be curious to know how many squares we are from domination.

I stayed up way too late playing this and which made this report less than ideal. It is not really complete I forgot to write some small stuff down. I am also too tired to MM at all so TMcC, things may not be optimal

Our final numbers are 48 infantry, 48 artillery, and 24 cavalry. America has 6 cavalry, 7 riflemen, and 15 infantry.

We should be able to kill them and win I would think.

I never did mobilize. TMcC, I leave that to you if you want to. Not sure we need it.

A picture from my steal plans. Don't often get to see this:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-USunits.JPG

The final result differs in that we own Philadelphia.

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1250AD.zip)

Good lord it is 3:37 am. It wasn't supposed to be THAT late. :arrow:

Edit: I forgot to turn off the music.]

[Edit: Some more comments now I am rested:

Susa is building the Pentagon. Be aware that if you switch to something else you will NOT be able to build the pentagon. An army died on the last turn leaving us with 2. Only switch away if you don't want it at all

There are two big stacks of artillery. One is currently bombarding washington down to reasonable size. Washington had 8 defenders when I stole plans. It may require more than the 30 odd artillary bombarding it to get the defenders hp down. The second is working on Chicago.

For population growth, we need hospitals. When America looked easy picking with rifleman my throught was to just cut through them and not worry about much else. Now it will be not so easy to take them out, it could be worth a short delay to build hospitals so we can continue to grow.

I think that TMcC can finish this game on his turn if he so desires. Or you can take it slower. Up to you. I can't see it going past Ben unless we decide on a different victory condition. Domination should be fairly easy to acchieve.

One argument against mobilization is that building temples to expand borders will shorten the game. If we mobilize we can't do that. I don't know that we need it. Most of our main towns make infantry in 2 and probably won't make infantry in 1 mobilized.

Our workers are fairly useless right now. I gave them random things to do, but they are unneccessary for the most part. I didn't merge them into towns due to lack of hospitals, but this is something we could do if we wanted. They could have some use switching mines-irrigation in our core - though I don't think we need to spend the time doing this to win.

I did more culture rushes than my record indicates. For some reason, recording this was the thing that got left out most often. It may be worthwhile going through the towns and seeing if we need anything to get more squares under our control.

The luxury rate is higher than it need be. In part this was due to no real need for money or science and the fact WLTKD lowers corruption. I did not adjust it the last few tlurns. It might be worth looking into whether raising it to get more cities under WLTKD or lowering it (keep an eye on Susa) makes sense.

Nice! Korea's gone, let's take some of America to win this one.
According to Mapstat we now need 99 tiles (660/759) and 45 population (336/381). But the population number may change due to increase in global population...

Originally posted by T_McC

On a completely different note, why am I not surprised to see Rubber in the city radius of Ravenna? I know what has been publicly stated about the mathematics of flips, but my personal experience makes me believe that there is a hidden "screw-you" factor that dramatically increases the odds of a city with a resource flipping away from the human. It has just happened too many times, with too unlikely a probability for me to believe otherwise.

Yeah, how gauche to quote myself but: Why am I not surprised that founded-on-rubber Iron-Works eligible Namp'o flipped?

Not sure why we captured Philadelphia, raze-and-replace. ( :confused: what is it with all the hyphens?)

I think we can wrap this on my turn, so ...
@Ben - If we get to the point where I have to go a little over 10, I won't pass with just 2-3 "Hit enter" turns, I'll finish it. Hope that's OK.

Ya philly could be razed. At the time I was hoping for a quick war and had just used the settler I did have, so I kept the city for the culture boundary increase. Then when America got infantry, it suddenly was not so quick. We probably need settlers so switching a town with enough shield to build one quickly (or rush it - we have tons of cash) is a good idea. You can abandon and replace philly if you want.

Flip chances in general are pretty low, so I don't always worry much about it if I feel it will only be for a few turns until the civ is destroyed. In other cases it can be nice to start with full size cities like we did with persia. In fact my last turn some of the Persian cities were bigger than our core ones. In this case, I agree that replacement would have been the better choice.

I have never noticed a correlation between resources and city flips, but then I may not have payed attention. Perhaps you have a civ curse in which case we can blame Nampo on you. You didn't let all the air out of a civ programmers tires in the past did you? :D

My particular curse seems to be lack of leaders. I have had 3 war-filled turns in this game and no leader yet despite about 2-3 score elite victories. I have had 2 other civ games with no leaders all game including one domination win on a large map

Originally posted by T_McC
@Ben - If we get to the point where I have to go a little over 10, I won't pass with just 2-3 "Hit enter" turns, I'll finish it. Hope that's OK.By all means. Isn't there something nice and symmetric about the last guy in the rotation getting the last turn?

And, of course, my obligatory big :goodjob: to Greebley for pummeling those weaker than us in masterful fasion.

JB01

Pre-turn: Hold It! Do I have the correct save file? Last time I played in this game there was a Blue Guy and a Red Guy, and they were both wearing hats! Where'd they go?

New Beijing needs a defender. Switch Tatung and Antioch to Settlers. Rush Temple in Namp'o. A couple of workers doing really strange things. Switch Pisae to library and rush. Rush Settler from Uruk. Will divert troops to attack Chicago before Washington. Want to get D.C. last, so we can better chance to keep it.

Ah, screw it. The game won't last 5 turns beyond when we capture D.C., so it'll burn. Checking the numbers with MapStat, we may not even have to kill the U.S. to achieve domination.

IT - Retreat 3 Cavs with a reg. Infantry, lose to Vet Infantry. (Fieldwork)

1255 AD (1)
Found New Xinjian. Abandon Philadelphia (not gonna capture it twice), found New Chengdu in its place. Rush Temple in New Tsingtao. Fairly unispiring bombardment round.

IT - Lose two workers to American Cavs, two Cavs die attacking Namp'o.

1260 AD (2)
Swap cavs outside of New Nanking. I'm not sure what Mrs. O'Leary's cow had to do with it, but Chicago burns at a loss of 2 cavs + 1 infantry. (Last defender ate his Wheaties) Hurry Temple and Library somewhere. I'm corraling workers for a final worker-merge if we hit the territory limit before the population limit. [74 tiles and 34 population to go: Population limit drops as we scorch the earth]

IT - Lose another couple of workers, U.S. cavalry dies on an attack. [We've got ~100 workers, and nothing useful for them to do. I'd normally be more careful than this, but it simply doesn't matter now.]

1265 AD (3)
Have a truly bare-ass minimum bombardment against D.C. But it's good enough for government work. Assault Washington, lose 1 unit, and generate a leader. Shades of 1812 as D.C. smolders.

Ugh, should have kept it. The borders closed on me and I can't refound this turn. About 1/2 the U.S military was in D.C.

1270 AD (4)
Kill a U.S. cavalry, shuffle troops.

1275 AD (5)
Kill two trespassing U.S. cavs Begin seige of Atlanta. Pretty good artillery round, I'm going in. 1st Cav Army kills two Infantry. 2nd Cav Army kills Infantry and Rifle. Deja vu, Atlanta is in flames. (Tara!)

New Tatang founded on the spot, Library worker-rushed. 30 tiles and 25 pop to go for domination.

IT - A few cities riot, as WW goes a bit higher. Clowns given employment. Have a few border expansions.

1280 AD (6)
Chinese Repatriation Day, as all native chinese workers are melded back into cities. It is also Persian Repatriation day, as all available Persian workers are granted their freedom to re-join formerly Persian cities. [No point prolonging the inevitable, I think we went over the territory limit on the IT]

Just to be spiteful, begin barrage of Boston. Not entirely spectacular, but I'll run with it.

The way I figure, the less cavs survive, the more :beer: for me.

And after a cavalry charge that generated enough horsemeat to open a new McDonalds ( :cringe: ), we ironically enough turn Boston into a big hole in the ground.

[Boy am I glad we're attacking the Americans last, I don't have any material about the Iroquois. :lol: :rolleyes: ]

We then fill that hole with New Macao. Worker rush a library, in case it matters. Decide not to chance it, and grant Babylonian Emancipation.

IT - A couple of border expansions and ... nothing. :(

1285 AD (7)
Someone's got to die this turn.

I can reach Hastings, so declare war on England. :satan:

Sign Iroquois to an MA against U.S. No good reason, just felt like it. We haven't been at war with them yet, and just wanted to give them a last taste of blood ... :vampire:

Capture Hastings with no losses. Press Return ...

IT - Maybe signing that MA wasn't a good idea. That was a long interturn.

1290 AD (8)
Stuff completes, the game concedes to us. A most satisfying victory. Final score: 6624. My highest Deity score ever.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01_Fini.JPG

Save game, only have to hit return and accept build orders to get entry into your HoF. I believe we built zero useful libraries, and may not have self-researched anything after the first row of the Ancient Age. We also went to the bother of capturing the Sistine Chapel and didn't build any cathedrals. :lol:

:thanx:


The End Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-1285_AD.zip)

Yay!! :band:

My first non-GOTM deity win :) We seemed to have a good mix of different playing styles which allowed us to play a strong game.

If anyone is looking for a new game to play, I signed up for Krys03 which is a deity game with the new conquests. We could use a 4th (and 5th) player as we only have 3 right now. We will be using the Sumerians.

One final screen shot:

What if we had gotten England's start instead. It is one of the more bizarre starts I have seen:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/JB01-England.JPG

Interestingly there is no way to actually use all 3 cows. You either waste one or settle on one

[party]

Right on! That was a great game. That's not my first Deity win, but it's definitely the first time on 20% land. I'm getting flashbacks to when we had 3 towns, 8 Archers, and were taking bets on whether or not the game would last into the Medieval Times. :lol:

This game was also by far the :hammer:-ingest game I've ever played. I'm pretty much a builder, and while I've learned how to hurry a war when I need to, I don't think I've ever been at war this much before. Seriously, consider the stages of our game:

(1) War with Persia to land-grab
(2) War with Babylon till they died
(3) War with Persia so Rome wouldn't grab all their land
(4) Surprise war with Rome till they were gassed and they died
(5) Peactime to build Factories and a few Banks
(6) War with Korea till they died
(7) Cleanup

All our infrastructure got built on the fly while we were cranking out units! Absolutely crazy!

When I set everything to random, I'd kinda planned on not getting one of the top 3 civs in the game, but I feel like we needed it given our start. Although... well, the game was nice enough to start us off right by an Ironworks site. Go back to page 1 of this thread and check out the first screenshot -- we so should have known Susa was going to be critical. ;)

I need to settle into some serious Conquest-ing myself, but hope to see you all in an SG in the future. Thanks!

Great game people, thanks! :)
Now, if we'd played Englands' start. That would have been a challenge. :lol: