This game is one of four running on the Rise of Rome Conquest, seeking to experience each of the four playable civs and to compare their different situations.

Scenario: Rise of Rome
Civ: Carthago
Difficulty: Deity
Goal: Domination Victory before time limit is reached

Roster
Sullla
ToddMarshall
Greebley
Kylearan
Nad

All exploits listed at RBCiv are off-limits. 10 turns per player at all times. 24/48 rule is in effect for "got it" message/playing turns, once everyone gets a copy of the expansion. Until then, we will be more flexible.

Kylearan and Nad have been shifted to the end of the roster while awaiting the arrival of Conquests in Europe. I will be playing the first 10 turns myself, mostly because I beta-tested this scenario back in July and have some familiarity with it. The opening turns are the most critical, so stay on your toes with the first go-around in the roster! :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a_start.jpg

I see that I am 2nd. I will not be arround to "get it" till Sunday night. Will be able to play sunday night or monday.

I thought I would check in. I do have the game already. I played a game yesterday (I had to try random map size) and I must say the increased cost of upgrading was a bit of a shock. I think I like the change though.

I am thinking we might as well take the first round a little slow if the European release isn't until Friday. It would give us time to discuss strategy.

I glanced briefly at the start and I see what you mean about the first turns being important. We are at war with Rome and its improved legions (4-3-1) while we have the defensive Numidean which we can't even build yet as we need Ivory, and we are weak compared to them. Oy :eek:

Reading the History section, we lose all our islands in this war (if I read the section correctly), lose spain about the time of the second and get slaughtered in the third. Time to rewrite history :hammer:

I am guessing we play this vaguely similar an always war game? Defensive at first, trying to get good kill ratios while gaining in power until we can finally turn the tables. Though I am assuming we can actually make peace? I would be hard to have 3 wars if we can't.

Sullla,
Did you pick normal agression? I think that was the one option I saw when I started that could be varied other than difficulty.

I guess you are all already doing this, but if not I'd recomment reading the other RBC3 threads - they've already made some very interesting discoveries, tiny little details which might otherwise easily get missed. Roads providing 4 movement, hoplites being 3.3.1 etc...

It's a good question if it's possible for us to make peace with Rome. Can we? I don't know how good our starting position is to attack Rome now (how many boats do we have? Do they have? What's our strongest attack unit?). For example, we could make peace with Rome for a short time after we have taken Messana (*if* we will be able to do this, that is), and either roll over Egypt afterwards (although this looks like a long way...) or attack Rome again when we have this heavy cavalry thingie. Although from the report on Sulla's page, it looks like time is against us - Rome seems to have the strongest units in the game in the long run, although their movement of one should be a severe disadvantage.

I think some settling will be in order, too. By the way, what do the new small sword icons near cities mean? That the city has a barracks?

Of course, I cannot give any meaningful proposals because I don't have the game yet, so you can safely ignore me until I have. ;)

It will be interesting to see how the AI will manage the new units, for example how many Legionarys will be misused as pseudo-workers... :)

-Kylearan

Just checking in...looks great, can't wait to get stuck in!!

For those that don't have the game, our mighty army:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a_forces.JPG

We also have 3 settlers and 9 workers as well

Thanks Greebley! Er, impressive forces we have there. *cough* Changes my comment about "try to capture Messina" into "try to hold Syracuse and Marsala", especially since in one of the other thread it has been said that we can't make peace with Rome. :eek:

Looking forward to Sulla's first turns...

-Kylearan

I decided to peruse the tech tree for this scenario.

Tactics give us a 4-2-2 war elephants with an extra hp and is my guess for the tech to go for first.

I was glad to see we can research astronomy any time we want. Looks like we could already use it.

Another difference - Galleys can hold 4 units.

Legions have an extra hit point too and get better with higher techs (5-4-1 then 6-5-1 if I remember correctly)

Well, I'm finally back but I'm totally drained. I haven't really looked at this one and probably won't till my turn. I spent over 2 hours reading every single unit, tech, etc. in the mesopotamia scenareo before I started my turn and thats the way I'll approach it here along with reading every post from the other games. That being said, keep pointing out every lil nugget of info you think would be helpful. I won't be able to play this one till tuesday night anyhow.

Reading the Numideon Merc in the Civopedia, it appears that this unit is not a UU for us and won't start a golden age?

It implies any civ can build it that has ivory and does not mention a golden age. Check it out and see if you agree.

If this is true it will make the beginning harder because I think Rome's legions do have GA potential so they get theirs right away. The net result could be good for us though as we get our GA when we are bigger.

*Yawn* Good morning.

You are correct in your thinking that the NM is not a UU for us. Our UU is a 4-2-2 50 shield Jumbo available at Tactics.

Yes, Rome's basic Legions can set off a GA. The 2 upgrades to the Legion can't, although this is likely to a non issue as they'll probably get it almost immediately.

I have been away for much of this weekend and thus did not have time to start this game off. Planning to play it tonight though. I hope this has given our European players enough time so that when we get around to them in the rotation, they will have copies on hand to play. Don't think I'd forgotten about this game or anything... :)

(0) 350BC OK, this is it. Finally time to roll with Carthage against Rome in this scenario. Now that I'm starting the game, I can reveal some of the things I didn't want to talk about in the setup phase. For those playing on my team, you're in for a real struggle. Carthage is by far the most difficult civ to play, locked permanently in war with the extremely dangerous Rome. It's hard for Rome to invade Carthage, true - but it's even harder for Carthage to invade Rome. The legions have the highest defense of any unit in the game, and it only gets worse as the scenario progresses. Persia comes in second, stuck in war with Macedon and its infernal hoplites (much harder to fight a 3/3 unit than a 4/2 one). My only goal on these first turns are to defend what we have and - IF we are lucky - take Messana so that have uncontested control of Sicily. We won't even be in a position to think about invading Italy for a very long time.

First priority is to look at our armed forces. We have three settlers and nine workers (that's pretty good), but only 4 archers, 3 spears, 1 sword, and 13 Numidians to work with. With all of Rome's freebie Deity legions, this might get ugly. We're going to HAVE to concentrate on dominating the seas; that is our one big advantage in this scenario. Research path is obvious: we must beeline to Tactics as soon as possible to get our UU War Elephants; until then, any offensive is probably out of the question. Unortunately, it's still 40 turns at best rate, so we're probably better off waiting to buy the tech...

Going through cities... Carthage is considered for a wonder, but it is the closest city to the front in Sicily. If we're going to defend our territory there, we need Carthago producing a steady stream of units. It is configured for max growth and set to swords for now until we research Tactics. Marsala and Syracuse, our cities on Sicily, start on cheap Militaristic walls - they might need them. Other cities get swapped to a mix of workers/settlers (in Spain) and military units in the cities close to us. Our problem as Carthage is that we have a good deal of commerce, but not many shields.

Checking diplomacy... we have just about nothing to trade. But Alex will ally with us against Rome for free?! OK! Better than OK, that's great news! :D

Now moving units... I send one archer in Spain up north to find the Celts and eventually the Goths. Since I have spoiler knowledge of this map, I intend to make use of it. We need ivory to build Numidians; ivory is a strategic resource, NOT a luxury on this map. I thus send one of starting settlers into the desert in a very odd location to get us ivory ASAP. After almost an hour on the first turn, time to end it and see what happens...

(1) 345BC Rome's only move for this turn is to move an archer next to Marsala on Sicily. With a Numidian defending, I'm not worried. I found the city of Lilibeo in Spain, which puts an extra spices at our disposal. I then send that extra spice to Persia for dyes and some money, improving relations with Xerxes and getting us a much-needed second luxury. Entertainment rate scaled back to 10%. We start with more galleys than Rome, so I take a chance and attack their exposed galley (got to control the seas right away). We luck out and win 3-0, with our galley promoting to veteran. Nice. :D Two of our galleys are now on patrol of the Messana straits, seeking to interdict any ships bound for Sicily. Barbs have showed up in Spain, but we have an archer exploring there who should be able to take out their camp and grab us 25g more.

Everything is tentatively looking good. If we are lucky, Rome will become preoccupied with Macedon and not focus on launching a naval invasion of our (largely undefended) homeland in North Africa. Silicy, on the other hand, is now an armed camp with 5 of our starting 11 Numidians defending our two cities there.

(2) 340BC As expected, the Roman archer attacks Marsala and loses 3-1, promoting our defender to vet status. An archer in Spain survives a barb attack without taking any damage. The most troubling sign is a Roman galley heading for Aleria (Corsica). We have only one spear there for defense, so I whip city walls this turn. We can only wait for the unit(s) to land and hope for the best. Another Roman galley heads for Sicily; we have a vet galley next to it, so I cross my fingers and attack. The Seafaring Carthaginians come through again, and we sink the ship 3-1. Woo yeah! Can't hurt us if you can't reach us! :D Also of note is the fact that the Roman city on Sicily, Messana, has been whipped down to size one. Can only be a good sign!

(3) 335BC Hmmm. The expected attack on Corsica does not come. The Roman galley we could see last turn headed north, possibly with a settler on board (?) Another galley appeared and is heading west. I would shadow them if I had any ships in the area, but I don't. What are they up to? Our archer goes down to 1hp but disperses a barb camp as planned. Nora founded in Spain to grab another wine resource, though it will need a worker on hand in order to hook it up. And we meet the Celts this turn too! Masonry and Iron Working gets their world map and all their gold. I found an embassy in Alesia and then GIVE them Alphabet and Writing so that we can get them to declare on Rome... wha? The game won't let me ally with them against Rome. Umm... what's going on here? Well, at least I can use the new map knowledge and contact to clean out a lot of money from the other civs, and buy a worker from Persia. We've now got our quota of workers from Persia, folks.

(4) 330BC Kind of a quiet turn, not too much going on. NOW this turn we can ally with Celts against Rome; they are willing to do it for peanuts (world map + 41g) so we happily sign them in against Ceasar. All of Rome's neighbors are now at war with them, so that should help take the heat off us. :goodjob: I should also mention that Persia now has Mathematics. We can buy it for our treasury - and we want the tech so we can build catapults - but I'd rather wait for Macedon to buy in and lower the price, which they almost assuredly will. Rome starts the game with Math.

(5) 325BC Rome signs Egypt into war against the Celts; I think this is the very definition of a "phony war". Now that we have finally produced some swords, it's time to start heading for the conquest of Sicily. Our starting army is loaded with three swords, which will head for Messana next turn. We now have a 3/2/2 unit with 11hp. :mwaha: And with our civ being Militaristic, there's a good chance we'll pop more leaders in the course of this game. (First leader goes to rush a Forbidden Palace in Spain though - once we discover Republic and enable the FP, that is).

Yikes! Our exploring archer spots a Roman legion, citizen (settler), and pike heading down the road. We're going to have to start sending reinforcements to Spain; that's where the real battle will be fought next. I begin to rethink my strategic plan... Utica founded in the desert, gaining us ivory. We can now build Numidians instead of spears - a big upgrade for only 10 extra shields.

(6) 320BC Our archer in Spain tried to hide on a mountain at the end of last turn, but the Roman legion chased him down and won without taking any damage. Our limited units in Spain are hastily re-shuffled to prepare for the likely coming onslaught. In more positive news, our army goes after Messana. In a freak swing of luck, it wins the first battle 5-0 (3 attack against 3 defense - but the Roman unit fortified and in a town on a hill for a real defense of 5.25). The second battle is more like what we'd expect; the army loses 7hp but wins and has 4hp remaining.

(7) 315BC Not too much going on. Healing up the army and getting more swords onto Sicily. Now that the legions have been killed, only spears remain for defense - a much easier task. Any reinforcements will be interdicted by our ships, so Sicily will soon fall.

(8) 310BC The attack on Messana goes forward. Our army inexplicably loses 7 straight rounds of combat, but then retreats and thus avoids death. Knowing that the RNG has now used up all its "bad seeds", I press the attack with our swords. The first wins with 1hp remaining. The second loses but reduces the spear to a single hp. Umm... and there are still more spears in there. Err, yeah, Rome must have a lot of free bonus units. I break off the attack again and wait for the army to re-heal. Geez, Rome starts with 1 legion, 1 archer, and 1 spear in Messana for the player. I've killed two legions, an archer, and two spears in that city already, and they never landed any reinforcements. At least two more spears there still to go... I also decide to start a min science run on Monotheism this turn with a scientist. The tech is utterly worthless, so hopefully the AI will ignore it and we can get something for it in 40 turns.

(9) 305BC Kind of a quiet turn. Rome has founded a city in Celtic territory, otherwise everything is pretty uneventuful. Still waiting for someone else to research Mathematics or another tech for a twofer.

(10) 300BC BAD news! Rome signs Persia to an alliance against us! :eek: This puts our cities in no danger, but it does snap a luxury coming to us. We'll want to make peace as soon as we can just to be safe. And it might be a good idea to sign Persia in against Rome when we get a chance. Fortunately, a city completes a worker and I scroll-ahead to prevent any cities going into disorder. Luxuries raised to 10% to compensate for lack of Persian dyes.

Did I say armies have gotten stronger? In one turn, ours goes from 1hp to 11hp. :D Our army kills the first spear, losing 3hp, then with 8hp left goes after the second one. The army loses 5 more hp, but wins and promotes to take the city. Messana and Sicily are ours!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3_messana.jpg

We can trade luxuries with the Celts, but I don't recommend it since the trade route with them is extremely insecure. Our reputation is worth more than that. Also of interest in terms of trading, we'll have an extra iron to send around in a few more turns for extra income. Everything looking pretty solid at this point, although actually invading and conquering Rome will be a major chore.

Some notes for the next player. Attacking Italy across the straits is probably suicide at this point; don't even think about it until we get Jumbos. The next few turns should probably be spent securing our holdings in Spain and expanding there if possible. Where to send our extra swords and sword army next is up to you; I'd leave a decent amount of swords and Numidians on Sicily to be safe, but that will still leave some extras for use elsewhere. The city of Confinium in northern Spain wouldn't be a bad target to take out next. We are still waiting on the AI to research Tactics for us; be patient and wait, because they most certainly will soon enough. We want to build horses and not swords at this point because horses upgrade to War Elephants.

One last note: the horseman being produced in Carthago Novo is intended to be used to scout out the Goths and Scythians. Sign a ROP with the Celts, take the horseman through their territory, and keep heading east. You'll find both of them in time. Keep Rome locked into war with its neighbors and the heat of those legions off of us. Above all, good luck! :goojob:

RBC3a - 300BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a_300BC.zip)

Here's the current map. Make sure to keep producing settlers to fill in some of this empty land near Carthage; I didn't have time on my turn, but we can't ignore doing that if we want a truly productive core. Keep settling in Spain too - victory in this game is based on score, which is based on territory and population. We need more land and people if we're going to get domination! :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a_300BC.jpg

Sullla
ToddMarshall <<< UP NOW
Greebley <<< on deck
Kylearan
Nad

I got it. 13 hour day at work today so I'm too tired to play this tonite. Should get to it tomorrow or wed.

Edit: btw, the persians would have given us half their gold and a lux for alliance vs rome on turn 1 just like Macedon (who would have given us all their gold and a lux for it). Egypt also would have given us everything they had for it. Neither of those 2 would have been anything but phony wars for rome, but it would have kept them from allying vs us. Also, Macedon can't buy into math.... they are at war with the persians and rome so they have no one to buy it off of :lol:

Originally posted by ToddMarshall
Edit: btw, the persians would have given us half their gold and a lux for alliance vs rome on turn 1 just like Macedon (who would have given us all their gold and a lux for it). Egypt also would have given us everything they had for it. Neither of those 2 would have been anything but phony wars for rome, but it would have kept them from allying vs us. Also, Macedon can't buy into math.... they are at war with the persians and rome so they have no one to buy it off of :lol:

This almost certainly sounds like a bug to me. Civs shouldn't be lining up to attack your greatest rival for no cost whatsoever. Here's something which likely needs to be addressed in a patch.

I kinda wondered about that myself. One intersiting fact is that Persia would go from acceptable to insulted for that alliace on a one gold break (somewhere arround 45g, don't remember exactly).

I found a bug in the mesopotamia scenareo last night too, but I lost the screenshot. One of the civs refered to itself as civname5 when offering an alliance and now I can't remember which civ it was :(.

Well I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my gf decided to surprise me by flying in from Atlanta for the weekend (just found out this afternoon). She arrives tomorrow. The bad news is that the place is a mess and it can't be that way when she gets here so I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for a swap or a skip :(. I could play friday night but not before. I appologize to all concerned for the delay.

Well I can play. Sullla, should I take it or do you prefer to just wait until Todd is ready? I am ok with either way.

I try to adhere to the 24/48 hour rule as much as possible. Since ToddMarshall has told us that he cannot play his turn within 48 hours, we'll skip him for now and go to Greebley. After Greebley's turn, it will go back to ToddMarshall while our European players are still waiting for copies.

Greebley, you are on the clock. :)

Ok. I got it. I am going to start it tonight, but I am unsure if I will finish. I should be able to finish tomorrow night in that case.

Good news! I just received an email that my copy has arrived at the store and has been sent to me. That means that I should have the game either tomorrow or Saturday, although I suspect from the time of day the email was sent that the postal service won't make it tomorrow. Anyway, I'm glad that my copy at last has reached this continent. :)

Oh, and Sulla, good job on securing Sicily for us! :goodjob: And we're in for a real struggle, you say? Good news! :D

-Kylearan

I got about 2 turns in last night. Persia and Rome are each sending a boat toward us, but otherwise all is quiet. I should be able to finish tonight.

Good news on getting Conquests, Kylearan. Hopefully, Nad will get his soon as well and we will be all set.

I'm still waiting impatiently! It's supposed to be released here tomorrow, if it isn't I am going to destroy Atari...

It would appear that Conquests is in the country [party]

I will have it within a couple of days, hopefully.

All aboard!! :thumbsup:

The people at atari looked out the window at work and saw Nad's cruise missile floating a single square away. They realized he meant business.

Now Nad will get conquests AND their territory map.

Preturn: I just reread Sullla's post to remind me of what has happened to date. Next is a perusal of our lands and to check for tweaks that may be useful.

First thing I do is pick a spearman and shift-U to upgrade to numideans. I noticed I could do an upgrade in Aleria which needs it. It upgrades a total of 4 spear to Numideans for 120 gold. This includes 3 veteran spear on our main continent in addition to aleria's spear. Olbias & Caralis do not upgrade because there is no harbor. Hmmm... that could use fixing. Olbias is 19 shields from a harbor so I rush one. This will get them Luxuries and enable me to upgrade the spears. Checking, those are the only 2 remaining spears. MM some towns getting an increase in the gold output of 12, though this is one turn only. Several things will build soon and I will go back to maximum shields.

One town totally confuses me though. At seven shields it gets 3 uncorrupted. At eight shields it gets 2 uncorrupted? Why? I saved a screen shot and the game.

Hit enter

IBT: Roman boat near Aleria

Marsala:Warrior->Galley
Thenae: Worker->Settler
Carthago Novo: Horseman->Horseman
Olbia: Harbor->barracks
Icosium: Settler->Settler
Lilibeo: Worker->Worker

295 BC:
Aleria could be in danger. I hate to give it more "Cruel opression when already suffering", but feel it is safer to do so. Rush a Numidean. The terrain is hilly so defense seems better. I also move our galley to land a swordsman and a Numidean on the Olbia island next turn.
Upgrade a warrior in Marsala and a spear in Caralis.
Decide to be really cautious and move the army out of messana and into the capitol. Culturally we are fine for flip purposes, but Messana is next to a volcano and I have no idea of the chance of eruption, so I err on the side of caution. This means our army does not heal this turn which is the downside. The king does NOT want to be remembered in history as the king who sacrificed Hannibal to the volcano gods.
Horse in Carthago Novo sent North as Sullla suggested. It will go near a Roman town, so I am not sure it will make it. Seems worth the chance though.
Icosium settler moves to a spot nearish the capitol to hopefully grow to a real city.
Syracuse is going to lose a lot of shields on its worker so I switch it to the galley in 3 and Marsala to the worker in 2 (8 and 6 shields respectively)

IBT: Roman Legion Lands next to Aleria on the hills as expected. We have walls and 2 numideans (one veteran) to defend with the one built this turn.
Carthago: Horseman->Horseman
Cirta: Horseman->Horseman
Aleria: Num Merc->Num Merc.
Leptis Magna:Worker->Settler
Mersa Makadh: Num Merc->Settler
Carmona: Num Merc->Settler
Persians are building Hadron's wall

290 BC:
Retreat worker into Alearia.
Move some military including landing a sword and Num Merc on Oblia-Caralis island.
I find I now know Stythia. I trade his territory map for our world map and alphabet. I can't trade writing for his world map so I gift him writing thinking to trade mapmaking and or code of laws for the world map. Then I discover he can't learn those techs and I gave him writing for nothing. Oops. Guess that is something new about conquests I didn't know. I hope I didn't just miss Sullla mentioning it, because I really don't remember if it was.
Macedonia has Monarchy, but I am not sure it is worth much other than a tech to get to republic. I don't think it worth going into anarchy for. Its biggest benefit seems 3 MPs.

IBT: Egypt declares war on Macedonians
Roman legion attacks our Veteran Numidean in Aleria and loses. We become Elite :D
Persia lands troops on our island next to syracuse.
Marsala: Worker->Horseman
Nora: Walls->Barracks

Macedonian city of byzantium builds the colossus

285 BC:
Now I have met the Goths too. My only guess is that the scenario introduces them one at a time or they can buy communication. I certainly didn't run accross them.

Massive map trades, some of which are expensive, but I then back sell them to egypt and Macedonia for a healthy profit.
The 3 persian archers and horse are killed.
Decide to switch a few towns: Carthago Novo to settler, Russadir to a worker, Gabes to a Num Merc. Army is healed. Send it toward spain. Note that Sicily still has most of the swordsmen.

IBT: Persian Galley is heading back to Persia.
Syracuse: Galley->Galley

280 BC:
Build Theveste SW of Carthago and NW of Thenae It is building barracks.
The northern islands, sicily, our mainland each have a galley. Our last galley is moving our army.

IBT: Roman galley heads toward our northern islands
Carthago: Horseman->Horseman
Olbia riots. The roman galley stopped on Olbia's fish and the loss of commerce lost a gold toward entertainment.
Tingis: Galley->Settler
Icosium: Settler->Settler
Macedonia builds the oracle in sparta

Our galley vs Roman galley wins with 1 hp left. Goes into Aleria to heal.
Macedonia now has Literature as well as Monarchy. I don't feel it is worth purchasing at this time.

IBT: Goths ally with Rome to kill us. The laughter following this announcement annoys the heck out of the Gothic ambassador. His vows of dire vengence reduce the whole court to hysterics.
Scythia and Macedon ally vs Rome.
Malaca:Settler->Num Merc
Cirta: Horseman->Settler

265 BC:
Persia will talk to us.
Trade world map, and 337 gold for peace and mathematics, and world map from persia

Trade spices and 240 gold for currency with Persia
Trade math, spices, 200 gold for literature from Macedonia
Trade literature for construction and 423 gold from Persia
Trade currency and construction for Monarcy and 224 gold from Macedonia

Persia unfortunately already has monarchy so there is no trade back.

Egypt has nothing to trade for. Instead I give her mathematics for war vs the Romans. I do this because if Rome allied with egypt, we might lose our rep. Right now we have both a northern and southern route to Macedonia and Persia, so I am hoping this deal was safe to make. Keep an eye out for Roman cities breaking the northern route. If that happened and Persia declared war again it could kill our rep.

Time to consider Aquaducts and Markets.
Carthago, Marsala, and Syracuse, and Caralis are all switched to Aquaducts. Aquaducts seemed higher priority as the growth is generally more than double since we use sea squares compared to the 50% increase of a market. I am making a bunch of settlers so I don't switch those towns over. Cirta and Thenae are also close to the capitol, but they stay both stick with their settlers

One thing I forgot to mention about Theveste before - It also allows irrigation to cross the row of hills. A worker start irrigating towards Thenae with the eventual intent of irrigating the entire Sahara desert (ok, maybe not in 130 turns...).

IBT: Egypt and Celts sign a peace treaty.
Scythia and Persia sign an alliance vs the celts
A Roman boat enters Carthage waters.
Thenae: Settler->Aquaduct
Macedonians build the lighthouse

260 BC: WOOT! The Alerian boat sinks a Roman Galley. The captian is declare the "Carthaginian Man of the Year" and is given a medal for outstanding performance (I wonder how many legions we have sunk?)

We found Leptis Minor which is building a worker

Army Lands in Nora. I don't send it anywhere. I think I will wait for Elephants and build up infrastructure. The fact that we have had 100% sink rate has really helped us.

IBT: Refuse an offer to attack the Celts
Oblia: Barracks->Galley
Leptis Magna: Settler->Settler
Gabe: Num Merc->Num Merc
Icosium Settler->Settler

Mostly moving settlers this turn.
Persia has engineering now. The price is pretty ridiculous right now (1126 + 32 gpt not talked down). I can wait.

IBT: The Celts align with the Goths against us (I have been checking to see if they will talk but no luck yet). This may break the northern route. Our army is right on the border too.
A city near Celtic territory goes into disorder. I was pretty sure I checked, so I cycle ahead and another city nearby also would have gone into disorder. Not sure why exaclty.
Messana builds walls and starts an anti-lava shield generator.
Temple of artemis built

250 BC: The mundane moves are done, but I left the army active as well as a horse on the same square. It seems better to do so rather than do a single turn of war against the celts. Most of our military troops are fortified and haven't moved.

I also didn't do much with Diplomacy this round though a quick check didn't show much to do. There are dyes (which I hope to settle near soon) and Engineering at exclusive prices with no trades.

The settler in Carthago Novo is intended for the smaller island with the wine. I was thinking of grabbing this as it is our only way to get Luxuries to our bigger islands until we get astronomy.

I started another settler on the long trek to dyes, half way to egypt. Another Lux would be great. A num merc is going as a guard. I forgot to send a worker along.

In general I have placing the settlers to maximize amount of land grabbed, as much or more than actual placement. This is with the domination victory in mind. It seems a sound strategy.

Making peace with the Celts soon would not be a bad idea. I much prefer having both roads to trade spices. Getting Astronomy would also solve the problem.

Feel free to switch everything over to a more militeristic approach if you feel that would be better. We will want to do that soon anyway. Most of the main builder towns are working on aquaducts. I was thinking they would all switch to horses when they finish. We have nearly 1200 gold for upgrading purposes.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a_Forces2.JPG

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a_250BC.zip)


Here are two screen shots of the town that confused me. Can anyone explain this? 8 shields with 2 uncorrupt and 7 with 3 uncorrupt. All I did was move a single citizen. Am I missing something obvious?


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3-Bug1.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3-Bug2.JPG

Now Nad will get conquests AND their territory map.

:lol:

Got it.

Greebley,

That's just... bizarre. The only thought I have was that the
3/7 was 'out of date', ie incorrect information due to a lack of refresh. So when you switch to 8, it gets recalculated and (correctly) shows 2 good shields. If this is true, you could then swap back to 7 and would see now only 2 good shields not 3. If not, it's a genuine miscalculation. Either way, it's a bug -- refresh bug or calculation bug. If that's not already on the list of bugs, you should send that save file to Breakaway. (Being able to reproduce the bug is often 90% of the battle, so they should like that)

Nice turn, btw :P
Charis

Nice job Greeley. I especially liked the trades that picked up 5 techs basically for the price of 2. :goodjob: Not sure what's going on with those shields either, but I did observe the same thing on my turn.

For now, we really should continue to bide our time until someone discovers Tactics and get us our War Elephants. When that time comes, here's an idea: take a combat settler and build a city on the silver hill tile southwest of Croton. This spot, right on the coast, on the boot of Italy, could serve as a forward base for our invasion of the penninsula. With walls and a couple of Numidians, it would be pretty safe from attack and would give our elephants a safe base to retreat back to. What do you say? Regardless though, it's not even an option until we have a strong force of 10-15+ Jumbos prepared to begin the conquest of Italy. :)

Sullla
ToddMarshall <<< UP NOW
Greebley
Kylearan <<< on deck
Nad

Greebly, someone else found the same problem with corruption. It has been listed in the Bugs forum. Someone has speculated that it is related to rounding to integers in the intermediate calculations of the corruption calculation.

For the hill in italy:

I was looking at that spot as well and agree it would be a good place to launch an assault from.

I think we would need more Num Mercs as well as the Jumbos. We don't have a lot of spare ones at this time.


For the bug:
I believe this bug should be there in the save that Sulla posted though I need to load it up to make absolutely sure. How would one send the save to Breakaway for their use?

Sir Pleb has already submitted a save for this bug. It's in the Conquests, bug reporting forum. You should post yours there.

Ok Thanks Madbax :)

I will try to remember to add the save to the bug thread tonight in case it is of use.

I must admit as a computer programmer, I am really curious how in the world if you add something you end up with less than you started. I don's see a way simple round-off could cause that (or conversely how adding 1 ends up adding 2 if they compute corrupted shields).

I must say it makes MM "interesting". No longer is it sufficient to put your citizens on the maximum shield squares to maximze production.

I have my copy of Conquests now and thought I'd be up after Greebley, but Sulla has posted that Todd is up now and I'm on deck.

I won't have time to play until tomorrow anyway, but could you please clarify, Sulla? Thanks. :crazyeye:

Regarding the shield bug, I highly doubt it's something like a rounding bug, but whatever it is, I hope they will patch it soon - along with all the other annoying bugs.

-Kylearan

Kylearan,
Todd and I switched places in the order. He had sudden commitments so I took the game first. I think he should be playing tonight or maybe tomorrow.

Next round I believe we will be back in the right order and you will be after me.

I got it and will post tonite or tomorrow.

Just to let you know I didn't die, I'm halfway done. Will complete and post in the morning. Off to spend some time with the gf, don't get to see her very often.

As someone who has also had a distant GF, I fully concur on her taking complete precedence.

I posted this in response to the persia thread, but I thought I would repeat it here as it is an obscure point in my log and I don't want anyone to get bitten by it:


It appears that the "barbarian civs" such as the celts can't learn all the techs - they have a limited subset. This got me too in my trading. Its not that they already have the tech, they just can't get it.

In my case it was more clear. I gave them writing so I could trade the techs that depended on it (Map Making and Code of Laws). After giving them writing, I could not trade anything further, even though I knew I had to be ahead in tech. The only conclusion that made sense was that only the 4 player civs can learn most of the techs.

Preturn: Looks pretty good.
Fire a couple Clowns and replace em with Tax guys.is could make (We have cities rioting?!). Swap Aleria from Horse to courthouse. This could make a good forward naval base if we can get a little production out of it. Can't see any reason we wouldn't want to take that city from the goths honestly so I move the army and horse over to it.

IT - Egypt completes MoM

[1] Citra Settler -> Settler
Carthago Novo - Settler -> Settler
Lilebeo - Worker -> Temple

Celt city captured, they still refuse to talk to us.
Diplo check - Persia now has tactics, but it is a monopoly. Hopefully the Greeks will pick it up soon.... erm, hmmm it is only 690 gold though so Rome must have it. I decide to wait a couple turns and see if a twofer becomes available. I do want to let the core duct's complete so there is no rush.

IT - Celts kill a NM on his way to their captured city. Rome starts the Library, The Wall is completed.

[2] Sabratha founded in what ammounts to a worthless hill spot west of our african core. If nothing else it can churn out some spears and workers for a while.

Diplo check - Greeks now have Astro and Philo (I think they are first to Philo as we cant give them everything we own for it) but Persians don't. Asto is even cheaper than Tactics so:

620g to Persia for Tactics
Tactics to Macedon for Astronomy WM and 560g (a lot more than I thought it would be worth to them)
Upgrade horsies to Jumbos.
Bad news - Crotton completes walls :(

IT - Macedon makes peace with Rome :( A Persian Fleet shows up south of Italy!

[3] Carthago -> Duct -> Jumbo
Icosium - Settler -> NM
Mersa Madkah - Settler -> Settler

Hadrumentum founded on the dyes.
Diplo - Macedon now has Engeneering too, but it costs so much even with multiple people knowing it I can't see paying for it.

IT - Scythia allies with Macedon vs Persia

[4] Found a couple cities. Start gearing up to take on Rome.

Diplo- Not much. Goths will now talk and would take peace for WM. I don't want to make peace with them until the Celts will talk however.

IT - nothing much

[5] Celts will give us all they have for peace (finally). I take it. Goths cough up 160g so that our Jumbos dont pay them a visit.

IT - Nothing

[6] Not Much interesting

IT - Even less interesting

[7] Building troops, moving galleys into position.

IT - Rome Completes GL

[8] More troop movement nothing exciting.

IT - zzzzz

[9] Beachead forces arrive in Italy.

IT - zzzzz

[10] Rusinagae founded on said hill near Croton. Garrisoned with 5 jumbos 3 NM's and an Archer. I kinda botched the galey situation (forgot they transport 4 in this scenareo) It occurs we can go from Carthage all the way to our beachead city in 1 turn if we go from port to port and walk accross the island. (Or would this be chaining ships? I dont think it would since we board at one port, get off, walk, board at annother port, sail to port, then disembark again. I've left many units with movement available for the next player. Sorry about the lack of depth in the report, but hey, I gotta have my priorities. Off to teach the gf how to beat Monarch. GL to the next leader :)

We are up to 6% territory (20% needed) and 21% of pop (50% needed) Just behind Persia in both categories.

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a-200BC.SAV)

Our situation is looking good. When we get an elephant win we will start our GA [dance] which will be very nice for our war on Rome. We can afford Military Training which upgrade the Jumbo's to heavy cav (4 attack to 5), though we may want to start the GA first.

I was wondering about the army over in Spain. Should we bring it over to help with the assault on Rome? If we move it south on the preturn (leaving the boat where it is), then it can jump on the boat next turn (it needs to move 7 - fortunately roads move 4 a turn) and then the boat can move 4 squares E. It would take about 5 turns or so total to get there. (Note that moving the boat north on the preturn adds a turn - unless we want to land in northern italy).

On the other hand, it might be better defending spain though Rome is also fighting the Celts so may keep busy with them.

We also don't have embassies with the non-celtic barbarians (Goths and S?). I forgot to do this when we met them. We may want to do so.

It is good to see our assault on Rome getting underway.

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

I still don't know how that citiy went into disorder. I did do a careful survey the previous turn. My only thoughts are that the Celts declaring war affected it, I moved out a military unit after checking, or I got content and unhappy mixed up with happy and content. I don't know why I have such trouble with riots even when trying to be very careful. Ah well.

We are probably a few turns from really going on the offensive in Italy, however I think the beachead should be secure and that the Romans will burn up a lot of troops trying to attack it. In about 2-3 turns we could have the ferry system set up and probably bring over annother 6-8 units. The swords on the island could also be brought over if needed. I really didn't concentrate as much on building settlers this turn as making sure every costal city had a defender. That is pretty much achieved now.

The Spanish Army is on the road to Italy fortified on a hill. It could reach northern Roman holdings in about 2 turns. I must say the new blitz feature makes it a very nice unit. I was mainly thinking of using it to assuage any Roman forrays against our spanish holdings. I did whip up a couple NM's there in our costal holdings just in case they sent naval raiding partys.

As to the riots.... I had one also and not only was it in a city I know I checked, but when I went to fix the problem the citizens WERENT unhappy..... There is something funky going on with riots.

One point of concern is that Macedon is now getting piled on pretty heavily. Lets hope they dont fall appart against Persia or we are going to have some serious domination competition.

PS: If you haven't heard, the FP is completely broken in C3C. In fact, it can actually increase civ wide corrupion. Don't build this until/unless a patch arrives to fix it. Ordinarily I'd suggest using a leader to rush it in Spain....

Edit: I just noticed I accidentilly left ther settler north of carmona on go to so plz click on him to take control before the turn starts. Sorry for not catching this before I posted the save.

Got it, already playing.

I hadn't expected to see the beachhead city on my turn already! I'm not sure if it hasn't been built too early, because we only have three NMs and five jumbos there with neither walls nor barracks for at least seven turns (the city will grow then and could be whipped), and we only have seven jumbos alltogether. Defending against those monster legionaries could get really ugly! Even more if the Romans attack Rusguinae from the hills between Rusguinae Croton. I can only hope that they will follow the road and end up on the plains tile where we can attack them more easily, and I hope they won't build too many heavy cavalry, too.

But then most often my playstyle is way too defensive and not ambitious enough, so let's see if it will work out.

Damn that Croton has built walls - most often the AIs won't built them, and they really hurt there. Legionary IIs with an extra hitpoint behind walls on a hill? I don't think we can do anything there until we bring over a lot of artillery. Uh, we have none! :eek: I hope siege craft will soon be discovered. I hope the AIs won't ignore it; researching it ourselves would take far too long.

I'm a bit uneasy about Persia and decide to bribe them to declare war on Rome; I give them our world map and 560 gold for it. I don't think they will help much, but at least Caesar cannot sign them against us.

Carmona is fully corrupt although it has a courthouse? Ouch. A FP would be really nice, but since it seems to be broken...

I wake up the horseman in Lilibeo, move him to Carthago Novo and upgrade him to war elephant; Spain could use a fast response unit in addition to the swordman army. Some build orders are changed, but nothing major: More workers, basically. We're still concentrating on settlers and workers and aren't building much military, but I continue to do so for a small amount of time. What I do, though, is to order up some catapults!



(I): Rome lands a Legionary II near Aleria. Macedons and Scythia both sign peace with the Celts, and the Goths declare war on Persia. No units appear near our beachhead - I *am* way too pessimistic about these things.

195BC (1): zzz

(I): Our elite Numidian barely defeats the Legionary. Scythia drags Egypt again into the war against Persia

190BC (2): My first catapult tries to get rid of the mine near Croton, but fails.

(I): Our beachhead gets attacked by a Roman heavy cavalry, but it fails to do any damage. Egypt signs Scythia against Macedon. Three Macedon galleys enter our territory.

185BC (3): Thenae's tile improvements prevent us from getting irrigation down to the south. Since Gabes could be a nice productive city if it had water, I decide to irrigate some mined tiles.

180BC (4): zzz

(I): Persia buys the Celts against Egypt and the Goths. Another four(!) Macedon galleys enter our waters...? We now have seven galleys heading somewhere - I hope there are settlers on board and nothing more. Macedon starts to build Bacchanalia.

175BC (5): Persia has siege craft now, but would want to have 1200g+44gpt for it. No thanks, let's build more 'pults and wait a bit!

(I): Crud, Egypt has sneaked in a settler and founds a city, interrupting the long road! I already had a settler on the way to that location. :( A Roman Legionary II moves onto the hill near our beachhead.

170BC (6): Three out of five catapults hit. Then,

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/rbc3a_ga.jpg

I reconfigure our cities for optimized GA production.

165BC (7): I give horses and iron to Egypt for incense - she can use all the help she can get against Persia. I didn't gave her tactics, although it was tempting...

(I) Egypt renegotiates our alliance versus Rome, and gets 155 gold for it.

160BC (8): Rusguniae completes walls and starts barracks, which I intend to whip next turn.

(I) A Leg II is landed again near Aleria, and another steps onto the hills at our beachhead.
:lol: All seven Macedonian galleys, three of whom had nearly reached our western shores, turn around and begin their long journey home. I guess it's because I had founded city last turn on a spot they wanted to settle; sending seven galleys full of settlers and garrisons is typical AI stupidness. :rotfl:

155BC (9): I whip the barracks in Rusguniae. I redline the Leg II and a jumbo finishes him off. Again, he doesn't promote.

(I): After the Leg II at Aleria was barely defeated (maybe we should get a jumbo there), another Leg II first kills our elite Numidian on the hill covering the jumbo at Rusguniae, then a heavy cavalry kills the jumbo itself. :mad: Egypt signs Scythia against the Celts.

150BC (10): Ugh, Rusuccuru riots, missed that, sorry. Fortunately, it's only a corrupt city deep in the wilderness.



I have founded some cities and moved several workers away from our corrupt areas to the core, where they are more important IMHO. I also have built or at least started some aqueducts and courthouses.

The Macedon galleys have turned around again and are heading west/southwest. :crazyeye: A settler of our own is on the way to finish our settlings on the coast, and I have a jumbo shadowing the galleys just in case there are not settlers in there.

Spain is very, very weak and only defended by our army and one jumbo. But I felt it was more important to set up for our real invasion in Italy.



Notes to next leader:

* I haven't moved the units in our beachhead city yet because there's a decision to make. We could buy siege craft from Persia now, albeit at a harsh price: Spices and over 1200 gold. But I would vote to do this to finally bring down the :hammer: on Rome. You could use all but one catapult to redline the heavy cavalry and finish it off (caution: There's a Legionary II behind it) and use the last catapult to shift-u them to fire catapults. You could then advance on Croton next turn: We have seven catapults, nine jumbos and five numidians in the city now, more are en route.

* Or you could buy military tradition (which is cheaper) and upgrade our jumbos to heavy cavalry and have a look if republic is available already; that would be very nice to have, for lower corruption and cash rush. But even with heavy cavalry, I do think we would need siege craft to minimize our losses.

* I'm guilty of some major :smoke: : I haven't realized until too late that forests give three shields in this scenario. I have already chopped two forests to speed up temples in Spain, but this is most probably not so bad since we won't build a FP anyway. But there are still workers busy chopping more forests, even near our core, so please have a look into that whether you want to let them complete their work or stop them. My apologies for that.

* I have tried to minimize loss of shields, e.g. cities with 15 or 16 spt build Numidians, with 17+ spt Jumbos, and 20+ catapults (and our glorious capital can churn out a Numidian every turn!). This of course can be changed; we should produce according to our needs and not be slaves to numerics. :)

Have fun invading Italy! (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/RBC3a-150BC.zip)

Roster:
Sullla - on deck
ToddMarshall
Greebley
Kylearan
Nad - UP NOW

-Kylearan

cool.

Got it.

I will be playing this tomorrow (Tuesday 25th).

Sounds good. I knew we wouldn't be ready to do masive invasion yet, I just wanted to give the AI somewhere to suicide on :lol: The arti is a good idea. Wanted to build some on my turn, but I couldn't find the time because we had so many costal cities lying undefended it worried me. We could indeed use 2-3 jumbos in Spain to back up the army. At some point we shouldtry to open a 2nd front from Spain also as the AI does so poorly in a 2 front war.

PS: forests in this scenareo don't give 3 shields. Thats 3 because of GA. I would stop choping that forest near gabes though. I wouldnt worry about the others.

Unless I missed something in the save, you can twofer mil trad and seige craft, which we probably should do. I'm 90% sure persia had one and macedon had one but neither had both.

Edit: note we can't upgrade the Italian jumbos yet though because we have no harbor in the beachead so no iron or horses avail to that city.

Forests give 3 shields because the GA? *smacks head* Of course! I'm getting senile, it seems. :mutant:

And I was so obsessed with fire catapults that I didn't think about the 2-fer. :crazyeye: Good that my turn was over...

About the jumbos: It's not so bad that we cannot upgrade the jumbos at the moment, because although heavy cavs have one more attack point, they have one less hitpoint as well.

I was amazed at how gassed (or preoccupied elsewhere) Rome is. I envisioned a bloodbath, with their 5-attack units against our 3-defense ones, but...once Croton with its walls is gone, it should go quickly.

One other thought: IIRC, republic in this scenario allows military police, right? Happiness is one of our biggest problems at the moment (well, beside the lack of workers, defenders, settlers, ... :lol: ), while we have no financial problems. To delay the construction of colisseums, we may produce lots of cheap MP units (warriors) to fill the cities. That would give all the corruptt cities something to do. And if the Bacchalania would be built somewhere near us... :mischief:

Edit: Oh, and one more thing. Once the assault on Croton starts, it should be captured quickly, lest our beachhead city flips away!

-Kylearan

sorry folks, more busy than anticipated yesterday, definitely playing tonight

I'm really sorry guys, it seems I'm cursed at the moment from playing Conquests! Was all set last night but then had to take my brother to hospital :(. I really appreciate your patience here, will move heaven and earth to play tonight.

So, sorry x 100, will do my best tonight!

Sorry to hear that. :( I hppe it's nothing serious and all is well for your brother!

RBC3a, Nad's Turns (belatedly)

Inherited turn, 150BC

At last! Took some time to read through everything so far and compiled mini-notes for myself to focus on these turns:

1) We're looking for a modified domination victory, requiring 20% land and 50% population. Ergo, we need as much land as possible. The map we are playing on is quite large and mostly consists of land, so there are a lot of tiles to gain and we have a long way to go.

2) There are 8 civs, 4 main civs and 4 subsidiary civs. It would appear that the sub-civs are limited to the extent of technological advancement they can gain. There are tons of wars taking place, we are locked against Rome and Macedon is locked against Persia.

3) putting the above together, our major fight is against Rome and we have established a beachhead platform. However, there is also tons of unsettled land, which would suggest we will have as much joy training settlers alongside the military requirements.

We are also in our Golden Age, usually an ample period to focus on infrastructure. I think I will spend these turns balancing these requirements, trying to get some infra done whilst securing our beachhead (and removing the pressure it is facing) and training settlers from corrupt sites to fill in some land (since there is so much land, I am inclined to favour greebley's approach of spacing out cities to cover as many tiles as possible).


Okay, onto the game. Firstly, I cannot see the 2fer Todd was alluding to :confused: The techs that are available for back and forth trade are siege craft and philosophy, but judging from the price they are held by monopolists, thus ruling out the possibility of getting a bargain trade. I decide to hold for now on this.

Sold Tactics to Egypt for WM + 357g.

I see the Goths have furs available. I'm not sure what our group policy is towards a possible trade. I understand that we previously had concerns over the trade route, but have those been alleviated now? We have routes heading towards Egypt and beyond, and through Spain, heading towards the Celts and beyond. After musing on this choice, I decide to go for it. This may prove to be a mistake, we shall see. Buy furs from the Goths for horses, wines and 24gpt. I keep it to a pure per-turn trade in case the route should be cut off, as I believe our rep would not be trashed if a pure per-turn deal were to be broken.

Lux rate to 0%, and made some miscellaneous map trades to net some change. I also reinstate the scientist on monotheism (24 turns).


Onto the action: bombarded the Roman heavy cav and polished off with our archer, then covering with a numidian. Moved some more troops into Rusguniae and changed a few builds, mostly in corrupt cities, prioritizing settlers.


IT: Persia breaks our alliance and makes peace with Rome. The Romans land a legionary II outside Aleria. The number of Macedonian galleys in our waters is worrying, hopefully they do not intend mischief.

Started the Heroic Epic in Carthage, can be built quickly during the GA and will prove a nice investment for our militaristic elites once completed.


Turn 1, 145BC: archer popped a hut in the west for barbs.

Since it may be a while before siege craft is generally available, I decide to set up some catapult bombardment of croton. Moved most of the numidians and cat's onto the hill outside. Once the numidians are fortified they will have defence 5.25 and even roman legion II's will struggle to shift them.

Founded remaining embassies.


IT: Roman legion II attacks Numidian outside Croton, we win and are promoted to elite. the Roman legion II outside Aleria wins however, defeating our elite Numidian with 1 HP to spare. A Roman garrison appears outside Vesontio, in position to pillage the horse tile (not a problem trade wise).


Turn 2, 140BC: I have little choice but to switch Aleria's courthouse to war elephant.

The bombing of Croton proves largely unsuccesful, until about the 7th shot, when we have the joyous moment of destroying its walls! :goodjob: Some bad news, however...the legions defending croton are now Legionary III's :(

Use the army in Spain to sneak up on Veii and capture 2 workers.

IT: The Roman 1HP legion outside Aleria goes for broke and attacks our regular numidian...we win and promote to veteran. However, the Romans land another legion in the same spot. Fortunately, we have the war elephant about to complete so the city is in no danger yet.

The macdonian galleys just float around looking generally useless but there are Persian galleys in our waters that look more menacing.


Turn 3, 135BC: the bombing of Croton fares slightly better as we manage to knock off a HP from defenders. It appears that Rome has at least 4 legions defending the city. Since we have knocked off a HP from each of them, I decide this is about a good an opportunity as we're going to get in the near future. We want to relieve the pressure on Rusguniae and this may be our chance.

Out come the Jumbos! The 1st retreats, the 2nd wins, the 3rd retreats, the 4th retreats, the 5th loses, the 6th loses, the 7th wins, the 8th loses, the 9th wins. A 1HP legion remains and we have no more jumbos, so I attack with a sword...we win, promote to elite and strike a significant blow against Caesar. we take 42g and raze the blight. Our beachhead is no longer under cultural pressure and we can build up our forces in security :goodjob:

I try to cover our injured units as best I can. If we can survive one interturn, we can retreat and regroup in Rusguniae.

IT: Macedonia and Rome ally against the Celts.A Numidian defeats the legionary attacking Aleria. Scythia and Macedon make peace...there is no Roman attack against the victors on Croton hill.


Turn 4, 130BC: general retreat towards Rusguniae. Hippo is founded.

New techs have now been spread around so I take the possibilities available:

Buy military training from Persia for WM, spices and 320g

Sell military training to Egypt for WM, Philosophy and 36g.

Both Persian and Macedon have Republic...we can afford it but it would cost a bomb...since I don't think we would want to risk a long revolt during our GA, I do not chase this.

Buy siege craft from Macedon for WM, spices and 496g.

Upgraded cat's to fire cat's


IT: for no discernible reason, Carthago riots?! As I scroll ahead, it would appear that we have lost a luxury though no message was given :( geez, I really hope I've not screwed our rep.


Turn 5, 125BC: examination reveals that we have lost the furs from the Goths, though the route is still open which would suggest the Goths have lost a source (perhaps to pillaging). Feck, the deal I made looks completely stupid now :(

However, it would appear that our rep is NOT trashed (phew) as we can still purchase techs, maps etc for gpt from all civs (except Rome, of course). :)

Lux rate is raised to 10%. Rusicade is founded and the army in Spain kills the offending Roman garrison wit little trouble.

In order to improve relations and pick up some change, I sign ROP with Macedon for 46g coming to us.


IT: still no Roman counter against Rusguniae...it would appear they have their hands full dealing with their other opponents. Good news for us, becasue as soon as we can build up a major force we can drive through the Roman heartlands :thumbsup:

Turn 6, 120BC: infra completing and miltary being trained again. I'm not convinced heavy cavalry is much of an advancement for us, I think I would prefer the lower attack but extra HP of the Jumbos at 10 shields less. I certainly don't think we should upgrade our existing elephants.

New Carthago founded.


Turn 7, 115BC: quiet turns now, rebuilding forces, quiet on the Roman front.

Turn 8, 110BC: New Lilibeo and New Nora founded.

IT: baaad news....treacherous Persia allies with Rome against us :mad: A number of Persian galleys that were previously drifting harmlessly in our waters now suddenly become a threat.

Scythia and Macedon ally against Egypt. Egypt makes peace with Rome. All-in-all, a bad interturn for us.


Turn 9, 105BC: Heroic Epic completes [dance]

Spanish army kills Roman garrison, capturing a citizen.

Moved some fire cats from Rusguniae back to Messana to deal with persian ships and potential landings. Lose a galley trying to sink a Persian 2HP galley.

Signed Egypt back into alliance immediately, also picking up a tech! Siege craft and spices gets us the alliance and engineering.


IT: persian ships moving; Egypt starts Bacchanalia.


Turn 10, 100BC: sink a Persian galley (hopefully it was loaded).


Notes: at the moment we have the mini-threat of the Persian ships so it may take a couple of turns just to secure ourselves against them before refocussing on Rome.

I managed to get some infra built while also keeping military production going. Ou GA has been very nice so far, our treasury is extremely healthy at 2842g + 241gpt. We could do with a better government to make use of that treasury so that is something to aim for as the GA ends.

There has been little sign of Roman counters and our platform is secure. Once we have enough troops over we could have some fun turns carving up Rome. In the meantime, IMO it is imperative we keep training settlers and fill as much land as possible. Even useless junk cities in the Sahara could play a role in upping our tile count. It will also be quicker to expand our territory with settlers rather than culture.


Good luck and have fun taking it to the Romans!!

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3aCarthage100BC.zip)

It sounds like Sullla will get a fun round of Roman bashing :hammer:

One thought I had. From reading the other threads, the harder requirement may be the 50% population. The AI have education already. We might want to buy it and then buy medicine if/when they get it. This tech would allow us to increase past size 12 in our cities and reach the pop requirement sooner. It might be worth pursuing.

A thought occurred to me: "What do they mean by popularion?" Is 12 size 1 cities (pop 20,000) equivalent to a size 12 city (pop 820,000)? Either both count as 12, or one counts as 240,000 and the other as 820,000. If the second case was true, then hospitals become even more useful. I decided to test it.

The result is that 12 size 1 are aproximately equivalent to 1 size 12 city. This makes Medicine not as important as it could be. Still if the price of education/medicine is not too high, the extra points and higher production of gold (Since the expansion is mostly into water squares) would make it a worthwhile pursuit.

Since we have to wait on republic due to our GA, I think going straight to imperialism might make more sense (it has less corruption).

Looks like decent progress is being made so far. Unless something has changed the way F11 counts population is NOT the way the game determines pop for either domination or UN vote. It does simply add up your # of total citizens, so 12 size 1 cities is the same as 1 size 12 one.

Double posts are evil :(

It hasn't changed then. I tested it by looking at the numbers on the new victory screen and abandoned cities and comparing, so we can consider that as verified.

I really like the victory screen BTW. Its really nice not having to worry about getting some alternative program and wondering whether using said program is giving me an unfair advantage.

Is Sullla gone for thanksgiving? He hasn't posted to the forums since the 24th. If he hasn't posted an "I got it" by tomorrow, why don't you grab it Todd, and he can take his turn when he gets back.

I will be unable to play till Tuesday night most likely, and its looking like "feast night" as I expect to be up in LK58, and Maniac1 also by then. However if he doesn't appear before tuesday night I will take a turn then. I really think hes just home for the holliday though and I expect he'll post that he is back and playing monday night.

Ya, I expect you are right, Todd.

I am finding the reading of the four games very interesting. It really clearly demonstrates how much better the players are than the AI, when you see each war from both sides. I kind of wish I knew how to make those animated gifs to show the minimaps of all 4 games every 10 turns. With all 4 mini-maps on one page you could see how the human expands for all 4 games at once.

OK, its tues night and still no Sulla. At this point I'm begining to suspect something is wrong (hopefully its just a simple comp/access problem....). Unless he appears soon, I got it. But it is 3rd in queue so if he appears before I say I'm playing then he can still play his turn before me.

I will be playing this tomorrow afternoon unless Sulla appears first. At this point I think we shoul consider him unable to play until he posts otherwise an just go on with the roster we have. If/when he reappears we can just slide him in after whoever is up. Because it is a shoprtened game I'd rather not totally skip him unless it is almost back to him.

Ya, this sounds like a good idea. I hope nothing bad happened to him. I will play after you unless he shows up.

I lost my turn log in a crash :(

Here is the summary of the situation:

The good: We have taken 2 more Italian cities and auto razed a size 1 crotton area replacement. We now have all techs thanks to capturing the great library. Rome is now under full dogpile.

The Bad: Neapolis is now size 13 and had AT LEAST SIX Legion III defending it. I called off the attack because we cant tak it :(. Troops are now in 2 stacks near there. I'm thinking it might be easier to bypass it and try to raze size 10 Rome instead. Rome has invaded Spain in force. They have taken one city only so far, but that can't last. Ive been picking off units with the army wherever possible and i shiped some cavs over to try to slow their progress, but it isn't good :(

Conclusion: The Legion III is just ridiculously overpowered at 6/5. I'm really not sure we can win this at this point. I think we waited too long to go after Italy. We shouldn't have tired to settle so agressivly in hindsight.

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a-Carthage-50BC.SAV)

I got it.

In the early game we had no units to attack with - I don't see us having much success before we had war elephants which is when the attack first started. Sulla said Carthage was the hardest to play. No suprise that he is right. I guess my impression was that wasn't really supposed to be balanced given that it is called the Rise of Rome.

I will do what I can with our position. I will start play tomorrow and will check the thread before starting so if anyone has comments on stategy, I will try to read them first.

Don't give up just yet. Legion III overpowered? Maybe, but they are still slow, and their defense can be countered with...more fire catapults! :hammer: If we can afford, I'd love to see some serious catapult building/rushing, several of them probably shipping over to Spain, but more to Italy also. Given enough arti, every unit and every city can be cracked (redlined Legs in size 1 Neapolis... :D).

Of course I'm not sure we have enough time for this, but let's at least try and not already call this a loss! :thanx:

-Kylearan

I was thinking that catapults could be the way to go as well. If we soften the Legions up first, then they are easier to kill.

Starting to play now.

Well don't forget that Cavalry kill 1 hp infantry. Can the Legion be that bad?

The problem with the legoin is that it is 6/5 and the best defenders available to us are 3 defense so we get torn up in counter attacks as well. I'm not saying it is lost, just that it's not looking good. The time limit is one of the biggest problems. We only have like 60 turns left. Given annother 100 turns we'd win because we'd have time to amass large stacks of cats and cavs.

Edit: Also those Legions are fairly mobile on their own turf since roads are 4 movement.

Preturn:
We have a good bit of cash, but under oligarchy we cannot buy units. I would REALLY like to get to Imperialism.

Todd is certainly right about the Spanish situation being grim. Rome is making a big push for our lands over there, and our troops are in Italy for the most part.

Make some minor adjustments and hit space

IBT: Roman Legions advance in spain. An injured heavy Cavalry of ours is killed.

45 BC:
The big decision - I am going to change governments. We are going to lose parts of spain if I do or don't and rushing using our large amount of cash would be a huge benefit for us. We are approaching 5000 gold with little to spend it on.
Great - 8 turns. Not what we wanted.

Also we have no boats to ship troops to spain. That will make the spanish situation tougher.

Start using the fire catapults to destroy irrigation around Neapolis to bring its size down.

I am not going to try to advance during Anarchy.

IBT:Attack on our northern town. 1 numidean wins and one loses to a legion III
A Numidean Merc is killed near Neapolis.

Macedon and goths sign a peace treaty.

40 BC: Head back a bit so we can't be attacked, but can bombard the Legions first.

IBT: Some counter attacks. We get lucky and kill 2 legions to only 1 numidean lost.

35 BC: Retreat last units back. More legionairse are attacking now.

IBT: Two towns in grave danger in spain. Decide to abandon them. See some barbarians.
Get a volcano warning. Retreat from it (I think it meant the one in Rome

30 BC: All troops moved from Volcano vacinity. I hope being 2 squares away is far enough. Bombard, attack and kill 2 legion IIIs.

IBT: A roman legion attacks an elite numidean on fortified on a hill across a river and the numidean barely wins.
Yep, now there is smoke coming out of the volcano near Neapolis. It would be awesome if it took out Neapolis.

25 BC: Some Heavy Cavalry arrive in spain.
Rome and Scythia ally agains us (I don't even see Scythia).

IBT: Another legion approaches near Italy. I am not sure where the Legion Herds in Spain are.

20 BC: Heavy cav fortified in some of our spanish cities.
Bombard a Legion down to 1 hp, but don't attack as it would put our unit in danger.

IBT: More Roman Legions appear in Italy. I am guessing the Roman legions might have gone after the barbarians??
Macedon and Celts sign a peace treaty.
Huge numbers of Macedon ships are streaming into our territory. It is worrysome.

15 BC: Decide to retreat one more square. That way I can attack roman legions after I damage them.
Fill a boat with heavy cavalry to persue the Macedoneans.

IBT: Roman legions do not persue in Italy. Volcano Erupts and is a complete disapointment.

10 BC: Bombard another legion. My leader fishing finally succeeds! We get a great leader.
Attack a roman galley and lose.

IBT: A larger force of Roman Legions show up

5 BC: We now are imperialistic.

Attack on legions:
Bombard down to one 4hp, and four 3hp legions.
Heavy Cav attacks (4 hp) legion and loses (legion is red-lined)
Heavy Cav attacks (3 hp) legion and barely wins.
Heavy Cav attacks (3 hp) legion and wins.
Heavy Cav attacks (3 hp) legion and retreats doing no damage.
Heavy Cav attacks (3 hp) legion and barely wins.
Heavy Cav attacks (3 hp) legion and loses doing a hp.
Heavy Cav attacks (2 hp) legion and loses doing a hp, but legion promotes (still 2 hp).
Heavy Cav attacks (2 hp) legion and retreats doing no damage.
Elite* Elephant attacks (2 hp) legion and kills it.
Regular H Cav attacks (1 hp) legion and kills it and promotes to Veteran.

Upgrade Elite* to heal it.

Head ship of heavy cavalry back. Macedon's behavior is weird, but it doesn't seem an attack, and Roman forces showing up could get rough. Almost all heavy cavalries are badly injured.

We are now imperialistic and about 4800 gold. We can rush units with cash now. I am handing this over one turn early (5 BC). Kylerean, you get an 11 turns this round. That way you can plan your campaign and rush the right units for your needs.

Similarly, I didn't use our Leader that I got. Kylearean, it is in the southmost town of Italy. I am assuming we want an army, but I still left it in leader form in case you want to rush a small wonder (A broken FP? - Probably not -Remember you cannot rush great wonders).

In spain there were nearly 20 legion running around. I am not sure where they are. Perhaps chasing barbarians, Perhaps the defenses I put in some cities made them turn aside. In any case they could reappear so beware. We have no fire catapults over in spain either.

As Todd mentioned, the legions are very tough. Above I hit them with 10-15 catapult shots, and 10 heavy cavalry to kill them all (though I think my luck was more toward the bad end than good). Still I lost 3, and killed 5 with bad luck, so it can work. With more catapults the odds would be even better.

I am still hopeful we can win this. As Todd said, the time limit will make it tough. Good Luck.

Will try to post pic if my 1 1/2 year old son will let me :crazyeye:

The SAVE (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a_5BC.zip)

Edit: Pics

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-5BC_Italy.JPG

Red squares are cities we lost in spain.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-5BC.JPG

One thing to note on cats in this scenareo: They do not kill pop points or destroy improvements period. They only dammage units. So we can't bombard cities back down to z lower size which further complicates things.

They do not kill pop points or destroy improvements period.

Even the base game now only knocks units down until everything is 1 hp. After that you will hit other stuff - you really need bombard SoD to get past the defenders.

In that case, going by the hit ratios I experienced, we need about 60 fire cats to be really effective. Im guessing that would take about 20 turns, leaving us about 40 to hit domination

I think our best way of getting the pop down is to cause starvation. The problem with that of course is the legions attacking us during that time as you mentioned. But even if we lose a Num Merc to a Roman legion, but can kill the legion when it gets left in the open we might come out ok in the exchange and eventually build up enough forces to take some town. We can rush a number of troops and keep the rest of the world attacking them to keep ahead of our losses.

Another possibility is to not go after Rome, but set up a holding action against them. Then attack Egypt or persia for the land. I am unsure how this would work though. To switch the fight to there might take the rest of our turns. [Edit: I think it may be too late to switch gears like that, though Egypt might be possible.]

Another idea would be to turn our army into a Num Merc army whose only purpose is to pillage. This would reduce the maximum city sizes and make them easier to take. I think that the AI will attacks a defense 2 army with an attack 6 unit, but I don't think they attack a defense 3.

Boy it's a rough one over here. You guys are givin' Rome heck but they're just not going to lie down. Do keep in mind the game victory conditions -- I would hate to see you win a Pyrrhic victory vs Rome then lose the overall game to Persia, who is your main rival at present.

Good luck!
Charis

Well, IF we can take Neapolis and Rome we should be ok. IF. We could allways get some land from Egypt (I figured we would try that later) and probably from the Celts.

I suspect it is too late in the day to go after persia, but I am starting to wonder if the best option for Carthage wasn't to go after Egypt from the beginning. Once Rome got those Legion III's they are just a real tough nut to crack.

@ Greelby - That city has too much food to starve by pillage alone with the wheats, cow, and fish I believe. We'd have to park on several tiles to get it to starve and with 3 defense vs 6 attack they'd tear us to shreads. It's allready been pillaged down pretty well except for a couple tiles nearest Rome.

How I would do it is to cut the road to the rest of Italy so the Legions have to stop with our catapults and such guarding that approach and killing Legions as they come. For Legions built in Neapolis, they would get a first free atttack and kill a Num Merc (we want squares with single Num Mercs for this so the legion leaves town). We then attack back and kill the Legion.

So cut the road at the irrigated grass 2 squares SE of rome, our main troops on the cow and wheat, to the SE and S of that to bombard on that square.

Num Mercs for the rest of the squares to starve Neapolis.

Yeah, cutting that road is pretty much essential. It would also cut off lux and force them to use more clowns. In case anyone forgot.

Sullla <-- MIA
ToddMarshall
Greebley
Kylearan <-- UP NOW
Nad <-- On Deck

Ouch, I didn't know about the new bombardment rules. That certainly makes things even tougher. And yes, in hindsight it probably would have been better to go after Egypt, but I guess it's too late for that now.

Thanks Greebley for revolting! Maybe our good financial situation can give us the edge; we'll see. I guess I will rush several catas in Spain to try to reach a stalemate there. In Italy, I'll try to set up a Legion trap at the square as you described.

Got it.

-Kylearan

Originally posted by ToddMarshall
The problem with the legoin is that it is 6/5 and the best defenders available to us are 3 defense so we get torn up in counter attacks as well. I'm not saying it is lost, just that it's not looking good. The time limit is one of the biggest problems. We only have like 60 turns left. Given annother 100 turns we'd win because we'd have time to amass large stacks of cats and cavs.


I beginning to think too that the roman legions are owerpowered in this scenario. The developers tried to compensate this with their high shield cost of 50/70/90 but this only works for the human player (we need 4-5 turns in productive cities (except Rome) to build them in RBC3c, but at 54 shields I guess the AI builds them in 2 or just rushes them.
I lost only one (and that was a version II after the 3rd Elephant attack) in 10 turns despite the fact that Hanni threw ~50 jumbos/Cavs at us, so they are really too powerful for deity-discount prices.

Oh boy, Persia is HUGE! And they still have lots of green land to settle! Wow.

:hmm: We have the research slider at 40%? What for, to get future tech 1 in 31 turns? I guess that's a left-over from anarchy? I set it to zero, and our income jumps from 148gpt to 340gpt.

Looking closer into our cities, I find a lot of odd things. Gabes is producing units with 50% corruption and no courthouse?!? Gades is at size 1, growing in 3, and has already the shield box full for a worker? Cities with no barracks are producing mercs or cavs, while cities with barracks produce catas? I change a lot of things and rush some courthouses, aqueducts and infirmaries.

I rethink my idea of rushing catapults in Spain: Our front there is so large they wouldn't be very effective. Let's see how much money will be left next turn when I have rushed some more infirmaries.

(I) Five Leg IIIs emerge out of Neapolis. And I wish all these Macedon galleys would fight Rome instead of parading in our waters.

1 AD (1): What a great sound the fire catapults make when bombarding! I absolutely love it. :) They redline four Legs, but we lose one cav against a garrison. I use the leader to form an army and fill it with heavy cav to minimize our losses. I feel that a defense 3 merc army would be a waste somehow. Again, I move workers away from our outer regions to our core because low-corruption cities work unimproved tiles! And after rushing more infirmaries, aqueducts and courthouses, we still have some money left to rush some catas in Spain. Again, thanks to Greebley for revolting! :worship:

5 AD (2): Starve Neapolis down, huh? Now it's size 14....

(I) Egypt and Goth sign peace, as well as Rome and Macedon

10 AD (3): Our forces position themselves on the hill near the road we want to cut.

(I) We lose 2 mercs in Italy. Rome lands a Legionary and a garriso near Aleria. Egypt and Celts sign peace. Goth get dragged into the war against Macedon.

15 AD (4): Our SoD easily kills three Legs, promoting two cavs to elite, and then cuts off the road to Neapolis. Our heavy cav in Aleria damages the Leg but has to retreat.

(I) The 2HP-Leg at Aleria manages to kill a fortified merc on a hill behind walls, losing only one hitpoint.

20 AD (5): I love armies! Our cav army moves two tiles near Neapolis. pillages, and then retreats to safety. A cav is ferried over to Aleria and gets rid of the garrison.

(I) The Romans are so confident in their Legs that the 1HP-Leg at Aleria attacks. But he loses. :p Another three Legs emerge out of Neapolis; I hope that stops now that the Leg trap near Rome is set up. Fighting Legs on a hill is no fun.

25 AD (6): We lose a cav while dispatching the Legs from Neapolis, but also promote one to elite.

(I) Goth and Rome make peace. We lose an elite cav I had to expose last turn, but at least it manages to redline the attacking Legionairy. And another one emerges from Neapolis, maybe they're sending out their defenders now?

30 AD (7): Neapolis is size 15 now.

35 AD (8): Yes!!! One of Neapolis' wheat tile gets polluted. :lol: The PRNG hates me this turn and I lose two cavs (one elite) against wounded Legs in the open. Neapolis' fish is covered with two galleys.

40 AD (9): More units to starve Neapolis move into position.

(I): Rome signs Goth against us. And then another Leg from Neapolis makes a sortie to kill one of our mercs, and...a spear is now shown on top of Neapolis, which is only size 13 again!

45 AD (10): Okay, that's our chance. I give up the Leg trap and move all our troops except those on starving mission to Neapolis - this blight will fall next turn! I also sign an alliance with Egypt against the Goth before they turn against us.

(I) Another Legionairy is landed near Aleria. Macedon buys the Celts in against Persia.

50 AD (11): Neapolis is at size 12 and doomed now. Bombardment reveals that there are five spearmen in the city, and we finally take it with no losses.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a-neapolis.jpg

Ok, it took long, too long to remove Neapolis, but from now on I think we will make a much faster progress. We have considerable forces now in Neapolis, and all other Roman cities are size 12 or below. In Spain all was quiet and no Roman units showed up, so I refounded two cities there, and we also have a small contingent of fire catapults there too. Italy could use some workers to repair the damage.

I've rushed several aqueducts, infirmaries, granaries and courthouses to speed up our growth a bit. With over 400 gold income, we should continue to do so for a while. Persia is clearly running away with the game - the gap between them and us has widened even more, and they have *huge* lands still to settle! For that reason, I have neglected to buy Macedon again against Rome, because they are one of two civs at war with Persia and have problems enough already. But even if we had fought Egypt instead of Rome in the beginning, I'm not sure we could have done much against Persia, as they are too far away.

What we should do now IMHO is to open a second front soon. Either ferry over troops to Spain, or attack Egypt. Since Spain is quiet at the moment, I'd prefer to settle a bit more and just concentrate on holding our lands there (we have enough troops now to accomplish this).

What I would do is to divert some of our reinforcements to our eastern border to Egypt - no catapults, only cavalry and mercs. Our army in Italy is strong enough now I think to keep going with smaller reinforcements. Then, after some turns, declare war on Egypt and roll over them, which in fact shouldn't be much of a problem. We will lose luxuries and our rep by doing this, but who cares? We need more land FAST, and they are an easy target and we have a road leading to them, so bringing in reinforcements won't be too problematic. What do you think?

Our next leader should take a look into our cities and our build orders please, as I haven't done so for the last few turns.

The game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a-50AD.zip)

By the way, I don't find the Legionaries overpowered, given the theme of this scenario. We will crush Rome despite their Deity bonus, and maybe could have done so faster if we had attacked earlier or brought more artillery from the beginning. It's Persia I'm more concerned of - they are far, far away and just have too much land to settle without the player being able to do anything about.

-Kylearan

Kylearan,
I had meant to make it clear I didn't adjust anything after the switch to Imperialism. If I didn't then this was an error on my part. Fortunately, you checked things out. The 40% science is odd. I basically ignored the sliders during anarchy. Must have changed them at some point though as my preturn it was zero/single scientist.

Good work on taking Neapolis too. That was a tough nut to crack. We may have to simply avoid the size 23 city that Rome has.

Given hindsight, the attack on Italy may not have been our optimal move. I do agree we need to hit egypt. I just hope the Roman war doesn't require too much resources. We are only average vs Egypt.

Nad, given that you are up next, I am really curious on your opinion of the situation and the best way to proceed. The persians made big strides forward in your turn Kylearan, they were ahead, but not by alot on mine. We may have to try to hit them even though they are far.

We are up to turn 80 of 130 I believe. I must say the time limit is definitely something I need to adjust my strategies to. Hitting Rome is something that would have worked well in a full game I think.

Good job revolting to Imperialisim. I meant to mention this but forgot. As it came on my next to last turn, I spendt my last turns pop rushing everything I could, mainly NM's in Spain and decided to let the next player decide how to proceede that way.

I can tell why Spain is quiet. On my last turn I bought the celts in vs Rome. Aparently Rome decided they were easier targets as 4 of their cities near spain no longer exist.

I like a 2nd front in Spain a lot. We can go for the romans then just go after the celts.

Wow @ what has happened to the Greeks. They were doing just dandy when I handed off but Persia is now eating them alive. They werent bought into the Roman war. Rome declared on them.

Looks to me like we either need to take all of rome + all or celtica or all of Rome + all of egypt to win. That's going to be one heck of a challenge in 50 turns, but maybe it can be done.

Interesting on Rome and the Celts. I think you are completly right about going after the celts because their cities were weaker. They turned around when I consolidated my forces (and gave up the two towns and got the heavy Cav over there.
Kind of ironic, they spent about 10 turns marching there, and then even though they couldd still handle the 2-3 units guarding the towns, they turned around again to walk 10 turns back to the celts lands.

Very good call at buying in the celts. It basically saved spain. Rome easily had the troops to utterly distroy our spanish troops

A second front in Spain would be fine with me, too. I slightly favoured Egypt at first because of three reasons:

* We wouldn't need ships to bring in reinforcements (okay, no biggie)

* I thought maybe our forces in Italy will eventually end up there anyway and could deal with the Celts then

* If we managed to take over Egypt, we could directly attack our main rival then (Persia)


I realize, though, that

* Dealing with Egypt could be too hard for a second front

* then attacking Persia could be even more suicide

* our forces in Italy may not be enough to finish off Rome and to go after the Celts afterwards


What's probably another reason to attack in Spain is the land's potential for growth, especially because we already have a base there. Let's hear what Nad's opinion on that is, though.

-Kylearan

I see that I am up, and will take a look at the game tonight.

Seems that we're up against it, but will be fun fighting against powerful foes.

I've been reading the last few turns and I think absolutely the best thing that was done was the revolution Greebley held :thumbsup: In such a short game I can understand the temptation not to revolt (8 turns is equivalent to 6% of ther total game) but finally we can make use of our cash...before, it was essentially pointless having a treasury. Well done, Greebley, on taking the initiative :) I think that gives us a chance.

RBC3a, Carthage, Inherited turn, 50AD


Well, we're in a bit of a pickle. We're fighting the civ with the best units, and the advance is proving quite slow, while we're losing to the most powerful nation, a nation that is also quite far from us and one which we can do little to check. Persia is extremely scary right now, the amount of unclaimed land they're taking is unreal...if left to their own devices they could settle most of Russia, Asia Minor and northern and eastern Europe :eek:

Given our situation, I echo Todd's sentiment, we need to be looking at Rome + A N other. However, I think we should tackle Rome first and foremost, and postpone a second enemy for the moment. The reason is that we have our hands full, and we need to focus our resources. Once we have destroyed the Romans, then we can open a different front, probably against Egypt. We should remember that attacking Egypt will not be as slow as taking on the mighty legion III's of Rome, and I would calculate that, if we could get rid of Rome and then refocus our attentions, we could turn over Egypt in 10 turns,

I do NOT think that time is going to prove decisive. Given the impending collapse of Macedon and our continued progress against Rome, I reckon either ourselves or Persia will win within the time limit.


All is not lost, however. Like the Persians we also have a back yard of unclaimed land. The Sahara may only offer terrible desert terain, but given the amount there is I think we can add another 5% to our land requirement by settling it all. We also have lots of tiles not within our cultural borders, so emphasizing temples could also bear fruit. And that is how I think we should approach this: try to satisfy the land requirement ASAP, and once we have that build up our population as fast as we can, by merging workers, by building metropolises, and by irrigating lots of tiles. This, therefore, is the approach I am going to follow. For now, I will try to increase our 8% land share, by taking cities off the Romans and by peeling settlers from corrupt cities, and then later, as we approach the 20% land target, we can emphasize growth.


Militarily, we're doing okay but not great. Spain is light on troops; we have a good number of fire catapults in Italy but a dearth of heavy cavalry, only 10 in Italy (and an army). IMO the balance of our military must be altered. Fire catapults are great for minimizing losses and taking on superior units, but we just do not have the time for siege combat...it takes about 5 turns per city to move catapults into enemy territory and next to their cities, then bombard, capture, move catapults into the new city and then move to the next target. With only 50 turns to go, we're not going to make much progress that way. I think we need as many fast units as can get, and so I switch lots of cities to heavy cavalry. Granted, without catapult support we're going to suffer greater losses, but with fast cavalry we'll be able to make more progress, and we can capitalize on the one advantage we have in this game, faster troops.

At the same time, I think we need to look out for an opportunity to hurt Persia. Right now is not the time, but if we can consolidate in Italy then declaring war on Persia might be a viable tactic later. At the least, we could buy in Egypt and see how the Persians fare fighting on three fronts. With this in mind, I think it is in our interests to prop up Macedon also...


Diplomatically, I see we are giving Persia spices for an alliance against Rome...this is up for renegotiation, and I cancel this deal. Conversely, the Egyptians are giving us silks for an alliance with Rome...I'm certainly not cancelling that deal :D

I renegotiate the alliance with the Celts, giving them horses and iron, so they can put up a better fight.

Finally, I make about 115g from map trading...this is something we should not neglect, given the changing nature of the map we can supplement our income quite decently by trading maps around (I did this frequently).


IT: Roman units move, Egypt signs an alliance against the Celts, Egypt wishes to renegotiate our silks for alliance deal :( As we need this luxury and I do not want widespread riots, I buy it instead for 52gpt.

Resistance ends in Neapolis, the city goes into disorder.


Turn 1, 55AD:

captured Vesontio in Spain.

We can produce units quite quickly and I don't see the need to rush them except in emergencies. Instead, I decide to invest in temples, and rush a few (in this and subsequent turns) to join up borders and increase our land share.

Neapolis is very unhappy and will be starved down.


IT: Egypt and Rome make peace, boo. A Numidian manages to defeat a legion III (henceforth L3) at Aleria. Lots of L3s converge on Neapolis.


Turn 2, 60AD:

Attacked some L3s on flat ground...I think we are decidedly better going on the offensive against them, heavy cavalry will do just fine attacking L3s, it is when L3s attack us that we have problems.

Lost 2 heavy cavalry, killed 2 L3s, wounded several others, the retreat capability of heavy cavalry is proving invaluable in reducing our fatality rates.


IT: lost an exposed Numidian to Roman counters, the Roman L3s converge on the weakly defended Canusium I intend to pick them off before they get there.


Turn 3 65AD:

Killed 2 L3s outside Rome, the 2nd success brought the great leader, Xanthipus [dance]. Sent him back to Neapolis to prepare another army for next turn.

Killed more L3s outside Neapolis and Canusium, getting some good combat results at the moment,

Rushed more temples.


IT: Macedon and Rome ally against the Celts, not good.


Turn 4, 70AD:

Beginning the bombardment of Rome, it is size 12 and defended by 6-7 L3s!!!

Made an army from the leader, filled with heavy cavalry.

On the Spanish front, managed to capture Hispalis, defeating 2 L3s without loss.

Sold Spices to Macedon for 220g.


IT: Goths and Persia ally against Rome. Resistance ends in Hispalis.


Turn 5, 75AD:

Killed 3 L3s outside Hispalis, again w/o loss.

Had a good round of bombardment which exposed a Roman 7HP cavalry army....I decided this was a great time to strike a blow and used our fresh cavalry army to destroy the Roman cavalry army :D It's a nice feeling killing an army :lol:

Killed 3 other exposed L3s outside Roma.


IT: finally the Romans managed a strong counter, we lost 4 exposed Numidians, and other legions moved into threatening positions.


Turn 6, 80AD:

The fall of Rome!!!

After decent bombardment, our cavalry army managed to kill 3 L3s (in the process being reduced to 1HP!!!), and our heavy cavalry managed to kill another 4 L3s and a garrison. We lost only one heavy cavalry in the attack. Captured Rome, then picked off a further 4 exposed L3s, losing two cavalry.

Made peace with the Goths, picking up 214g.

At this point, we are up to 10% land area, 26% population. Persia has 13% land, 33% population, still well ahead. I think if the Persians get to 15% land and 40% population we may be forced into action against them.


IT: Roman galleys threaten our coastlines, resistance ends in Roma, the city goes into disorder.


Turn 7, 85AD:

lots of moving and healing. For some reason, Egypt is suddenly annoyed :confused:


IT: Celts and Romans make peace, not at all good for us!

Lose 3 Numidians I was using to scout ahead, killin one L3 in the process. Even on hills, numidians get cut to shreds by L3s.


Turn 8, 90AD:

killed 2 legions outside Pisae, losing one cavalry. Re-signed the alliance with the Celts, giving them iron and horses.


IT: Persia and Rome make peace :aargh:

From somewhere, the Romans have managed to find tons of L3s...they scamper outside Ancona. Kill a L3 on defence at Vesontio.


Turn 9, 95AD:


I count 20 L3s outside Ancona :eek: and who knows how many within. As I have troops in position, I decide to go ahead with the attack on Ancona, it may be our last chance for an offensive for a short while. Lost 3 heavy cavalry but killed 5 L3s and razed Ancona. There was no way I could hold it with all those L3s outside so I made sure the Romans couldn't get it back.

Also managed to capture Veii, killing 2 L3s.

On second thoughts, I am forced to abandon Veii, as I can only defend it with 5 fire cats, an injured heavy cavalry and a numidian this turn...there are 2 L3s just outside, so I don't want to risk losing our cat's by trying to hold the city.


IT: lose an exposed cavalry, sword, and numidian.

Leptis Magna riots, my bad.


Turn 10, 100AD:

mopping up for the next player to pick up the offensive. Kill a L3 near Rome, but fortified most of the troops with movement left for Todd to position as he wishes. Also didn't rush projects this turn, so you have a bit of gold to play with.


There is a big stack of units, including 30+ fire catapults, in Roma. I suspect we may have to defend for a couple of turns to soak up the excess Roman L3s. Once they've exhausted those we can go back on the offensive. Progress should be much quicker now as we are biting into the heart of Rome.

We're up to 11% land, 26% population. Persia has 13% land, 34% population, so I've made slight headway into the land share, but not much into population. I don't think we need to worry about population just yet, let's try and whack up the land share and then we can irrigate like crazy. We may still need to hurt Persia to slow them down.

As well as smashing Rome, we may just be able to begin building a force on the eastern front to go after Egypt...i the meantime, I feel it is imperative we keep settling empty spaces, especially the wide open Sahara, to increase our land share without having to fight for every inch.

Good luck to the next player, this game is really entering the fun stages now!

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a100AD.zip)

I see it. However I am ill and not going to play tonite. This is crunch time and I want to be fully cognizent when I play. We each have one turn left. Personally I'm not worried about persia right now. We have to more than enough to worry about just meeting the requirements ourselves.

Edit: I think the most important part of the last 10 turns will be rushing temples and merging workers in.

Todd, once you open the save I think you will be worried about Persia!

Hitting the requirements ourselves won't be too much of a problem, at least for the land portion. Our share increased by 3% in my turn, and that rate should accelerate, as some of the temples I rushed will expand our borders and as we make faster progress against Rome. Even if we kept the same pace of expansion, we will get to 20% in 30 turns. The pop requirement may be harder to meet, effectively we need to double our pop, but as it appears that pop in this game is simply total number of citizens (as opposed to the actual population those figures refer to), simply expanding will increase that requirement also.


The thing about Persia is that they have half the known world to expand into, and not a single civ to stop them...the Goths have just one city, far to the north, Macedon is squashed in the middle, and we are destroying Rome. All that land is also good terrain, grasslands mainly, and with their deity bonuses they can swallow it all up very quickly.


That is why I think we will have to do something about them sometime. I agree, right now is not the moment, but maybe in 15 turns time (in the middle of Greebley's turn), we will have to turn the tables and declare war, signing as many other civs in as we can. I am thinking 15/40 as the guide, once they are that close we must act...

Nad, good turns! :goodjob: I especially like the second cav army; they are just great against L3s. And good call on switching back to cav production, although I still think we needed to build the catapults.


I agree that pop will be the problem, not land. Bear in mind two problems: Settling all the desert will not help us much pop-wise, as these cities cannot grow (especially compared to Persia's new cities). And second, organizing an alliance against Persia can also backfire if we're not cautious. Every city they conquer from other civs will greatly help their pop, too, so we should think twice about who we will sign in against them and who not.

Let's see what the next 10-20 turns will bring; maybe it will be better for us just to attack a different, militarily weaker civ to conquer pop points faster. Attacking Persia will be very slow going while their cities will continue to grow in their backyard. I think we can get pop faster compared to them if we just swallow another civ with large cities, once Rome is gone. While Persia will found size 1 cities, we could get size 4+ cities from maybe the Celts and/or Egypt. Attacking Persia directly would result in 10-20 turns minimum fighting until they're gassed before we can even begin to attack their cities, while they could acquire big cities themselves from other civs.

-Kylearan

Don't worry, I didn't veto all the catapults ;) :D I just changed the emphasis onto heavy cavalry, we're still building fire cats too.

Your point about the desert is a good one....I think we can pick up land from the desert but not pop, so maybe we should leave it for now, concentrate on the other civs, and if, in 30 turns time we find we still need more land, then go back to the Sahara? Not sure about this.

About attacking Persia: I do not think the intention of such an attack would be to capture and hold their cities...that is unlikely, as you say, our best bet is taking out Rome and Egypt (Egypt has some lovely size 20 + cities on flood plains, they could do wonders for our pop! I would imagine their best defender is the numidian, so capturing them should be fairly straightforward). The intention in attacking Persia, or allying against Persia, would be solely to slow them down, to get them building military instead of expanding, to cut their luxuries etc. What we could do is try to raze some of their weaker outlying cities and try to force them to attack rather than expand. Of course, there is a danger they might just get even more land doing this, but if we could just the moment of the fight and go on the offensive, we may be bale to set them back a little.

That may be the last desperate option we have, if Persia approaches victory...also, since we may be attacking them very late in the game, we may not have to worry so much about losing units.

Ah, I see now what you mean about slowing down Persia. Yes, maybe we will be forced to do this. But somehow I hope that this maybe won't be necessary when we conquer massive pop points ourselves. I took a quick look at the save, and now disagree with Todd about whom to go after next. The Celtic cities are relatively small, while Egypt has about 100 pop points near our border alone, and more to the north. If we get to conquer them...

One thing to think about is starving down cities - isn't that counterproductive at the moment? We will never get them back to their size again in time, so I propose to let them remain as large as possible.


I have a probably dumb question: If no civ meets the pop/land requirements at the end of the scenario, VPs will be the tie breaker. Now what exactly are VPs in this scenario? Is it just a measure of pop/land, or, like in other scenarios, how much damage you've done and wonders you built? I didn't find anything about this in the civilopedia.

What an exciting game...I love it! :)

Todd, I hope you get well soon.

-Kylearan

This is so exiting to follow :D
Keep up the good work!
But where is Sulla :hm:

Kylearan: the only reason I'm starving the Roman cities is becasue they're completely unhappy...they have about 75% unhappiness because we're fighting their mother country, so we don't really have much choice with those larger cities.

The tiebreaker is simply score....unsurprisingly, considering the deity bonus and all that, Persia is about 1500 points ahead...we have no chance of catching up in score


Volum: we have no idea where Sulla is, he has simply disappeared. Hope all is well and that he'll be back soon.

My question about the score is: Is it calculated the same way as in other scenarios, mesopotamia for example, like 100VPs per pop point when a city is captured etc.? (I forgot to check during my turn...) Or is it just a reflection of the curren pop/land situation?

I agree that we probably won't have much chance in catching up on Persia if it's the first way, I'm just curious.

Volum: Thanks for the support! :)

-Kylearan

P.S.: I better stop chatting now and get some work done... :D

Score is the score of the main game and has nothing to do with VP.

Here is one problem with setting the desert. Every settler we produce costs us 2 pop points. If the city cant at least reach size 2 we actually hurt our pop % in the long run. Settling in spain should be ok because the city can at least reach size 2. Settling in the sahara unless it has an oasis in its inner ring is probably hurting more than helping.

Can you post a screenshot?

Here are some pics (for us and lurkers) @ 100AD with 40 turns to go.

This is the currrent situation in spain:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-100AD_Spain.JPG

Here is our core:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-100AD_Africa.JPG

And here is the Roman lands and Italy.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-100AD_Rome.JPG

Here is egypt which we may want to attack to get people and land:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-100AD_Egypt.JPG

This is the land that Persia is expanding into and why it is such a threat. The area is actually bigger than this as it didn't all fit on screen in zoom-out mode:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-100AD_Persian_Expand.JPG

I'm still very ill. I couldn't even make it through the day at work. I'm sorry for the delay.

I had another idea about the pop problem. Although I don't use this tactic normally because I think it's a grey area (nearly an exploit), here it could help us a lot if nobody would be aginst it.

What about setting up one or two worker factories in size 6 cities to merge the workers (now or later) into size 13+ cities? For example, Rusuccuru in Spain is totally corrupt, but able to grow every other turn. So cash-rush a worker there every other turn, keeping it at size six, to merge the workers into size 13+ cities, for example captured cities that were starved down and are now in the process of regrowing, or increase the lux slider to allow our core cities to grow larger. That way, a lot of food (and pop) is gained, because the food boxes of size 13+ cities are so much bigger than those of the size 6 city.

With 40 turns left, that would be 20 pop nearly for free; if we do this with two cities (Spain has enough high-food, fully-corrupt cities), we should be able to outgrow Persia.

-Kylearan

I was under the impression that in this scenario, pop=pop, ie, it doesn't matter how much food one pop requires, it is the same as any other. Would this make a difference to your thinking?

Personally I don't have any problems with worker/settler farms, I rarely set them up myself (too lazy!) but I don't have any principled problem with them.

I have no problems with normal worker farms myself, but what I meant is different. The idea behind this is that small cities with small food boxes boost large cities with larger food boxes, speeding up overall growth.

Assuming every city has a granary, size 1-6 cities need 10 food to grow, size 7-12 20 food, and size 13+ need 30 food to grow. This drastically slows down city growth at sizes 7 and 13. So if you use a size 6 city as a worker farm to merge the workers into size 13+ cities, you save 20 food per pop point gained. This will result in a much improved growth curve, providing you with a much higher overall pop count in the end, especially in situations like this when you have no time to let the big cities to grow for themselves.

I hope the concept is a bit clearer now, I find it difficult to explain, sorry. :crazyeye:

-Kylearan

Right thanks, I see what you mean now.

It's a little bit cheesy though well within the game scenario and mechanics.

It's still okay with me though.

We can probably do what you suggest without aggregiously exploiting it. Simply have the towns with high food build workers and merge them into towns with less food seems like a perfectly valid strategy to me and can do what you propose without explicitly setting up "worker factories" per se.

Todd,
I suggest taking your time and playing when you can play well. The game only has 4 turns left, so taking some extra time is not a problem. If we want to win, we need to all play as best we can, and this is much more important than finishing this week.

I'm still sick and there is no way I can play till sat afternoon at the earliest. If I can't keep something down tomorrow I may have to get fluid replacement. I'll try to keep the team advised but if i go much over that and you want to go on skip me or swap me as you see fit.

I really think the pop is our biggest problem. And a worker farm or two doesn't bother me in the least. Also note that if we can take out eastern rome we can go after persia's greek lands. Note that every pop point we take from them is like double in that it reduces therir pop as it increases ours.

Glad to know the flu shot "worked" for me :(.

Get well soon Todd :)

Greebley, if you are around, I think you should take the game...the weekend is the best time to get some turns in for most people (especially me) and there's no point wasting half of it just to see if Todd can make it. As soon as Todd is better he can slip back in to the roster. Let's get this baby moving again!!

Ok, I can do that. I got the flu too and last night was murder, but fortunately mine was only the 24 hour variety. I have a lot of sympathy for you, Todd, at this moment. I hope you get well!

I will start playing now.

Well I tried playing this, but my recent sickness is affecting me much more than I thought it would. I have had to reload the preturn 4 times because instead of moving to the square to bombard the L3, I keep bombarding the square I want to move to instead. If I can't even do something as simple as bombard a unit, I hate to see what I do with our strategy and if we want to win, I think we need to play well. Kylearan, if you can play then go for it. I shouldn't play right now.

Jeez, it appear we've got an epidemic! Get well soon, both u guys!

Perhaps we should just wait until we've got some health again. After all, there's no rush with just 40 turns left, so I'm quite happy to let this settle for a while, and then we can have a go with renewed enthusiasm soon.

Well, my wife has the flu too, but so far I'm feeling fine. :D

I would like to wait for Todd and/or Greebley to recover, though - in such a critical stage of the game, it feels strange for me to get the game again so soon. (Well, 'soon' meaning game time, not real life time... :crazyeye: )

-Kylearan

Well I am feeling a bit better today, but I think I will give myself another day. Todd if you feel up for taking the game today or tomorrow, just post here. If you can't get it this weekend, I may try to play it tomorrow. I will post again right if/when I start so we don't collide.

This game is great I will hate if you don't win

I think I'm up to playing either tomorrow or monday. Whoever gets it first can play. I'm fine either way.

I think I would like to keep the order if you are going to be able to play that soon. Go ahead and play it Todd. I will play after you.

I will be able to play tonight

Edit: I'm playing but it may take some time to get through. It's not looking good. Rome is attacking Spain in force. I'm going to take my time and try to Salvage Spain as best I can.

Lifting this from the ignominy of page 2 ;)

I'm anxious to know what's happening with Spain...that was a quiet front in my turns and I was handling whatever the Romans could muster with ease, and, indeed, going on the offensive. A little worrying if the Romans have managed a big counter there, because it's not as strongly defended as Italy.

Keep us informed, Todd, and let's see some shouting from everyone on the sidelines!! :D It's approaching 2 weeks since this game moved and the thread has been very quiet. Succession games are most fun when there's plenty of action and everyone is chipping in with the banter. So let's hear some noise!!!


Go Todd, serve us some Roman pies with Persian dressing :hammer: [dance]

When I checked the last save, we were weak VS Rome still. Spain was in danger once before when about 20 legions were threatening towns. They got pulled away when I reinforced the towns in Spain and the war with the celts started. It is possible, they might have been up in celt lands attacking the Celts and now have returned? At the time they were sufficient to totally decimate our forces in spain - against a human we would have been kicked out of spain 40 turns ago.

I am presuming that if Todd is having Spanish troubles the 20 L3's may be back? That would certainly be my best guess.

With the infinite wisdom of hindsight, I am firmly of the opinion that attacking the Romans is not the way to play this. The problem is I am not sure what we should do. The forces of Persian from the roman game....lets see if I can find it... (see below). Make me dubious an attack on Persia would be effective in the time remaining. Egypt would really be the best target for us. I don't know it is sufficient though, so maybe we do have to deal with Rome first. We probably don't have sufficient time to do this though.

Its hard to say without seeing Todd's turns yet. Hopefully, he will get time to finish up and we can see how things currently stand. I think you are correct on a need for discussion Nad. We can discuss what should be the plan of attack for the last thirty turns before I take my turn and see if we can reach a consensus on what to do.

I definitely think that this is by far the hardest of the four games. We have to stop Persia while facing the superior Roman forces.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/Persian_Trouble.JPG

*From the sidelines of the victorious Persians* ;)
I think you guys have the toughest row to plough, that is certainly true. But I think you should stay the course against Rome. You have most of their core disrupted and if you can just get over whatever units they have left from their Celtic wars, they should probably be gassed and you can take the rest of Rome out "fairly" quickly.
You can then start building up an Egyptian front while your leftover forces in the north clean up the Celts and do land grabs up there. Hopefully, you can time your major conquests in Egypt towards the end of the game to scratch out a victory near the end of the 130 turn limit.

Good luck you Carthies!

Ya, you may be right. I am hoping we have a clearer picture when we get Todd's report. If we let Rome live then breaking away from Rome would be difficult and the constant attacks from Rome would mean tying up units that we probably cannot afford.

I was also thinking of looking into how long it would take to transport our units to attack Egypt. I think we are going to need their cities to have a chance. It will give us a better idea on our time limits for the Roman war.

I have a problem. I have no net access till monday from home since Verizon screwed up my DSL somehow. I had to get permission from work just to access this site to post this :(. I have no way to post the game till then unless I can figure out some way to use somone elses access between now and then. And yes, the L III's are back bigtime. Sorry for the delay.

You could save your game on a floppy and then post it from wherever you want.

Anyway, it's now Monday so hopefully your internet connection is sorted and we can get back on track. I'd like to finish this game quite soon as I'm going away on the 3rd January...we should be able to finish by then if there are no more major delays.

I have a trip the 27th of December. I don't think this should be a problem, but I thought I would make you all aware of it.

The status quo cannot continue too much longer...we really can't be spending 2-3 weeks for each turn if we want any sort of coninuity in this game. Hopefully Todd's problems will be resolved soon and he can post the save, but I would say that if he hasn't posted by Boxing Day we should swap him in the roster to a later date when he can play his turn.

Forgive my ignorance Nad, but when is boxing day? I should know as I have heard it before (the 26th?) but I just don't remember.

Boxing Day is indeed the 26th December (what do you guys call it in the States?)

We don'r really have a name for it other than "the day after Christmas" but Canada has Boxing day I believe (which is why I have heard of it).

Ok, I agree. I will play the 26th if we don't hear from Todd, though I don't relish duplicating the "Rome smashes Spain" turns that it seems Todd ran into. Hopefully, Todd will be able to post the save before this time.

This game really has suffered from bad luck. First our leader, Sullla, vanishes (I really hope he is ok), players getting the Flu, broken ISP's.

Ok, it is now the 26th, so I played this game albiet a bit early on the 26th. I am guessing Todd will not get his ISP fixed. Apologies if you do, Todd.

Preturn: Attack the nearby L3's close to Rome. My RNG luck is not good. The fire catapults miss a lot. Kill one with the army, but the army is too injured to try again. Swordman vs 1 hp L3 wins,Heavy Cav vs 2hp L3 wins, Heavy Cav vs 2 hp L3 retreats, Heavy Cav vs 1 hp L3 loses, sword vs 1hp L3 wins and I have no more uninjured unit to take out the last one.

So I am unable to kill the 4 L3's next to our border. Num Mercs cover the heavy cavs.

To ally Persia vs Rome is too expensive. Bummer.

I change Rome to a settler and rush it. I want to grab the lands that belong to neither us or Rome.

Attack another legion near a town in spain. Heavy Cav dies without doing any damage to the Legion.

Hmmm... Yet again we have no galleys anywhere near Spain. I wake up one in our capitol and send it west in case I need it.

We probably should have built the Forbidden Palace - ah well too late now. It doesn't help that much pre-patch, but it is of some benefit. (rank corruption is about the same, distance corruption is reduced normally). +100 gpt I would guess.

Everything else looks fine... End turn...

IBT: Bunches of Legions running around (16 near rome, 16 + 3 L2 in spain)

Carthago: HCav->HCav
Marsala: HCav->HCav
Syracuse: Fire Cat -> Fire Cat
Cirta: HCav->HCav
Leptis Minor: Courthouse->HCav
Sabratha: Worker->Worker
Hispalis: Walls->Barracks

105 AD:
Hispalis doesn't look like it can hold. I retreat my forces. I also pillage the roads to slow Roman advance and so my units can heal.

Going to send some of the new HCav to the South. If we don't take on Egypt as well we have lost I think.
Build New Hadrumetum with settler from Rome
Use my Fire Cats to do their pathetic bombardment. Do some damage.
Attack L3 with 2 hp and win.
Attack L3 with 3 hp and win.
Attack L3 with 3 hp and lose.
Attack L3 with 1 hp using elite unit and score a Leader! Capture a citizen (1 worker only). Use leader to make army.

Switch to barracks in New Carthage
Switch 3 cities in spain to Fire Cats and rush them.
Switch 3 cities in spain to build walls.
Switch Theveste to an infirmary

Moves some boats to intercept some Roman ones.

There are still a number of legions near our troops near Rome but nothing I can do about that. They are all injured though.

IBT: Boy, I would guess Rome must have at least 40-50 L3's total. 3 Num Mercs are killed by attacking L3's
Thenae: HCav->HCav
Caralis: HCav->HCav
Leptis Magna: HCav->HCav
Rusaddir: FireCat->FireCat.
Icosium: HCav->HCav
Nora: FireCat->FireCat
Vesontio: FireCat->FireCat
New Nora: Walls->FireCat
Rusuccuru: FireCat->FireCat
New Carthage: Barracks->HCav

110 AD:
Bombard: Some L3's to 2 hp.
Attack L3 unfortified on mountain with army. Army loses 10 hp before it kills the 2 hp Legion.
I kill the other legion on the mountain. Clearly I need to hold that mountain as the L3's are just too strong when they claim it.
HCav kills 2hp L3.
HCav kills 2hp L3 becomes Elite
Rush a Fire Cat in Lilibeo.
Rushed a courthouse in Mersa Madakh
Switch Tarentum to a Num Merc and rush
Switch Canusium to a Num Merc due in 1

IBT: Attack on mountain: 3 Num Mercs lost killing 2 L3's
Gabes: HCav->HCav
Mersa Madakh: Courthouse->HCav (oddly it goes from1 shield to 5 - that seems high)
Tartentum: Num Merc->Num Merc
Canusium: Num Merc->Num Merc
Lilebeo: FireCat->FireCat
Rusicade: Settler->Settler
New Sabratha: Walls->FireCat

115 AD:
Knock a hitpoint off a garrison in our lands (near rome) and kill it.
Heavy Cav vs 3hp legion loses
Heavy Cav vs 2hp legion wins
Heavy Cav vs 2hp legion wins
Army kills 3 2hp legions.
Heavy Cav vs 2hp legion retreats doing no damage
Heavy Cav vs 2hp legion wins (and then I misclick switching between the report and he runs into Roman lands and is doomed.

Galley attacks Roman galley and wins
Galley attacks Roman galley and loses
Galley attacks 2hp Roman galley and loses doing no damage.

Change Syracuse and Marsala to Galleys
Rush Numidean in Roma and Neapolis
Rush Barracks in Vesontio
Rush Temple in New Cirta
Capitol not happy. Raise Lux to 20 and adjust any city that this affects.

(in spain) attack an L3 and retreat. No major threat appearing in Spain yet. Falling back and rushing units may have caused the 19 legions to look elsewhere or they could suddenly appear. Not sure which.

IBT: A big stack of Legions is spotted before they off the Misclicked HCav. They then kill it. At least the HCav tells me something before he dies. I am guessing that is the stack that was in spain??? They keep doing that to me...I see a big stack. I fall back and prepare for the worst...which never comes as the stack goes elsewhere. I am not sure whether to be annoyed or relieved.

Roma: Num Merc->Num Merc
Neapolis: Num Merc->Num Merc
Carthago: HCav->HCav
Marsala: Galley->Galley
Syracuse: Galley->Galley
Cirta: HCav->HCav
Vesontio: Barracks->HCav
Rusguniae: HCav->HCav
New Leptis Magna: Worker->Settler
New Leptis Minor: Worker->Worker
New Cirta: Temple->Fire Cat
Change Gabes to a settler.

120 AD:
Bombard a garrison and attack it with an elite Heavy Cav which wins.
Galley vs Galley wins this time
Elite HCav vs 1hp Legion wins
Elite 4hp HCav vs 1hp Legion on flat terrain loses :(
HCav vs 1hp Legion wins.
Army on mountain attacks 2 healthy Legions (on flat) and wins with 1/2 hp left.
HCav vs 1hp Legion wins.
Sword vs 1hp (was also bombarded) Garrison wins.

Hurry settler in Carthago Novo and Utica
Change Lilebeo and hurry settler.

IBT: Well not all L3's left Spain - here come some (6 L3's and 1 L2, 1L1 and garrison

Carthego Novo: Settler->Settler
Carmona: Num Merc->Num Merc
Lilebeo: Settler->Settler
Utica: Settler->Settler

125 AD:
Build New Rusaddir
Attack a spear guarding a Roman city (boat landed random settler on island) and win (still guarded by spear).

Attempt to take out Virconium, but 2 Cav barely damage the legion guarding it.
Rush Settler in Al Kaf (about to max in pop)

IBT: Ah, Cuss words of severity. Persia is demanding spices. I don't see any choice but to cave. If persia attacked us now we would be in bad trouble. So we strengthen the leader instead.

What the heck is Macedonia doing with all those boats??? Fighting the Celts?

Lots of Roman Legions near Rome again (14). Not sure what the units in Spain are doing.

Marsala: Galley->FireCat
Thenae: HCav->HCav
Caralis: HCav->HCav
Gabes: Settler->HCav
Icosium: HCav->HCav
Nora: FireCat->FireCat
Vesontio: HCav->HCav
Gades: Worker->FireCat
Missed Neapolis.
Al Kaf: Settler->Courthose
New Carthago: HCav->HCav
New Lilibeo: Worker->FireCat
New Theveste: Worker->FireCat

130 AD:
The Roman have remembered their Flame Retardant Undies as my FireCats do very little. They knock the hp of 4 legions to 2, 2, 2, and 3 hp. Army kills the 3 hp, a 2 hp and a Garrison at full health. HCav kill the rest without loss. I attack an elite L3 and do very well losing 2 hp. I attack a Vet with the same army and have only 1 hp left! I guess that attack is too risky. It is a shame because there simply are not enough FireCats. I feel I need thrice as many.

IBT: Romans advance. Spanish L3's are retreating again. There must be a precise number of troops needed for that town to have Rome go for it. If I take troops out, back they come. Kinda interesting....
Carthago: HCav->HCav
Malaca needs aquaduct
Cirta: HCav->HCav
Theveste: Infirmary->HCav

Bombard L3's to 4 or 3 hp
Elite* Attacks 4hp L3 and loses
Army Attacks 4hp L3 and wins
HCav Attacks 4hp L3 and wins
E HCav Attacks 4hp L2 and Loses
HCav Attacks 4hp L2 and wins

The odd just don't seem good enough... Not going to attack anymore and hope the counters arent worse.

Galley vs Galley wins

Rush a courthouse in Canasium. I think the shields are too low.
Rush FireCats in Tarentum, Neapolis, Roma.

IBT: Rome move further into my territory and pillages

Goth and Macedon sign Peace

We lose our Incense (from Egypt).

Roma: FireCat->FireCat (I adjust happiness to stop several riots as well)
Neaopolis: FireCat->FireCat
Syracuse: Galley->FireCat
Olbia: FireCat->FireCat
Tarentum: FireCat->FireCat
Canusium Courthouse->FireCat (goes from 1 to 6 shields with the courthouse!)
Sabratha: Worker->Worker
Rusguniae: HCav->FireCat
New Hadrumetum:Walls->FireCat

140 AD:
HCav vs 2hp E Legion wins
HCav vs 2hp Garrison wins.
HCav vs Garrison retreats.
E HCav vs 1hp Legion wins.
Sword vs 1hp Legion wins and becomes Elite.
HCav vs 2hp Legion wins.
HCav vs 1hp Legion wins.
HCav vs 1hp Legion wins.
Army (1/2 hp) vs 3 1hp Legion wins.
Army vs 3hp Legion wins.
Army vs 2hp Legion wins.
3hp HCav vs 3hp Garrison wins and becomes Elite.

Area around Rome Cleared of Legions!

(Spain) Sword vs Spear loses
HCav vs Spear gets Great Leader! We make a HCav Army in Spain

Build New Sulcis

IBT: One Roman Garrison shows up and nothing else!

Marsala: FireCat->FireCat
Leptis Magna: HCav->HCav
Mersa Madakh: FireCat->HCav
Saladae: Worker->FireCat

145 AD:
Bombard and Kill Garrison.

(Spain) Sword vs Archer loses.
Build New Saladae:
Build New Carthago Novo on an island.
Build New Malaca

Hurry Temple in New Ruscade
Hurry Heavy Cav in Vesontio
Hurry Temple in Calaris
Hurry Temple in Rusicade

IBT: A few L3's show up. Persia and Rome Agree to destroy Macedon.
Carthego: HCav->HCav
Thenae: HCav->HCav
Cirta:HCav->HCav
Caralis: HCav->HCav
Icosium: HCav->HCav
Vesontio: HCav->HCav
Theveste: HCav->HCav
Calaris: Temple->FireCat
Rusicade:Temple->FireCat
New Rusicade:Temple->FireCat

150 AD:
Build New Gades
Capture Virconium

Kill the 4 L3's and for the first time advance my troops!


Notes:

I killed a staggering number of L3's. Hopefully, Rome is now weak enough to go on the offensive. Don't be suprised if a stack of 6 or more L3's show up though. I think Rome might have at least one still existant. I don't expect the 16-20 that were showing up on some turns though.

The lines are much the same including Spain. I settled New Gades, but it might have been too aggressive. Don't be afraid to retreat back again. When the Cav Army is defending the border, Rome will probably go elsewhere again.

Almost every HCav built in Africa is in Hippo near Egypt. There are 13 of them and 2 fire Cats. Attack on Egypt can happen when we feel ready.

I got good luck with leaders (2). One in Rome and spain. If you get stuck remember that Conquests has really powerful pillaging from armies. You can decimate an enemy with pillaging if you need to and have time (we may not).

I am a lot more hopeful than I was the first few turns when I realized just how many L3's Rome had. It will still be a hard race to the finish and we may lose it, but we do have some chance. Rome looks like it might finally be attackable, and we have a force for egypt (we may need some Num Mercs - I mostly built the HCavs). Whether we can pass Persia and reach 50% pop remains to be seen.

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a150AD.zip)

Pictures and perhaps more comments will be coming later. I need to stop here.

Well, I tried to make some pictures of our current situation.

First some additional comments:

I am not sure it was wise to send the forces toward Egypt as soon as I did. At the time, Rome seemed so strong that I thought I would mostly be doing a holding action against Rome while we took out Egypt. Now however, I feel we can make forward progress against Rome. I am hoping we have sufficient forces in the North to do so.

It might be worth spending money to investigate some Egyptian cities before we attack them to find out what we are facing. I haven't checked how are forces are compared to Egypt.

Here are our Forces Down by Egypt:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-150AD_EgyptForce.JPG

Here are the Forces Near Rome in Italy. The second stack is in town. It was used to take out the 4 Legions this turn

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-150AD_RomanForce.JPG

Here is an overall picture of our Roman Front. There is an HCav army off screen that helped take out the one Roman city I captured on my turns. I also marked my new "Forward City". If it encounters Roman forces strong enought to take it, then consider falling back. Once the HCav Army joins the Forces in New Gabe, I don't think Rome will press their attack. There definitely is a level of forces required in Spain to keep Rome looking elsewhere. Go below that level and Rome will send a number of units. Rome could have taken all Spain at any point it wanted to in this game. Both my last two turns I encountered Roman forces that could destroy me, that turned back after fortification. Don't be afraid to rush units in Spain if you need to.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-150AD_RomanFront.JPG

Finally, here is the Roman-Italy line without the force list blocking the view:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-150AD_RomanFront_Italy.JPG

Issues I am not very sure on:

When do we attack Egypt? What forces are required? (I think we need more, especially Num Mercs to absorb counter attacks)

Do we have sufficient forces in the Roman area to effectively attack? (I think yes).

Can we reach 50% pop? It is going to be really hard. We might have to get creative. I did settler some of the desert - but those towns won't give much pop (basically it was mostly towns that had reached (or nearly reached) max pop. We should definitely plan on merging in all workers at some point. I figure building workers that increase growth rate is good.

For example, if a town has grown to only making +3 food per turn, but if we build a worker and get the town up to +4 food; when we merge the worker back in we will have a net gain as the town will be growing faster between now and the end of the game.

As I mentioned I will be on a trip tomorrow, but may be able to comment after I get to where I am going. I will out through the 5th. Feel free to finish this up.

Great stuff Greebley! :thumbsup:

I believe Kylearan is up

Whoops, I'm up? :blush: I'm sorry that I didn't notice this.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have had time to play anyway because of the holidays. Strange but true, I have more time for SGs during my regular life. :o

I'm afraid I won't be able to play before next year, probably Friday, so if Nad wants to play now feel free to do so.

Apologies again for the delay!

-Kylearan

Oh, and regarding the current situation: Good set of turns, Greebley! I don't think you moved troops to the Egyptian border too early - in fact, war against Egypt cannot start early enough IMHO. We can gain much more pop there against weaker units, although they probably have more forces at the moment than Rome has. We will see.

I'm not sure if we really want to bring slow NMs to the front, though. Against heavy cav they're toast anyway, and rushing HCs of our own looks more worthwhile. But I haven't looked at the game for some time now.

-Kylearan

I wouldn't hold up the atack for Num Mercs, but if we can get a few down then it might be worth it. They are cheaper abd can get killed in place of the HCav. It also frees up some HCav from needing to guard the town & fortified behind a wall fairly decent.

Rushing 1 or 2 near the front or in the cities that are behind egyptian lines might be worthwhile. I would also put up walls on the towns that are further in and may have to hold off some Egyptian hordes.

The Situation: There are 30 turns left to play in this scenario and compared to Persia, we are marginally behind in land area (13% vs 14%) and considerably behind in population (26% vs 36%). But I still have hope that we can win this - all comes down to how the war against Egypt will go, and what Persia does in the meantime. Rome, on the other hand, would be nice to finish off but not mandatory. They are our blood enemy and have been very annoying, but finishing them off won't help much except in the land area department. It would reduce our happiness problems in ex-Roman cities if we'd eliminate Rome, though.

We have way too few workers in Spain! Most of the lands there are not irrigated, I plan to change that and rush a lot of workers there if the military situation permits. These workers can irrigate the cities for max growth (most cities in Spain are built near fresh water!) and then later should be merged into larger cities. In fact, we have way too few workers overall: Only 45 alltogether!

I'm not sure why more desert cities have been founded and more settlers are on the way to found even more - they actually *reduce* our population! Two workers instead of one settler for a desert town would be much more helpful, especially because land area won't be the problem. And all the workers building roads and irrigating(!) the desert cities could be used much better irrigating other cities! Not speaking of the wasted NuMercs guarding these cities... :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: Desert cities not being able to grow are employing taxmen now, and their garrisons move out to the Egyptian front where they will be needed more urgent.

I switch Hippo from settler to barracks (done in 2) and rush another barracks in Utica so we can rush reinforcements for our attack against Egypt there. Rusuccuru, New Nora and al-Khaf rush a worker each. Cirta is swapped from Infirmary to worker: It cannot grow past size 13 at the moment anyway, and Sicily could use some workers to clean up the pollution. Rusaddir is switched from courthouse to worker, then harbor so it can grow again. I wake up a lot of workers who are improving unimportant tiles. Finally, I thank Greebley for the HCs near the Egyptian border and move them out of Hippo, preparing to strike next turn.

(I) Several L3s come into view. Egypt and Celts sign peace, and Cleo cancels our silks deal. I don't renew it because I plan to attack next turn anyway.

155 AD (1): I scroll ahead to prevent riots from the lost silks. I dial up Macedon to ask what they would pay for an alliance vs Egypt - what, only 220 gold? Better than nothing, though: Deal done. Then I give Persia 56gpt for silks - yes, I'm giving money to our main rival here, but that puts a lot of clowns back to work and is a lot cheaper than increasing the lux slider, and Egypt's silks are far away. I rush a colisseum in Leptis Magna which is size 10, has an infirmary but has happiness problems. More Workers and and aqueduct in Aea get rushed.

Wow, our catapults do very well this turn: Nearly every attack a hit! In Italy, 5 L3s are killed and 1 HC lost.

160 AD (2): We take the first Egyptian city, Avaris, losing one HC. This brings our dyes at Hadrumetum online. I decide to ignore small desert cities like Athribis and Abydos and move our HCs towards bigger cities.

In Italy, bombardment reveals that size 15 Pisae is guarded by four L3s, which alltogether lose five hitpoints. Then our armies cross the river and attack, and Pisae is ours. We capture two fire catapults.

More workers in Spain and another aqueduct and two NMs near Egypt gets rushed.

(I) No less than five Roman galleys appear near Italy - if they are full of troops, we're in trouble regardless where they land them. And about five Egyptian galleys move along our shores as well. Macedon is dying fast now.

165 AD (3): I have bad luck this turn: Against two vet NMs and an elite swordman in a size 2 city, four HCs retreat and two die before I finally take Heliopolis. Next target will be size 20 Alexandria already!

In Italy, I decide we cannot ignore Rome's capital, Padua, even if cracking this size 26 monster will take time. If we conquer the cities around, we have to leave too large garrisons in there, so Padua must fall first. I advance our cat stack towards the city.

(I) More Macedon cities fall to Persia. It's scary. Egypt lands a single swordman on our soil, and signs a peace treaty with the Goth.

170 AD (4): The swordman is dispatched, and our forces heal and gather in Heliopolis to advance on Alexandria next turn. Padua gets its first two defenders killed by our army. Getting three armies in Italy really was the turning point against Rome! Then I mistype and accidently expose a fire catapult which we will lose next turn.

(I) Over a dozen Persian galleys are parading in our waters now in addition to the Egyptian ones. A fresh wave of L3s appear: About 8 in Italy and 3 in Spain.

175 AD (5): Two swords are killed in Egypt, promoting one HC to elite - an army would be really nice! 12 HCs advance on Alexandria. In Italy, our catapults redline two L3s in the open and then considerably hurt the five defenders of Padua. Our army single-handedly kills three of them, being left with only 2 hitpoints. The last two defenders are more stubborn, and after two dead and six retreating HCs, it actually needs our elite swordman to make the killing blow against the last redlined defender, and we take the size 26 city! :hammer:

(I) Goth is dragged into the war against Persia. And for the first time, Egypt actually tried to defend itself! Three swordmen, all protected by a NM, attack our SoD at Alexandria - and all three lose the battle. :-)

180 AD (6): There are several L3s on the loose near Padua, so while our armies heal, our cats and HCs make short work of them. In Egypt, our campaign goes not so well: Alexandria is defended by a lot of NMs, and I do mean *a lot*. And they fight very well, too. We lose two HCs, the rest of our attacking forces retreat and manage to kill only two NMs. But reinforcements are underway.

(I) Ouch! Egypt had awakened now, it seems. We lose a NM and three HCs to attacks from swordmen, killing only one. And a galley lands two archers and a swordman near Caralis, where our swordman finally gets something to do.

185 AD (7): Our Egyptian task force retreats into Heliopolis to regroup. Our Paduan forces split up and advance on Aquiliae and Ariminum. Bah, many of the Roman cities left have not expanded borders yet!

(I) Egypt lands four swordmen near Utica, and gather a stack of three NMs and three swordmen near Alexandria, in perfect striking range for our gathering attack force - maybe we can score a leader here?

190 AD (8): Our bad luck in Egypt continues, as we lose two HCs attacking the NM/sword stack, and four HCs retreat. No leaders, no promotions. In Italy, luck is on our side: While taking Ariminum, we score another leader! At Aquiliae, our army nearly dies killing the first defender and has to retreat to heal.

(I) The Celts cancel our alliance against Rome. And, very impressive, Egypt lands another seven units near Utica!

195 AD (9): Unfortunately for Egypt, our reinforcements to Egypt pass Utica, so it's a bad choice for a landing. But again we have bad luck against Egypt and four of our seven attacking HCs retreat. Yay. But then we have a lucky break and score a leader while decimating a stack of five swords and three NMs. Finally, an army in Egypt! :hammer:

In Italy, Aquileia is captured, and our HC army that was guarding Spain leaves New Gades to attack Burdigala next turn.

200 AD (10): We get a reminder that the game will end in 20 turns. In Italy, we take Genua and score yet another leader taking our a redlined L3! :hammer: In Egypt, our forces kill several NMs and swords, but our bad luck continues: Our army loses a lot of health killing a 2HP-NM, and near Utica several HCs retreat trying to get rid of the landed swordmen.


The situation in Egypt:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbc3a_20left.jpg

Notes to next leader:

At Utica, the situation is a bit dicey because of my abysmal combat luck there - I hope the city holds. You should be able to take Alexandria during the next turns, just rush more HCs near the front to overwhelm Egypt. Fighting Rome in Italy is no longer a problem too, especially because we now have five armies there. But the terrain is very rough, so advancement could be slow. And please have an eye on the cities - you have to work the tiles manually to maximize growth in totally corrupt cities, and max growth is the key now!

Our pop gap compared to Persia has remained approx. the same during my reign, but I have produced a lot of workers (about 20?) so we should in fact have caught up a bit. Still, Persia's lead is frighteningly huge, and I don't know if we can make it. But let's try as hard as we can!

Good luck! (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbc3a_200ad.zip)


-Kylearan

I don't think the desert cities will be a loss. They will generally be size 2 by the end with irrigation. I was assuming the cities in africa will be all at max pop, so each desert city will be 2 "free" pop.

Spain would have been a better spot to settle, but that wasn't possible with the Roman L3's running around (the cities I could settle were settled).

At least that is how I saw it. Perhaps we can't reach full pop in Africa, but I think we can.

Good Luck Nad. I hope you can bring us closer to the win. It looks like we have finally beaten Rome.

After a night's sleep, some thoughts...

* Regarding desert cities, first my apologies if my wording was too harsh. But I'd like to discuss that some more. :p

Desert cities are only worth it if you know that every of your cities will be maxed out at game's end. In this scenario, this will not be the case, and so you lose two pop at one city to potentially gain two pop in the desert, netting no increase in overall population. Even worse, you only keep your overall population if you irrigate two desert tiles at the new city.

In our situation, there are a lot of cities which won't be maxed out in twenty turns, especially in Spain where most cities can grow to size 12 and don't have a granary. So instead of building one settler, built two workers instead and use them (plus the workers you no longer need to irrigate deserts) to irrigate the tiles at the cities in Spain, and merge them in at game's end. This will give you an actual *increase* of overall population, which is what we need now.


* I'm not sure if we really want to kill off Rome completely. Maybe it's better for us to let Rome keep some of their small cities in rugged terrain which would take forever to reach, and instead attack the Celts now? We only have 20 turns left, and maybe we can gain land and pop faster by going after Celtic cities, which can be reached faster and taken easier (no L3s!). We have five armies there now, so we should roll over them quite fast.

Or we say that this scenario is lost anyway and make it our goal to at least get rid of our blood enemy before the game ends. But if we still try to win this, or just want to see how far we can go during the last 20 turns, it may be better to attack the Celts soon and let Roma live.


* At the end of the next leader's turn, and during the first turns of the last leader, our money should be used to rush temples so that there will be enough time left for the borders to expand. Additionally, the last leader should keep in mind that moving all the workers to appropriate cities where they can be merged in may take a few turns. On the last turn, increase the lux slider as much as you can, so that even ex-Roman cities are happy enough to work more tiles so that slaves can be merged in there, too.


* Persia now controls all of Macedon's southern lands, so maybe their growth will be slowed down now that they have to move their forces up into the north. That may slow down their advancement in VPs also, so maybe, just maybe, if using our six armies will speed up our progress in Egypt and Celtica, we could catch up in VPs and win the tie...? (Hey, think positive! :D ) It's really a pleasure to fight NMs and swords after the L3s gave us so much trouble!


Anyway, good luck Nad! Even if we lose, this was a fun game and a pleasure to play with you all!

-Kylearan

Okay cool, sounds like a fun and epic turn ahead. Will play in a couple of days or so, need to get some free time together to concentrate on this turn.

Update (of sorts): well, I've not even started my turns yet :o

I've just been hit by a busy week at work. My current estimate is that I will be able to play Friday/Saturday; apologies for the delay, but as we're at the very end and nearly half the team is no longer with us, I don't think anyone's in a particular rush over this.

BTW, are we still playing unpatched? I assume so, and that's what I'll play on unless informed otherwise.

I played unpatched and was assuming we would stay that way.

No problem on taking some time to play this. You don't want to play it when rushed. Good luck :)

I have played unpatched as well. Patching would only help the AIs, since we have no FP but they probably have... ;)

-Kylearan

Hi Kyle...I can't extract the file, I'm not sure why that is. I've downloaded the save 3 times and try to open it on different PCs also, not sure what the problem is.

Please could you check?

Thanks!!

Or if any reader can extract it, could you please upload the save file only, unzipped?

I'll try to help you: Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a_200AD.SAV)

Thanks ville!!!

Whatever the problem had been, thank you for fixing it, Ville! :-)

-Kylearan

You're welcome:)

I finished at 3am this morning (!), a good 12 hours after starting, this was my longest ever Civ session and it was a lot of fun! It was sweet & sour...sweet because we have a moral victory (just about), sour because we're extremely unlikely to win.

Here's a summary:


Inherited Turn, 200AD


We have a very large empire and two main theatres of war, against Rome & Egypt. We're going to need to advance at a very rapid pace to reach our targets. Looking at the victory screen, we've fallen behind even further in the land share, we have 15%, Persia has raced to 20% so their target has been hit.

Population will be the deciding factor and it looks insurmountable...we have 30%, Persia has 41%. Since the pop requirement is relative to world pop, we have a massive task ahead. The best bet will be to take pop off the AIs, so as to increase our share while decreasing the rest of the world share. This is easier said than done, however...


With just 20 turns to go, we may as well go for it. In the last few turns we'll have to go for broke. My aim is to swallow as much land and pop as possible while irrigating everything we own (apart from the core productive cities which are already very large). The Egyptian floodplains look extremely welcoming. To maximize pop however, will require a lot of micromanagement, which is a real burden at this stage in the game when we have so many cities.


Early


Moved troops into position to try to take on Rome and Egypt. Amazingly, I had very little trouble against Rome, but a terrible time aganst Egypt. In 210AD, surrounded by Egyptian troops, I went for broke to take Alexandria... and failed miserably. From then on, we were on the backfoot against Egypt.

Meanwhile, Segusio and Antium were captured in 210AD. As if Caesar's death warrant had not already been signed, he then proceeded to declare war on Persia :crazyeye:

The land outside Alexandria became a bloodbath. Egypt started pouring forth dozens of swords and numidians. The have no high quality units, but they do have tons of these basic units, helped by the deity production factor, and they swamped us through sheer numbers. They also seemed to get some jammy combat results, and our attack force was cut to pieces. Even worse, a leader spawned on defence was killed as the Egyptian swords poured in :(. We have two major problems: lack of catapults on that front and lack of terrain to use to our advantage. I had no choice but to retreat to hold what we have and regroup.


Middle


Rome was on the verge of collapse. I took Massilla and Beneventum in 220AD, Cumae in 225AD (which now gives us our own source of silks! :goodjob: ), and Burdigala, Ravenna and Brundisium in 230AD. The only real misfortune we had against Rome was to lose a 9HP cavalry army against a 4HP L3 on open ground :mad:

Retreated away from Egypt and began to use defensive tactics gainst them, attacking from cities and retreating to minimize counters and casualties.


Late


The north African plains again ran red, though this time it was Egyptian blood. As the Egyptians approached our cities, the lack of terrain now worked to our advantage, as our cavalry cut their numidians and swords to pieces and retreated along the roads. Despite a kill ration of at least 5:1, the Egyptians still have dozens of units! (where is Cleo getting them all from?!)

I'm very tempted to sign in Persia to have Egypt fighting on 2 fronts, but don't want to commit us to a 20 turn deal and in any case, Darius will only consider a ridiculous offer.


Against Rome, the advance slowed as Caesar diverted all his L3s that were fighting the Celts back to tackle us. At one point the Romans had a stack of 27 L3s on the same tile :eek: Unfortunately, because Rome is at war with so many civs, the stack demonstrated classic puppet-strings, as it moved to and away from our cities. Caesaraugusta was captured in 245AD.



Notes for the next player:

Enjoy!

We're not gonna win but there's plenty of fun to be had. We've got tons of troops in Italy/Asia Minor, not enough in North Africa, even though I sent all freshly-produced units here in my turns. The army is quite scattered so it may take you an hour or so just to pinpoint where all the troops are.

We're up to 18% land, 33% population. Persia has 21% land, 42% population, so we are closer to Persia by 2% in both land and population. It's nowhere near enough though. The consolation is that Persia won't win by domination either and will have to settle for a points victory.

Rome is down to just 4 cities now, and I think we'll score a nice moral victory if we can take those out (you shouldn't have too much difficulty finishing them off, although, as I say, they do have a fair number of L3s wandering about).

You've got a bit of gold to spend, and an income of 500gpt. The silks deal with Persia only has a turn to run, so be sure to cancel that to gain another 56gpt.


Egypt has lots of troops and galleys floating around, so keep a close watch. It would be nice if we could take a couple of their cities but they are putting up a strong fight, stronger than I thought they would.

Anyway, it's been a great game and I've enjoyed it thoroughly. A victory would have been nice, but really, there was little we could do to stop Persia. While we had our hands full tackling Rome, Macedon collapsed against Persia, and Persia's location does seem to be the best of the 4 powers. We did our bit, and if this game were 30 turns longer, I reckon we'd win.


So go Greebley, finish it off in style!


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3a250AD.zip

Ok, I have got it and will see what I can do with it.

Preturn: Start looking over our position. One thing I notice is that our army near Egypt is probably a goner. It is next to around 15 swordsmen with 5 hp left guarded by a numidean. Hmmm... I wonder if I move the units in the town onto the army whether Egypt will just go around for the now weakly defended town. I am going to try it. If they attack we will lose some units, but I am guessing they will go for the less defended town... Lets see if they do...

We are average vs Egypt in terms of forces.

I hope that Egyptian fleet isn't full of units. That could be a problem.

I move a very few units to attempt to hit the northmost Roman town next turn.

The builds look decent for now. May do a survey next turn. End turn.

IBT: Sure enough the Egyptians go around the army square without attacking. They attack the injured HCav, but it retreats, so no losses.

I think I will also count down instead of up (turns to end)

255 AD (9):
I am worried about the Egyptian boats containing units. In conquests, the AI can actually drop off a "real" force now and then. and we don't want to lose towns in Spain so I rush a Heavy Cav there.

IBT: Roman stack shows up

260 AD (8): Take one of the Roman towns - 3 left. Can bombard another next turn.

IBT: Egypt has an incredible number of swords and Numidean's.

265 AD (7): Progress is very slow. There are so many Egyptian units.

IBT: More Egyptians.

270 AD (6): The town bombardment is making no progress. They heal due to barracks that I cannot destroy. Need more units. I like the 6 turns left message.

IBT:
Persia and Celts sign a peace treaty.
Celts and Egypt sign a peace treaty.

275 AD (5): Take out an Egyptian town mostly by avoiding their units.

IBT: Even more Egyptian units.

280 AD(4): Kill some more Roman units

IBT:Egypt and Goth decide the they can take out Persia :lol:

285 AD(3): Attempt to take out the Roman city and get terrible RNG. I lose 2 armies (had 5 and 8 hp) vs a 2 and 1 hp Legion. There is 1-2 legion still left (having 2 and 1 hp), This pretty much means I will miss taking out Rome by 1-2 cities.
In general, the battles are not going well. This is not a good time for poor luck, but that is what I am getting.

I am ignoring egyptian forces to attempt to take out a bigger city than what I would lose. Not sure if this is a good idea, but there is 30-50 units to kill so I would spend the whole game keeping them back.

I take out the western Roman town having finally cleared out the legions. Rome has 2 towns left.

I am also allowing towns to riot rather than starve.

Starting to merge in workers.

IBT: Egyptians attack the town I didn't fully defend and not only take it, they do so without loss of units.

290 AD: Well I just cannot take out that Roman city - I lose another army there losing to the second L3 with 2 hp (it started healthy). I may lose all the Fire Catapults, not that it really matters anymore. So I won't even meet our secondary goal of killing Rome. Ah well.

The egyptian gambit works, I take out Alexandria so I traded a size 6 city for a size 16
We get the Mausoleum of Mausollus

Merging the workers. I am raising Lux to 80% to make cities with Romans as happy as possible.

Oddly Persia has not made any progress vs Rome. I don't know why either

Most cities are on wealth by now...

IBT:
Macedonia and Celts make peace

295 AD:
Do I get next turn to play? I would think so. I do what I can this turn just in case.

IBT:
Nope, the previous was the last turn. I erred and didn't save the game just before.

Its too bad because I think I could have gotten a Egyptian and Celtic town (the Roman town was 2 turns away).

We didn't win. Here are some pictures of things at the end.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-300AD_EgyptNavy.JPG

Nearly caught up with Persia - mostly from merged workers and maximized growth:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-300AD_VC.JPG

The final mini-map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBC3-300AD_Map.JPG

Ah well, a brave try but not unexpected.


Thanks everyone for a great game, and maybe a rematch later in the year once all the problems and bugs have been ironed out?

It was fun to play even though we lost. I think this is one start where deity level is hard. I think the lack of the Forbidden Palace hurt us, but I think attacking Rome like we did may have not been the best strategy. If we were to play again, I am thinking going after Egypt and then Persia might work better (and try to keep Rome occupied with the Celts).

I am wondering if Firaxis might not change this scenario as I would call it "The Rise of Persia" and not "The Rise of Rome". I could see them weakening Persia (or even strengthening the Goths).

I wonder if it is worth commenting on this in the conquest bugs thread. In one sense it is interesting to have the civs at different strengths, however, I would have thought Rome to be the dominant one, and not Persia. On the other hand, it also may be an artifact of the higher difficulty level and play very differently at regent.

I have to agree that this was a fun game despite the loss! It was nice to play with you all - too bad Sulla and Todd vanished so suddenly.

I really was surprised how strong Egypt turned out to be! Good that we at least have captured Alexandria in the end after two failed attempts to take it. :)

If a rematch would happen, what would I do different?

- Build much more workers, and earlier. Vital parts of our empire were unimproved for a long time.

- Go after Egypt first, then either Persia or Rome depending on who's stronger.

- Now that it's working, rush a FP in Spain! That should help *a lot*, looking at how many half-corrupt cities we had.

- Do everything to weaken (or at least not strengthen) Persia from the beginning, now that we know how strong they are.


Anyway, thanks all for a fun game!

-Kylearan