Many Leaders Game 5 - One City Challenge

Peter the end of days....

And you'll have to read all this spam to find out when exactly that was. Mwuuhahaha! :)

Spoiler :

Full report
Spoiler :

Pre flight check - been a little while since I looked at this game, fortunately not too much to familiarise myself with.

I take Oz's comment on board - why stop growing and leave undeveloped tiles. The reason was that I had hit my goal of 1 turn unit production, was growing unhealthy and had only 1 tech I really *needed*.

Decided that was boring, so stuck down a few belated cottages and sacked some specialists to grow them. Think this was worthwhile - if nothing else, then at least some insurance if things had gone wrong.

My science rate is nowhere near as impressive as some players, but think my AIs are more war gimped. None are particularly near good military units at this point. 15 turns for me to get Infantry online, which will rock.

Press enter.

IBT Monty makes a very stupid attack on some of my units (that destroyed one of his stacks last turn). Several catapults over a river at them. Followed by a lot of knights, then a lot more catapults after that... all with the river penalty. Costs me 2 cossacks, but kill a good dozen of his units. Pull that stack back for reinforcement and healing.

Make a GG rifleman medic for my monty stack.

1720AD - Have a minor disaster attacking Eridu and lose a bunch of troops at good odds. Ah well, that's the way it goes sometimes. That stack is getting close to blunted though. Need to be careful with it.

Next few turns, skirmish with Monty, killing many of his knights and pikemen. Heal my stack near Eridu and start advancing towards Bad-Tibira.



1740AD - stack closes on Olmec. It will pay soon!

1745AD - troops slam into Olmec, destroying half the defenders. Man I love cossacks.

1750AD - Olmec falls. Start to soften up

1755AD - in an unfortunate developement it seems Gilgamesh has Grenadiers - this will make things more painful! Assault Bad-Tibira, minimal losses and kick some of his newly upgraded grenadiers round the block. The final kill is made by my GG horse archer (a .6 strength longbow at >99% odds). Another city down.

1760AD - Umma is refounded on the site of Bad Tibira - lose a cossack, but level it.

1775AD - Tlaxcala is blown to bits. Assembly line completes - production switches to Infantry. West stack is close by, so will be pulled back for upgrade. East stack is too far in for that sort of thing.

1790AD - a moderately unpronouncable former indian city is levelled - costing a cossack and a rifle. My Western Aztec stack is upgraded to infantry.

1800AD - Thracian falls to my stack. Take a few losses, but reinforcing infantry is on the way.



I capitulate Gilgamesh to my will. Demand his fish, corn and clam resources. Force open borders and prepare to plow into Vikings with my new one city ally. He also throws in Military Science and some old techs.

1804AD - Sci Method is in. Tzintzunzen(??) is destroyed - was founded on the site of Olmec. We'll make some progress soon! :)

1808AD - nasty little git poisons moscows water. Ow! Get this event:



Opt to pay for an extra 50% chance at the research. Not following that route at the moment, but have loads of cash and nothing to spend it on. :)

1810AD - destroy Texcoco - although do lose a cossack. Infantry are making a nasty mess out of Montys muskets and longbows. :o

1812AD - a great general is born while destroying a maurauding Aztec stack.

1814AD - leonardis is turned into a 3rd GG medic - going to put together a 2nd Aztec bashing stack. A barbarian city is destroyed as it was blocking my supply lines to the east.

1816AD - destroy Bombay (viking) at the cost of a cossack - 3 infantry arrive on this front. A quick sitrep:

seems OK. Clearing both sides fairly well. Gilgamesh is mine (for now). West armies are mostly infantry. Raggy and Monty are researching Printing press - so still a while to go until they have rifles.

1822AD - Teotihucan falls - taken 3 rounds of pounding the place and cost me a couple of infantry. Had to chew through a lot of old units to get there.

1826AD - Biology is in - building national park. Start on Optics. Roskilde is levelled by the eastern stack.

1830AD - Optics discovered. Start astronomy. Launch a massive assault on Tenochtitlan - lose a couple of infantry and a couple of cossacks, but kill a good 20 Aztecs.

1832AD - get a great scientist and partially bulb astronomy. Smash Tenochtitlan to bits. Slight reinforcement, but nothing too heavy. Destroy 2 settler pairs hiding behind it.

1834AD - burn Bikra to the ground. National park completes.

1836AD - finish astronomy.

1838AD - finish an observatory.

1842AD - get a theatre event:



Take the cash option as I've given up on the iron deposit - decided ages ago the investment needed was too big for it.

1844AD - destroy Tonsberg, which the kindly summerians have been softening up for me for a few turns. Tlaetlolco gets leveled.

1850AD - Summerians caputre Jelling - I was a little too slow on that one. Destroy Xochicalco. The end is nigh! Just hoping the summerians stay vassalised. Will be a pain to have to kill them again - I'm moving a little insurance stack up on eastern flank - just in case.

1852AD - Uppsala is blitzkrieged by Cossacks - only a couple of longbows and catapults defending. Monty is gonna be dead soon!

1854AD - Physics discovered. GS is Settled, for want of anything better to do with them.

1862AD - Bjorgvin blown up - seeing the last of the vikings... followed immediately by Haithabu - ending the Aztecs as well.

1864AD - It's a conquest win! :) And my lowest normalised score on the leaderboard. :)






Moscow at the end:


Power graph:



Conquest in pictures:
Spoiler :






Final Thoughts:
Spoiler :

Hehe - same turn finish as Oz - that pleases me greatly! :)

Never tried OCC conquest before and it was a lot of fun. Nice fast game compared to some others...

I really learned the value of the march promotion. Normally the core of rifle/infantry stacks would be promoted CR melee units. This was not an option in this game, so I went march instead. With the tech gap and GG medic this tatic was scary. When I'd hit a critical mass of infantry in a stack, could just plow through cities without pausing.

Cossacks rock thoroughly - that +50% vs mounted was way more useful than I'd anticipated. Those guys just murdered the hordes of knights, jumbos and curasiers that the AI loves. Not used it in BTS and it's found a little dark cold bit in my heart to call home.

Dumped siege gear mostly - trebs were too weak, and I had no iron for cannons. Would have got Artillery if the game had continued, but they wern't needed.

The DoWs worked well for me - had no problems being at war with everyone and it slowed their economies while leaving mine basically untouched.

2 tiers of tech edge was the big killer - infantry against muskets/grenadiers is only going to end 1 way...

Still, felt close right to the end, kept wondering if Gilgamesh was going to un-capitualte - but he didn't.

No metals certainly made this interesting. Think the big change for me would have been railroads - would have sped the conquest up greatly I think.

Anyway, that was fun! Thanks!


 
Here goes, Round 6. Not quite 50 turns though ...

Spoiler :

Episode 6: Elizabeth of England, Empress of the Earth

Last time, on the Epics of Elizabeth of England, Monty declared suddenly on the elegant queen. It was unexpected, since he is still having war with Ragnar (albeit winning, but not much).

It caught the queen by surprise, but not unprepared :hammer: However, let's see how the queen is doing at the this point in history:


Not too shabbily. Heading towards assembly line, and with a engineer idling. You do know what that means, don't you?


Sweet. That means the next great general and the free one from fascism can be used to create morale-boosted city-raiding super-infantries. That's why I have been keeping the warriors for like 5800 years.


This also means another thing -- trouble for monty.

You have chosen unwisely! :hammer:


Meanwhile, Asoka bite the dust.


The map and our locations means that to eradicate the enemies of England, a two front war is the fastest way to go. One force goes counter-clockwise, finishing Gilgamesh, then Asoka. The other force go clockwise, razing Monty then squeezing on Ragnar together with the counter-clockwise force. This way also reduce the chances of enemies settling previously culled land.

Monty's DoW simply brought forward the plan by a few turns (I have been planning to do that, which explains also why I wasn't caught unprepared by the surprise Aztec's aggression).

So now that Asoka is gone, my counterclockwise forces took a few years to refresh themselves just outside Vikings borders, and then we knocked on the pirate's door:

"Dear Ragnar, do enlighten me. Do Viking has a lot of rich and unprotected coastal cities or what?"

With cavalries, artilleries and infantries, Monty didn't stand a chance.


I even had time to build the Kremlin.


Which is a mistake. Because I was hoping to complete the Taj Mahal as well. Somehow, :smoke:, I go for the Kremlin first. Which would likely mean that it would have shorten the total time for both wonder due to the golden age. Why does that matter? Well, it does, because I did not make it to Taj Mahal. I was hoping to end the game in golden age (fittingly, I must add, since i have been plagiarizing pictures from that movie).

Anyway, back to the war:


Damned. Looks like the sneaky pirate managed to elude my forces and smuggled a settler out. But the same turn, I found where he is hiding:


And the game ended, turn #297, year 1854. (Sorry, Oz & TrivialAI).


In retrospect, I could have finished earlier I suppose. But I finished this game on Christmas day, before Ozzy's report (just didn't find time to composite these images), and it never crossed my mind that it is possible to capitulate the AIs. I might end up earlier if I capitulate Monty and perhaps even Ragnar. Also, I wasn't paying attention to espionage at all, until towards end of the game I wanted to try to stage revolt in Ragnar's city to capture it easier (without the defense bonus, and I think revolt would injure the city defenders), but I didn't have enough espionage points. I should had concentrated all the espionage points on ragnar when it was clear Asoka/Monty is going to die.

Anyway, nice and fun game. Thanks to the sponsor Ozbenno. I am glad with my choice of Elizabeth, and even making use of her Financial trait to show that Industrious isn't everything in OCC. Financial + cottages has their use as well (although this map and starting location is especially suited for Lizzy, with lost of floodplains to support a few cottages).


 

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@TriviAl - Well done. MLG3 you beat me by 2 turns, MLG4 by 1 turn and MLG5 we're the same :eek: . You know I've got you in MLG6 now don't you. :lol:

@GreyFox - Nicely done. Was pretty sure you had it won at the last checkpoint as you had the artillery on the attack already, definately my mistake.

@Cabledawg - Another nice game. I also had the Great Spy from Communism (I assume yours too) with a couple turns to go. Didin't think about stoning him though :goodjob:

@Kodii - Nice sogging through rifles and infantry. Gilgamesh's rifles were bad enough in my game, hate to imagine what his infantry was like. Hope pawelo was paying attention :mischief:
 
@Cable:
Spoiler :
Congrats on the win. It wasn't easy playing with Shaka, and you used him well. I don't really recall how many GG i have, but I am certain I do not have 19, since most are GS and according to my stats, I only had 9 GS (rare that a great person ended up the #5 most built unit :lol:). However, I did play 40 turns less and miss out on the Music GA and Fusion GE.


@Kodii:
Spoiler :
Nice finish, still can't help but watch your Moscow growth-by-cattle-event with envy ;) I am totally surprised by your 3 hrs play time. I spent 9+ hrs. However, I do play while watching TV, so some time is lost there I admit ;) I also do lots of micromanaging (it's only one city anyway) to optimize on research/production time.


@Ozzy:
Spoiler :
Congrats as well. It wasn't easy to go with Wang Kon, since he doesn't have the three most popular traits for OCC (Industrious, Expansive, Philosophical). Financial does help though, you made use of it competently.

I still can't get over the fact that I had no resource pop throughout my game. The only game I remembered where there is no resource pop.


@TrivialAI
Spoiler :
Nicely done, finishing the same turn as Ozzy! A beeline for artillery might have end you the game earlier ... maybe. Sieges still rules. Especially CR# artilleries versus longbows :lol:


@Yena
Spoiler :
Nice progress. Slow, but steady. Good luck on the upcoming (final?) Monty campaign!
 
Ramesses II
Turns 251 - 300

Spoiler :
To recap the last round, Gilgamesh declared war on me. Then Montezuma declared war on Gilgamesh. I made peace with Gilgamesh and Montezuma stole Gunpowder technology from me. I quickly declared on Montezuma, even though I wasn't a 100% ready. Gilgamesh capitulated to Montezuma and then joined in the fray. I now have a two front war. Montezuma has a large stack next to my fortified outpost (in the east). He has more troops 2 more tiles away. Even though I can produce 1-turn Riflemen, this may be the end game for me. :undecide:

I press enter to start this round off. And Monty does indeed attack the troops in my fort. He led off with a cat and a couple of his trebs. For some reason, he decided to not commit all of his siege up front. I only watched about the first 20 minutes of the combat sequence. Holy mackerel, he has a lot of troops! But ... the Egyptian troops held the fort! I lost only 1 Rifleman killing off Monty's stack. But then Gilgamesh sent in a couple of Knights killing 2 more units.

And as a result of this battle, Montezuma no longer has the largest army!



I passed out promotions to my beat up and bloody troops. But there were more bad guys ready to attack again. My newest Rifleman was given a CG2 promotion and sent to defend the fort.

That battle also gave birth to my 3rd Great General. I used Joan of Arc to build a Military Academy. It wasn't needed at the moment, but it should allow 1-turn Infantry when they become available in 4 turns.



After that, things on the eastern front quieted down. I took a short pause to build a Levee and to replace one of my lost Workers. When Assembly Line came in, I turned out a quick Infantry. Montezuma learned Replaceable Parts and quickly shopped it around to the other AI. I can't imagine that he got anything for it, as he was leading the other AI in techs.

While I was building a second stack for the eastern front, Montezuma went out and learned Rifling. He quickly sold it to the other AI for cash and then did some upgrades. It'll be no big deal once my Infantry finally walk to the front lines. The real problem is this war with Montezuma is taking way too long. :sad: Those trebs are next to useless against Monty's 125% cultural defenses.

More bad luck ... The city would begin starving as I lose the pigs pasture the same turn that a farm gets pillaged.



After razing several more of Montezuma's cities, Gilgamesh is able to break the chains of bondage ...



I tried a couple of times to make peace with Gilgamesh. But he wouldn't give up any techs. Probably because I hadn't threatened any of his cities. I was pounding Montezuma to the west, and also razing the Sumerian cities that Monty captured to the east.

I kept the pressure up on Montezuma. But eventually my pathetic excuse for siege weapons were getting too low. By the time I was able to lower the cultural defenses of Tenochtitlan, Monty had managed to upgrade everything to rifles and cavs. My western stack of mostly Riflemen wasn't up to the task of taking the city. So I decided to do what I hated more than anything:



I really hated to give Monty 10 turns of peace. But I needed to bring my troops home for some Infantry upgrades. It would be quicker to have them kicked out of his borders than to march them through his cultural defenses. Unfortunately, I didn't count on them becoming trapped in his borders. :eek:



Getting Compass from Monty would also help me out, as I needed to research up to Astronomy and Physics before I could grab Artillery. As I had just completed Biology, I decided to build the National Park. I originally hadn't planned on building it, but I was sitting at -6 health and unable to build a Factory. Besides, it did wonders for Shaka! ;)

And with a little bit of micromanagement and a revolt back to Org Religion, it would only take 1 turn to build the big park. Spiritual sure is a nice trait! I also decided to build a Factory before revolting back to Theocracy.

It seems Monty has spent the turns of peace by planting down new cities. Silly boy! Helped me out, though, as my stack got kicked free. It allowed me to upgrade all those rifles to Infantry. Plus I'm was turning out a Trebuchet every turn. Unfortunately, I was still 2 dozen turns away from Artillery. If only I could lay my hands on some iron!

And then as Monty's peace treaty finally came to an end, he showed up with this demand!



:lol: You've got to be kidding me? I decided to renegotiate the deal ...



I would go on to raze a few more cities, including the last of his captured Sumerian cities. The war with Gilgamesh would slow to a crawl as I run out of siege weapons to lower the cultural defenses.

I would take a detour on the road to Artillery to research Military Tradition. I figured some Cavalry support would help out the offense. The only one that I managed to build did not survive very long. A mis-click sent it charging off by itself where Monty's Rifleman promptly laid it to rest.

As the set comes to an end, I'm about a dozen turns away from beginning Artillery production. Neither Montezuma nor Gilgamesh appear to have any teeth left for any significant assault on my city. But they have turtled up in their cities with lots and lots of rifles and cavs. Hopefully the warfare will speed up once I have some decent siege.

In the meantime, peace has been kind to Ragnar. He has pretty much caught up from his tech deficit, and has recently become the first AI to learn Steel. :eek: As the largest and most powerful AI, he may prove to be problematic for me when his turn comes.

 

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De Gaulle: who will win?

Spoiler :

I took lots of sceen dumps, but every battle field looks the same. My war was initially with musketeers and trebs, but later I found that riflemen and cavalry iis enough to crack cities, even with lots of cultural defence.

253: The last major Sumerian city (Kish) razed. The troops rest before taking the remaining smaller cities.
266: I finally get rifling, and immediately the tables are turned and Monty is on the run.
275: Ragnar and Asoka declare war on Gilgamesh when he is down to two border cities. It would be better if Ragnar lost as many troops as possible on Gilgamesh city walls, so I negotiate peace to let him concentrate on the new threat. My reinforcements now go to the Aztec front.
275-285: It is easy to take cities with riflemen backed up by veteran musketeers, and city after city fall until I raze Tenochtitlan in turn 285. The rest is just moping up.
287: The Sumerian are gone, and I declare war on Ragnar and Asoka. Ragnar has a big knight army, but it is no match for my riflemen.
294: The last Aztec city is razed.

302: The first major Viking city is razed (it takes time to march riflemen over the map)
309: Delhi is razed, I now have two armies heaving into the Viking and Indian core territories, and I'm building cavalry since it takes too much time to march new riflemen to the front.
318: Victory is mine!


Stats:


And a final look at my only city


Summary: I never got iron, and I wasted time going for steel without being able to build cannons and some other mistakes. But all in all it was a fun game, although it felt a bit tedious in the end. If it had been a private game I would have called it a win once Monty was crushed, and not bothered with Asoka and Ragnar who were terribly backwards, having wasted their resources fighting each other for about 2000 years.

Edit: Somehow I was so determined of getting rid of other map colours that I didn't even remember that asking for Ragnar's capitulation was an option :crazyeye:
 
Spoiler :

Razed a couple of cities in the first Aztec wa, but a lethal flanking frenzy from Monty as I besieged two of his core cities elimated all my siege, leaving me little option but to make peace for some change. Handily, I was 11 turns from Assembly Line, so I was ready to roll over him in the next war:





I declared at Ragnar's request (but razing a city he once owned gave him the hump with me.

Pentagon was speeded by a GE I had lying around. Level 4 units out of the box. Woo.




Monty is just about to die, but I'm more interested in Raggy's stack: it's a good time to strike at him whilst I have the chance to knock out that Cav stack. I have too much siege for city attacks so I suicide a bunch on the stack, and then kill some units off with Infantry. Decimated, the stack heads home to heal. Excellent.

Push on to the Jewish Holy city and slaughter loads of troops there. Split stacks to tack out the 'backfill' cities Raggy snuck in. Slow but inevitable progress.

With Artillery in and some cannon upgraded, I declared on Asoka, landing my troops at Bangalore. Had some lousy RNG, so I had to retreat to a hill to heal up and await reinforcements. Hostiles:




It was my turn to get smashed. Two full pages of log on the battle, so my boys certainly went down fighting! Eventually:




Finally:





First time I've seen the Conquest movie!

Thoughts: such games clearly favour turtling traits (PHI, FIN, IND) more than warmongering ones. Not only for the boost to ones own tech, but also on the AI denial level. Didn't get much use out of the coast, and suffered for missing the horses. Made some :smoke: moves through lack of warmongering experience (tech, GG use, siege) but I should be able to avoid repeating these errors as a result of this game.



Save:http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96651/Boudica_AD-1959.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Spoiler :

I tried to follow your tips and made some minor achievements.
First of all, I reduced Ragnar's empire to half the size. Still he wouldn't capitulate (checked every single turn) until he finally gave up to Monty.
The latter came with a huge infantry stack and decimated almost every single troop I've been guarding for him. Then he managed a GA, and while I was finally getting something interesting (15+ marines, 15+ artilleries), he started to wander around with fighters and paratroopers.
I definitely won't win this one (nor have a time for another failed attempt).
My small infantry stack to the north face now Ragnar's infantries fortified and CG2...
I think my error was somewhere around 1700AD. I should have pushed earlier with my rifles, defy every single AP resolution instead of getting the ****** bigger and bigger etc.

I think I will retry offline this game, starting with my 1400AD or 1700AD checkpoint. I'm positive I can make it if I avoid some critical errors I've made.

Sorry to report a MLG abandon - I think I would have been toasted a few years later anyway.
 
Still got a couple more games (hopefully) so will wait for final words.

@yena - nice win, without infantry or artillery :goodjob: I agree that the win was guaranteed in this game well before the end but I always enjoy a good AI beat up anyway.

@Swiss Pauli - you'd never won by conquest before? :eek: You said you didn't get any advantage out of the coast but do you feel you had any disadvantage out of it?

@pawelo - bummer about the retirement. I also think you may have done better with just defying the AP resolutions and warring on. Let us know if you end up doing a replay.
 
@Ozbenno - aside from my 'learn how to CIV games' I avoid military wins in solo games. As to the coast, I lost out on horses and production so it didn't turn out to be a smart move.
 
Toku - Round 5

Spoiler :
i'm back home now after xmas round the GF's so i'm going to make a determined effort to finish this one, note i said finish i didn't say win, i don't think that my overall civ skills are good enough for this type of game but i'm not giving in, so onwards.

a nice event at last



i finally realised i would never win when the ongoing war between Monty amd Gil came to an end with Gils capitulation, whatever happens now i'll be fighting a two front war at some stage.



this made me laugh:lol: :lol: :lol:



what a pay off :lol: :lol:



This actually gave me a little bit of hope, if i can quickly get 10/15 rifles and back stab Monty



very short report i'm afraid with not much detail but i'm still hanging in, i've got Iron now so cannons are possible and i'm holding out for oil
 

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My game is in 1854... Gilga is a vassal ,Monty is no more and Asoka is avassal of Ragnar ( that wants to win the game by conquest/dom ). Will finish this soon , but the simple sheer weigth of Ragnar's army is delaying it ( I've arties and am one step away from getting infantry ,but my main army is still of cavs :( )
 
Toku - The End

i went down not with a bang but with a wimper,

i never managed to get into a position where i felt comfortable attacking Monty and in the end he ran away with it vasselising both Ragnar and Gil.

my last superplan was the building of many many ICBMs but in the end Monty won by Cultural before i could cause nuclear winter.

 
Monty is actually not bad for a cultural win. Bad luck Ad Hoc.
surely that Monty in human hands is a good leader for a cultural win. But I'm still trying to swallow a Agg AI Monty winning that way :suicide: ( welll ,I'm not that suprised : In my game mad Monty tried to Ap win :eek: ... it was a close call. Then I dowed him, just to make sure we would try again :devil: )
 
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