NC XXXV: Julius Caesar

Problem is I have easily enough land available as it is could probably hunker down for the win without any more war, but my gut says just wipe everyone out now while I have the advantage.

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I'd say take out Shaka for sure. Maybe send out a Reconnoiter In Force (a suitable SoD) to find Mongolia while consolidating your holdings?

It's been a great game so far, first up we bagged the mids



Then we killed Genghis



and now working at settling all of the vast continent that now belongs to us. The idea is to settle the entire continent before astronomy to make sure we dont have any squatters on our continent.
Meanwhile i also want to get a caravel out asap to meet our potential tech trading partners.
Economy is healthy even though our cities are fairly spread out, now we need to work on rapid settlement of the continent without crashing the economy.
Happy cap is a bit of a factor and we need to keep finding ways to increase hapiness.

And heres the state of our empire now ...

dalamb said:

I'd say take out Shaka for sure. Maybe send out a Reconnoiter In Force (a suitable SoD) to find Mongolia while consolidating your holdings?

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Yup, that's pretty much the route I took in the end.

Interesting. we seem to be at about the same stage, same difficulty/speed, same number of opponents beat, but you seem to be in alot better shape than me in your game.

The pyramids are still up for grabs (@505ad) in my game so I might have to have a stab at them.

Tech Path - Alphabet > Currency > CoL > Meditation > Priesthood > Monarchy > Calender

Pretty soon after taking out Joao I healed up my troops built a couple more then on turn 133 declare on Shaka with about 13 Praets. Tore through his cities pretty quickly but again he had one city I couldn't find so sued for peace. I kept a few more cities this time.

Shaka's old empire...




After finishing off Shaka decided to push on and take Genghis staright away as I had decent sized stack of well promoted troops including a couple of warlord units.




Genghis took a bit longer to take down but the result was inevitable and pretty soon I had the continent to myself.



Alphabet & Currency really helped me out this game, the only way I could keep going is by building wealth and research and I don't really have a economy as such but that will all change soon. I've luckily founded confu with CoL as no other religion has been founded on this continent and I have a Great Prophet due in 4 turns for shrine.

My Empire...




and the rather poor state of my econmy...




Looking forward I have 2 plans...

a) Settle the whole continent asap, put cottages everywhere and go for space.
b) forget settling the whole continent and beeline Astro for a possible conquest win.

I decide to settle on the stone on recommendation of other players in this thread. Tech path is BW, Mystiscism, IW. Somewhere in the middle of the IW research I notice I don't have stone access in my capital! I head over to the newbie questions thread and find out I actually still have to research masonry. Woops!

Anyway, I still manage to get stonehenge(hooray) and during scouting around shaka's starting position I get two exp huts for my warrior which leads to these promotions:

Super healer yeey
Question: Does this work everywhere or only in jungle/forest tiles? I'm pretty sure it works everywhere but I might aswell ask now I'm here .

IW is researched and we continue with Wheel, AG, Sailing, Pottery, Writing, Alphabet. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

I settle Antium and chop half of Italy to get me to 10 Praetorians. My attack on Joao went quite smoothly: lost about 3 units but fortunately he lost a lot more :>. After getting two slave riots I actually get a nice event on taking lisbon!


It's 975BC now and Joao has one crap city left somewhere(yeah I'm slow ). My world looks like this atm:


I'm not entirely sure about the position of my second city:

I wanted some decent production as my second city. I actually have plans to make Antium my main production city. I mainly looked to the 7 hills and the rice in the BFC, this should make for an awesome production city later on, right?

Next up is obviously the taking of Joao's last city. I'll try to take shaka out aswell with my praets. After that, I'll settle the undisputed north and west of Rome and tech myself to renaissance to conquer the rest of the world.

I'll start with three dotmaps for the northern and western expansion:



Comments are appreciated!

Now on the game itself. My praetorians went off to look for the remaining portuguese. After going in the opposite direction, a border pop releaved Joao's last hideout. It was quickly dealt with and preparations were made for a war with Shaka.
My economy was a mess already(quite scary to only make profit at 20% science and 50+ turns on currency to go). So I decided to keep myself alive by plundering shaka while I fix my home cities.

I quickly razed his copper city and stationed a spy near the iron. My evil plan could not fail! Or could it?

Guess 87% was not enough .
Btw, what kind of ed up name for a city is that? uMgungundlovu? Seriously Shaka!

Our spies did not give up though! They stole the knowledge of a very sacred technology of the africans:


Currency finished on the same turn as this one:

Pfoei, no more 20% slider madness!

While Rome had an golden age of architecture...

our conquest did not falter!


With Shaka gone, I have A LOT of land to keep for myself. I could probably settle 10 cities more and I haven't even seen the Mongol cities :/. I'm not sure if I should continue my praetorian conquest on Khan. He has already researched monarchy, I really don't want to run into longbows halfway on my conquest, he's dead either way when I get my macemen/trebs.

Here's the situation at 325AD:

I have a stack of 6 Praetorians and 4 more in the queue. I was about to go after Joao and he got the "Axe Haft" event, I think. Meaning his Axes are going to get a free Shock promotion.

So what's the best course? Try to hit him hard and early before he gets too many Axes, or set my sights on Shaka? I'm inclined more to the former, because Joao isn't going to get any weaker.

Current save attached. I'm using BAT 2.0 BTW, don't know if that makes a difference.

View attachment Duckstab Caesar BC-1400.CivBeyondSwordSave

And after all the early action we settle down for a peaceful passage of play, basically involved with settling all the land available to us. We keep our economy strong and continue to expand our empire. we win the lib race and pick up Astro as our free tech. meanwhile we begin some tech brokering with our intercontinental friends. Lincoln seems to be the powerhouse over at that continent but he's not technologically advanced. He hates Justinian's guts ... , Justinian & Willem are teching pretty strongly. Justinian has a very high power rating, probably preparing to declare on Lincoln.
Meanwhile my plan is to tech Steel & Rifling and load up some cannons + rifles and go pay them all a visit starting with Justinian. I will be shooting for a conquest win which looks very likely at this point in time.
Some screenies for your vewing pleasure ....

Really all the work was done in the first two rounds, just needed to fill my continent and cottage up for the win. Despite all the warring early and struggling to get my economy going again the AI on the other continent must have been teching really slowly as I still won the lib race for printing press and picked up all of the free Great people except the great artist from music.

Founded sid's sushi giving some of my cities a much needed boost just as they were reaching the peak of their growth. Ended up with about 27 cities but never finished settling the whole continent!

Towards the end I built the UN and had good relations with Will & Lincoln, the UN resolutions popped up a turn before my spaceship was due to win and went for diplomatic victory for the hell of it and it came in.

Victory





Empire

I have a stack of 6 Praetorians and 4 more in the queue. I was about to go after Joao and he got the "Axe Haft" event, I think. Meaning his Axes are going to get a free Shock promotion. ...

Click to expand...

I didn't take the trouble to download your save file, so this doesn't look at your specific situation. By "in the queue" do you mean you have 4 cities making Praetorians? You should have no trouble sustaining a war at that rate!

You could get a better answer than the following from the Combat Explained article, but here's my naive analysis: I think the Axe Haft event doesn't make Joao's axes powerful enough to delay attacking him, and sooner rather than later after more axes is better. With "shock" they're 5*1.25 = 6.25 strength; your base swords are still 8. With CR I against a city, which I imagine is what you have, they're 8*1.2 = 9.6. IIRC combat in Civ IV swings very heavily based on small differences in relative strength, so the difference, while noticeable, likely won't derail your attack.

Also, I'm a pretty timid and inexperienced warmonger, but I'm pretty sure 6 Praetorians is plenty to take and defend the first city, and not likely to lose many. If you've got a 2:1 ratio in numbers in the first attack (I only faced 3 defenders in the first city) your attack ought to be overwhelming. You might need to wait a bit to heal; do you have a Medic I or Woods III unit to help?

In 800 BC the Pyramids were completed in Rome and the switch was soon made to Hereditary Rule. The strategy was to avoid civics changes, garrison as needed for happy cities, and fund a 60% science rate from captured cities with a notional razing rate of 50%.

There was something of a scare when the praetorians were far more than decimated destroying the Portugese hill/copper city but Joao II settled a great military instructor in the keeper city 2W of the iron where the Portugese civilization perished in 170 BC.

On the eve of the Zulu War (205 AD) the Roman Empire was still at four cities and the Zulus at eight. But the Romans had a substantial power lead, a field army of nine to the south of Zululand and another of seven to the north with reinforcements on the way. Unfair fights are finer than fair fights.

The capital, the dye city and the central east one have been kept as will be the southern one 1N of the fish as a staging area for the future Mongolian War. The northern city was razed as will be the two west coast cities and the hill city supplying horses (that one may require a couple of catapults and Monglia even more). Rome just got a GE and is taking a mini time out to secure the Great Lighthouse.

dalamb said:

I didn't take the trouble to download your save file, so this doesn't look at your specific situation. By "in the queue" do you mean you have 4 cities making Praetorians? You should have no trouble sustaining a war at that rate!

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I have 2 cities making Praetorians right now. I don't have the save handy myself right now but I should have a force of 10 chopped/whipped out in less than 10 turns.

You could get a better answer than the following from the Combat Explained article, but here's my naive analysis: I think the Axe Haft event doesn't make Joao's axes powerful enough to delay attacking him, and sooner rather than later after more axes is better. With "shock" they're 5*1.25 = 6.25 strength; your base swords are still 8.

Click to expand...

Aren't Axes +50% vs melee to begin with? I was figuring 5 * (1 + .5 + .25) for 8.75. I'd imagine they'd be fortified as well.

With CR I against a city, which I imagine is what you have, they're 8*1.2 = 9.6. IIRC combat in Civ IV swings very heavily based on small differences in relative strength, so the difference, while noticeable, likely won't derail your attack.

Click to expand...

I'm giving most of them CR I, a few have Combat I in case I meet some enemies in the field.

Also, I'm a pretty timid and inexperienced warmonger, but I'm pretty sure 6 Praetorians is plenty to take and defend the first city, and not likely to lose many. If you've got a 2:1 ratio in numbers in the first attack (I only faced 3 defenders in the first city) your attack ought to be overwhelming. You might need to wait a bit to heal; do you have a Medic I or Woods III unit to help?

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No medics yet and my original Warrior only killed enough animals/barbs to make it up to Woodsman II. I'm going to try to settle near and hook up the horses to the SW soon. That'll give me a few chariots to help deal with Joao's Axes. But I'll probably start the war before then.

Aren't Axes +50% vs melee to begin with? I was figuring 5 * (1 + .5 + .25) for 8.75. I'd imagine they'd be fortified as well.

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Oops; you're right. Still, probably a good idea to attack relatively soon. But maybe you should hope for advice from someone better at war than me.

I conquered my continent, and now plan to hunker down and

• Contact the other continent and see if it's weak enough to conquer quickly.
• Otherwise aim for a space victory.

Significant milestones:

• 1100 BC: The Zulus conquer Karakorum from the barbarians. As I later found out, this let them build more cities faster, which was part of the reason I took so long to conquer them.
• 975 BC: I finish my 7th Praetorian, so:
  
• 925 BC: I start the war with Joao.
• 900 BC: Raze Oporto; it was blocking a better location 2SW, where I eventually build Neapolis. Also kll Guimaraes, to the northeast on the horses. It also was in a suboptimal location. I'd prepositioned a few praets there so I could take both cities on the same turn and converge on Lisbon.
• 775 BC: I take Lisbon and gain a GG, who settles in Antium (my furthest NW city, near sheep and clams). Portugal fails to die; he'd settled one more city off to the east near the copper.
• 700 BC: Great Prophet from Stonehenge; I saved him to bulb Theology.
• 650 BC: I finished CoL, gaining Confucianism and switching to it as state religion. I had gone the meditation > priesthood route because it's faster.
• 410 BC: finish the Oracle and take Civil Service. Immediately switch to Bureaucracy and Caste System; depending on whether I was building something urgent in Rome or not, I ran lots of scientists there.
• 290 BC: finish Monotheism and bulb Theology; switch to Theocracy.
• 170 BC: start the war with Shaka.
• 155 BC: take uMgung-whatever
• 125 BC: GS in Rome; build an Academy.
• 110 BC: finish Currency for an economic boost; at some point I built a Forum in Rome for the 25% GPP boost.
• 10 AD: A settler finished in Lisbon after I chopped the 2 hills on which I needed to build mines. In 25 AD I settled Neapolis 2SW of the old Oporto location to get pigs, corn, and eventual dye and silk.
• 70 AD: Taking Bulwalayo generates a GG, whom I save for a super-medic -- once I get horses! In retrospect, razing Guimaraes may have been a mistake, because I could have built the medic much sooner and perhaps maintain better momentum during the war.
• 145 AD: Take Nobamba
• 160 AD: Finish Alphabet. For some reason I waited until 190 AD to extort Horseback Riding and some gold for Shaka in return for a peace treaty.
• 340 AD: Finish the Pyramids in Rome and switch to Representation.
• 370 AD: Resume the war.
• 385 AD: Take kwaDukuza. Shortly thereafter (415 AD) I'm told:
  
• 445 AD: Found Ravenna SW beside the marble and corn.
• 490 AD: Bulb Philosophy (and found Taoism) with a fresh GS from Rome.
• 550 AD: Capture Karakorum. Extort Monarchy from Shaka for a peace treaty.
• 715 AD: re-declare on Shaka, taking his last city (Nongoma) in 730 AD.

Here's my current world map:

Lots of territory to expand into; I have 2 settlers saved up. I'll take that barbarian city to the NE soon, since it has gems and spices, which I currently lack.

I'm currently tech'ing towards Optics for caravels and overseas contact. Machinery will obsolete my Praetorians, which wouldn't normally matter, but at the moment I get a free City Raider I promotion for them. Should I hold off Machinery and go for something else, e.g. the Liberalism chain? Construction/Engineering? Feudalism? (for even better Praetorians? In Antium, barracks+instructor+feud+theo = 9 XP, 1 away from the next promotion).

Once I'm sure I'm done with soldiers for a while, I might want to shift out of Theology in favour of Organized Religion or Pacifism; the latter might be expensive with such a big army! At least until I recover from overextending myself with all this conquest. I also need to figure where to put the Forbidden Palance; Karakorum seems a reasonable bet once I get its mines online. I might also want to switch out of Caste for Slavery for a bit, to whip infrastruture in the recent conquests. Advice?

At some point I should use the 2 setters. I figure I should wait until the Praetorians finish exploring the unknown territory, but of the places I can see, here are two possibilities:

• Red, which gets bananas.
  
• Cyan, Clams/Pigs/Iron, all of which I have.
  

I'm currently figuring Rome for a science city and Karakorum for a GP farm; does this seem reasonable? I held off on building the NE in Rome, so it's still available for Karakorum.