RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

hahaha, 33 happiness? that's hilarious. I guess that's what happens when you've only got one maritime CS. Anyway, good job taking Ravenna and Rome!

I actually took the other two Roman cities, which weren't defended at all, too. Siam is at war with Egypt and Greece at the moment, which of course doesn't mean we can be sure they won't attack us, too :lol:

Our borders are fairly compact considering the situation and we now bisect the continent. We could push further into France but I didn't check if Napoleon is willing to sue for peace, which might be preferable to attack Monty for a spell. Brussels also has rifles now but I didn't want to dump money into them because we can't really use the culture well and their military contribution was questionable at best. They might prove a useful distraction for Monty, though, if we go that route. We could also stay at war with France and attack Monty. France is nothing that two artilleries plus a rifle and knight couldn't handle and we have some free artillery now that we pushed to the southern coast.

As for the happiness, this is basically the first time this happened to me. I continued to build colosseums as normal because I don't mind getting another golden age in 30 turns or so. It would have been interesting to build Chichen Itza instead of Himeji Castle in that regard but I quite like the +25% bonus, myself. Our cities grow fairly slowly, which is a bit of a concern.

Unsolicited partial lurker answer

The most obvious thing seems to be the lack of a real military challenge. In Civ IV the AI was at least proficient enough in swinging its' huge stacks around that there was a real threat of being wiped out. Here, despite making war on three fronts simulatenously, a really bad turn seems to be mean "loosing a unit"...

Yes, a direct result of the new tactical combat. The problem is that while you can buff the AI on the strategic level with cheats, players won't accept direct combat bonuses unless they are really small. This is the same effect that you can observe in the Total War series, which has separated real time battles, in that the player can take vastly inferior armies and vastly inferior positions with huge handicaps and still come out top because, on the tactical level, humans are so much better than the AI that any comparison is just doomed to fail.

A decent way to fix this would, in my opinion, be to create separate AIs for two cases: AI vs player combat and AI vs AI combat. In AI vs player combat, the AI doesn't quite need to do chess-level brute force preconjecture to calculate sensible battle outcomes but it should plan, say, three or four turns into the future with a memory of three or four turns into the past and assumptions about possible units in the fog. This is obviously too resource-hungry and not at all necessary in AI vs AI combat.

Edit: It's also a direct result of the power of mounted units, which can kill a unit and retreat to a safer position.
 
Yes, a direct result of the new tactical combat. The problem is that while you can buff the AI on the strategic level with cheats, players won't accept direct combat bonuses unless they are really small. This is the same effect that you can observe in the Total War series, which has separated real time battles, in that the player can take vastly inferior armies and vastly inferior positions with huge handicaps and still come out top because, on the tactical level, humans are so much better than the AI that any comparison is just doomed to fail.

lurker's comment:
In some ways I think the combat AI tries to be too clever, with trying to set up attack positions and defend or retreat wounded units. A simple zerg strategy -- pick one target, throw everything at it, stick with it until successful or losses exceed X% -- would probably be better than what we have now. That should be easy to code and would take advantage of the high-level AI's production bonuses.
 
t166: Pay Siam and Egypt 50 gold each for their open borders and send out some obsolete units to scout (Monty wants 2 resources for OB and I actually don't have enough units to scout all directions at the same time.) No one is massing anything on our borders so I move most of our units over to the French front, leaving 1 artillery and a couple of other units facing Siam. If they declare on us the plan is just to sacrifice a couple of cities for time.

t167: We only have two artillery around Troyes and France is still streaming musketeers in 2-3 at a time, pick them off conservatively while waiting for more of our forces to arrive in this area. Our obsolete crossbow helps out by helping to shoot at an obsolete French pike (the AI has upgraded or lost all its other outdated troops by now), but I'm just going to sacrifice it on purpose because it has useless promotions, there's no point upgrading and it's just getting in the way of better units.

economy: Researching military science. I bought a coast fish tile for 60g in one of our small cities in the north because it's just too silly having cities on the polar ice cap and ignoring fish. I like this Himeji castle build from us, might as well deny it to the AI.

t168: France takes the crossbow bait and tries to advance towards the river/hill line separating French from ex-Roman lands with a line of 5 muskets, but artillery can take them down to red health easily and we now have 4 of them concentrated on this front. Defeat of these troops allows me to push forces across the bridge NE of Troyes. These auto-healing rifles are nice.

Great scientist spawns in Ayshe, we don't get any new military tech until steam power so might as well save him for then.

computer turn: Fighting is now going on at the Siam/Greece border, hoplites are able to hold against elephants for now. Greece is way behind in the tech race though and has lost at least one city on the east coast to a random city-state with Rifles.

t169: Artillery bombard Troyes and we take it. I annexed it by mistake and decide to rectify this by razing the city, replacement settler is on the way. France is rush buying cannons to defend the Tours area, and a small force of ours is engaging them

computer turn: Napoleon sees the writing on the wall



I refuse, I want to permanently cripple him as a military power and grab the capital to save us the trouble of coming back later. On the subject of capitals, if we push east from Akhetaten Siam's capital is the next city on from Muang Salaung. The Siamese AI is increasingly heavily fortifying that border city, it's now up to 55 strength.

t170: and here's the situation on the French front



Cannons are still being rushed in Tours and I take some damage killing them, the main difficulty will be pushing past the natural defence line that guards the French heartland. Fortunately the 3 range of artillery really helps here. A bit of scouting west reveals that Paris, Orleans and Lyon are just concealed by the fog and a bunch of muskets and cannons are clustered around Paris. Trying to push everything through the central gap will result in casualties.

Also found Siam's maritime CS ally of Rio, so I decide to spend our money on poaching it. 1000 gold takes us to +75 relations or so starting from hostile, but doesn't buy the alliance, I'll send them another 1000 in three turns

computer turn: Monty signs peace with Napoleon

t171: 1 artillery with a small force moves into position to clean up Tours while I move the other 3 artillery up tight to the mountain line for maximum range against hostile units. A rifle can move 1 square in and out of French territory to act as spotter.

Diplomacy: Trade Monty 2 resources for 210 gold + war with Siam to keep him distracted (he can't actually get to Siam though).

t172: French defensive strategy has switched to buying cannons in all threatened cities every turn and trying to bombard our troops with them. They're also trying to outflank us from the north. Not an unreasonable play, but they're badly outgunned being 1 tech level behind.

I have a second lot of 1000 gold now, so I bribe Rio again, successfully poaching it from Siam and taking us back to 2 maritime CS. We'll note at this point that Siam has a ton of gold and could just buy it back, but honestly if the AI did this you'd never be able to keep hold of any city-states at deity because the computer has such silly amounts of gold from its bonuses.

t173: More thinning out of the enemy muskets with artillery fire and trying to pick off cannons safely. Our rifles to the north get pretty damaged from cannon and city-defence fire at Orleans. All French cities are still spamming out cannons. I upgrade one of our knights to a cavalry.

t174: Tours which had been softened up by the 1 artillery bombardment is taken out by our sipahi. At this point I've managed to fully scout the AI lands to the east. Egypt has, surprisingly, managed to survive the earlier wars with Siam without losing cities, and their capital is about 4 cities east of our Roman holdings (more good news). Siam is starting to upgrade its elephants to cavalry, I expect Greece to start losing ground soon although their hoplites have been doing a heroic job.

t175: pushed across the main French defence line for the first time as they're very low on troops



This seemed like a pretty bad place to finish the turnset, since I'd gotten used to AI movements by now and our units look rather awkward in this screenshot, so I decided to play a couple more turns so I could hand over with the tactical situation resolved.

computer turn: our rifle takes fire from Paris and its cannon but survives, on my turn I'll heal and move to the forest hill by Orleans. France builds more cannons and moves forward with them aggressively

Also, Brussels was captured by Monty, which confused me until I realised that Siam had poached the city-state earlier, which put them at war with the Aztecs when I bribed them to declare on Siam a few turns back.

t176: I lost a somewhat damaged sipahi leaving it 2NE of Lyon after killing a cannon, thinking it was safe when a musket comes out of the fog on the French road network and kills it. Oops, that was a bit careless. Artillery is in position but I mostly have to use shots on killing muskets for this turn. A Siam lancer crossed our lands to try and scout Aztecs, one it steps over the Aztec border it gets killed immediately.

t177: Bombard cities (gave 2 artillery the siege promotion.) Position troops for the city assault next turn. I use a couple of captured French workers as distraction for the cannons.

t178:



Somehow it works out so that I take all 3 cities in the same turn, overall plenty of wounded units from city/cannon fire but no more deaths. Fill in a couple of gaps with our settlers, not that we really need any more cities, but people complained that our citizens were too happy so I had to get them back to their accustomed miserable status. This would be a suitable place to hand over, so I do.


Napoleon will give all his gold (6700!), 82gpt and a city for peace if we want it. How he has this much gold when he's been rush buying cannons is unclear... Anyway, up to Sulla whether to accept the deal now or clear the area south of Lyon first. We're clear #1 in food/production/GNP now, and don't really need more cities.
 

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Noooo the sipahi! How could you let it die!?

I'm just kidding. Nicely done. It's kind of shocking how fast napoleon folded. Even with basically unlimited troops (rush buying cannons every turn) he still couldn't do anything against the artillery/rifle/mounted combination.

I kind of want to see Sullla take peace with Napoleon and go kill Monty. I'm still annoyed that he stole Helsinki away from us.

Anyway, is it to soon for us to start talking about what kind of victory we want to get?
 
Apparently losing a single unit constitutes sloppy play when conquering AI civs on Deity. :lol: But seriously, well done and well played.

I'm going to take peace with France for all their gold and indeed go smash the Aztecs. Then we can wheel to the east and take the last three capitals. Conquest is the way to go here - let's finish off this game ASAP.
 
Well artillery/rifle should beat cannon/musket easily to be fair. The extra range on artillery is a very big deal and renders muskets mostly useless. However, I must say that the AI generally uses its siege weapons very poorly, it never uses the 1 square road move / setup / shoot technique that we do. The AI cannon will either stay fortified in the city, or move 2 on the first turn if nothing is in range intending to setup/shoot the next turn (but usually gets killed before it can do anything because it's sitting 2 away from its intended target.)

For victory we might as well go for domination at this point, we're about halfway there anyway and no doubt the AIs will just force us to fight even if we go for a spaceship or something.
 
Lurker...

Apparently losing a single unit constitutes sloppy play when conquering AI civs on Deity. :lol: But seriously, well done and well played.

I eagerly await the first no-loss Deity domination game...

How do you calculate a K/D ratio when you have to divide by zero?
 
Lurker comment:
Discount tours! Lol, great name for a city, I suppose you guys have so many you need to be creative. This game has been a great read!
 
Lurker comment:

I found this a couple days ago and have read through everything. Don't have Civ V, which sounds like it's for the best. Doesn't mean I don't find your SG fascinating. Keep up the fantastic work!
 
Lurking:
Have you guys got the attack twice promotion on any artillery yet? I got that and the + 1 range on one in my current deity game. That one artillery with help of a infantry can hold the entirety of one of my lines. So much awesomeness.
 
No none of them have that promotion (logistics) yet. The closest is one with barrage 3 and 80XP. I do agree with you that that promotion is great though- maybe a little too good. In the right position, an artillery with logistics is almost invincible.
 
Turn 0 (1180AD): As always when starting up one of these succession games, I take some time to look around. A lot has changed since I last ran a turnset, and we've broken out of our stalemate lines to go rampaging through France. I'll start by signing peace with Napoleon:

RB3-35s.jpg


Why yes, that is 9000 gold that France is willing to grant us for peace, and he'll throw in the city of Marseilles in the deal too. I take it. Marseillies is located to the southwest of Paris, along with a couple of other French cities. We should probably raze and replace this city, but at this point, does it really matter? I'll just puppet it and leave it alone. (Possible bug: I used the "View City" feature after puppeting, and just looking at the city increased unhappiness by 5. Did the game interpret that as annexing the city? Have to test this again to see.) France has exactly 4 cities left, spread out all over the map, and is completely finished as a great power.

I now have 8600 gold and +300gpt, so I may as well put that to good use. There are still a couple of knights that were left unupgraded, so I turn them into cavalry. Kudos to our previous players for revealing so much of the map via Open Borders in Egypt/Siam territory. Start healing with our victorious units from the French campaign. No one is allied with cultural Vienna, so 1000 gold gets us another 20 culture/turn plus city visibility and another ally in any future war. For some reason, they only go to "Friend" status despite us having 125 influence. Ummm... never seen this before. Is that a bug? Vienna is not allied with anyone else. What's going on here (?) If this is an intended design feature, I've never seen it explained or documented anywhere.

Our military consists of 5 artillery, 2 cavs + 1 sipahi, and 7 rifles, most of them upgraded from janissaries. Given our ridiculous income, I'm going to purchase a couple more artillery in Edirne (our barracks + armory city) just because they are our best unit at the moment. I'll leave us with 3000 gold in the bank, which should be more than enough...

Some minor micromanagement of cities, and we should be good to go. For some weird reason, the game seems to take a different path through our cities every time I get a new save. Weird. Anyway, I want more settlers to continue our city spam!

Turn 1 (1190AD): Watch Greece somehow continuing to fight off more Siam units with hoplites. Impressive to see, although I don't think Greece will hold out for too much longer. We get a gazillion "We Love the King Day" messages as a result of France's luxuries. Purchase a colosseum in one of our innumberable little cities to deal with our -2 unhappiness. (We can purchase a colosseum every other turn with our base income alone now.) Also get a billion "trade route connected" messages, good to know I guess. Mostly just healing units and moving them into positions north near the Aztecs.

RB3-36s.jpg


Turn 2 (1200AD): Watch two hoplites combined to take down a Siamese psycophant. It's just like the movie 300! We complete Himeji Castle; I go ahead and queue up Chichen Itza next. No clue if we'll actually get it, but may as well make the attempt. We discover Navigation and start Scientific Theory (1430 beakers), which is a pretty good 4 turn fit for us at our current rate of 424 beakers/turn. Siamese units are flooding into our territory, due to that ridiculous Open Borders bug. It's pretty absurd that the AI can just walk through our territory, and there's literally nothing we can do about it, short of declaring war and physically killing them. French and Aztec units continue to do some fighting near our borders; Montezmua still ranks #1 in power, a little above us.

Turn 3 (1210AD): Lhasa apparently requested that we build Himeji Castle, as we gain more free influence with them. That's.... random. Feels to me like the whole city state "quest" thing could have used a little more thought and planning.

Turn 4 (1220AD): Siam completes Chichen Itza; oh well, not much production lost. I set our capital to work on Big Ben, although there's a good chance we won't land that one either. Not a big deal either way. In a shining example of Civ5 diplomacy, Napoleon (the guy we just fought a gigantic war against) pops up and asks us to join him in war against Alexander, who is located on the other side of the world, with no cities within a thousand miles. France and Greece are the two minnows of this continent, and France immediately wants to go attack Greece mere turns after signing a crippling peace treaty. Uh huh. Brilliant, just brilliant. :smoke: Am planning to declare war on Aztecs next turn, now that our units are reassigned.

Turn 5 (1230AD): We get another Great Scientist, giving us two on hand. Let's save them for the moment; infantry is coming soon anyway, and once we have a third Great Scientist (in 19 turns) we can pop all three to slingshot Electricity + Telegraph + Electronics. We'll jump very quickly from infantry to mechs, and upgraded 50 strength mechs with 4 movement should crush any remaining resistance.

RB3-37s.jpg


Go ahead and declare war on Montezuma, who is already at war with Siam. I would feel bad about this, if Montezuma wasn't "Hostile" against us, for about the eighteenth time this game. Kill a rifle and spear, while shifting units for their upcoming attack next turn. Have to kill a lot of units before we can make any forward advance.

Incidentally, I have spent ages and ages already searching for my Great Generals, which can be tough to spot on the map. Clicking on the unit's name on the F3 unit list does NOT zoom to the unit, which is unbelievably frustrating. So I know that I have 3 Great Generals, but finding them is entirely up to me. Not much fun... this really would be a nice fix, especially on large/busy maps.

Turn 6 (1240AD): Scientific Theory discovered, Archaeology next (3t research with minimal wastage). We have plenty of coal, although it will have to be mined first. The Aztecs moved a lot of units around, but didn't attack us anywhere. Mostly pointless shuffling of units. This took the cake:

RB3-38s.jpg


This rifle could have attacked our city; it was two tiles west of Diyarbakir last turn. But instead of attacking the city, it chose to embark itself into the water, right next to the city itself. Simply unbelievable... :smoke: By the way, five different cities can bombard enemy units, another reason why spamming cities so close to one another is an effective tactic. Kill lots of enemy units. Units from Siam and France are gunking up the path forward in some places; have to be careful that Siam doesn't capture any of these cities!

RB3-39s.jpg


Turn 7 (1250AD): Lots of Siam vs Aztecs combat on the interturn; Siam seems to be winning most of the fights, although their units will likely get wiped out on Monty's counterattack, now that they've moved deep into Aztec territory like a bunch of idiots. Aztecs still embarking units in an insane tactical display along our north coast. Kill more enemy units. The actual military push is going to go through Brussels first and then roll up the enemy flank from the south. Aztecs have also dropped out of the #1 position in Power ranking, which we now occupy.

Turn 8 (1260AD): Now that the Siamese units can't capture the city, I use my artillery to bombard the defenses of Brussels. Two shots leaves it completely undefended. Yeah, artillery are really unstoppable in this game. Rifles and cavs move into position to capture it next turn (finally crossing the river now that the defending units are all gone).

Turn 9 (1270AD): Archaelogy discovered, Steam Power next due in 4t with minimal overflow. Somehow, all of the Siamese rifles managed to turn themselves into infantry between turns. That wouldn't be so remarkable if it hadn't happened outside Siam's cultural borders! :eek: Huh?! Pretty sure you have to be within your own borders to upgrade units. Does that rule not apply to the AI now? Well, we take Brussels back from Monty:

RB3-40s.jpg


I choose to liberate the city, to get the free culture. More useful than puppeting, that's for sure. Now check out that Siamese infantry. You can see it's in the territory of Brussels. How in the world did this unit upgrade between turns?! Makes absolutely no sense. Anyway, those assorted units around Brussels might look dangerous, but they really aren't. The ones north of the river are blocked from attacking anyway, and our artillery blasts away the musket and redlines the rifle. The only danger is if Brussels is taken on the Aztec turn, which might possibly happen, and even that would only cost us a single unit. I'll have a road across the river next turn and can start moving up the artillery further - yay for combat workers! Would be even more fun if I could just group them together, to place a road instantly in one turn...

Turn 10 (1280AD): Montezuma continues to shuffle around his units without really attacking or doing anything. In response, I continue to massacre his units in large numbers. Point artillery, fire, lots of dead stuff. Siam actually signed peace with the Aztecs on the interturn, although the game actually didn't display this message. Instead, it displayed all of Siam's city state allies signing peace with Montezuma. That notification system seems a bit clunky at the moment... No mention of a major shift in global politics, but it seems to feel that it's incredibly important to tell me that Lhasa wants us to produce a Great Merchant. Thanks. :rolleyes:

One other weird thing: I can't be 100% sure of this, but I think one of our rifles disappeared when we liberated Brussels. I couldn't find the actual rifle that captured the city anywhere afterwards. Maybe it was shifted to a different tile or something (we have a lot of rifles in the area), but I never saw one of our units inside the city itself, where one should have been after capture. Is this yet another bug (?)

RB3-41s.jpg


Turn 11 (1290AD): Kill more Aztec units. Monty is starting to look gassed, which isn't surprising given the massive number of units that he's lost. Artillery slowly pushing forward on every front. Calix will be the next city to fall, will already be in firing range next turn.

Turn 12 (1300AD): Do the same thing as every other turn, kill more Aztec units. It's a bit amazing just how many units the AI can churn out on Deity, and how utterly useless they prove to be. I'd like to hand off the turn here, but I'm pretty sure I can take Calix next turn, and it will involve more precise unit moves than I'm willing to describe. So I'm going to take just the first part of one more turn to try and get that city.

Turn 13 (1310AD): Well that worked just as well as expected:

RB3-42s.jpg


Got the city and cleaned up all of the units surrounding it too, without losses. I had to fire seven different artilley pieces together (several of them moving along roads just built by workers before firing) and move our cav unit around a zone of control to get the city. Apologies for going over an extra turn, but I didn't want to pass off the save in that state. Now we have a turn or two of repositioning before the next attack, which should give luddite a chance to see where everything is again.
 
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RB3-44s.jpg


We finished Steam Power and I started us on Replaceable Parts for infantry (4t). Should be able to slingshot Electronics (mechs) with three Great Scientists very soon. We have another solicy policy to adopt, and I highly recommend Free Thought (+1 science per trading post) since we are working about a billion of the things. This will take us up to 700 beakers/turn and 3 turn Replaceable Parts if we adopt it. I pass off the turnset with 5000 gold in the bank, us making 450 gold/turn, and about to cross the 600 beaker threshold. Also, we have not yet hit Turn 200. Anyone still questioning the effectiveness of a dedicated ICS build in Civ5? :crazyeye:

Units Killed
4 cannons
8 rifles
1 lancer
2 knights
1 longswordsman
14 muskets
4 pikemen
1 horseman
1 swordsman
1 spearman
37 units total

Units Lost
zero (unless there was a bugged one at Brussels)

It was not a good turnset for the AI. :hammer:

Roster
Sullla
pi-r8 [luddite] <<< UP NOW
alpaca <<< on deck
uberfish

The game is clearly won, just some more elbow grease to put in for the actual victory. :cool:
 

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Lurkers Comment:

Maybe you had a hostile stance with the city state and the 1000 needed some of it to get to 0 and that is why it did not get to ally status?

Where were the units that upgraded, where they in your borders? I have not seen it, but maybe OB would allow them to upgrade under an OB? Does not seem right, that should require being an ally and OB at least.

Given the state of the game, probably both are bugs.
 
Lurkers Comment:

Maybe you had a hostile stance with the city state and the 1000 needed some of it to get to 0 and that is why it did not get to ally status?

Where were the units that upgraded, where they in your borders? I have not seen it, but maybe OB would allow them to upgrade under an OB? Does not seem right, that should require being an ally and OB at least.

Given the state of the game, probably both are bugs.

Lurker:

im pretty sure its part of the neverending OB bug. being in someone elses territory with OB consitutes being in "friendly" territory and allows you to upgrade i believe

im pretty sure you can in a friendly/ally city state as well
 
Turn 0 (1180AD):

Some minor micromanagement of cities, and we should be good to go. For some weird reason, the game seems to take a different path through our cities every time I get a new save. Weird. Anyway, I want more settlers to continue our city spam!

What? City micromanagement? Why are you wasting your time with that? What do you think this is, some sort of empire-building game? Anyway I think the reason the game takes a different path through cities is because they keep getting renamed.

The unit upgrading must be a bug/AI exploit. For one thing, it looks like brussels was still an Aztek city when the infantry upgraded. Also You can upgrade units in the territory of a friendly city state, but not in another civ's territory even if you have open borders with them. Maybe a defense pact would let you do that, but I've never been able to sign one of those. And for the lost riflemen- whenever you liberate a city state, the unit pops out to a random location, because you can't ever have units inside an allied city. It can be quite annoying when it pops out on the other side, surrounded by hostile units.

I totally understand about playing the extra turns by the way. I wouldn't have wanted to stop in that position either. You didn't need to worry though- I'm quite sure I would have figured out how to take that city in one turn. The warfare just isn't that complicated in this game, as long as you spend time planning everything first. The only hard part is predicting the possible counterattacks by the AI.

I guess I'll just keep knocking heads. I was sort of hoping we might finish the game in under 200 turns but that's not going to be possible. Still going to be a very fast victory, though. I'm going to go ahead and play now since I've got free time, and I don't think we really need to discuss much at this point, right?

edit- for the great generals thing, did you try double clicking on them? that works for me.

edit 2- It says vienna is currently allied with Siam. Maybe you bribed them the same turn Siam did, I don't know.
 
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