King of the World #2: Frederick

Head east into Russia instead. It sucks to have a negative modifier with Cathy, but everything else nearby is capitals with culture bonuses and walls. I think that Moscow's far enough away that you should be able to pick up a few cities that aren't capitals, but make good chop -> commerce cities.. Head back to take out France, Spain, Rome, and Greece once you've got catapults and maybe swords.

At this point, you MUST expand. Europe is no longer a soft target, so fight where you'll win.

Elrohir said:

...go for the Praetorian and the Iron. Take that hill and hold it while you bring in some extra axes.

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I agree with this, take the iron hill, and choke rome until you bring more axes. Also, is Rome on a hill or not? That could kinda make or break it...

Rome is not on a hill. Which is the only reason I still hold out hope.

I propose plan B: Leave rome alone for now. pillage every tile rome has without hesitation. Kill anything that leaves the city onto flat land. If you can't take rome yet, cripple them for later. Get construction asap while rome is trying to recover(Ideally beelining it while using your axes to pillage all tiles, and leave them in the roman borders throughout the time you are researching to prevent rome from re-hooking up their iron. You may have been too late to take the city at this stage, but you can keep him on ice until your ready.)then come back with about 8-10 cats. I think you made a mistake in building so many axes. with only 5 at start you could have done better. Remember, your cities will continue producing re-inforcements throughout the war, so speed was of the essence. that's over now, so this is the plan that i propose.

Fortify 2 axes on the wooden hill you are standing on already, use some others to pillage... ...hid your main army just outside his visible range... ....very likely he will send out some defenders to stop you, then strike for him

OR

leave Rome alone and try out Greece...

Greece never seems strong on the world map and so attack them .. Russia is too far IMO and will drive your maintenance up + Cathy is probablly strong.

Brave Jay said:

I propose plan B: Leave rome alone for now. pillage every tile rome has without hesitation. Kill anything that leaves the city onto flat land. If you can't take rome yet, cripple them for later. Get construction asap while rome is trying to recover(Ideally beelining it while using your axes to pillage all tiles, and leave them in the roman borders throughout the time you are researching to prevent rome from re-hooking up their iron. You may have been too late to take the city at this stage, but you can keep him on ice until your ready.)then come back with about 8-10 cats. I think you made a mistake in building so many axes. with only 5 at start you could have done better. Remember, your cities will continue producing re-inforcements throughout the war, so speed was of the essence. that's over now, so this is the plan that i propose.

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That could work, but it's risky - if you declare peace in the meantime, he'll just rebuild the iron and we're back to square one. If you don't, then you have to pay maintenance costs for those units outside of your territory, and you can't use them in your war against France.

If you're going to occupy Italia for any length of time, I would suggest moving at least a portion of your army out back into your territory to save maintenance costs. Leave at least one or two Axes down there, of course, to keep Caeser from hooking up the Iron.

At this point, if you want to go on, I think you really only have two options: Either build a lot more Axemen (You'll probably need three or four more, plus replacements for however many you lose taking out the Praetorian) or you can tech to catapults while keeping Rome down and keep Caeser from hooking up his iron. Your call Neal.

Elrohir said:

That could work, but it's risky - if you declare peace in the meantime, he'll just rebuild the iron and we're back to square one. If you don't, then you have to pay maintenance costs for those units outside of your territory, and you can't use them in your war against France.

If you're going to occupy Italia for any length of time, I would suggest moving at least a portion of your army out back into your territory to save maintenance costs. Leave at least one or two Axes down there, of course, to keep Caeser from hooking up the Iron.

At this point, if you want to go on, I think you really only have two options: Either build a lot more Axemen (You'll probably need three or four more, plus replacements for however many you lose taking out the Praetorian) or you can tech to catapults while keeping Rome down and keep Caeser from hooking up his iron. Your call Neal.

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Good point. He wouldn't need his entire army of axes, to reduce unit costs, but the idea is basically the same. harass and hound him, keep the iron from getting hooked up, and leave his workers hostage inside the cities.

Brave Jay said:

Good point. He wouldn't need his entire army of axes, to reduce unit costs, but the idea is basically the same. harass and hound him, keep the iron from getting hooked up, and leave his workers hostage inside the cities.

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Yep. The key is to keep him from building more Praetorians, if he gets a couple of those fortified in Rome, we're sunk.

If Caeser keeps the level of 5 Archers the same, I'm thinking 15-16 axes should do it total. I don't know if that is doable, but it's worth a shot. If the attack fails miserably, there's always other leaders.

I think the biggest issue right now is that we've pretty much declined having an economy in favor of the rush on Rome. Rome has to fall, one way or another, or we've wasted so much in the way of time and resources that continuing would be an exercise in frustration.

Thankfully, while building up our axemen of doom, I set us on a beeline to Construction. We have Writing and Mathematics, and Construction is on the way. Hamburg is building a library, both for that all-important culture pop and so that we can run a scientist or two. Hopefully, that will make Construction happen sooner rather than later, and we can get our cats rolling.

So, does that sound like a plan? Trash Rome's infrastructure, deny her production, and try to get some Catapults in here? Or would that take too long? I'll probably end up playing the next round tonight or tomorrow, so I look forward to your input.

Neal said:

I think the biggest issue right now is that we've pretty much declined having an economy in favor of the rush on Rome. Rome has to fall, one way or another, or we've wasted so much in the way of time and resources that continuing would be an exercise in frustration.

Thankfully, while building up our axemen of doom, I set us on a beeline to Construction. We have Writing and Mathematics, and Construction is on the way. Hamburg is building a library, both for that all-important culture pop and so that we can run a scientist or two. Hopefully, that will make Construction happen sooner rather than later, and we can get our cats rolling.

So, does that sound like a plan? Trash Rome's infrastructure, deny her production, and try to get some Catapults in here? Or would that take too long? I'll probably end up playing the next round tonight or tomorrow, so I look forward to your input.

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I still say you should go after Catherine. Her border is next to Hamburg, and she likes to expand early. You should be able to pick up three or four cities with the losses you can expect on Rome alone. While your axes are getting you an Eastern Empire, you can build some infrastructure, then start building the cats to focus on the capitals of Europe. Head to CoL while building the cats, and you should be able to handle the upkeep.

"Quinctili Vare, legiones redde!"
-Augustus Caesar

Before there was Germany, there was Germania. A bunch of grubby people with axes that hated Rome and all it stood for. Of course, in our history, they hated Rome largely because Rome was expanding its influence via its legions into Germania.

In this game, we hate Rome because it's not as soft a target as we'd like it to be. The foul-tempered Axe guy part is the same, though.

To begin, we got right down to the business of denying Rome her Iron:



It was more difficult than it should have been because of that stupid river that chops Italy in half. Two units' worth of Axemen died dislodging those pesky Praetorians.

Once that was done, it was just a matter of keeping Caesar from building reinforcements while I worked feverishly on my own:



Wooo! Axe party in Italy! We even pillaged a few gold that would help keep our economy afloat for a while longer.

We got our libraries up and running rather quickly, in order to finish Construction. This had a nice little side benefit:



Ever since I installed Warlords, it seems like the "order" of Great People is jumbled. Ah, well. My plan was to build an Academy in Berlin, both for culture and to boost our capitol in the future (Once we have some more production cities, Berlin is going to be a scientist mecca). He could lightbulb Alphabet, though, which would be crucial to backfilling some techs (The Construction beeline would give us Mathematics, which the AI seems to usually wait on).

We went straight to the unusually pensive Alexander, who didn't even have Writing yet:



And temporarily halted our trading there (nobody was being especially generous with their offers).

In 550 B.C., it was time. Say it's impatient on my part, Say it's a prudent gamble, say that the money was going to run out before Catapults came onto the scene, but we couldn't wait any longer:



I won't lie to you: We were absurdly lucky in our attacks. We won at least three 16% battles. Rome was reduced to a handful of heavily injured defenders:



We had about ten Axemen in all left, most of which were severely injured. All of them, though, qualified for promotion to CR2, which healed them enough to get right back into action.

Oh, lest I forget, our advanced tactics (Throw Axemen at Bad Guy) encouraged the finest military minds of our age to flock to Berlin's banner:



I settled him in the capitol for the ability to pump out 2-promotion units.

As promised, the following turn:



Rome is ours! About 1500 years too late, but it's ours. Julius Caesar retreated to his winter palace in the southern tip of Italy, and, after a few turns to heal, our Axemen would be in hot pursuit.

Shortly thereafter, Isabella came to me with an offer I found it difficult to refuse:



Honestly, everyone's gonna have Writing pretty soon, anyway, so we may as well get what we can for it. Oh, and one more thing about our ravishing Spaniard: How in Sid Meier's name did she not snag a religion!? She's almost not even worth conquering without a shrine. And speaking of religion, our lack of one is wreaking havoc both on our happiness (I'm having to run our cities with skeleton crews) and our cultural borders. Won't someone spread your beliefs to us? Please?

Alexander came back and showed us just what that magic metal was that allowed Rome to build those armored brutes:



As our workers got back to work rebuilding Rome's ravaged infrastructure, we sent our newly refreshed soldiers out to conquer the rest of the peninsula:



Our CR2 and CR3 Axes against unpromoted Archers? Piece of cake. We just studied up on our Advanced Military Tactics (Throw Axemen at Bad Guy) and...



Oh. Unfortunately, our run of luck seems to have run out. We're pretty low on Axemen now, and we might be starting to look like a target for Louis or Catherine. So I negotiated a truce with Caesar (He wouldn't give us anything, but he wasn't being belligerent about things, either).

Here's Germany proper in 365 B.C.:



And the Roman territory:



I guess the plan is to stock up on Catapults and finish Caesar followed by a strike on Louis, whose culture is now becoming a major concern. We're still screwed, mind you, but I think we may be starting to scrape our way out of our early hole.

My biggest concern is that I don't think Antium is Rome's last city. If you look at the screenshots of the ill-fated attack on that particular fortress-city, you'll see that Rome's borders turn southward somewhere in North Africa. I think Caesar may have snuck a Settler across the Mediterranean.

Which isn't really that much of a big deal, except for the fact that Rome (and Antium, should we be able to take it) will still suffer from "Motherland" unhappiness. Assuming Caesar's or Louis' borders don't swallow Rome up first, anyway (hence the Drama research- Well, that and the ability to buy happiness).

Of course, there's also the fact that, honestly, I think the assault on Rome should have failed miserably. Please believe me when I tell you that I didn't reroll and load to get that result, but I still feel guilty that it worked.

So I'm kind of ambivalent about this game. On the one hand, we're in a bad spot, and we should by all rights be in an even worse one. On the other, though, I have nobody to blame for the sorry state of the game but myself, and I'd hate to abandon what could be a winnable scenario.

So, yeah. After all's said and done, Germany's much harder on this map than I gave it credit for. I thank you all for all the help and support you've given me so far. Without you guys I'd've started over long ago. Here's the save:

Take France?

I'm totally puzzled. Why on earth didn't you settle on the copper? Sure it's not a MP game, but this seems a bit strange. Furthermore, you didn't even settle on the coast...
Then you settled a second city.
Not too bad. But you knew rome was going for iron, and you knew where it was. I would have declared with 1 axe, moved and fortfied it on the iron hill with Dr Scout to help him live longer while building more of them...?
After that you rampaged through Italy without taking Antium? Why?

Silly question I guess.
Rome is no threat anymore, but you need to remove or capture Antium to remove the cultural problem. Or don't you? a theatre + a library in Rome could do the trick, but it would be slow.
I guess 4 catapults and 5 axes would be faster.

Isn't Louis wonder happy yet? France has to go and has to go quikcly. With some pults and swordsmen you should be able to take paris and Orleans pretty quickly. This is going to be intense.

Killroyan said:

Isn't Louis wonder happy yet? France has to go and has to go quikcly. With some pults and swordsmen you should be able to take paris and Orleans pretty quickly. This is going to be intense.

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by the time antium is taken, there should be some wonders in Paris

Take Antium first (not taking it last time kinda puzzled me), and hope that Louis builds you a couple wonders in the meantime...

I didn't take Antium because, as you can see in the second screenshot, the RNG gods were not kind to me, and I was down to 2 axes in my offensive force. Without having killed a single Archer. I wasn't going to take it without building some reinforcements.

Maybe making peace wasn't the best play, but I figured I'd build some catapults and another axe or two and redeclare as soon as the 10 turns are up. I have absolutely zero sources of happiness in my cities, and War Weariness was starting to kick in.

All Julie can build right now is more Archers, anyway. And once some Cats are online, those are no longer a serious threat.

Good work so far. I agree to take care of Antium and Then take down Paris. With Paris, Rome, and Berlin, you will have a nice core to a growing empire in place. Siege Units will be vital in these conquests. I would keep a siege unit on the production line at all times. Go for Fuedalism quickly to make some vassals out of the smaller civs.

Definetly an uphill battle. Little choice now. Those cultural borders will choke you out without acting.