ALC Game 17, Take 2: Russia/Peter (BtS)

martin031 said:

I do not know if I get the resoning behind this. Why not clean out the continent first, then see if he has made cities elsewhere. Is it just to mitigate the "long to be with our homeland" unhapiness? Seems like alot of effort for little gain, when those hammers can be divested elsewhere if that is in fact the case. But I highly doubt he has a city already on another landmass already.

Click to expand...

I agree to defeat him at Rome and see what develops. But if he has another city offshore, you need to be able to wipe him out, and incidentally explore the other place. Plus you need Sailing for a lot of other reasons. Why not research Sailing now and have the capability if you need it?

True, Jules may not have another city yet. I think it's likely. After all, where have his hammers gone? He doesn't have a huge army; all he has built is a couple of workers, two archers, and a fleet of fishing boats. I think there's a chance he might have already settled elsewhere. And even if he hasn't, Sis won't be capturing Rome for another 20-30 turns ... which is plenty of time for Julius to build a galley and toss some salad elsewhere, as it were.

I also doubt he has another city on another landmass. It requires a galley. Did you see a galley?

I looked at the save and according to the trade screen Caesar has only one city.

Sisiutil said:

Round 3: 2625 BC to 1975 BC

So to summarize:

1. Do I make peace with Caesar or keep at him?

Click to expand...

[Perry White]Great Caesar's Gold![/Perry White]


Ya know, you pillaged Caesar's gold. If you sign a cease fire with him (not a 10 turn peace treaty), the first thing that he'll probably do is send a worker over to mine and hook up his gold again. The AI never seems to send more than 2 workers to do a job, but if it has a high priority tile to connect and improve, it often does send 2 workers.

That's 2 free workers you can grab immediately with just a warrior if he does so and the extra -3 diplomacy for declaring war a second time won't matter much since you plan to wipe him off the map entirely.

You don't even have to worry about the -1 "you declared war on our friend" penalty since you haven't met the rest of the civs yet.

popejubal said:

[Perry White]Great Caesar's Gold![/Perry White]


Ya know, you pillaged Caesar's gold. If you sign a cease fire with him (not a 10 turn peace treaty), the first thing that he'll probably do is send a worker over to mine and hook up his gold again. The AI never seems to send more than 2 workers to do a job, but if it has a high priority tile to connect and improve, it often does send 2 workers.

That's 2 free workers you can grab immediately with just a warrior if he does so and the extra -3 diplomacy for declaring war a second time won't matter much since you plan to wipe him off the map entirely.

You don't even have to worry about the -1 "you declared war on our friend" penalty since you haven't met the rest of the civs yet.

Click to expand...

You're evil. I like you.

However, there's a chance the Worker will be escorted by an Archer.

I'll think about it.

Sisiutil said:

You're evil. I like you.

However, there's a chance the Worker will be escorted by an Archer.

I'll think about it.

Click to expand...

Less posting ...

... more playing.



EDIT: I say sign a cease fire. He's almost guaranteed to spend hammers on a Settler and possibly a worker, so you'll have considerably more units than him.

It's also possible he'll place the 2nd city just right for you -- at which point you can thank him for his masterful placement.

My suggestions:

-You don't need another city. You need swords asap to finish him off. I worry about him building more units. I wouldn'tve declared war. The worker isn't worth him pumping a bunch of archers in his capital. BUT now that that is done the question is how many units can you produce out of your 2 cities in 10 turns. Enough to take his capital? I would say so. So my vote would be to try and take him out asap.

-Teching: I would suggest teching currency-col via alphabet to support your expansion. Then I would suggest going after drama and lit via aesthetics for the GL and drama to use the culture slider to max out scientists for awhile (lightbulb phil). Once you get some commerce cities online in the south and get more sources you can pump up the sci slider again imo. Run a pile of scientists in multiple cities and lightbulb your way to ASTRONOMY THEN LIBERALISM. The AI techs alot slower in BtS so this is definitely possible.

if caesar does settle another city it will likely be on this continent. I doubt the AI would seek additional maintainance from being on another continent over settling nearby.

I'd declare peace while you mass swords, and keep warriors near the gold and the copper incase he decides to send a worker to either. but your worry about the archer is appropriate, as this time around he is likely to have his worker escorted.

NaZ

Oh, I just put it together after reading NaZ's post that we will ilkely be making some colonies in this game. That's cool.
I would keep the war going, unless you pull somehting sneaky like popejubal suggested. That actually sounds like a pretty good idea, but it's your call. I'd pass on the third city as well, until Julius falls before the forum.

I would not declare peace! You have him down and can keep him that way fairly easily. You are not going to be at all happy if he decides to plop down a second city on a hilltop...

Even on a war footing, I would not expect him to spam archers and even if he does your pillaging limits the spamming he can do. He could pop rush, but even that has limits. I would be very surprised if he has more than 3-4 archers by the time you get your Swords out. 5-6 swords and the irritant is gone...

replace the pillaging warrior with a sword and Rome is helpless...

i agree keep at him and pillage away preventing him from getting a second city while you build up your forces,

but please no galleys yet, not until you have him getting desperate

I would definitely make peace. Why not? There is only one reason not to make peace with Caesar, and many benefits.

First of all, you can make just as many units at peace as at war, so your production isn't changed. Also, you can build units ridiculously quickly at the moment. I think each of your cities can get at least 10 hammers/turn at the moment. This means about 5 turns for an axe (35 hammers *1.5 = ~50 hammers). Give yourself 10 turns (ceasefire) and you have 4 axes. If you whip another axe at the end, you'll have 6 axes in each city, enough to handle his current archers plus one more. I'd probably even wait for 8 axes, in case he whips an axe or two on your way to the city. That means you want him to avoid producing more archers.

Downside:
Caesar might rebuild his tile improvements and produce more stuff. So what? This will make your new city have more tile improvements once you finish taking it. Also, he won't have time to build too many new things between now and whenever you attack him; his worker just isn't that fast, and you can keep an eye on his tech progress w/ espionage (which is the big reason to deny him his gold at the moment).

Mostly, I doubt that your power is (at the moment) high enough relative to his that he will build many archers.

Upsides:
Fewer archers defending Rome. Caesar will likely switch production to a settler or infrastructure if you go to peace, or at least will not whip too many archers. If you get really lucky, he'll finish a settler and send off an archer (or two!) to escort it. Why is it lucky? because he won't have cultural defenses in the new city, and it's far easier to take two cities defended by two archers each than one city defended by four archers. Whipping will be less in the new city, and if you can wait for the new city to have either 2 pop or a cultural expansion, then it won't auto-raze and you save on a settler.

Potential worker-stealing! Always awesome.

The key to this strat, also, is massing your axes where he can't see them. Count tiles to figure where his fog of war ends and put them there. I think you can arrange it so that you can still get in his territory the first turn you declare war, otherwise reveal them right before you attack. Go with a stack of 6-10 axes, depending on how it feels. Keep your warrior down near the copper to watch for any potential new city you can bully after taking out rome.

After taking out Caesar, remember the lessons of your Mehmed game! Isolated, or even semi-isolated, starts give you a ~25% hammer bonus but a ~50% beaker penalty. You'll be behind on tech. Make up for it by having more production and playing catch-up. BTS will help you here, via espionage. Also, if you're running an SE, don't worry too much about overexpanding. It would be better to build too many size 3 cities that are running two scientists than too few size 7 cities, have the slider at ~60% (but working mines and farms) and have fewer overall scientists. This is, of course, not true if you switch to caste system, which I think would be a good idea. In that case, stick to the posted dot-maps, run CS and lots of scientists. Yes, you won't be able to whip. So what? You have lots of production, and you don't need to whip. You can drop your scientists on mines in some odd world where you need production, but since you're isolated you really don't. Just tech up and have a dedicated city (probably your 2-fish & iron) city constantly building defenders. That city should never build a library, or a grocer, or a market, or...etc. Perhaps build temples to get the happy limit up, but other than that barracks and lots and lots of city defenders to stop you from looking like a weak target to other AIs. You should also be be helped because the AI techs a bit slower in BTS if you can keep it at war. Pay attention to Aelf's old EMC's to get diplomatic hints as well, and play the AIs off against each other.

slobberinbear said:

I agree to defeat him at Rome and see what develops. But if he has another city offshore, you need to be able to wipe him out, and incidentally explore the other place. Plus you need Sailing for a lot of other reasons. Why not research Sailing now and have the capability if you need it?

True, Jules may not have another city yet. I think it's likely. After all, where have his hammers gone? He doesn't have a huge army; all he has built is a couple of workers, two archers, and a fleet of fishing boats. I think there's a chance he might have already settled elsewhere. And even if he hasn't, Sis won't be capturing Rome for another 20-30 turns ... which is plenty of time for Julius to build a galley and toss some salad elsewhere, as it were.

Click to expand...

I agree that sailing is an important tech, especially for this map. All the possible coastal cities will be better off if they do not have to wait for raods to connect them.
I think I misunderstood your first post. I thought you were advocating getting sailing now, and having galleys ready to go before the taking of Rome.
I bet if anything that Ceasar will try to make one more city on this island before running scared.

Someone should check to see what happens with Cease Fires. I recall reading that some negotiations with the AI were changed to prevent people from exploiting temporary peace agreements for just this reason.
Isn't that why we keep seeing "Peace Treaty Ended" when you don't recall agreeing to peace with anyone? I obviously don't have all the facts but something about peace negotiations has changed.

If you are thinking of making peace for a bit, try and get a cesaefire instead. Then you can nobble any settlers or workers that try and fix the mine or get the copper while building units. Do you need wrtiting for that though?

Scaphism said:

Someone should check to see what happens with Cease Fires. I recall reading that some negotiations with the AI were changed to prevent people from exploiting temporary peace agreements for just this reason.
Isn't that why we keep seeing "Peace Treaty Ended" when you don't recall agreeing to peace with anyone? I obviously don't have all the facts but something about peace negotiations has changed.

Click to expand...

Now, if either you or another civ demand something from the other, it sets up an automatic 10 turn peace treaty. I think that it's one-way, so whoever gave in and handed something over is still able to declare war, but I'm not positive.

Round 4: 1975 BC to 1050 BC, Part 1

As the round started, I decided to keep pressing Caesar--not peace treaty or cease fire--and to keep researching Sailing.



I told the mediator to go cool his heels. Maybe some other time against another opponent. I've got Julius on the ropes and I'm not letting him up.

I got the Iron hooked up to start my military builds, and I got the gold hooked up to allow for slightly bigger cities. As we discussed, as soon as I was able, I whipped an Axeman out of Moscow:



I think the threshold for hammers from whipping on epic speed is about 44 without other modifiers such as a forge or Organized Religion. This is why I was working the two low-hammer tiles you see above, so I could contribute some hammers to the build but still be able to whip 2 pop for maximum overflow. I'm pretty sure I got it right, because that whip completed the Axeman on the next turn and the partially-built granary on the following one.

In 1775 I finished Sailing:



I then started researching Animal Husbandry to check for horses. I also began building my first Galley in St. Petersburg shortly thereafter. Maybe I should have been focusing solely on Axes and Swords, but hey, I researched Sailing, I should get some use out of it right away.

My brand-spanking new Axeman found a Roman Archer hanging out on open terrain. I couldn't resist:



He won! Excellent. Even better, though the Axe dropped to 0.8 health, Caesar declined attacking him across that river with one of his two remaining garrison archers. Since my Axeman was not facing any Romans with metal yet, I decided to give him the anti-archery Cover promotion.



In 1600 BC, the last of the ancient/classical era strategic technologies was finished:




And so, does my island have horses? Yep, but not in an immediately convenient location:



Once again, my decision to skip AH earlier and go after Iron Working instead is vindicated. No, I did not cheat and check Worldbuilder, you'll just have to take my word for it. The game is more fun to play if I don't know these things.

I began researching Writing after AH. Shortly after that, my first random event occurred, and lucky me, it was a reasonably pleasant one:



Not exactly game-breaking, but nice nonetheless, since I'll be working that iron mine practically the whole game. It did remind me, though, to start saving some money for a randomly-rainy day, so I lowered the slider to 80% earlier than I normally would.

Then a very interesting and revealing development occurred:



Caesar became Hindu, but a close look at the map will tell you that he didn't found it. It simply spread to Rome. That confirmed that he's in contact with someone, and furthermore, that there's a trade route to that other civ from Rome. So I won't be isolated, and that's both good and bad news, though mostly good, I think. But it gives more importance to a period of rapid expansion following the war.

Once my Galley was finished in St. Petersburg, I sent it towards Rome to disrupt Caesar's ability to whip Archers. I started by pillaging the southernmost clams, since I couldn't block both them and the northern seafood clump:




I then sent the Galley north to the middle fish tile and decided to try out one of the naval units' new capabilities in BtS, the blockade:



Now unless I misunderstand this, besides blockading trade, this will also block access to resources in the affected tiles, correct? Let me know if I'm wrong here. It certainly seemed that way from the appearance of things.

Evidently it was very effective, because Caesar built a Galley himself and sent it to attack mine. Too bad for him, it sank to Davey Jones' locker without so much as putting a scratch in my ship's finely-crafted hull.

The Galley, by the way, should prove useful in another regard. When the war is done, I plan to have it explore westwards in search of whoever founded Hinduism and spread it to Rome.

While all this wonderful naval action was going on, I was building up a force of Swordsmen to take Rome. I whipped some and chopped some along the way:



Oh yes, I also finished writing and began work on Metal Casting. The other techs just didn't seem to be as much of a priority. MC will help with forges for production and +1 happy from the gold. I'll also probably try to build the Colossus, maybe in St. Pete. And it should make an excellent trading tech, since it looks like it won't take too long to meet up with other civs.

As some of you recommended, I whipped St. Pete back to 2 pop rather than 1 to keep working that iron mine with its +2 commerce bonus. That meant a 1 pop whip (St. Pete will take a long time to grow to 4 pop), so I maxed out the overflow hammers by working that low-yield plains tile for one turn.

Again, it looks like that was pretty effective, given the build speed of another Swordsman on the next turn:



I could be wrong, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of this whipping thing. Only took me a year and a half and God knows how many games.

Now, hold on to your hats, because the next random event occurred, and guess what? It's one of those quests! Oooo...



Well, heck. Since I'm planning on running a SE, this sounds right up my alley. Slight problem: I don't have 7 cities. But since REX will follow the war and Libraries will be priority builds, I should have this in the bag. I'd like to prioritize the marble city and go after the Great Library, and time the 7th library so it finishes after the GL. What, by the way, are the goodies being promised to me? I haven't seen this quest before; in my one BtS off-line game thus far I completed them for Stables and for Colosseums, but not Libraries.

Hmmm... I'm several techs away from being able to build the Great Library. Should I change research? The mystery civ next door obviously has Polytheism (remember that the religion selection option is off), so maybe Alphabet for tech trading? Or should I try to get to Literature on my own? Er... I need Masonry for the marble, too...

Anyway, we can worry about the quest shortly. For now, my army of Swordsmen was assembled, and Rome was ready to fall to their blades. Or so I hoped. Stay tuned...

Round 4: 1975 BC to 1050 BC, Part 2

Many of you have told me how you really like seeing the blow-by-blow accounts of the city-capturing battles, so I decided to indulge you yet again in that regard.

I had 8 Swordsmen built. One got waylaid taking out a barb Warrior, another was bringing up the rear just in case he was needed. So I wound up approaching Rome with 6 Swordsmen and my Combat I/Cover Axeman for protection, not that it I was in dire need of it, what with only Archers facing me.



And not many of them, either! Looks like my efforts to cripple Caesar were very effective. He did manage to chop that 1 forest, mainly because, as you can see, he parked an Archer over there. I was also lucky. Caesar did not build walls; the chop, as near as I can figure, went towards that unsuccessful attempt to raise the naval blockade with a Galley; my Cover Axe took out 2 of his Archers (another one, evidently busy exploring and maybe healing from a fight with a barb, wandered in from the wilderness quite late); and, strangest of all, that Archer did not get pulled back to defend the city.

With the overall odds in my favour, I attacked.



That Swordsman lost the battle and died, but did considerable damage to the defending Archer, whittling him down to 0.6 strength. Time for the next Swordsman to have a go.



The odds weren't much better, and this Swordsman suffered a similar fate. If there had been more defending Archers I would have despaired at this point, but the two dead Swordsmen had served their purpose, acting as pseudo-Catapults and heavily damaging the defenders. Thus, my next two Swords got much better odds... and results.







And Rome falls without ever having truly risen. Requiescat in pace, Caesar. Requiescat in pace. Don't fret, I'll play an off-line game with you soon and you, me, and those marvelous Praets will conquer the world together. But not this time, alas.

So Rome is history. I decided to get on with the SE (and that quest) by prioritizing Libraries. As you can see by the number of turns required for Metal Casting, the gold mine is starting to be far less effective as a research booster. I also decided to rename Rome, in honour of a very good book by Edward Rutherfurd:



Whee! That was fun.

So, now it's time to get on with other things. Building the specialist economy, pursuing some wonders, seeking out the neighbours, and fulfilling that worthwhile quest.

First off, the map, with all the classical-era resources revealed.



Time for the final dot-maps! I know several have been contributed already, but now we need to work in the horses too. If there's a previous dot-map that should suffice, please post it again--look at how many pages there are in this thread already, and we're not even out of the BCs yet!

As I was asking in the previous post, should I be leaving Metal Casting aside in pursuit of other techs? I'm inclined to finish what I start, but I'd like to hear opinions.

I think I went overboard on the Swordsmen. I built 8 and only needed 4. Still, that could easily have not been enough. I have 6 of them now, and I plan to use them as fog-busters. The barbs should start showing up fast and furious for awhile now that I'm the only civ on the continent (which is why both St. Pete and Moscow are building Axemen). Where should the 6 Swordsmen go for maximum effectiveness? I have a Warrior and a Scout who can help out as well, though I'm inclined to send the Scout out on an exploring Galley. There might still be tribal villages out there on the islands, waiting to be popped!

Another criticism I'm anticipating is the promotions. I gave all the Swords City Raider promotions out of habit. I should have only CR-promoted the Swords I used. The other 2 should have gotten Combat I, since they're going to be used primarily as defensive units for some time. Oh well, live and learn.

The saved game file is below.

nice work. now time to get the econ rolling and rex your way to the 7 required cities. maybe the barbs will do you a favor and save you a settler or two. might want to leave some fog in convienent places to that end.

it is important that you remember to NOT research any renaisance techs.. you'll end the quest prematurely

looking forward to a builder and exploration round. might want to train a 2nd (atleast) galley to get the coasts explored as far as you can reach. who knows what will develop but be thurough.

NaZ

Sisiutil said:

I began researching Writing after AH. Shortly after that, my first random event occurred, and lucky me, it was a reasonably pleasant one:

Click to expand...

Wasn't the mediator the first?

Well, heck. Since I'm planning on running a SE, this sounds right up my alley. Slight problem: I don't have 7 cities. But since REX will follow the war and Libraries will be priority builds, I should have this in the bag. I'd like to prioritize the marble city and go after the Great Library, and time the 7th library so it finishes after the GL. What, by the way, are the goodies being promised to me? I haven't seen this quest before; in my one BtS off-line game thus far I completed them for Stables and for Colosseums, but not Libraries.

Click to expand...

You'll be able to choose from +2 beakers for every library, an extra free scientist in your GL city (if you have the GL, obviously), or a random ancient tech you don't have yet.

Keep in mind other civs get the quest too, so don't take too long to build those libraries if you want to win it.