ALC Game 29: France/De Gaulle

Round 6: 1110 AD to 1320 AD (21 turns)

Spoiler :


I started by making some of the changes recommended: I inserted some workers into the tops of build queues. I spread my workers out in an attempt to improve tiles that were going to start growing quickly when I stopped whipping. I also increased the number of specialists in the capital from two to four

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I did this so that I could pop a GP earlier and get our first Golden Age started earlier. This would in turn allow us to switch civics. And here he is. Galileo started a MoM powered Golden Age (twelve turns on normal speed).

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I peacefully revolted into Bureaucracy, Caste System, and Organized Religion.

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Bureaucracy because it would power the capital. Caste System to run mass specialists in a few cities. Organized Religion to build missionaries without monasteries. This would be especially important since only one city had the religion I was revolting into and it was incredibly hammer poor.

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Luckily that city had some forests to spare so missionaries could be chopped out. The were several reasons to switch to Buddhism One, three of the remaining five AIs are in Buddhism and the diplo bonus never hurt anybody. Two, Zara had recently researched Theology meaning it was likely that he'd build the Apostolic Palace and do so in his religion, Buddhism. Three, Kossin said so.

Orleans was volunteered to try and pop a Great Person.

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It was important to run this many because otherwise Paris would beat Orleans to the Great Person. I stopped Paris from running any specialists and gave Orleans these five.

I feel really silly. I forgot to take a screenshot of a wonder. :eek:. Anyway, I finished Angkor Wat in the capital and then started on the Taj Mahal. I'll be finishing it right before my current Golden Age ends, so I won't have to spend a turn in the dark ages.

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While I was working on my wonder/golden age hogging, I met the final leader.

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He's not particularly pleased with me, but I'm not too worried. I can take him.

After I finished Nationalism, I researched Education. Next up is Liberalism.

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Check out the time it takes to research Liberalism, and that's with only four cottages in the empire. And there's not really that many specs either. It's pretty much the Golden Age being awesome. Tiles are so good in Golden Ages. My coasts are now 2 food, 4 commerce. Excellent.

Kossin's predictive abilities remain as impressive as ever.

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I went ahead and voted for Zara. No particular reason why. I don't really care.

Orleans finished its Merchant who was going to chill for just a short while.

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You can see at the top of the screen how long it will be before Paris produces its Great Person.

Things are looking good. I take Military Tradition from Liberalism.

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More good news:

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Go ahead and add twelve turns to our Golden Age. Why stop there though? I'm a sucker for overindulgence.

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So we're looking good. We've got 24 turns of Golden Age to play with. I'll switch civics soon and start building our super-speedy army as quick as I can. I think we'll

WAIT A SECOND. WTH MATE?

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Well, I suppose I'm not as ready as I had hoped to be, but that's okay. I still have that pretty large army of elephants and catapults located up north...ready to attack...Tokugawa's army...

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Are you super-cereal dude? Five horse archers and a chariot? Well I made quick work of them and moved my other stack into attacking position.

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The city fell at the cost of a few suicide catapults.

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In the meantime, Beijing was gunning for a great person.

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Paris was getting over 100 great person points a turn and I knew that I had to get what I could from other cities before the National Epic + a dozen wonders became too much to compete with.

In a completely unsurprising move, this resolution came up.

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I went ahead and voted yes knowing that this resolution was going to pass. I thought about defying the resolution since Osaka had just three troops, but I'll save the defying anger for a couple turns later when I will be finishing off Tokugawa.

Paris continues to be awesome. It took only four turns to build this little gadget.

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I'm spamming Buddhist buildings, so this wonder makes all sorts of sense.

And my suspicions were confirmed.

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This was certainly less contested than the Bush - Gore election. I'm hopeful that in the next war against Tokugawa I'll be able to finish him off before the AP has time to propose that we stop the fighting. If not, I'll definitely be able to do it before Zara does so a second time.

Oh, and I forgot to take a picture, but Beijing popped for a Great Prophet. That's what I get for building a bunch of wonders all over the place, but it's okay. I should be able to get enough other Great People to continue our massive Golden Age.

This is where I stopped the round for the time being. It seems like a pretty natural stopping point and I have some questions.

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  • I'm thinking Rep is a good way to go, but I'm not against Police State.
  • I'm leaning toward Nationhood for the ability to draft Musketeers and because my empire is big enough now that we're not so reliant on the capital.
  • Slavery seems obvious. I'm going to be whipping curis like mad.
  • OR has served it's time of utility. I've got monasteries and infrastructure mostly up. I'm torn between Philosophy for another Golden Age and maybe even two more Golden Ages and Theocracy for the XPs. (edit in italics)

QUESTION 1: Can a Great General be one of the Great People used to start a Golden Age?

The diplomatic situation is unsurprising.

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At least there are a few AIs that aren't pleased with each other. It also doesn't really matter if they hate me since I'm miles ahead of all of them.

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I hope to take out all of Tokugawa and all of Ragnar, no capitulation this time as I should have no problems with magic rifles, or magic redcoats. This should get me pretty close to the Domination Limits. Here's the view of my current holdings.

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Hmm, it looks like I might be fighting Toku and Ragnar simultaneously. That's alright with me.

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Finally, what should I do about the slider in general? I think I've got the techs I need to finish out this game. I'm specialist-teching towards Rifling. I think it might be worthwhile to turn the espionage slider up and get some intel and revolt-instigating abilities against Ragnar.

I'll amass an army of Curis and Musketeers as planned and as soon as the ten turns are up I'll DoW on Tokugawa and start taking over the world. Sound good to everybody?

 
why not theocracy? I don't see you going with Pac with the military buildup, OR you don't want since you will be whipping army... so why not theo?

I would consider vassalage too... you could get +4 exp units out of any city, +6 (2 proms) from baracks and +9 from rax+stables.

When I head for cuir war I don't delay myself much with muskets/LB's, mostly as garrison after the mass wave of cuirs gets away.

btw lol at Toku voting Yes on that AP vote :-D

and another great turnset btw! very impressive and entertaining to read.

Oh and you should try to get the Guilds for better workshops if you start to workshoping around, with caste and guilds they will be match for hills and you know the routine, after guilds get eng and chemistry making them even better.

edit:
oh and forgot we are charismatic... so even better to go theo+vassalage...you will get highly promoted troops out of the gate
 
GGs can't be used for GAs. :)

It looks like you could tech rifling in 12-14 turns if you went at it full-bore. Why not do that, then turn off the slider and draft/whip cav+rifles, while you slow-build cuirassiers in the meantime? That's probably end of game right there.

EDIT: And make sure you check when the next AP vote is due before you declare. In any case, once you have Toku's buddhist cites you should be able to vote down any resolutions. Also, theo for sure now (you're going to be producing units, not buildings, right?), then add vassalage once you're at rifling (mostly for drafing, but 3-promo cavalry are nice :) ).
 
Benginal said:
[...]
I got it last night. It's not quite as "oooooh" as getting BUG was, but it's pretty neat. I'll take it.

Yeah, I agree. My stack is pretty legitimate, I probably could have taken a few more cities. If you look closely at the next screenshot (the one where we declare peace), though, you can see that Toku is five turns from Longbows. I had flashbacks to ALC 28 where Redcoats ate through my Oromos and I didn't want to repeat that experience.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Offline: I play fast and lazy and emperor is still a challenge, :mischief:.
ALC: I think I'll play the next game with Bismark at Emperor. Then with the next leader, Pericles, I'll have some nice traits for leveling up.



  1. Alright. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I understand the concept as you can see in Shanghai, my HE city, where I didn't whip at all. I guess it didn't occur to me to follow that same principal in my NE city. Silly me.
  2. Yeah, you have to stop assuming I've made obvious civic changes. You didn't go into Rep!! You didn't go into Buro!! I think I get the point though, won't let it happen again.
  3. What would you recommend I build? I don't think I particularly need any of those buildings?
  4. That's true. I like your Buddhism idea though, and I have a lot of cities that can build temples and monasteries quickly, so I think it will be worth it. And also, the GS points are higher than that surely? I've got the Parthenon and the NE (oh, btw, I'm going to switch the UoS to Paris, I'm just building it wherever it is now for failure Gold) and I'll also be in Pacifism soon, which I think makes the GP points a little more worth building it.
  5. So the idea is, OR for a little bit to mass produce missionaries. Then switch to Pacifism for GP points?
  6. On it.
  7. This sounds like a great idea. If my last 48 turns are all Golden Age powered, that would be pretty cool. :).
  8. Okee dokes.
  9. I don't know man. Harbors seem cooler than I think they really are. Question though, doesn't the computer route foreign trade routes to the city where they will get the highest return? Ie, if I build harbors there won't the game send the foreign trade routes there to maximize the trade route income?
  10. I wasn't going to tech it, but I thought having a wb there to be ready for the whales might be a good idea. You're right though, overflowing into it would have been better.
  11. Good catch. My micro skills are still very poor, :blush:. I'll make the change.
  12. The workers were in that big block so that they could make a farm a turn. I was indeed thinking mass whip of curis. But some more workers, now that I'm at peace, is probably a good idea. Especially since I can build them in just a few turns now.
  13. I had similar advice from Sisiutil in the last ALC telling me to trade resources for even just 1 gold as it could make the difference. Selling techs for cheap always just seems a little odd to me. So I can sell Lit to three people (probably) and get 200 gold (probably). Is it worth it to give the AIs that boost? I mean I'm sure it is, since all the good players seem to rely on selling old techs as a part of their strategy. So I'll do it, it just feels dumb selling a tech for 20 gold, no matter how ridiculous it is that the AI still doesn't have it. Now I'm rambling, but I guess the logic I usually hear is if I don't get something for it, then Zara will. Is that right? Any other reasons to sell it other than just the gold? Diplo benefits?

[...]
Click to expand...

Sorry I am quite busy once again so not much time to answer. Glad to see things went ok though. Selling old techs for cash is useful to you because
1) you get gold to deficit research
2) you prevent someone else from having the gold
3) the AI not knowing the tech gets a lot of bonuses to research it because everyone else knows it
4) the AI will get the old tech anyway so might as well get something in return
etc.

In your example, Literature wonders are gone so all it really does is open up HE/NE for the AI... usually the AI poorly places its wonders and with so many discounts it doesn't really help its military building anyway.
 
To add a bit to my previous post, I'd also like to question your use of great people in starting golden ages. There's no advantage to queueing up an additional GA before the current one ends, and you may seriously limit your options by doing so. It doesn't hurt anything to save them up until the current one expires, and you may find that you wish you'd saved that GS for bulbing PP (so you get to rifling faster), or the GM to run a trade mission (to upgrade those cuirassiers to cavalry), especially since you'll likely generate an artist soon enough to use instead and they're a lot less useful for tech bulbing. I'm not saying you're wrong in having multiple consecutive GAs, just that it's needlessly limiting to burn your great people before you need to.
 
vranasm said:
why not theocracy? I don't see you going with Pac with the military buildup, OR you don't want since you will be whipping army... so why not theo?

I would consider vassalage too... you could get +4 exp units out of any city, +6 (2 proms) from baracks and +9 from rax+stables.

edit:
oh and forgot we are charismatic... so even better to go theo+vassalage...you will get highly promoted troops out of the gate
Click to expand...

Excellent points. I forgot we were charismatic too, shame on me. XPs become even more powerful for charismatic leaders so to take full advantage of this trait, in the ALC style I think we should definitely go ahead and adopt +XP civics.

vranasm said:
Oh and you should try to get the Guilds for better workshops if you start to workshoping around, with caste and guilds they will be match for hills and you know the routine, after guilds get eng and chemistry making them even better.
Click to expand...

I'm heading that way. I love workshops.

huerfanista said:
GGs can't be used for GAs. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks.

huerfanista said:
It looks like you could tech rifling in 12-14 turns if you went at it full-bore. Why not do that, then turn off the slider and draft/whip cav+rifles, while you slow-build cuirassiers in the meantime? That's probably end of game right there.
Click to expand...

I would, except in the spirit of the ALCs I want to get at least a little use out of these musketeers. In the post mortem we can hate on them for having a short window and not being particularly useful, but for now I want to use them against at least one AI.

huerfanista said:
To add a bit to my previous post, I'd also like to question your use of great people in starting golden ages. There's no advantage to queueing up an additional GA before the current one ends, and you may seriously limit your options by doing so. It doesn't hurt anything to save them up until the current one expires, and you may find that you wish you'd saved that GS for bulbing PP (so you get to rifling faster), or the GM to run a trade mission (to upgrade those cuirassiers to cavalry), especially since you'll likely generate an artist soon enough to use instead and they're a lot less useful for tech bulbing. I'm not saying you're wrong in having multiple consecutive GAs, just that it's needlessly limiting to burn your great people before you need to.
Click to expand...

:goodjob:. This is an excellent post. It seems so obvious now, but I did not even come close to thinking of it. It's so true. The cost of starting a Golden Age doesn't go up, except for a slight 200 gp points which isn't really that much compared to the benefits I could have gotten with one of the better Great People 20 turns earlier. Again good job bringing that to my attention, very true and very useful information.
 
Benginal said:
I would, except in the spirit of the ALCs I want to get at least a little use out of these musketeers. In the post mortem we can hate on them for having a short window and not being particularly useful, but for now I want to use them against at least one AI.
Click to expand...

Somehow I knew you were going to say that. :lol: Well, you're already cruising to an easy win here, so by all means see what you can do with them. :goodjob:
 
Got to love that tech rate, very nice. Those lake tiles just keep getting better and better. Which reminds me, it isn't just the GAges that is driving your quick teching, it's also those lovely wonders everyone says not to build. Plus, it is the wonders that are (partially) enabling and extending the GAges anyway. So go Industrious, go go Industrious.

Building the UoS does make sense if you have enough religious buildings, but the question is why were you spamming them? I know you wanted to be able to build missionaries to spread Buddhism, but that just requires a few monasteries. Were you building temples as well? Fess up.

AFAIK Great Generals can't be used for GAges, which seems consistent with the idea of a GAge historically. {nm, already answered above{

"OR has served it's time of utility. I've got monasteries and infrastructure mostly up. I'm torn between Philosophy for another Golden Age and maybe even two more Golden Ages." Do you mean pacifism? What are you torn between again? "What was the middle one again?" [AFCW]
 
Mec AntiKythera said:
Got to love that tech rate, very nice. Those lake tiles just keep getting better and better. Which reminds me, it isn't just the GAges that is driving your quick teching, it's also those lovely wonders everyone says not to build. Plus, it is the wonders that are (partially) enabling and extending the GAges anyway. So go Industrious, go go Industrious.
Click to expand...

Good point, I forgot about that. I've got pretty much every wonder in the book doing all sorts of good things for my empire. I've noticed that the AI is teching worse than usual, and I'm going to credit at least a little of this to them not having any wonders. So not only does wonder spamming significantly improve our situation in a vacuum, but it also puts down the AI which makes our situation even better relative to them.

Mec AntiKythera said:
Building the UoS does make sense if you have enough religious buildings, but the question is why were you spamming them? I know you wanted to be able to build missionaries to spread Buddhism, but that just requires a few monasteries. Were you building temples as well? Fess up.
Click to expand...

You'll notice that Zara built the Apostolic Palace in Buddhism. This gives all Buddhist building +2:hammers:. So the two religious buildings are giving me extra hammers, extra beakers, extra culture, beaker multipliers, and happiness. They become very powerful buildings when they're in the AP's religion.

Mec AntiKythera said:
"OR has served it's time of utility. I've got monasteries and infrastructure mostly up. I'm torn between Philosophy for another Golden Age and maybe even two more Golden Ages." Do you mean pacifism? What are you torn between again? "What was the middle one again?" [AFCW]
Click to expand...

Yes. I did indeed mean Pacifism. The other option was Theocracy (fixed in the original post). I think I'm going to go with Theo since I'll be building a large army and XP are even more valuable when Charismatic since it takes fewer to get promotions.
 
Benginal said:
You'll notice that Zara built the Apostolic Palace in Buddhism. This gives all Buddhist building +2:hammers:. So the two religious buildings are giving me extra hammers, extra beakers, extra culture, beaker multipliers, and happiness. They become very powerful buildings when they're in the AP's religion.

Yes. I did indeed mean Pacifism. The other option was Theocracy (fixed in the original post). I think I'm going to go with Theo since I'll be building a large army and XP are even more valuable when Charismatic since it takes fewer to get promotions.
Click to expand...

Ah right, that's the problem with me never having played BTS, I miss basics like that. Thanks for clearing that up.

Does going Theo mean we won't see four GAges in a row? I still want to see 48 golden turns one day.
 
Round 7: 1320 AD to 1625 AD (43 turns)

Spoiler :

The round started with a massive, revolt-free civic switch.

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I was pretty clearly focusing on military civics. Every column picked the most militaristic civic it could find. About seven turns later I switched to Nationhood, as opposed to Vassalage, for the ability to draft units and to more efficiently run the espionage slider against my future enemies. I wasn't drafting as much as I could have been as anger very quickly piled up. I would have been much better off being in nationhood for five turns while I ran the slider and drafted fifteen musketeers and then switching back to Vassalage for the XPs. Ah well, live and learn.

As of turn 193, here's our army:

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It's small and outdated. I have one cuirassier so far and no musketeers. But things are about to change. I'll whip very heavily, draft three units a turn, and build quite a few units.

Sometimes, the AIs aren't very good at predicting human behavior. Did he not just see my massive revolt into wartime civics.

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Well I don't mind too much. My army is already on the way and I'm not worried about anything he can send at me.

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All right all right. Not wanting to lose a bunch of highly promoted elephants (that will be getting promoted to cuirassiers). I retreated out of the city and let Ragnar have it. It thought about trying to hold it. My plan was to suicide my catapults into his stack and then upgrade all of my elephants right then. Unfortunately, I didn't have open borders with Tokugawa, and therefore couldn't attack Ragnar's stack. So retreat it was. Those veterans will live to fight another day.

Well it turns out Ragnar has a LOT of units. I shouldn't have been surprised. I suppose I need to look at that AI behavior spreadsheet in Kossin's signature a few more times.

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Not to worry though, I have the ability to handle him easily.

And his stack disappears in a cloud of gunpowder smoke. Here's a note on upgrading

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Units will keep all the promotions they have when they are upgraded. But they will lose any XPs they have over 10 (yes, it's the same number for charismatic leaders). So looking at the screenshot above I have two options.
  1. Upgrade the elephant now, I get a cuirassier with combat I - III and 10/13 XP.
  2. Promote him to combat IV and then upgrade him, I get a cuirassier with combat I - IV and 10/13 XP.
To conclude: if possible, upgrade units with more than 10 XP before you promote. I even left a few elephants that had twelve XP unpromoted, so that they could win an easy battle later, get their new promotion, and then get upgraded without losing two XPs.

Geez Louise Raggles, how many units did you build?

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This is his third stack of that size. By this point taking it out was like eating cotton candy - It's really delicious and dissolves in your mouth so you don't even really have to work at it (Nearly every battles was at >90% odds), but at the same time it's kind of sticky and makes your hands gross (he was all over the place and even stole a worker, :eek:).

You'll also notice I'm doing a little binary Espionaging. I think I did one more turn than I had too, because when I finished off Toku I still had about 1,000 EPs accumulated towards him.

Alright. 11 turns later here's the situation:

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23 musketeers and 36 curis. Granted, some of them were upgrades. But that's still quite an army to build in ten turns. Let's go crack some skulls...Looks like I forgot to take a picture of me declaring on Toku. Whoops.

Here's my battle plan.

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I sent my primary stack due north to capture Osaka and Kyoto. The smaller stack went to take back that city I had "given" Ragnar earlier.

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Oh, and some good news on the home front. Right after the turnset started I popped a Great Engineer. And then I got this little guy.

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There ya go Mec, 48 turns of Golden Age as ordered.

So it turns out I didn't build nearly enough spies. I was usually getting them to the city just before the stack got there. Here's what the rest of my city revolts cost.

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It wasn't a huge deal, since I made too many EPs anyway. But in future, I should build more spies and have them in place longer. I should also calculate the EPs needed more accurately.

Needless to say, the city fell.

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Somewhere in there, Tokugawa vassaled to Ragnar. I was still at war with Ragnar so I didn't even notice. But my western stack decided to go get in on some Viking action and let Ragnar know we hadn't forgotten about him.

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Another benefit of the fast units + spies war is that you are required to build EPs. This let me know everything about Tokugawa. I could see all of his cities builds, all of his army and where they were, and what he was teching. It made it much easier as I could always send about the right number of troops to a front and not have to guess and end up being overly-cautious and slowing the war down. Therefore, I split my primary stack into two stacks. One half of the original primary stack went over and secured the Eastern side of Japan.

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And the other went West and finished off Tokugawa.

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But I was still having a party and didn't see any reason to let off the force of the French. Viking territory was now convincingly invaded.

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With one turn left in the Golden Age I made sure to go switch civics back to more normal settings. The other AI's, and Ragnar for that matter, were all pretty close to Rifling so I didn't see me being able to finish the game with this war. As such, I switched back to these civics.

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I had trouble deciding between Caste and Slavery. I ended up picking Caste because I didn't see myself whipping that much in the future and I thought Caste gave me more flexibility in terms of research and gold. I can always switch back to Slavery if you guys say so. The other touch choice was free religion vs. organized religion. I didn't have very many religions to make good use of free religion. OR probably would have been the better choice, but I was, and still am, prioritizing getting a tech advantage to finish off the continent.

Without changing the slider at all, my tech rate went up from ~80 bpt to well over 300. Representation and a bunch of settled Great People are really a pretty powerful combination.

Along my same logical lines of not being able to finish that war, I stopped building troops and focused a little bit on getting some much needed infrastructure up.

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Those courthouses should help.

Meanwhile, the Viking empire began to crumble.

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I went ahead and used a Great Artist (born after the golden ages had ended) to give the former Vikings something nice too look at. I like doing this as it makes the city so much more productive way earlier. It stops all revolting and gives the city all of its tiles to work (well it would once I captured the rest of Ragnar's holdings).

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Ragnar got rifles after this and the rest of the war was hard. I upgraded my most veteran Curis, many of whom were at combat III and pinch, to Cavalry, but losses were still heavy. Sheer numbers won the day though and eventually Ragnar was left with three cities - one with five Rifles that I was about to take, one down near Saladin, and one island city way down south. I was not going to go hunting after those two far away cities so I took this deal.

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Those wars took a little longer than I would have hoped, 33 turns to finish off both Ragnar and Toku, but in the end I don't think it was entirely unsuccesful. Unfortunately, the other AIs now all have Rifilng, or are close to it. Salading is at war against Huayna and his passal, Zara. So, had I decided to build a ton more Cavalry and Rifles, this game would probably be over soon. As it is, I did not. So we need a plan for how to finish out this game.

I'll post a state of the world shortly.
 
State of the World, 1625 AD

Spoiler :

The World

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Some of my Cities

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Alliances

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Techs

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Tech Tree

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Note that I only have ten turns of research at that pace.

Victory Conditions

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Info

Unfortunately, I put all my espionage on Mao, Toku, and Ragnar. So I have no idea how the rest of the world is doing in terms of power, etc. But I guess this is promising.

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Notice that I'm in a battle for highest approval rating. Let's concentrate on that in the next round. ;).

Some War Stats

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That's about a 3:1 ratio of kills to deaths. Not great, but I'll take it.

Questions

I've really only got one. How do we finish his game. Domination seems obvious, but where should we tech to?

  1. Cavalry and Airships
  2. Cavalry and Bombers
  3. Cavalry and Nukes
  4. Infantry and Artillery
  5. Tanks
  6. Any others?
 
Interesting question and save you layed down. Looked into it.

From what I saw... Zara should have access to airships. HC shouldn't, he has around 1k gold though.
I think you could go with cavalry war if you somehow get his gold.

At this point I usually after cavalries try to get airships to prolong the cavalry charge. HC shouldn't have that many rifles yet and 1-2 per city I think you could overcome with numbers and proper air support.

Or you can outtech them and go for tanks and finish the game around 1800AD, but HC is in war his SoD should be away and you will battle only basic defense. Then there is that Zara with his airships. that could be complication
 
And a delightful 48 turns they were. I think you are on the brink of discovering the GA economy. 1320 to 1555, golden years, ga ga golden years. Reminds me of a song.

Seriously, nice round and good write-up. A small set back, a bit of a challenge, and then a convincing territorial expansion, sounds like a good date. Well done.

The just-add-water-and-stir instant army is something I need to learn. 11 turns? Amazing. As is the mounted and city-revolt attack, all new to me. Interesting to see that you have built zero siege units, an argument to avoid artillery if only for purity of form. As to how to finish this off, I don't really know. Are city revolts effective in the modern era? I guess I vote for airships since I don't know what they are . . .
 
Round 8: 1625 AD - 1898 AD (84 turns)

Spoiler :

I thought about trying to continue with the cavalry and adding lots more cavalry or maybe waiting a while and adding bombers. But when the game starts to get near the end I get less interested in doing what's best and more interested in doing what will finish the game. In this case, with my massive empire, but tech deficit, I thought nukes would be a nice solution. I could build a ton more of them than anybody else and drop them all over the place and let the fast-moving units I'd already built go around and capture empty cities. Before you get too excited, let me warn you that I played this round pretty terribly.

The round began with me planning out my techs.

Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG


The order and reasoning went as follows:
  1. Scientific Method: On the way to physics.
  2. Physics: Will let me know if I have Uranium. I really should. With an empire as big as mine it would be ridiculous to not have Uranium. It would also give me a great scientist I could settle in Paris. (This was gaffe number 1 ... Zara got physics a long time ago).
  3. Steam Power: Would let me build levees and, more importantly, let me research
  4. Assembly Line: Factories and Coal plants unite. Putting one of each of these in a city makes that city about 7 notches better than it used to be.
  5. Steel: I researched this since it would let me build the Ironworks.
  6. Electricity: Necessary for
  7. Fission: Nuclear bombs ftw.
  8. Biology: More specialists.

Have any of you noticed gaffe number 2? Well apparently you need Rocketry for nuclear weapons. Sigh. I'd notice this later and it wouldn't be that bad.

My cities began building what I deemed necessary infrastructure:

Civ4ScreenShot0001.JPG


The batting order* went like this.

  1. Forge: I'm industrious and this makes everything else cheaper.
  2. Courthouse: I have some far away cities.
  3. Granary: Growth, but more importantly, health.
  4. Grocer: Commerce multiplier, but more importantly, health.
  5. Harbor: Same as above.
  6. Aqueduct: Super cheap health.
  7. Levee: Free hammers.
  8. Salon: It's the Unique Building. I have to build a few.
  9. Wealth

*Interrupt with Factory and Coal Plant as soon as they become available.

I was mostly self-researching at this point and I soon got this technology.

Civ4ScreenShot0002.JPG


I didn't get Astronomy until very late since the map ended up as a Pangaea. This put the UB very late, but I did try my best to build some. I was in Representation still, so the Salon added about 15-20 beakers per city according to BULL.

Here's an example of a lame happening.

Civ4ScreenShot0003.JPG


What the heck man? I rightfully took that city from Ragnar. It's not my fault Huayna let it get taken from him. It's okay though. I'd get it back eventually.

Let the revolution begin.

Civ4ScreenShot0004.JPG


The industrial revolution that is. Cities began to get powered up and ready for war.

Civ4ScreenShot0005.JPG


I started on the Manhattan Project in Paris (10 turns) right away.

In the meantime, I decided all these techs would be more useful than Rocketry.

Civ4ScreenShot0006.JPG


I'm a little embarrassed, but I'll get over it.

Civ4ScreenShot0007.JPG


Well I found out that I needed Rocketry, so I went and started on that. It wasn't a huge loss since most of my cities still needed to get powered up before they could build nukes in any reasonable amount of time.

I was a little worried about the AIs getting their own nuclear weapons.

Civ4ScreenShot0008.JPG


But I think I'll be safe. They're pursuing other things.

The cities were getting going and I was going to start building nukes. The plan was to get two nukes per Incan city and then declare and wipe out Huayna with 50 or so left over horses and musketeers. That plan went down the drain real fast.

Civ4ScreenShot0009.JPG


Apparently, after capitulating Saladin, Huayna was bored and decided to pick on me. This was actually a pretty good move on his part. I had a medium-sized, but incredibly old, army and I was still a few turns away from my first nukes. As I had only just gotten

Civ4ScreenShot0010.JPG


Nukes are incredibly expensive and it would be at least a couple turns until I had anything to show for my beeline. So I made some changes.

Civ4ScreenShot0011.JPG


Universal Suffrage would allow me to buy nukes. I had enough gold to afford about one ICBM per turn which was going to be very useful the rest of the game.

Unfortunately, my army died pretty quickly.

Civ4ScreenShot0012.JPG


This you can write down as gaffe number 3. I didn't retreat my main forces and ended up losing about 75% of my army.

Alright. The revolt is over and the AI sucks at war. I'm sure they could have done a lot more damage then they did. They captured just the one city and by upgrading my musketeers to infantry I was able to hold them off. My cities then switched to full war production.

Civ4ScreenShot0013.JPG


Any city that could build an ICBM in under ten turns did that. Any city that could then build a cavalry in under ten turns did that. The rest got put on building wealth that would purchase ICBMs. It would have been better to build tactical nukes. Go ahead and put that as gaffe 4. I suppose I still thought I could lay down a rain of fire all over Incan land ... I couldn't.

The power of nuclear weapons saved me. Check out this before and after.

Civ4ScreenShot0014.JPG


Civ4ScreenShot0015.JPG


Civ4ScreenShot0016.JPG


I was starting to get really worried though. This war was taking all sorts of time longer than I thought it was going to. Did I still have a tech lead?

Civ4ScreenShot0017.JPG


Yeah, I'm good.

Gaffe number 5 coming up. I decided this force was enough to invade with.

Civ4ScreenShot0019.JPG


Some nukes later, and it looked like I was right.

Civ4ScreenShot0020.JPG


At this point I stopped taking screen shots. I was at war with not just Huayna but also his vassals. This was giving me all sorts of trouble and Zara and Saladin managed to knock out my entire ground contingent. I was beaten back, had no force, and had no captured cities to show for my effort. I needed to re-focus. I started by getting some peace on.

Civ4ScreenShot0021.JPG


This helped a lot as Zara was the only one with an army both more advanced than mine and larger than mine (huayna had like 7 advanced troops and Saladin had a bunch of camels). I hunkered down in my territory and let Huayna and Saladin build and send troops my way. I'd take out the smaller stacks with the Cavalry I was accumulating and take out the larger stacks with the Nukes I was accumulating. It was slow going, a pretty typical two steps forward one step back kind of deal. I kept using up my nuclear weapons and was having trouble hanging on to them for an assault on Huayna.

Finally, I was able to go in. With about 50 cavalry and 10 ICBMs stored up I rushed headlong into Huayna's empire. I was able to nuke cities before I got to them and then capture them easily. Instead of a mass nuking, I played it a little smarter. I peeked to see if I could take a city without a nuke and if I could I did and if not I dropped two bombs on it which leveled the city and everything in it. Soon after, Saladin broke free and I took his peace offering.

Civ4ScreenShot0022.JPG


After a very long, slow war I took this deal from Huayna.

Civ4ScreenShot0024.JPG


I was confident that once borders popped I would have enough land for a domination victory.

Civ4ScreenShot0025.JPG


I liked the idea of just knocking him out but I decided not to since there was a concern that he might capitulate to Zara or Saladin forcing me back into a war with them, which I was too spread out and too weak to handle.

Civ4ScreenShot0026.JPG


Sure enough, after just a few turns the game was won.

Civ4ScreenShot0028.JPG


A score worthy of my zillion late-game mistakes:

Civ4ScreenShot0029.JPG

 
interesting... nice win even if I hate nukes...

btw about that physics problem if you look to my post before your last report I mentioned Zara has access to Airships...
You should have maybe try with cavalry charge. HC would not have vassal and when I checked your last save I took 1 cavalry to scout his cap and he had there only LB's and some stupid units. The only problem was upgrade gold, which you could probably risk taking away with military science (if I remember correctly) and quickly go on him.
Could be probably interesting to replay from the last report again.
 
I probably could have done some damage to Huayna had I invaded. I decided not to though, because Zara was already his Vassal and, as you said, already had access to airships. It's possible I could have won the game with the force I had. What I could have done was to keep producing cavalry instead of stopping military production when I was almost done with Ragnar. This would have given me a very large stack indeed.
 
Post Mortem

It turns out I forgot to save after I finished last night. I still have my auto-save saving only every 4 turns and not wanting to replay the last three turns, I think we'll just have a screenshot-less post mortem. There was nothing too surprising or telling in any of the statistics, so I don't think we're missing anything important.

Demographics

The main thing to remember here is that after the Cavalry rush in which I kept all cities and took no vassals, except for Ragnar who had some stupid hard to get to cities, I had more than twice as much land as anybody else. As such, my production, GNP, food output, and all things that big empires have more of were way higher. My power was never that high at the end of the game. The graph had some interesting spots. The best moment was the few turns I was invading Huayna and launching by ICBMs. My power fell off pretty dramatically. In the end, my approval rating was dead last and everybody was somewhere between -40 and -100 with me ... something about dropping nukes all over the place.

Musketeers

We were pretty sure going in that these units were no Oromo and it turned out we were exactly right. Had we rushed earlier in the game, or waited until musketeers for our first attack, the musketeers might have been more helpful, but as it was we took so long getting to gunpowder that the window for an effective Musketeer attack was closed. Muskets are fun with cannons, but the only benefit of the Musketeer is it's move bonus, which makes the muskets+cannons attack way less appealing. When I was attacking Toku and Ragnar with them I almost never used them as their odds were always miles lower than the odds on the curis. Then I didn't want to use them for mop-up since I wanted the curis getting the experience. Overall, this unit isn't great.

Salons

I think I built about 10 of these. They are not super buildings. I did my best to make them as useful as they could be by staying in Rep thus giving the free artists some extra beakers, but they weren't really that good. Couple their mediocrity with the fact that Astronomy was a nearly useless tech in this game and the Salons became completely forgettable. I'm rating this building as somewhere between lame and lousy.

Points to take Away

  1. The power of the whip. I think this will be a point to take away in all of my ALCs. I was able to build a large army twice by two pop whipping cats and elephants and then later by two-pop whipping curis. The whip is so powerful when used even slightly correctly that I'm excited to get better at using it.
  2. Wonders aren't that great. I was industrious and built almost every single one, but I didn't notice them being that great. This is likely because I didn't try to optimize them (letting ToA city grow really big, planting a ton of coastal cities for TGL, etc). But still, my dates for all the milestones were late. I think the reason for this was mostly
  3. Good neighbors are important. I had no friends this entire game. I was able to get some trades here and there, but I never really had a partner who I split research duty with. Not only that, but none of the neighbors were excellent techers themselves and I had trouble meeting/getting pleased enough with the ones that could have been useful. So neighbors and trading are more important than wonders.
  4. AIs suck. On the other hand, because I was able to get my hands on so many wonders I think I couldn't have lost this game. Even if I hadn't finished off Huayna right away. I was still way bigger and could have just outproduced him in the modern age. Nobody was going to beat me to space or culture and the AI can't win a domination victory when it involves taking land from the human.
  5. Golden ages are cool. This could be the one way the wonders changed my game, now that I think about it. I was able to get lots of great people from Paris since I built so many wonders and the National Epic there. These great people + the MoM allowed me 48 uninterrupted turns of Golden Age which significantly increased everything about my game.

De Gaulle Comments
I didn't really know I was playing with this leader specifically. It's always a good idea to play the map, but in this game I think that's pretty much all I ended up doing. His unique units are not game-changing and his traits are cool, but definitely don't suggest anything unusual be done. So for Zara I'd say go for Oromos because they're awesome. But for De Gaulle, just kind of do whatever and you won't really notice.
 
Whoa, a surprise ending. I didn't see that coming, but I guess the AI didn't either. -100? You really know how to make an impression on someone. It was a game of extremes. You had almost all the wonders, 48 turns of Golden Ages, and then a finish to end the world. Maybe you should adjust your name a little bit. How does Banginal sound to you?

Congratulations on the victory and thanks for the write-up!
 
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