Rat44 CCM - Ultimate Challenge

I didn't expect we'd take Canada's capital this soon--tremendous.

It's hard to see where the Canadians still have iron--Halifax? It would be good to solve that problem so that the rest of the campaign isn't a bloody slog of 3-3 attacks.

Edit: The Greeks have two visible iron hooked up, so plainly the Canadians are using one of those. Given the AI's very high ratio of cities to workers with the settings we're using, we can hope that some Canadian towns lack connections to their new capital and so to the iron.

CommandoBob said:

Back to me already?

Click to expand...

A common sentiment. Enjoy your time with your son.

Elephantium said:

Once we make peace with them, the Mongols are the weakest (in terms of science, at least) right now. OTOH, they have the Hunnic Storm - that could be unpleasant. I like the idea of going after Greece next to round out our empire, but they're already in the Age of Discovery.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how much difference Hunnic Storm makes in itself, but regardless of that a Mongol campaign looks deeply unappetizing, as we'd be struggling through terrible terrain to take junk cities. It would be vastly preferable to attack the Greeks before they build arquebusiers, if we have the chance.

Pre turn

establish embassy with Mongols to know what they do

IT Excellent news as Mongols declare war on Japan
Canada loses a spear in Halifax to what must be an invisible unit from Greece, they then counter that attack, then they lose an ancient cav to us, Montreal riots

Turn 1 1AD
excellent start at Halifax as we go 3-0 and take the city



There are 6 Canadian cities left, a check reveals that they would give us 2 techs, almost 3 including monarchy

move units forward to be able to attack in 2 turns


Turn 2 25AD
decide to wait a turn to attack Quebec as we might face heavy sea bombardment and we would only lose units if we go in with too few troops
move forward so fast units can attack Toronto next turn

Turn 3 - 50AD
attack Toronto and after 2 defeats, find that they have knights, however the knight goes down to our chariot
and we take the city




spot a pike with 3 settlers
use a catapult to catch those 3 workers for us, get a 4th settler using an enslaver
move troops next to Quebec

IT we lose the covering spear after bombardment and a LB attack
Canada also drops a spear further up north
Chinese finish Great Wall

Turn 4 - 75AD
lose 1 chariot and 2 tomahawks, but take Quebec and gain a MGL, which is sent back for a market rush

take out a spear behind the lines
start to march towards Edmonton, there are 3 more cities left for us to take, monarchy and republic are now a close for us


IT Canada drops 3 units next to Quebec, Egypt finishes Dome of the Rock

Turn 5 - 100AD
rush market in New York
whittle down the stack of 3, take care of a dropped spear behind the lines

send a boat on a suicide mission way east

IT Canada drops 2 defenders next to Quebec, good luck with that
we know we're behind in techs as the Turks finish Philosophers Stone

Turn 6 - 125AD
move troops towards the remaining cities

IT Canada clearly gassed as they cannot muster a single attack besides the annoying sea bombards


Turn 7 - 150AD
lose 3 units but secure us the first lux, furs at Edmonton

on the northeastern coats, we finally bump into someone new, the British who are up all tech as well

IT all the Canadians can do is to pillage a tile

Turn 8 - 175AD
attack Calgary and win 5/4 with our tomahawks against pikes, extremely good RnG

this leaves us with Surrey, we take the city losing one chariot


the Canadian campaign is over

In the north we meet another Civ, the Aztecs, up all known techs

Time to broker with Canada: we get this deal


Unfortunately all Civs, have all other techs above us.

Get us Dark Ages from Japan as this is the only tech gaining access to another tech right now for 500gold and 47gpt, get feudalism from Aztecs for 695g and 40 gpt

we can't get Religion and I guess we need to research at ourselves to gain access to chivalry while preparing for a Greek campaign

IT Portuguese finish Hagia Sophia

Turn 9 - 200AD
a German chariot shows up near our capital

IT no attack

Turn 10 - 225AD
continue to build infrastructure for our switch to monarchy

we will get a few more markets, have built culture in the south
I do not know when is the best time to revolt. maybe we revolt now or wait for the Greek campaign as unit costs + the gpt
for the techs we bought will drag us a little.

There is a settler pair that could settle a small void north of Toronto

I guess Montreal will be the best spot to start an attack once the borders expand


The situation in our south

A lightning conclusion to the campaign.

If we have to fight a bloody even-odds campaign against the Greeks, 3-3 based on tomahawk warriors will be cheaper in shields than 4-4 based on knights. So if I can establish that the Greeks don't have arqs, I'll launch that war or at least get us set up for it.

At the moment I incline towards a quick revolt to monarchy. Our Canadian conquests have a lot of irrigated grassland so we'll get an immediate benefit there.

I've got it. The instant turnarounds may end here--perhaps a relief to some --since I probably can't play for 16-24 hours.

I will be away this weekend including Friday. I will likely need to swap with the next player unless NP wants to take the weekend to play.

View attachment 318133, many units have movement

225 (0): The sooner we revolt, the more the population loss in our Canadian conquests will fall on established Canadian citizens rather than new American ones. Also, a quick attack on Greece clearly isn’t practical—too many of our units have to stay where they are as garrisons. So, we’ll revolt immediately.

Before we leave despotism, though, I pop-rush granaries in Quebec, Calgary, Edmonton, and Surrey. This is obviously a severe step, which in conjunction with the revolt will reduce all these towns but Calgary to size one, but I’m confident it’s right. The flip risk in our Canadian cities is extreme, and I’d rather turn our dubiously loyal Canadian citizens into something permanently useful than let them rebel or starve them down for no gain.

I also do partial pop-rushes in Victoria and Ottawa, because these towns are at size two and so it’s free, apart from the unhappiness—that is, they’re going to be at size one after we revolt whether we spend their second pop points on rushing or not.

The four cities mentioned above complete their granaries.


250 (1): We suffer through a turn of anarchy, then enter monarchy in the interturn.

The Mongols and Japanese make peace, disappointingly quickly from our point of view.


275 (2): The Germans move a force of six Jumbos and two chariots towards Atlanta, so it’s time to end that phony war before it becomes real. We give them twenty gold for peace, and lose our war happiness.

Oh-oh. In calculating our switch to monarchy I trusted the Civilopedia, which says that each unit over the limit costs two gpt. In fact we’re being charged three gpt, putting us at -30 gpt with only 93 gold in the bank. We can only hope that the completion of Washington’s marketplace this IT will help a lot.

A tomahawk warrior in transit in Canada redline-retreats an attacking invisible unit, presumably Greek.

Washington builds its marketplace, which improves our position to -17 gpt.


300 (3): We enslave the redlined invisible unit (1-0).

Our exploring merchant ship spots a yellow border that seems to belong to an unmet civ, but it can’t move within the border (which is inland), and we don’t see any yellow units, so after lingering for a turn the ship sails on.

One of our tomahawk warriors runs into and defeats an invisible unit (2-0).


325 (4): Our financial position is so critical that I send our extra horses to the Aztecs for 13 gpt, though it’s the sort of thing we usually avoid. Given the way trade works in CCM our reputation should be safe, at least, unless both our Canadian horse cities flip.

Playing CCM with these settings may be unbalanced and untested, but at least it returns concern about money to the game.

We have an extra source of furs, too, but we can’t trade it because the flip risk is much higher than in the case of the horse tiles. I’ll disconnect it so it can’t be demanded away.

We enslave an uncovered Mongol worker, thus keeping them from hooking up horses.

The invisible-unit threat is extreme at the moment. We lose a spearman at Halifax and a TW near Montreal (2-2).

Toronto completes Christian Community, New York Royal Garrison, Boston its marketplace, Halifax CC, and Mississauga slavery. We’re now 15 gpt in the black.

350 (5): We enslave the slaver that attacked outside Montreal (3-2).

We repulse another invisible attack on Halifax (4-2).


375 (6): Philadelphia builds a castle, so we finally have a fourth native city that can train veterans.

Washington completes a granary, Montreal walls, Calgary American Flag, Edmonton AF, and Surrey AF.


400 (7): We see our first Greek longbowman.

Quebec builds AF and Victoria a granary.

The Russians, unknown to us, complete Hanseatic League. Navigation is just a first-tier Age of Discovery tech, so this doesn’t tell us anything new about AI tech progress.


425 (8): We get Washington set up for two-turn Jumbo production, though we’ll probably build another couple of one-turn pikemen there first.

Regina builds a granary, and Charlottetown AF.


450 (9): Our single scientist discovers Religion. I believe this is the first time we’ve min-researched a tech all the way in CCM, but it’s no surprise, Religion being so expensive.


475 (10): We push two suicide scouts into the darkness covering Greece, since attacking into fog is a terrible idea, and locate two Greek cities. Both towns are held by Hoplites, so the Greeks don’t seem to have arqs yet.

Three slaver victories this round yielded three slaves.

Two elite victories this round didn’t generate a Great Leader.

The uninviting prospect:

Our forces are deployed on the theory that we’ll be attacking Greece in about ten turns, with a stack of attack units and settlers near Montreal. But we aren’t committed to anything yet, since I assume we’ll want to spend most of the next round producing units, and that will leave time to get our armies to any starting point we want.

I say this because the more we see of Greece, the more difficult that campaign looks. Almost every Greek city we can see is walled, on a hill, over size ten, or some combination of those. Even though the Greeks don’t seem to have arqs, taking such objectives with attack-factor-three units when Hoplites are defending will be bad enough.

That leaves a possible Mongol campaign, which I believe I described as struggling through terrible terrain to reach junk cities. That’s all still true, but OTOH in our current difficulty with unit costs we don’t need good cities, just cities. With one-turn roading stacks, the rough terrain means less than it would in C3C. And crucially, the Mongols don’t have iron hooked up, so they’re still showing regular spearmen on top of their cities. So I now think the next player should spend the first part of his round marching our strike force west, and then attack Bulgan and Ulaangom towards the end. But it’s obviously a difficult choice, and the whole team should discuss it.

I’ve left a lot of units unmoved which should start moving west before we hit Enter if we choose the Mongol option. I’ll leave one unit active in each stack that needs to be considered.

With Religion we’re eligible to build the Great Monastery, but the opportunity cost to complete it in Washington would be five Jumbos, so I think we should wait for a Great Leader.

We made good progress developing Philadelphia and Atlanta this round, and they’re ready to contribute fully to the war effort, except that Atlanta needs a castle so that it can train veterans. When Atlanta completes its marketplace this IT, our gpt position will improve a fair amount.

Atlanta’s MM is set strictly for this IT and should be reviewed next turn. The same is true of Washington and Philadelphia.

Our war production is humming along well now, with two-turn Jumbos in Washington, two-turn ancient cav in Boston and New York, and two-turn pikemen in Philadelphia.

Our letting the Canadians survive an extra twenty turns so that we could take techs from them was necessary, but it’s produced a lot of complications. The difference from normal CCM is that because the AI founded so many cities so early in this game, Canada dominates us culturally in a way our previous first victims didn’t. If we didn’t have to worry about flips we could comb about fifteen units out of our Canadian towns and add them to our SoD or just disband them to save gold, and our position would look better either way. So, of course we’ll want to eliminate Canada as soon as the peace treaty expires.

Greebley, I'm sorry I couldn't play more quickly to address your situation, but RL was distracting. I suppose it's a question of whether you want to play a whole round tonight or ask for a swap.

Agree with NP, Greece doesn't look appetizing and remember Mongols had a war before.

We should prepare and maybe even launch a Mongol campaign asap. It will whittle down our unit costs and give us extra cities.

Once, those expensive gpt deals are up, we should be able to afford chivalry and catapult us in the the next age where we will get a free tech I assume.

And of course, we should take out Canada as soon as possible

The Roster:
ThERat
Northern Pike
Greebley - swap or skip?
Elephantium - up
CommandoBob

Amazing reading! One of the few threads in which I read every words...
I wish you a great luck! It seems that as you elimintate Greece and Canada the things become much easier.

I think I had better swap or skip. I would be free Sunday night, so CB, you can choose between playing after Elephantium, or letting me play first. Whichever works better for you.

I'll get started tonight.

BTW, are any of you fellows interested in setting up a CCM PBEM game? I made a thread in the relevant forum: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=458316

Northern Pike said:

Oh-oh. In calculating our switch to monarchy I trusted the Civilopedia, which says that each unit over the limit costs two gpt. In fact we’re being charged three gpt, putting us at -30 gpt with only 93 gold in the bank...

325 (4): Our financial position is so critical that I send our extra horses to the Aztecs for 13 gpt, though it’s the sort of thing we usually avoid. Given the way trade works in CCM our reputation should be safe, at least, unless both our Canadian horse cities flip.

Playing CCM with these settings may be unbalanced and untested, but at least it returns concern about money to the game.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I made your special biq from an early version of CCM 1.8 and in that version I did rise the unit costs a little bit. So here the CCM 1.7 civilopedia can´t be true. If I remember well, in that early version of CCM 1.8 I also made some spying missions (p.e. stealing maps) more expensive and more risky.

No problem--I assumed it was something like that, and we appreciate your making the special biq.

I actually like the challenge we now face with not much cash, a welcome change to the normal play.

And since steals have been made more difficult, we might want to try to avoid them.

Does anyone know what happened to the drop down selection menu that was at the bottom of all screens?