Rat44 CCM - Ultimate Challenge

I like that idea, too.

And since it appears they have had no wars, they will have plenty of units. And we have a long front with them.

Would we need to set up a honey-pot bait-and-switch city pair to keep the Greeks diverted while we grab their own cities?

That's a good idea. We'll want to keep their SoDs wandering back and forth until we can whittle them down.

Greebley, my apologies--RL has thrown my schedule off, and I now expect to post between 5:00 and 6:00 PM, eastern time.

Greebley, here are the save and the handoff notes, so you can jump right in if you want to. I may take a little longer to post the report per se.

View attachment 319529, end of turn

[Post moved to end of report.]

1310 (0): We go 1-2 against Keshik attacks. One of our losses is the missionary left alone on a mountain near Baruun-Urt--which provides him no protection against Keshiks.

Shouldn't our American version of the missionary be two young men in white shirts?

We repel a Greek invisible attack outside Halifax.

Quebec builds a temple, Bulgan a granary (switched from castle--this inner-core town needs to grow), and Surrey a temple.

Dalandgadzad comes out of resistance.

The challenge:

1320 (1): We unhorse four Keshiks on our approach to Baruun-Urt (4-0).

We take Baruun-Urt, held by three spearmen, without loss (7-0), capturing two workers. We gain control of Hunnic Storm, which will function until Ballistics; we'll see if the healing-in-enemy-territory feature proves useful.

We ride down a Mongol spearman near Seattle (8-0).

In a skirmish outside Choibalsan we slay an archer and enslave a spearman, but lose a knight (10-1).

We do very well against Keshik counterattacks, going 4-0, with a heroic ancient cav in Baruun-Urt accounting for three by itself (14-1). Since the AI can't handle building veteran units under CCM's special constraints, most Keshiks are regulars, of course.

We repulse another Greek invisible attack at Halifax (15-1).

Choibalsan flips, which is no surprise at all. We only lose two units and we should be able to recapture it immediately.

Fredericton constructs a temple, Gatineau a town clock, and Seattle American Flag.


1330 (2): We retake Choibalsan, held by two late pikemen (17-1).

We trample two spearmen on our approach to Amalik (19-1).

Amalik is at size eleven and potentially a difficult objective, but we storm it without loss (held by a late pikeman and two spearmen; 22-1).

Here and there we mop up two longbowmen and a Keshik (25-1). We gain a very welcome monk.

One of our pikemen puts on almost as fine a display of defense as the AC last turn, redline/retreating two Keshiks and repelling an invisible unit (26-1).

We lose a pikeman to invisible attack at Halifax, though (26-2).

Toronto constructs a town centre, and Mississauga a theatre.

Hunnic Storm gives us our first horse archer—militarily unimportant, but a nice graphic.

The Koreans complete Taj Mahal, which requires Free Artistry. We don’t know the Koreans, or any civ that’s getting Wonders built, in fact. Plainly we’re on the smaller, backward continent, which promises an interesting later game.


1340 (3): We dispose of the invisible Greek attacker at Halifax (27-2).

I’m doing a lot of irrigating. With the much greater opportunities for city growth in CCM, just mining everything green isn’t necessarily the best course.

We move sixteen knights and support units in proportion within striking range of Kazan. At size thirteen on a hill, this city may be a tough target even held by spearmen.

We rout two Keshiks on our approach march (29-2).

Bah—our six-HP elite Jumbo, anchoring our stack at Kazan, goes down without much of a fight to a Keshik (29-3).

Edmonton finishes a temple, Dalanzadgad American Flag, and Philadelphia a town clock, which makes the town capable of one-turn knight production.


1350 (4): Kazan is held by four spearmen and three Keshiks, so it’s a good thing we brought a large stack. But most are regulars or redlined, and our assault is anticlimactically easy. We seize the city for the loss of one knight (36-4), capturing two workers and taking a slave.

We culture-bomb Kazan with our only monk.

Our single exploring transport ship continues its highly productive voyage by meeting the Vikings. They’ve got fourteen cities, but they’re behind us in tech and have no money, so no new possibilities arise. They may be stuck on an offshore island.

All along the front we account for two Keshiks, two spearmen, and a late pikeman (41-4).

We R&R one Keshik attack near Kazan.

Ottawa builds an aqueduct, Halifax a granary, Regina an aqueduct, and Chicago Christian Community.


1360 (5): With Kazan’s culture bomb and some combat roading, we’re able to attack Hovd and Mandalgovi without approach marches.

We capture Hovd, held by two spearmen. We lose a knight (43-5).

We take a moment to pick off a redlined Keshik (44-5).

We take Mandalgovi, held by two spearmen (46-5).

We ride down a longbowman outside Choibalsan (47-5).

We go 2-1 against scattered Keshik counterattacks, but lose a pikeman to an invisible attacker—Mongol this time, not Greek (49-7).

Montréal builds a town centre, Vancouver a town clock, Winnipeg a temple, and Seattle CC.

Great Playhouse, another Wonder requiring Free Artistry, is completed on the other continent.

Every IT is an adventure as we wait for Mongol cities to flip, but we escape again.


1370 (6): We convert the Mongol slaver that slew our pikeman to the monastic life (50-7).

Sweeping a redlined Keshik out of our way somehow costs us a knight, but on the second try we gain our first Great Leader of the round (51-8). He’ll rush a granary in Seattle—unexciting but useful.

Tabriz is close enough to Mandalgovi that we’re able to storm it without a culture bomb or an approach march (held by two spearmen and a longbowman; 54-8).

We topple a Keshik attacking out of Karakorum (55-8).

Kazan builds AF, underdeveloped Victoria a marketplace, and Ulaangom a castle.


1380 (7): We seize Darkhan at the cost of a knight, completing our conquest of the eastern lobe of the Mongol lands (held by two spearmen and a LB; 58-9). The Mongols now hold only a narrow arc of seven cities from Karakorum to Choir.

We’ve pretty well eliminated the possibility of saltpetre in the Mongol lands. OTOH, we can see a Japanese source in the western desert which will be right on our border once we control all Mongolia.

We overrun two longbowmen on our approach to forest-bound Hohhot (60-9).

The pikeman covering our Hohhot force loses a close battle with an attacking LB (60-10).

Amalik completes AF, Baruun-Urt AF, Surrey an aqueduct, and Seattle a Leader-rushed granary.


1390 (8): We capture Hohhot, held by two spearmen and a LB (63-10).

We set up our attack on Karakorum by culture-bombing Mandalgovi.

We take the Mongol capital of Karakorum, defended by four late pikemen. We suffer three retreats but no losses (67-10).

Boston finishes its town clock, Choibalsan AF, and Halifax an aqueduct.

Copernicus is built, so the unknown continent has reached Physics on the lower half of the Age of Discovery tech tree.


1400 (9): We’ve split up our forces to advance simultaneously on all five remaining Mongol cities. We should be able to eliminate them in this round if we get one more IT without flips, and if attacking Daidu next turn doesn’t leave us too weak for a follow-up attack on Erdenet.

We trample two wandering longbowmen (69-10).

We storm Choir, deep in the northern hills, at the cost of a maceman. We’re fortunate that the force sent off when we assumed the town was held by spearmen prevails against three late pikemen (72-11).

We get set up to take the last four Mongol cities next turn, if the attacks work out.

Well, I’ve never seen this before. We lose a properly covered worker stack—two defenders, pikeman on top—when the Greeks attack with a missionary and a slaver in tandem (72-13). Fortunately only three foreign workers are in the stack.

Kazan and Dalanzadgad build CC.

The British, whom we know, build Westminster Palace, so our continent’s AI civs have got as far as Jurisprudence.


1410(10): We’ll attack Erenhot last, since that will be the best city to leave the Mongols if we have to work around the houseboat-civ bug.

We seize the new Mongol capital of Daidu with great ease, given that it’s a size-fourteen city held by four late pikemen (76-13). We capture a worker.

Pushing on from Daidu we capture Erdenet, defended by two late pikemen and a LB (79-13).

We take Ulaanbaatar, held by two late pikemen and a LB (82-13), and capture a worker.

Thus the Mongols are reduced to one city, and this is the worth of pointy-stick research after the ancient era:

Oddly, Erenhot does not have walls when our attack goes in, though reconnaissance by one of our slavers clearly established it as a walled town. Probably the Mongols lost the walls to negative gpt, since they still have a large, futile navy at sea.

So we storm Erenhot without difficulty, and:

We extirpate the garrison of a late pikeman and a spearman without loss, and capture a worker (84-13). Fifteen Mongol units that we can see, all ships, come off the map.

We refute the Greek missionary that claimed our workers with a missionary of our own, but don’t gain a monk (85-13).

Four slaver victories this round generated one slave.

Sixteen elite victories this round produced one Great Leader.

Five missionary victories this round yielded two monks.

I agree with attacking the Greeks next, since the other possible targets are so far away, or have such bad city sites, that integrating their lands into our empire won’t help us for a long time. But it’ll be a war with every possible disadvantage—a 4-4 basic attack, our weakness relative to them (as presently listed), and their very tough cities. We may have to spend a long time just wearing down their army, AW-style, before we take many cities. But ideally we’d start the war by seizing Piraeus in the east (though it’s a nightmare objective) to deprive them of saltpetre.

If we spend the next round just building up, we’ll add about thirty-five knights to our present fifty-three, which would be a mighty force. But the new units would also represent -105 gpt, which we have to bear in mind as we consider trading our gpt away again.

Our foreign gpt payments have just ended, so we’re free to consider our tech and trade options. I haven’t addressed this, for lack of time; so the whole team can look at the situation, and Greebley may want to take action before hitting Enter.

The Vikings are behind us in tech, but not by much, so tech-for-tech trades may become available there.

Washington doesn’t have its town clock, because it’s unnecessary when the city is just cranking out one-turn knights, but we should get the clock built whenever we change our build plans there.

Boston needs another pop point to build one-turn knights, so it’s set for maximum food surplus while still making one-turn pikemen.

Some of our Mongol cities may go into disorder as they come out of resistance, but it doesn’t matter now.

Routine unit-shuffling to cover workers has left Atlanta and Winnipeg with garrisons of only two, so please correct this when you can.

Edit: And please change Hovd and Erenhot to American Flag builds before hitting enter.

Our treb outside Choir may be on auto-move due to a mis-click.

amazing progress.

It's really great to see the Mongols gone after just one more turnset

Now, let amass a sizable force and taker on Greece. It might go in similar fashion that we need to have 2 rounds of skirmishes followed by real progress.

However, once we have taken care of Greece, we have a great core and that should be sufficient to get us ahead in the game. I could imagine that we would be 'found' by other more advanced civs from the other continent

Got it.

I was going to play when I realized there is a 2 for 1 deal. Greece doesn't have printing press.

Do we delay the war for 20 turns for this? I was really unsure.

I know we like the warrior path but if we got printing press and maybe renaissance to head toward University, we could pause to build our academies and library gained by printing press. I think self research would likely be better than trying to buy techs when we are so far behind to not get any 2-fers anymore. We could also build the temples and such to try to get our cities out of the rut they seem to be in.

Requires discussion though. What does the team want to do?

I'm not at my Civ computer right now but I'll have some feedback on that in twenty minutes or half an hour.