From demigod to klutz

ville-v said:

You had better focus to the war. Start it as early as you can to limit expansion of the AI. If my first town is a good settler factory, my second town starts pumping archers right away. Research iron working fast, so that you can take down all towns that have iron. Build lots of catapults.

Place your towns 2 tiles from each other, build barracks, then build troops. I don't know about Monarch but on higher levels the AI will build towns (in place of the razed ones) fast enough so that you don't have to build any settlers to fill the gaps. You don't need infrastructure in your cities, sheer amount of towns makes sure you don't need to pay unit support and can afford running with 50% luxury if necessary. After iron working and mathematics I don't research anything.

Conquer the ToA if you can, you only need to hold it for 5 turns to get all your cities to fill 21 tiles. The shields you need to build it are best used to build military.

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Clearly, I am not ruthless enough! It is quite a novel approach to the game to just try and knock everybody out without fannying about building stuff. Quite good fun. I'll stick at Monarch for a bit then go up to Emp and try it there. The Temple of A is a bit of a drain on resources, you are right. I got it free first time round with a GSL but have since been building it the hard way. I'll stop doing that.

Quite annoying is that every map I get turns out to have horses bloody miles away!

Theov said:

I beeline to Scientific Method, build ToE get Electronics and build the Hoover Dam asap.

I dunno, but that tech route helps me more than to go the industrious route.

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For general games, maybe, though hydro plants don't help until you have factories.
However, for a 20K game, I want to get rails up and the factory & coal plant built to help with the later middle-ages wonders that I am still building. ToE and Hoover just aren't very high culture wonders.

Update: I broke the 9,000 barrier, and the year zero one at the same time, simply by playing on the smallest land mass, tiny Pangea map and conquering 66% of it by 150 BC. No poncing about with artillery or spears, just mass-produced mounted warriors. Each conquered city pays for its own defence (one spearman is enough). I also found I can get Polytheism, trade it for Writing with the Dutch, win the race to Philosophy and get Monarchy free, which is a lot faster than getting Monarchy directly.

Merry Christmas all.

As I don't have enough stress in my life I've gone back to trying to win a demigod game without cheating, except I'm doing it with the Mayans, which is a form of cheating in the view of some. I'm playing small continental. A big problem is the tech race. I can get to the end of the ancient era in good shape, actually in the lead, with or without the slingshot (I start by researching the wheel, for which others are willing to pay a lot - don't ask me why, get alphabet in trading, then writing etc). But almost immediately once I hit the Middle Ages a lag opens up and starts to stretch.

I have finally accepted the wisdom of beefing up my core cities to size 12 by importng workers from the 'crap towns' (Lanzelot ) and note the remarkable benefits. I remain a clueless klutz however. In my latest effort I had no iron but failed to realise in time that this dictated I should make a dart for longbowmen with a view to forming 'the poor man's army' (Lanzelot again). I have also reluctantly accepted that I must make more war. In my previous game, I wiped out the Romans (the AI seems to play the Romans badly which is why I hand pick them) but acquired only one GW (the GW) and no techs as Rome was as backward as me. Overreaching against India and losing cities and units to culture flipping sent me back to the drawing board.

Question: what are the comparative strengths and weaknesses of medieval infantry and longbowmen?

They donnot differ much. MedInfs is earlier available which is a great difference. Longbowmen are available without iron which can be a great difference. MedInfs have higher defence, but if they have to use that defence you are doing something wrong anyway. Longbowmen offer defence bombardement. When a different unit of the stack is attacked each longbowmen can once per turn bombard the attacker with an value of 2. That is not so much. If you have enough trebuchets in your stack they can do the same with a value of 6. Therefore i conclude that there is essential no difference between those 2 units as their main attribute, the attack value 4, is the same.

Thanks Justanick. Very helpful.

What a screw up. I'm embarrassed to say what I did. Maya, small continental, demigod. I built the Statue and went to war with India and Carthage on my continent, mostly the latter. I carved up Carthage good and aimed for the capital with my AC army, medieval infantry, trebuchets, pikes and what not. Captured it, got the GL and the GW and caught up in the tech race in one fell swoop. I had the largest population at this point 3/4 through the Middle Ages. Basically, I'm winning a demigod before I'm half way through.

Then I thought - I'll destroy Carthage (the capital) so it can't flip. Yes, I actually did that I slogged away for a few turns, noting how quickly I fell behind in the tech race (funny how useful the GL would have been ... ) then disaster struck. Earlier, in the war with India, I had captured Hyderabad. Hyderabad was in the middle of a bunch of swamps but also right in the middle of my continent. I started an extremely long term project to clear the swamps and build the forbidden palace. It must have taken 50-100 turns but I completed it. Then it flipped back to India. That's right. Size 2 when I captured it, size 6 when it flipped. Nowhere near the Indian capital or any Indian city. WTF!

I quit. I mean that in the past tense. I'm not quitting Civ III. Yet.

walletta said:

What a screw up. I'm embarrassed to say what I did. Maya, small continental, demigod. I built the Statue and went to war with India and Carthage on my continent, mostly the latter. I carved up Carthage good and aimed for the capital with my AC army, medieval infantry, trebuchets, pikes and what not. Captured it, got the GL and the GW and caught up in the tech race in one fell swoop. I had the largest population at this point 3/4 through the Middle Ages. Basically, I'm winning a demigod before I'm half way through.

Then I thought - I'll destroy Carthage (the capital) so it can't flip. Yes, I actually did that I slogged away for a few turns, noting how quickly I fell behind in the tech race (funny how useful the GL would have been ... ) then disaster struck. Earlier, in the war with India, I had captured Hyderabad. Hyderabad was in the middle of a bunch of swamps but also right in the middle of my continent. I started an extremely long term project to clear the swamps and build the forbidden palace. It must have taken 50-100 turns but I completed it. Then it flipped back to India. That's right. Size 2 when I captured it, size 6 when it flipped. Nowhere near the Indian capital or any Indian city. WTF!

I quit. I mean that in the past tense. I'm not quitting Civ III. Yet.

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I agree that losing your fp in a flip is quite a sad event but not sad enough to quit. Build some libraries and universities in the nearby cities and the town has very high chances of flipping back to you as it's fast from the Indian capital and had more of your citizens than Indians. I think quitting a game just because something went wrong is a terrible option as that would mean you're giving up on all your effort uptil that moment and the time you spent to reach there is also wasted. Even if you can't get the fp back you still can get the city which your workers spent so much time improving. Declare war of you need to and keep playing until there's absolutely no hope.

Atishay Jain said:

I agree that losing your fp in a flip is quite a sad event but not sad enough to quit. Build some libraries and universities in the nearby cities and the town has very high chances of flipping back to you as it's fast from the Indian capital and had more of your citizens than Indians. I think quitting a game just because something went wrong is a terrible option as that would mean you're giving up on all your effort uptil that moment and the time you spent to reach there is also wasted. Even if you can't get the fp back you still can get the city which your workers spent so much time improving. Declare war of you need to and keep playing until there's absolutely no hope.

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It's the flip in combo with the stupid decision to abandon Carthage that caused me to jack that game in. I will probably replay it from an earlier save but, sadly, it will not count as a non-cheating demigod win. Still, I am learning all the while and demigod feels much less out of reach now than it did a while back.

walletta said:

Still, I am learning all the while and demigod feels much less out of reach now than it did a while back.

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Well that's a good thing. I too am at about the same point - easily win at Emperor, irregular results with demigod and only one victory (just barely made it with the UN that I didn't even build) on diety.

Atishay Jain said:

Well that's a good thing. I too am at about the same point - easily win at Emperor, irregular results with demigod and only one victory (just barely made it with the UN that I didn't even build) on diety.

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Heh, well I don't easily win on Emperor TBH.

I re-started from the point just before I had abandoned Carthage. Turned out I got no more benefit from the Gt. Lib. anyway. Still, this time, Hyderabad didn't flip and I removed both Carthage (the civ, not the city) from my continent and then India too. On the other one, Rome did the same to Germany and England. Rome is quite away ahead in the tech race but I have a bigger piece of the planet and long term, I hope I can catch up. We are at war too. It's lucky for me the AI is so grossly incompetent at some things. Like amphibious operations. Once my core towns have factories and coal plants belching out smoke, I may go communist to do something about the gross corruption of my monarchy and move to total, permanent war.

Well, I certainly ended up with a fascinating game! It's 1580, only Rome and I survive. We each have one continent of approximately equal size. Rome, mistress of the seas, controls the small handful of islands that make up the remainder of the land. Rome's pop is 56%, mine 43%. Rome has a significant tech lead. I can only win this militarily, methinks. I plan to go for flight, then mass produce bombers and fighters and teach the Romans how to use them by knocking out her strategic resources and luxuries. I have to bank on making each unit of mine worth two of Rome's. There is an island just offshore which I can use to soak up Roman effort by carpet bombing and threatening it, while I build a carrier fleet and escorts to take the war to the Roman heartland (I am not sure anything significant is within range of land-based bombers - I'd better check). This is a great challenge and promises to be a lot of fun. I will wittier on about it later, no doubt.

I have a happier populace (more lux) and I can build armies to defend myself against incursion, with a mobile reaction force of massed artillery to obliterate any who dare to set foot on the motherland! Mayans! We shall fight them on the beaches [etc.]

ETA tactical advice on the most effective way of destroying enemy planes please. I need command of the air.

The most efficient way to destroy planes is to destroy them on the ground. When taking the city or airfield with ground troops is no option you can bombard the plane on the ground with your naval forces. Destroyers and battleships can bombard planes and destroy them on the ground. All naval units and all air units have the ability to kill air units via bombardement. You should spam out battleships using a mobilized war economy.

Soon you should also use Marines to capture those cities whose defences have been obliterated by massive battleship bombardement. You might be tempted to do the bombardement with bombers instead. And while that is (much) more effective it might be (much) less efficient because you risk losing tons of bombers to enemy air defence. When using naval forces instead you can limit your losses to Hitpoints only. Those can be regenerated for free when in port. Please note that while in port ships have only half of the usual defence value and are thus rather vulnerable.

As for the research i would advise to go for mass production first and build commerce harbours while you can. This greatly helps your economy and thus your research or the amount of troops you can maintain. The choice is yours. Then let the ultimate war commence.

justanick said:

The most efficient way to destroy planes is to destroy them on the ground. When taking the city or airfield with ground troops is no option you can bombard the plane on the ground with your naval forces. Destroyers and battleships can bombard planes and destroy them on the ground. All naval units and all air units have the ability to kill air units via bombardement. You should spam out battleships using a mobilized war economy.

Soon you should also use Marines to capture those cities whose defences have been obliterated by massive battleship bombardement. You might be tempted to do the bombardement with bombers instead. And while that is (much) more effective it might be (much) less efficient because you risk losing tons of bombers to enemy air defence. When using naval forces instead you can limit your losses to Hitpoints only. Those can be regenerated for free when in port. Please note that while in port ships have only half of the usual defence value and are thus rather vulnerable.

As for the research i would advise to go for mass production first and build commerce harbours while you can. This greatly helps your economy and thus your research or the amount of troops you can maintain. The choice is yours. Then let the ultimate war commence.

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Great, thanks very much Justanick! Inspired by these stirring (and much appreciated) words I will go forth into battle!

The first great peoples' war has concluded with a derisory payment of 40 gold pieces to the gluttonous, putrid Romans. Their bombers, tanks, mechanised and TOW infantry were no match for the determined Mayan defenders of cannon, artillery, infantry and cavalry and all those who set foot on the ancient soil paid with their lives. True, Brandenberg, now renamed 'Stalingrad', is no longer a teeming city of 12 pop. but rather a pale shadow of the former greatness (to which it will however soon return) of one heroic citizen sans barracks, temple, factory, harbor ... sans everything, in fact. Also true, one of our great armies, the first rifleman army had to be sacrificed in the defence of the city, but our massed guns emerged unscathed and four armies remain in the field with another, the first infantry shock army, soon to emerge from the romantically-named second city - '002'.

All in all, given the massive disparity in strength, a glorious victory. When the Romans return (for this is but an armistice - we aren't complete morons) they will meet with a fiercer reception as the Mayans close in on the secrets of those funny flying things that caused such devastation, but which our strategists reported were ill-deployed, costing us no cities, luxuries or resources.

Further, the Mayans now lead in GNP, annual income and manufactured goods, proving the superiority of the Great Commie Leap Forward. More anon.

Oh, the buggers have marines. We lost a city but regained it immediately. Still. Worrying ...

The Romans got in a huff over a slight misunderstanding arising from our well-meaning interest in the precise composition of their army and launched a dastardly second Great War of the continents (the historians have renamed the earlier war 'the first Great War of the continents). After only two or three rounds of combat we find we could work on our air tactics a little bit but that ground ops remain a turkey shoot. The Romans land a humongous splodge of metal somewhere and we turn it to burnt-out rust with artillery, bombers (we can fly!) and killer cavalry armies of which we are managing to get by with 5 (to add to the three infantry armies).

We have thunk up a new tactic (fully aware that all the experts here will either: A already have tried it or B rejected it as risibly dumb) namely: posting a captured slave worker, of which we acquired many in the medieval wars, on each and every coastal hill or mountain square, forcing the Romans to put ashore on level ground thereby assuring their total destruction even more, er, totally.

But alas, an eventually successful spying mission brought grim news of the scale of the opposing army which is imposing to put it mildly, even if it features some odd quirks. In addition to the 170+ mechanised infantry (can't have too many of those) there are also half a dozen gleaming aircraft carriers but scarcely any planes (9 bombers and 12 fighter jets) and we have yet to see any of these craft in action, nor the cruisers, nor the battleships neither. Only destroyers escorting transports which we find it enjoyable to sink. There are some mysterious, er, big pointy things that look great but hardly seem to be doing anything except standing there. The last time we saw anything like these was several thousand years ago when the Egyptians made them out of stone and just sort of stood them up and looked at them. Oh well. One fool on the war council asked: what if they are enormous bombs that could destroy entire cities or even the whole world? I boxed his ears and packed him off for coastal lookout duty with the slaves whose heroic self-sacrifice will forever command the eternal and supreme indifference of the Mayan people.

But alack, of all things, the Romans are closing in on a runaway cultural victory so the war is now just a pointless loss of Roman life. Except for the pointy things, I could defend myself forever against the cave man tactics of the enemy but, such is life. My own incompetence in the earlier Carthaginian and Indiian wars accounts for the failure. Too slow and far too many stupid mistakes. Fun though.

Since the game is effectively over I have resorted to shameless cheating by attempting to steal tech and then re-rolling (i.e. reloading) when the attempt fails.

The culture thing has come too fast but Rome may have sealed a permanent and unassailable lead in the Space Race too, given the runaway tech advantage. I need to get much better at war fighting. The empire management is just about OK but I am lousy at prosecuting an offensive war. I know only one stratagem, long drawn out defence followed by slow attrition of the enemy. And tactically, things could be a lot better too, from not being so risk-averse to remembering basics like taking workers and settlers along with the army.

Right now I am munching my way through the shedloads of modern armour Rome keeps serving up. Down from 31 to 17 units in a couple of turns and soon there will be none. Not much longer and there will be no more transports to bring them over either. Maybe I should spare the transports, come to think of it.

If you've done the Romans that much damage, what are the chances of extorting some of their tech advantage and/or crappy towns for peace (which you can then use as beachheads for the next war)?

And at this stage in the game, you won't ever have them less than Furious at you, so you can always try propaganda or spying on them again if you need some more...

Just because they've got Nukes, doesn't necessarily mean they'll use them.

tjs282 said:

If you've done the Romans that much damage, what are the chances of extorting some of their tech advantage and/or crappy towns for peace (which you can then use as beachheads for the next war)?

And at this stage in the game, you won't ever have them less than Furious at you, so you can always try propaganda or spying on them again if you need some more...

Just because they've got Nukes, doesn't necessarily mean they'll use them.

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I haven't damaged them anything like enough. I persuaded them they weren't going to achieve anything and at the end of the second great war they paid me 120g (it was the other way round before) but I have jacked the game in now because of the strange artillery thing I described elsewhere (I have a bug), the imminence of the Romans' culture victory, the possibility the Romans' lead in tech is at runaway proportions (they have just about every GW going to maximise their output - although my pop is now larger, from 43-56 to 51-49, as are my manufactured goods and annual income) and the length of time it will take to degrade them enough to commence offensive operations, although I could scoop up one or two of the islands they control, especially the ones near my shores.

No, it's back to the drawing board for a new shot at the title, armed with new and valuable experience and terrific advice here.

Settled my capital beside two cows in a corridor of grass and hills with jungle at one end and desert at the other. I have re-started this one about 20 times trying to find the best path in trading and expansion. It eventually turned out I should have focused more on the uninviting desert, which is easier to develop and sniffed at by Carthage at the farther side of it.

In tech trading, first warrior code, then pick up alphabet in exchange, then bee line for philosophy and then head for construction (to get the aqueducts going) worked best. I arrived in the Middle Ages close to the tech lead and with a viable empire. India, across the jungle, is not strong. Carthage is mighty but friendly. I have three sources of iron, no horses (but Spain is willing), one saltpetre, three spice and one wine as the industrial era approaches. Carthage and Persia are big, Greece is eliminated.

Strategy.

1 military

My army is obsolete. It should consist of muskets, cavalry and cannon but is instead a jumble of trebuchets, knights, pikes and spears, with leftover warriors and swords too. Oh, and some Javelin Throwers, one of which I forgot not to use thus triggering the GA just as I transited to Monarchy, which was OK but not best. I read the article here about using the JWs to farm workers from barbarian camps, a very sneaky idea which in one of the junked games was so successful I ended up with a massive slave population toiling away. If you add them to your cities they don't make for happy campers. Anyway, it's only a question of time before Carthage notices the frailty and the mask slips. So that's priority one. Only one short war against Carthage and England (they started it) so far but otherwise I have peacefully co-existed with everyone. In the earlier attempts I was picked on a lot because I was weaker. Now they respect me. I sense India might be weak. Maybe I'll pick her off. Wish I had an army by now.

2 Diplomatic

I could use some mutual assistance pacts to insure against the Carthaginian threat. I should also get everybody's maps, I suppose. I am pretty backward when it comes to exploring the planet. At the very least, I should find out whether there are any wonders near enough to justify a military campaign.

3 commercial

The iron is very handy. Wish I had another source of saltpetre. But I don't. I might culture (or fight) my way to some more wine and sell that.

4 technological

This is not too bad although I fear Carthage and Persia may be pulling away. I have been on max research the whole time, cash permitting, and probably lag two or three behind as I close in on Physics. Soon comes the Industrial Age and the big choices:

A nationalism to get those rifles, much better than lousy muskets

B steam, to build the railways, then:
Bi dart for scientific method and the Theory of Evolution or
Bii head for replaceable parts the strength of which Justanick explained the other day.

I am addicted to the TofE but it would be crushing not to get there first and the belching factories of industrialisation must certainly compensate a great deal if I go the other route.

5 Wonders

I so far only managed to get Copernicus Observatory, located in 'z1/capital' (my capital, obviously). Smiths Trading would be nice but I bet I can't hope for that.

I find monarchy works better for me than Republic. More anon.