My second civilization Noble win :D

Tarew

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 25, 2007
Messages
31
Hope the title isn't getting cheesy yet. Some of you may have read about my first civilization win on noble three days ago, in which I sort of introduced myself to the community. It showed me two things:

1. People on this forum are about 8 times nicer than people on other games forums.
2. People here like reading stories, especially crazy ones about civilization games (my first victory was indeed quite crazy and involved me sending about 40 spies to keep Poverty Point in continuous revolt for 32 turns to prevent Sitting Bull from scoring a cultural victory for those who missed it).

While I'm afraid this game was not quite as insane as the first one, it was still quite memorable (and again rather stressful for me :p ).

The game was a noble game on normal speed and a temparate/medium pangaea map. I only got this game two weeks ago (having never played a civ game before that) so I'm constantly experimenting with strategies that work and (more often) with strategies that don't.
In the past several games (including the first Zulu game I wrote about) I'd been playing quite aggressive. It's not in my nature to attack but I find that when I try to play a builder strategy I tend to badly neglect my military.
Anyway I am becoming better at warmongering (the earlier the better) but I still have trouble taking cities that are guarded by archers etc. early on.
To that end, the Chinese Cho-Ko-Nu unit seemed excellent because of the collateral damage in order to prevent me from having to build excessive numbers of catapults. So I wanted to see if I could get them as soon as possible to gain a technological advantage. The Oracle gambit seemed the most appropriate way to go about it so I chose Qin Shi Huang as my leader for this game mostly for his Industrious trait (though as you will see, protective would be a life saver). The plan was to beeline to Metal Casting, use the Oracle to get that and then research machinery so that with some luck I'd have Cho-Ko-Nu before the opponents had Longbowmen.

The beginning started out extremely well. I was on the bottom middle of the continent and had a stone quarry nearby. I went Warrior-Warrior (aborted at popsize 2)-Settler as usual, making a worker in Shanghai and beginning on the Oracle in Beijing. This went SO smoothly that I actually didn't have all the prereqs for Metal Casting by the time the Oracle was 1 turn from completion so I delayed that and began Stonehenge instead.
Everything went exactly according to plan and within a stunningly short time I had constructed no less than 5 wonders: The Oracle, Stonehenge, the Great Wall, the Pyramids and the Colossus. Seems like a perfect start doesn't it? Wrong.

By this time my opponents had begun to announce themselves and I'm sure you'll understand I was quite shocked to see the mess I was into as they were:

Charlemagne
Hannibal
Ragnar
Shaka
Genghis Khan
Pericles

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
That was about the first thing that came to mind. In only two and a half weeks of playing I've already had extremely bad experiences with both Shaka and Ragnar, in fact one of the reasons I tried the Zulus myself earlier was because Shaka kept wiping me off of the map before that.
Ragnar is about the nastiest backstabbing AI I have ever seen in a game and though I hadn't played against Genghis Khan much, I could pretty much figure out his style from his traits and from history :cry:

In the game I was surrounded by Hanniba; on my left, Pericles on my upper left, Charlemagne covering the entire upper border and Ragnar on my direct right *cry*.
Fortunately Shaka and Genghis were all the way behind Ragnar, stuck together in a relatively small piece of land and they pretty much kept eachother occupied for most of the game (though Genghis at one point actually allied with Ragnar and still attacked me).

So, after having built all those wonders and a third city, Guangzhou, I have finally finished researching Machinery and my Cho-Ko-Nu are ready to go.
Ragnar actually started off quite far from my right otherwise I would have definitely attacked him first but Hannibal was closing in fast on my left so I decided to target him. As expected my Cho-Ko-Nu force was far superior to his archers and axeman. It was only because I had some extremely bad luck in the city fights (losing multiple 80% win chance fights in a row) that it took a while. In the end I managed to take Carthage (capturing the Temple of Artemis and the Kashi Visvanath) and three other cities though, effectively cutting his empire in half (had already set up a town on a southern island) and rendering him completely harmless for the rest of the game.

That was about as far as my expansion would go in this game though as I was forced to hastily get the bulk of my troops back to Beijing as Ragnar declared war on me, the first time of many more to come.
I manage to defend myself but don't have a sufficient force remaining to counterattack and I know that at least Charlemagne has Longbowmen by now. I have 7 cities now though and still a very decent military tech lead so the situation isn't too grim. I decide to switch to builder mode for the time being. Because my empire is considerably smaller than the Zulu empire from my first game, I also have no problem keeping the research bar at 100%, much to my surprise.
The next phase of the game is fairly uneventful. I build a few more wonders and watch interestedly as Shaka and Genghis Khan are desparately trying to kill eachother (Shaka would eventually prevail but Genghis was never completely destroyed). I also build a strong bond with Pericles, the only fellow who is extremely unlikely to declare war on me and maintain reasonable connections with Charlemagne (who is the number 1 at this point, though only 150 points above me).
Anyway, I tech my way up to Riflemen when Ragnar decides to attack for about the fourth time (his previous attacks have all been fairly easily repelled). This time he actually has Genghis Khan supporting him and his stack size is impressive. I myself have built my last stone wonder, Chichen Itza by now and have several highly upgraded Rifleman guarding Beijing.
Ragnar on the other hand only has Trebuchets, Musketmen and Knights and he then proceeds to waste his ENTIRE stack on my city defences! :eek:
I'm quite stunned by this incredible waste of life and the walls of Beijing remained red-stained for several decades afterwards (though in all honesty, I'd have lost this if most of my riflemen didnt have City Defender III, obtainable because of Qin's Protective trait).

By this time, the only opponent keeping up with me in tech is Charlemagne and I don't really feel like going for another space race (Chinese in space somehow doesn't sound quite as captivating as Zulus in space). Then I notice Beijing already has 15000 culture because of all the wonder production. Not bad at all. Unfortunately my two next most cultured cities only have 4000 culture (Carthage and Hadrumetum, both captured from Hannibal).
Nevertheless I've never seen the cultural victory movie before so I decide to go for it, designating Beijing, Carthage and Hadrumetum as culture cities and everything else (most notible Shanghai, which would get West point and churn out gunmen with 5 promotions to begin with later on).

I keep teching until I get Mass Media (being the first to get liberalism, fascism and communism) and then proceed to build cultural wonders and temples in the two low culture cities. All in all I manage to get my hands on:

Broadway, Eiffel Tower, Cristo Redentor, Rock%Roll, Hollywood, the United Nations and the Kremlin. Go Industrious!

Then however the fun really begins as I am forced to give up teching and switch the bar all the way to cultural mode. The progress is slow (550 and 450 a turn in both the captured cities) and to add insult to injury, Ragnar attacks me AGAIN, this time with Infantry.
Unfortunately, this time I only have Infantry is well, albeit a lot of it and highly upgraded.
He comes quite a bit closer to capturing Beijing this time and I actually have to send in troops from Guangzhou to prevent it from being captured.
Eventually Ragnar retreats again and I pursue into his land but have insufficient force to take any cities.

I'm pretty confident I'll win after that battle. Beijing is at 48k and the other 2 cities are at 36 and 32k. My relations with Pericles (who is also going for a cultural victory but is way behind) are still excellent, Hannibal is still harmless, Shaka and Genghis are STILL fighting and I'm still on speaking terms with Charlemagne.
Unfortunately that last aspect is about to change...

Immediately after Beijing reaches legendary culture, Charlemagne, still number 1 and his land covering my ENTIRE upper border, declares war on me.
Not only that, he also send in no less than 3 impressive forces of Artillery, SAM infantry and regular infantry and targets 3 different cities, Guangzhou, Shanghai and worst of all, Hadremetum, my least developed culture city.

The following battle is brutal. I immediately send in reinforcements from Beijing which for a change is not under attack to Hadremetum and they only just make it in time to prevent disaster. Guangzhou is also under heavy siege but holds because Charlemagne foolishly leaves several of his artillery pieces unguarded for me to mop up, after which he can no longer suffuciently lower the cities defences and suicides most of his units.

This war lasts for a total of about 30 turns (my UN peacekeeping resolution was forcefully rejected) during which Charlie sends wave after wave of troops in but my troops, by now utterly trained in City Defense and Drill withstand the assault and ultimately Charlemagne accepts my peace offer.
Several cowardly attempts as Hadremetum's water supplies are still made by enemy spies (from Shaka, who peculiarly remained very friendly with me throughout the game, I suppose mostly because I was hostile to Genghis) but eventually I succeed and score my first cultural victory in 2009 AD.
Curiously, the city displayed in the end movie looked almost exactly like Beijing, especially with the pyramids featuring so prominently :)

Overall there are still about 40 million ways left for me to improve (and thank god for that) but I'm quite pleased with how I've managed to hold my empire together against 3-4 war-oriented opponents.
 
Woohoo! Great job!

Nice save at the end. Great teching by the sound of it, and your diplomacy is good.

A couple pointers:
- It sounds like you had good friends (till the end, at least) with Pericles and Charlemagne. This is a key to triangle diplomacy. This means helping out the triangle and ignoring everyone else, basically. Check out the article on it in the War Academy
-Bribery. Since you had a (basic) buddy in Shaka, when he was out of a war with Genghis, get him to declare on Ragnar. Then get Genghis involved. Use old crappy techs like Code of Laws in order to get them to declare. This will keep the three non-triangle people to be occupied, really preventing major skirmishes.
-Hannibal was taken out. Good. You were at Machinery when that happened. Bad. Try massing hordes of Axemen to take out early thorns in your side. 6-12 Axes promoted with City Raider I/II and/or Combat/Cover in the early stages will be enough to take out a Civ. Especially when most AIs are focusing less on military but more on REXing.

Not a bad game. Instead, quite good. Keep up the good work!
 
Who needs diplomacy? Just tell every computer to go to hell when they ask for help. Then again that doesn't work for most people and its much nicer to have a war buddy. Seems you ave a good grasp of how to run a war so you can only go up from there.
 
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