Rat44 CCM - Ultimate Challenge

I can see the potential spot for our 4th city on the hill at the seas to the southwest.

Great getting us iron already, but bad luck with the enslaver. nothing that can be done about this. Maybe we can try and get some settle pairs with enslavers, but we need better luck.

A nice result getting iron hooked up so quickly.

Elephantium said:

Move workers to irrigate that mined cow.

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This is becoming a comedy of errors, since it's Boston's mined cow that was a mistake. One mined cow and one irrigated one, for +5 food, was the right mix at Washington before we started running specialists there. But since Washington now is supporting specialists, and doesn't need the extra shield for two-turn tomahawk warriors, having that cow irrigated isn't terrible.

There's a possible twofer in play, since we can buy Math for 222 gold and 16 gpt and then offer it to Greece for Trade. Unfortunately, we'd then be left with almost no gold to top up the offer, so I wouldn't expect the Greeks to accept. But the Greeks have 86 gold and 13 gpt right now, so at worst we could sell them Math for that, effectively buying it for 136 gold and 3 gpt as a onefer. So we should follow that course, and then--immediately, this IT--make the crucial switch from granary to Siege Workshop in Boston.

It's too bad that our western scout was taken before he could investigate that lavender border around Bremen--presumably the Vikings. As a general note about the use of scouts in CCM, a scout that has discovered a new civ should not just push deeper into that civ's territory, which by definition won't reveal a different civ, and makes it very likely that the scout will be killed by an invisible unit. Instead the scout should be sent in a different direction, through unclaimed land, in search of another new civ.

I saw that we lost both scouts in the north together with a pinkish border. We might be able to send a spear north to get more contacts. It is vital for us.

The Roster:
ThERat
Northern Pike
Greebley
Elephantium
CommandoBob - up

ThERat said:

Maybe we can try and get some settle pairs with enslavers, but we need better luck.

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I would leave Canadian settlement teams alone at this point, since Canada is our obvious first target. We have to take the attitude that they're founding our cities.

The Mongols will poach Washington's horses as soon as Bulgan gets a cultural expansion. Since there's no horse unit we want to build before Republic/ancient cav, and that's a hard tech to get, it may not matter much. We should hold Canada's horse towns fairly soon--or if we're not strong enough for that, we're probably doomed anyway.

good point from NP on the trades.

Also, I would swap our capital to a temple first before churning out military units.

Btw, we need to play at our top to survive this, it won't be a walk in the park this time round

Got it. Strategy post soon, maybe tonight. Depends if we have guests over after church tonight.

ThERat said:

Also, I would swap our capital to a temple first before churning out military units.

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I agree that Washington has to build its temple during the next round, although if CB prefers to let the present tomahawk warrior and perhaps one more complete there first, that would be fine. We're still very low on units.

In fact, we've reached the familiar point in CCM where we have to get three temples completed so that we can build our religious communities. Boston should thus begin a temple after switching to and finishing Siege Workshop. New York I think can finish its granary and then possibly fit in a unit or two, but we have to make sure that it completes a temple no later than Boston does.

Despotism
00% Tax
70% Science
30% Luxury

229 gold, +18 gpt

Constructon in 41 turns.


City Builds

1. Washington (10) Tomahawk Warrior (3.1.1) in 1, grows in 9.
2. New York (5) granary in 2, grows in 5.
3. Boston (3) granary in 1, grows in 2.
4. Philadelphia (1) walls in 10, grows in 5.

01 Iron connected
00 Luxuries


01 Worker
01 Scout
07 Warrior
01 Chariot
02 Enslaver
03 Northeuropean Workers
06 Native Spears

Current Units: 20
Allowed Units: 26
Support Costs: 0 gpt

Turn 50 of 500

Compared to Canada (Despotism) we are Weak.
Compared to Greece (Despotism) we are Weak.
Compared to Mongol Khanates (Despotism) we are Weak.
Compared to Germany(Despotism) we are Weak.
Compared to Japan (Despotism) we are Weak.

City Counts
16 Canada
16 Mongol Khanates
15 Germany
15 Greece
12 Japan
04 USA (Rat44 people)

Well, that is eye-opening!

We will soon hit the city limit. The five civs we know are 1/6 of the total civs and these five have 74 cities. Multiply those 74 by 6 and we get 444 cities in play. The AI needs an average of around 17 cities to hit the city limit of 512. Hopefully we can build City #5 before that happens.


Plans
Lay low and play nicely with everyone while stocking up on Tomahawk warriors.

City site in the hills to the SW, but we need another 10 turns to get our next Clan. And we need the AI to ignore that area for the next 12 turns.

During preflight buy Math from either Germany or Japan and try to sell it to Greece for Trade. If that won't work (and it might not) sell Math to Greece to reduce our cost for the tech.
Then in Boston: granary (60 sheilds) -> Seige Workshop (80 sheilds,small wonder). Boston has 56 shields towards the granary.

Worker Tasks
Philadephia is not connected, but it will be this IBT.
These two workers and 2 slaves will mine then road the BG 1SW of Philly. Then they will head back to Washington to road the BGs SW of Washington to speed up our next settlers movement to the coastline. The coastal hill 3S-2SW of Washington looks very pleasant; 2 BGs and fish in the initial city tiles.

We need a non-river road between Boston and New York. The river between Boston and Mt. Boston is bad news and makes the trip from Boston to New York take three turns. We have 2 workers and 2 defenders 1SW of New York about to finish a mine. These guys would road up 4NW to connect to Boston. Then the trip from Boston to New York becomes 5 roaded tiles with no rivers to cross. Once Boston can start cranking out Tomahawks we will need to get them to the front line quickly. This route saves us a turn of walking.

We are four turns away from our next Apprentice.

City Builds
Washington: vTomahawk in 1 -> vTomhawk in 2 -> Temple in 4 or 5 -> vTomahawk in 2.
New York: granary in 2 -> vTomhawk in 4 -> vTomhawk in 4 -> vTomhawk in 4.
Boston: granary in 1 switches to Seige Workshop in 5 -> temple in 12.
Philadelphia: walls in 10 -> granary in 15 (?).

We have no Temples built right now.

Canandian War
This won't come during my turns, but where do we plan to attack from, New York or Philadelphia?

Glad to see you trying it out this way. I thought the even # of settlers between AI and human just made CCM too easy. Getting to your GA as America may be a tough chore itself. Good luck!

That sounds good. I'm skeptical that we'll be able to found a city south of Washington before the AI does, but as long as the roads we build towards that hypothetical city contribute to Washington's development, it's all right.

Yes, I'd start a granary in Philadelphia after its walls.

CommandoBob said:

Canadian War
This won't come during my turns, but where do we plan to attack from, New York or Philadelphia?

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Yes, the choices are more complicated when we're attacking an enemy who largely surrounds us. Given that our SoD will consist mostly of slow units, I wouldn't want to send it north from New York towards Regina/Ottawa, which is obviously an outlying area for the Canadians; we could then be caught with most of our strength out of play when they counterattack from their capital (which I assume to be in the fog south of Vancouver) through Mississauga. So I think we should attack east from Philadelphia.

If the campaign follows the usual pattern of early wars in CCM, we'll take one or two cities quickly and then get bogged down wiping out the Canadian field army. At that point we may be able to put together task forces of newly built units sufficient to take their peripheral cities, which should be lightly held if we act in time.

Edit: After two tomahawk warriors New York should probably begin its temple.

This is definitely a game to watch... It will be interesting to see it play out for good or for ill.

BtW, is it possible to turn off limit of the cities? Is it worthwhile?

My understanding is that the limit of 512 cities on the map is absolutely hardcoded. I doubt that the programmers who made these decisions on Civ III late in the last century had any idea that people would want to play the game on the scale we like.

vanilla had a limit of 256 cities.

I remember shadow playing Aggie's monster map game. you would have to wait for 1-2 hours in between easily on the computers those days.

I think there's a no-city-limit patch somewhere, but that's definitely nonstandard play.

Elephantium said:

I think there's a no-city-limit patch somewhere, but that's definitely nonstandard play.

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Yes, such a no-city-limit patch exists in various variants:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=327919

Unfortunately, as you can see in the last posts, this patch at present is not fully reliable. On the other side - for reasons of gameplay and turntimes - I think 512 cities for C3C are enough.

Northern Pike said:

Yes, the choices are more complicated when we're attacking an enemy who largely surrounds us.

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This remembers me to the situation when General Custer was encircled over and over by red indians and he delivered the ultimatum: "Surrender now or we will attack you from all sides" (fictive phrase from me).

Back to the game: This could be tough!

ThERat said:

I remember shadow playing Aggie's monster map game. you would have to wait for 1-2 hours in between easily on the computers those days.

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I know that well - there were times my world map got that bad. Near 512 cities I can recall minutes just to register a city capture. Sometimes, during heavy war, I did several saves for a single turn.

Lurker:

For a long time I would cancel the game with the task manager as it would say not responding. I finally realized I just had to wait longer.

Watching the settler squat and then nothing for maybe 50 seconds. A long time for what is normally an instant town.

Nice memories, you could nap while the computer would work...only annoying part would be to get back to the computer to find some silly message that would hold up the whole interturn

Lurker's comment: nap... zzzzzzzZZZZ