ALC Game #23: America/Lincoln

Polobo said:

How does his upgrading the warrior to an axeman having anything to do with woodsmanIII? It didn't lose any XP and axemen can get woodsmanIII as well. It cost some money but its not like he had the GG when he needed the axe to capture cities.

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It's best to have medic units that won't be near the top of the stack for defense. During this era, a wood2 axe on a forest tile would very likely be at, or very near the top of the defenders list.

Polobo said:

Also, you are wrong. When healing which ever unit has the best healing rate will be used period. The only stacking that occurs is within the same unit to determine its effective healing rate.

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That must have been what I was thinking of: that a medic with wood3 and medic3 will have THOSE effects stacked.

Polobo said:

Also, pretty sure (and agree) that the first GG will not be used as a medic so odds are the woodsman axe - pretty sure he's still alive - will get woodsman3 at least for some basic healing and possibly some additional experience at which point with the 2nd general we may very well have a Super-Duper Medic.

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It's been a while since Sis didn't create a MASH unit with his first GG, but that is the way he went this time. In that case it looks like you're right: making a wood3 via regular xp may well be the most sound.

The last game I played to the end with a charismatic leader I won by domination with a wee little warrior with wood3+medic3+morale racing around with my tanks: I guess I'm just trying to relive those good times

Thanks Validator. Sisiutil, perhaps having a galleon able to escape to some Monty-less large island ...

A great engineer is probably the bulber, but low prob to spawn and I'm not up on the Great Prophet and its bulb order. A GE out of NY?

If it sounds like I'm cluctching at straws, I am. Monty with the time and space to rex certainly has the potential to roll over Sisiutil. There's no choke point that would allow a fort plus defenders to eat through an attacking stack and that stratey is lessened if there are catapults or HA with flanking 2.

Maybe the best option is to trade for feudalism, whip Washngton down to 1 for LBs and then go guilds, but that requires machinery, too and I don't think Monty will wait that long. Enough knights quickly enough. A spy or two to go pillage Monty's resources

As a matter of interest, how many cities does each civ have?

Waste of units finishing off the incans for a worthless city that's buffered by hatshepsut. You could have taken out a few small aztec cities, 1 large one, and killed off more units.

Scarredroman said:

Thanks Validator. Sisiutil, perhaps having a galleon able to escape to some Monty-less large island ...

A great engineer is probably the bulber, but low prob to spawn and I'm not up on the Great Prophet and its bulb order. A GE out of NY?

If it sounds like I'm cluctching at straws, I am. Monty with the time and space to rex certainly has the potential to roll over Sisiutil. There's no choke point that would allow a fort plus defenders to eat through an attacking stack and that stratey is lessened if there are catapults or HA with flanking 2.

Maybe the best option is to trade for feudalism, whip Washngton down to 1 for LBs and then go guilds, but that requires machinery, too and I don't think Monty will wait that long. Enough knights quickly enough. A spy or two to go pillage Monty's resources

As a matter of interest, how many cities does each civ have?

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Does this strategy of extreme paranoia work for YOU?

You're suggesting the outlandish and that he's almost lost the game because he didn't rush Monty early with axemen. On the contrary, the feat should be more challenging and thus, more fun (that *is* the point, right?).

You're talking about not just mobilizing an army, but shutting down a civ to do it. Whipping Washington down to the point where it becomes useless is a terrible strategy. He needs Washington to stay at a high pop to keep those specialists specializing. He already mentioned that Boston is the main front (I think) for his military units.

The war with Monty is nothing to fret about. A decent number of well-placed units on the border (on hills, of course) and a heavy garrison in Boston should negate any massive army that the crazy guy has planned.

I can't wait for the next update!

vicawoo said:

Waste of units finishing off the incans for a worthless city that's buffered by hatshepsut. You could have taken out a few small aztec cities, 1 large one, and killed off more units.

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We needed closure.

Scarredroman: You're a glass-is-half-empty kinda guy, aren't ya?

Bandobras Took: Yes, it occurs to me that this would be a perfect tactic for Protective. But then, it really only works against the few leaders who come at you with wave after wave of units: Monty, Shaka, and Alexander are the main ones that come to mind. Maybe the two Khans. All the other leaders seem to make a half-hearted attempt at an invasion. If you manage to destroy their first offensive stack and take the fight to them, they make like turtles and cower behind their city walls.

As it is, I expect Charismatic to be a big benefit here, as the surviving units will earn promotions even more quickly than usual. The more Monty attacks, the less success he should have.

Scarredroman said:

As a matter of interest, how many cities does each civ have?

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Monty 10
Hammurabi 10
Hattie 10
Gilgamesh 9
Zara 8
Shaka 7
Sisiutil 6

Polobo said:

We needed closure.

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Name the movie:

Get a dictionary. Find out what this "closure" thing is. If that's what he's going to hit us with, I want to be ready.

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Validator said:

Spoiler :

Monty 10
Hammurabi 10
Hattie 10
Gilgamesh 9
Zara 8
Shaka 7
Sisiutil 6

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That's a spoiler, I think.

No... any information that can be gleaned from the current save is fair game.

However, anything you have to press "end turn" to find out is a spoiler.

NintendoTogepi said:

That's a spoiler, I think.

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No, it comes from checking the number of cities that shows up on the trade screen for each leader.

Sisiutil said:

Name the movie:

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Analyze This

Monty usually gets me when my glass is a quarter full.

Sisiutil said:

Bandobras Took: Yes, it occurs to me that this would be a perfect tactic for Protective. But then, it really only works against the few leaders who come at you with wave after wave of units: Monty, Shaka, and Alexander are the main ones that come to mind. Maybe the two Khans. All the other leaders seem to make a half-hearted attempt at an invasion. If you manage to destroy their first offensive stack and take the fight to them, they make like turtles and cower behind their city walls.

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I haven't had Alexander as a neighbor much, but I've been able to destroy Shaka and Montezuma in just such a manner; of course, that was on Prince level . . .

@ Polobolo. Having one unit with medic1 and one unit with woodsmanIII in a stack gives the bonuses from BOTH. However medicIII does not stack with a second units woodsman. I tried both in WB and the effects of woodsmanIII and medicI on two seperate units DO Stack.

CivCorpse said:

@ Polobolo. Having one unit with medic1 and one unit with woodsmanIII in a stack gives the bonuses from BOTH. However medicIII does not stack with a second units woodsman. I tried both in WB and the effects of woodsmanIII and medicI on two seperate units DO Stack.

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I have no reason to doubt you and I have not actually done any experiments myself. This is, however, the first time I've actually heard that stacking can occur if two separate units have healing capabilities (and the topic has come up in numerous posts). Your results (that Medic III will not stack but Medic I will) seems inconsistent and possibly buggy in nature (though I do not know the designer's intentions in this matter).

To confirm: If you have a Medic I and a separate woodsman III in a stack then units in that stack heal at 25% + Base AND a Woodsman III + Medic III on different units will also only heal 25% + Base. The only difference is the the Medic III stack will also heal units in surrounding tiles at the same 25% + Base rate. If the medic I + woodsman III did not stack on separate units you would only experience 15% + Base for the other stack units. I would see little reason to shoot for a super-medic as you usually don't care about the adjacent tiles bonus (I tend to use it sometimes in friendly territory but for a foreign soil stack you want to keep it together). Getting a Medic I and Woodsman III units is quite simple mid-game and beyond (once you start warring).

Wanted to toss another suggestion for techs onto the pile: Machinery.

Having Crossbowmen paired with Spearmen/Pikemen for defenders will ensure Sis is covered from all angles. Since Monty will tech slowly, it's going to be some time before he can build Macemen... and of course, we want Monty cut down to size long before he can get Macemen built.

Sis may have Axemen to defend against Melee units, but against other Axemen, they need to be on favorable terrain to win the majority of battles or have proper promotions. Otherwise, you'll end up with 50/50 battles and risk losing units, or even worse, facing units Monty promotes so as to gain an advantage.

Remember, even though we are seeing Horse Archers from Monty and will likely see War Elephants, he won't ignore Axemen and Jaguars entirely.

So, after MC, I would get Machinery, then head to Engineering. That should give him the techs he needs to withstand Monty's early attacks, and then it's off to pick off the leftovers in Monty's territory.

Round 5: 190 AD to 990 AD (58 turns), Part 1

I began the round well aware that a DoW from Montezuma had to be imminent. I needed an edge, otherwise he'd be taking cities from me like there was no tomorrow. So I began to research Feudalism:



Then, on the very next turn, I went to see Gilgamesh, who offered me the following deal:



Excellent! That game me a strong defensive unit and a means to give them an extra promotion--just the thing I'd need to fend off Monty.

Speaking of our favourite Aztec maniac, he came by with a diplomatic demand that I turned down. I mean, I know he's going to declare war, so what's the point in appeasing him?

With Feudalism in the bag, I decided it was time to switch civics.



Hereditary Rule for the extra happiness, Vassalage for promotions (and to lower the cost of the large army I was going to need to build), and OR to make Hatshepsut even happier and to help with any non-military builds, although they'd be few and far between.

As you can see, I also decided to research Civil Service. I figured that by this point in the game, the AI would start to research Metal Casting on its own, so I figured it would be easier to pick it up in a trade.

Notice I stuck with Slavery for now. When I came out of revolt, I began whipping Longbowmen.



And none too soon! Sure enough, a stack of Aztec units appeared on my border.



Hmmm... you might wonder why Boston's building a library instead of defensive units? Well, those tiles due west were under a lot of Aztec cultural pressure. So I spread Buddhism there with one of the Missionaries I was building at the end of the last round, and decided to shore up its culture a little while my other cities built units. My hope here was to ensure that Monty's units had to slog through my culture, giving me an extra turn to react and shift units where they were needed (and move Workers to safety as well).

As expected, on the very next turn...



For such a nutjob, he's remarkably predictable.

So I rushed all my whipped Longbows, all of them with City Garrison II promotions, to Boston. Meanwhile, life went on. I was nearly done Civil Service on my own when Hatty came by offering this deal:



It was all that gold. I couldn't resist. In retrospect, as you'll see, maybe I should have.

I also got a little help from a random event in New York.



This expanded NY's borders ahead of schedule, sealing off that fish site I have yet to claim. Now I can take my time about it. Good thing, too, because I needed to focus on building units, not Settlers.

Monty only brought along a couple of Catapults, which allowed his stack to grow in size as it whittled away Boston's defenses.



The AI is still inordinately fond of mounted units in this game. Why, I don't know. I rarely see a stack of city raider-promoted units like a human would build.

I threw that Catapult at the stack on the turn before I thought Monty would attack--turns out I was 1 turn early on that. Nevertheless, I weakened his units a little. Another thing about the AI: it rarely reduces a city's defenses down to 0%, again unlike a human. This is interesting: for a computer-driven construct, the AI is surprisingly imprecise and sloppy. And yet, its human opponents are as exacting as any CPU I've ever come across. Go figure.

In any case, Monty's units were met by a hail of Longbow-powered arrows.



I lost a couple of Longbows. Monty lost his stack. And his top-of-the-charts power rating.



Meanwhile, I researched another tech on my own.



Huh? I'm going down the Liberalism path? While I'm at war with Montezuma?
Calm down. I figured--rightly, as you'll see--that the AI would be targeting the medieval military techs, and if I researched them myself, I'd be duplicating their efforts. The reason I usually win the Liberalism race is because the AI places a low priority on its prerequisite techs (especially Education), so I figured I'd research them--with a little help, in the case of Education, from my next Great Scientist--and then use them to backfill the techs I needed. All I had to do was spam Longbowmen in the meantime to hold off Montezuma.

Seems he had the same idea vis-a-vis me...



Dang! I was hoping he'd be dragging way behind in techs, but there they are, those damn Longbowmen. It meant I'd need more Catapults until I somehow got Engineering.

Nevertheless, I managed to take this Aztec city with the few Catapults I had. The extra promotions seemed to make the difference, so Vassalage was proving its worth as a civic. I didn't switch out of it even when Bureaucracy became available.

Sure enough, the backfill techs gradually started to become available.



And all that fighting earned me my next Great General, who I combined with my Medic I chariot for my mobile hospital unit.



One game soon, I promise, I'll figure out how to get this Woodsman III/Medic III unit you guys are so amped on, but not on my first game on Immortal. I'm sticking to the tried-and-true here.

I continued to backfill techs with the other civs. The shared religion was starting to really kick in, with more civs becoming "Friendly" as the round wore on (with the notable exception of Montezuma, of course).






And my next Great Scientist appeared in Cuzco, just in time to shave nearly 20 turns off of Education.



So during the next part of the round, it was time to start collecting my complete set of medieval war techs. All the while, Montezuma kept building up new stacks and sending them my way. Each wave cost me a couple of Longbowmen. Could I hold out?

Yes, that's me trying to build a little suspense, there.

To be continued...

Round 5: 190 AD to 990 AD (58 turns), Part 2

Sure enough, Monty threw another stack--smaller this time, though--at his former city. Uh, Monty, that city's on a hill, you might recall, and I have Longbows, you might want to... oh, well, fine. Never mind. Be that way.



And the tech trading frenzy continued!



Yes, I was risking WFYABTA, but so far, my plan was working. And notice how even Shaka's rating of me was rising. As soon as any of them hit Friendly, WFYABTA would cease to be an issue. I was counting on it.

Of course, the whole shared religion thing didn't work with everybody.



The next tech was an important one: very expensive, very valuable. I knew it would earn me several key techs that I'd skipped.



And... this is where I started to get a little weird. Suddenly, the old familiary Liberalism prize was in sight. Could it be? Liberalism, won on my first Immortal game? What a coup that would be! So I began to research the big L. And I held Education close to my chest, for as long as I thought I could. Without Caste System to help out, the SE wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders.

And just to complicate matters further, Gilgamesh, of all people, built the Apostolic Palace.



Darn. I'd really been hoping Zara, who was ahead on several techs, would build that thing and make it Christian and therefore irrelevant. As it is, I'm going to have to contend with this thing all through the war with Montezuma. Ugh.

Hatshepsut won the residency.



Hmmm, interesting... once I spread Buddhism to my cities that don't have it, and capture a couple of Buddhist Aztec cities, I should hold the swing votes. In Civ V, I'd like to see more interaction with the AI on game features like this. Like me making a deal with Gilgamesh: he gets my AP votes in return for me requesting a certain vote be called or never called--like, say, ending the war with Montezuma. That would make the AP more interesting (and even a little more realistic, don't you think?).

Just as I was about to push into his territory and attack Texcoco, Monty came at me with another stack.




Well, at least the AI is trying to make use of siege weapons for a change! Too bad he doesn't have a lot of muscle--and not the right type of muscle, either--to finish the job the Cats are gonna start. And even if Monty managed to capture a city, how was he planning on holding on to it, anyway? This is why I pull my city raiders out of a city rather than letting them defend it. Chances are, if the city falls, they can take it back on the following turn, because the AI neglected to bring along any defensive units.

Okay, Liberalism was going to take too long (though, ever the optimist, I doggedly kept researching it) and the war was going too slowly. Longbows had given me a defensive edge, now I needed several offensive ones. Time to start trading. Fortunately, shifting from the medieval to the renaissance eras thanks to Education made Zara "forget" one tech trade (that is how it works, right?) so WFYABTA cleared up with him.



Which is why I traded with Zara first, before I went to see anyone else.



Yes! So now I'd be able to build Pikes to more handily fend off Monty's beloved mounted units, including those troublesome War Elephants, and those wonderful Trebuchets. They're expensive, though, so for the time being I had to make do with Catapults.



In the new post-3.17 absence of Combat promotions for siege weapons, I began using Drill promotions. One of the two Drill II Cats I used to weaking this stack survived, so I'm becoming a fan of the Drill track for defensive siege weapons.

I got another Great Scientist and used him to lightbulb part of Printing Press.



Should I keep lightbulbing techs or should I shift to academies or settling? What's optimal? The GP are going to start getting more expensive--though I haven't had a chance yet to build the National Epic, so that will help. I'm not sure if I get started on that right away or wait until I get that marble tile in Monty's north. That could take a while.

With Education out of the bag and available for trading, it only made sense to get everything I could for it before anybody else did.



And what the heck, tech brokering isn't turned off, so I kept taking advantage of the WFYABTA-busting Friendly ratings:



And I managed to capture another Aztec city before the end of the round!



Yes, Monty had another stack on its way to his former city, but I figured I'd let the defenders I left behind deal with it.

They did, and I earned another Great General. I sent him to the former barb city, Aryan, though I haven't used him yet.



I'd started building the Heroic Epic in Aryan. It seems like a good choice--the extra food from the wheat and the pigs means I can workshop most of the other tiles. I thought I'd put the Moai Statues here too to get the most I could out of those water tiles. However, I haven't invested too many hammers (and no chops) in the HE yet, so if someone has a better candidate, speak up.

I was also experiencing slave revolts, no less than three, IIRC, in Aryan (not the capital, for some reason). Techs are getting more expensive, so I needed more specialists to help me out. And I was wondering if I could still pull off a Liberalism win. So I did a single civics change, to caste system.



I also sold a cheap tech off for some gold, thinking that I'd try pushing the slider to 100% for a few turns to see if I could snag Liberalism.



Meanwhile, I fended off another Aztec counter-attack, this one at Texcoco. And on that very turn, the AP vote I'd been dreading came up.



It's going to hurt me somewhere, but I defied the resolution. I've got the techs, I'm building the units--I'm committed. Monty is going down. I am not going to let the AP interfere with that. As I mentioned in a previous post, the unhappiness from defying a successful resolution goes away; the diplomatic penalties for declaring war on someone's buddy usually don't. I need to keep as many civs friendly to keep WFYABTA at bay; right now I've got 4 of them there, which is remarkable. So, I got all huffy and defiant.

Alas, winning Liberalism was not to be. Hatshepsut surprised me by beating me there. Looks like she snagged Gunpowder.



It surprised me because of all the civs potentially competing for Liberalism, she got the least help from me. If you recall, the only Liberalism-path tech I traded to her was Philosophy. I'm pretty sure she went off and researched both Paper and Education on her own. I'm sure about the last one, because I tried trading Education to her a couple of times and she refused, so obviously she was researching it herself.

So... do I finish off Liberalism, or abandon those hard-won flasks and go after something else?

That's the round. The save is below, a state-of-the-world post will follow.

Oops, didn't see the last thing. Still, finish off liberalism just for the science boost from Free Religion.

The State of the World, 990 AD

First, here's a look at the map, which is much more complete thanks to my intrepid Scout and all that map trading that went on.



Zara, by the way, won the circumnavigation race. Apparently he hasn't found any other civs yet, though there should be one more out there. Whoever it is must be isolated and, given the lack of "faraway land" accomplishments of late, I'm guessing is probably pretty backward. Very few AIs can handle an isolated start well. Mansa Musa is one of those very few, but I don't think it's him. I'm building one Caravel to go out and see if I can find our shrinking violet.

Domestic advisor:



Because of the focus on military, I'm lacking a lot of infrastructure. Not one courthouse, for example, even though I got CoL in the previous round, and no Universities yet--though the first one is going in Washington; may as well leverage all the Great Scientists I'm running there. And I don't think that's going to change any time soon. The war with Monty got off to a slow start because of his waves of counter-attacks. Even though all his units died, give Monty his due: he probably counter-attacks more often than any other AI, and it really slows you down. I can't leave a captured city protected by just a Longbow and a Pikeman. Not with Monty! No, this war is going to take a while and require a lot of units before it's done. I'm hoping that will raise my power rating enough so that no one will be willing to take him on as a vassal.

Foreign advisor, Relations and Glance:





So, no less than four civs at friendly--not bad! Unfortunately, Montezuma's also a Buddhist with high diplomatic ratings, hence the resolution and my reluctance to declare war on him. There's no guarantee that you can goad the AI into declaring war on you, not even Monty, who might be tempted by an easier target around--Shaka comes to mind, though I'd have to allow him to march through my territory to get to him.

Active trade deals:



And resources:



The other good thing about taking over Monty's territory is the resources I'll get. It should allow me to get a few more trades for GPT going, for one thing.

Info--trade route income and civics:



Another way that the war with Monty is hurting me is that it seems to have shut down those lucrative intercontinental trade deals with Zara.

Techs:



In spite of a lack of infrastructure thanks to having Monty as a neighbour, I'm not doing to badly--full credit to the SE and Philosophical on that account. You can see how this war has hurt Montezuma. He was relatively competitive tech-wise when it began, but his unit overhead has put him in his usual position behind everyone else. Shaka's doing a little better, but not by much. I wonder if Shaka will be attacking someone close by? Zara is lucky he's on a separate land mass, because as the only Christian in a Buddhist Bunch he must be at the bottom of everyone's... uh... Buddhist card list. (Sorry, I got to the end of that cliche and realized it wasn't going to work.)

Military advisor:



A ways to go for the next GG, but knowing Monty, I'll get there.

Religion Advisor:



I was so busy building units to fend off Monty that I haven't had a chance to produce two lousy missionaries to send to those last two non-Buddhist cities. You know what? I think I should have followed the age-old first rule of Civ IV: if Montezuma is next to you, execute. With extreme prejudice. Really, waiting to do it later like I have just means you have to put up with wave after wave of obsolete suicide squads, but there's enough of them so you can't leave any city weakly defended.

Victory conditions:



It doesn't look like anyone's going for a sneaky little cultural victory, but it may be too soon to tell.

Demographics:



It amazes me that even with all the units I've produced I'm still at the bottom of the power ratings. Oh, speaking of which, I've lost visibility into most civs' demographics--that dang lack of courthouses.

Top five cities:



Like I said, the final civ isn't showing up here, so I think they must be pretty backward. I probably won't get any techs from them, but with some luck, I may be able to trade some techs for cash and hopefully they have a few worthwhile resources.

Anyway, that's the round. Taking out Monty still has a long way to go, but I at last have the means to do it. I'll need to neglect infrastructure for awhile to get the army built, but when I start rolling over Monty I should be able to build up a good head of steam. I think the switch to Caste System was essential. The only way I'm going to stay afloat economically and in techs is to keep running those specialists and keep lightbulbing techs to trade.

Unless, of course, you folks tell me different.