Greek Builders - International Friendly #3 - Spoiler Thread

This is the spoiler thread for the International Friendly #3 game.

Here are the comparison dates. Take note of your number of cities, population, science (ie: late AA, early IA, etc.), and MapStat score (if you use Mapstat).

Year - Turn#
1000BC - 81
10AD - 128
1000AD - 215
End of Game.

Arabia was supposed to be in this game, but I accidently left them off. This caused Babylon and Persia to be the major AI powers in my game.

Ancient Age - playing on Emperor

3600 Meet a Babylonian spear.
3250 Pottery from a Goodie Hut.
3000 Granary is built.
2950 Contact with Byzantine and Persian warriors. Why didn't he want the goodie hut?


2750 First settler built.
2630 Sparta founded.
2510 Meet Indian warrior.
2390 Thermoplyae founded.
2270 Writing is researched first.
2230 Delphi founded.
1990 Pharsalos founded.
1830 Philosophy and Code of Laws discovered. I was scared of going Republic Slingshot after tr1725 Knossos founded.
1650 Argos founded.
1475 Mycenae is founded.
1300 Herakleia founded.
1150 Ephesus founded.
1075 Republic is discovered.
1025 Sneak attack by India!
1025 EMBASSY with Persia for 45 gold...he wants way too much for a MA vs. India.
1000

Cities: 10
Population: 22
Science: all AA but Construction, Currency, Monarchy, and Literature.
Score: 328
Mapstat QSC: 4352


925 Thessalonica founded.
925 Start of a 6-turn revolt.
850 Rhodes founded.
825 PEACE with India...they give me 54 gold.
775 Republic begins.
775 Eretria founded.
670 Persia and Babylons are now Middle Ages and I get all the Barbs.


670 Make Trades with Babylon and Persia and I am in the MA as well.


This is as far as I played at the moment, I'm behind on some SG's. I'm gonna go for some type of military victory, probably domination, around mid-IA.

Everything here is from Civassist archives.

Goal is 100k in the middle ages, using ToA.

Initial research was towards Republic slingshot, which kept me ahead until about 10 turns before the end of my most recent play session, where Babylon got Invention (monopoly) and won't sell it to me.


Shortly after getting Republic, I'm sneak-attacked by Persia. Well, they'll be my first victim. This also sets off my Golden Age where I produce 4-turn hoplites in 2 cities and 4- or 5-turn catapaults in two others. Athens builds Pyramids in a ToA prebuild. At 1000 BC, I'm in the middle of my golden age, a few techs short of the end of the Ancient Age (Poly in 5, need MM and Construction), and have 5 cities.

My first stack of 2 hoplites and 3 cats rolls up to Gordium. The cats aren't enough to redline the regular/veteran pair of spears in the city, I'll have to wait for more.

My GA progresses research quickly; I get Poly in 5 and Construction in 8, then trade Construction to Babylon to bring both of us into the Middle ages. Babylon gets Feudalism, I get engineering, trade takes place, and Trebs start showing up in my city screens. Crap, I forgot about those. This is only my fourth game in Conquests, and I thought the catapaults would be my only artillery until Cannons. Oh well, they'll just move out a little slower.

Soon later, a barb sneak stack knocks out six workers in one turn, leaving me with one slave. I can't really spare the pop in my golden age to build workers, especially with a war going on while I'm a republic.

Eventually I had a stack of 12 Trebs, 7 Veteran Hoplites, and 2 Hoplite Armies (12/12, 13/13) ravaging Persia. I'm 27 turns away from Invention (at minimum research) in 380 AD, Gunpowder just behind that, but struggling to pull in an income. Persia was reduced to one city which I have yet to find, and I'm currently building up Markets to have positive GPT - right now both sliders are at 0% and I'm losing 14 per turn, mostly due to unit costs. Currently I have 26 hoplites and 17 trebs, and I'm preparing to war on either Babylon or India - India seems like a good choice since I've got a few cities of theirs with HIGH (5% or more) flip chances. I'm also settler-cramming everywhere I can get, since those free temples really build up culture fast for every city I have. 100k should be no problem if I can take over India and either one of the Babylonians or Byzantines. If I can beat out the AI to Gunpowder I can really get a jump on them, as 2 attack is obviously twice as good as one attack. Hopefully I can get a Musket army or two running, but I'll need more cities first - I've only got 16 right now, and as such, can only support two more armies. The 100k is definitely going to need a ton more cities, and I plan to cram the jungle for that. Right now I'm only bringing in 66 per turn and an estimated date of 2530 AD - not happening.

EDIT: Ok, so here's my biggest stack a few years later. I've also got a stack of 7 hoplites already sitting in a city near Delhi, as well as about 20 more trebs moving in from various other locations - basically every non-barracks city is building one every 5 turns on average, so I'm pumping out around 2 per turn. I'm moving in position to attack India right now; they've become a powerhouse after conquering the Byzantines.

Contacts:
Babylon 3200 BC
Byzantines 3150 BC
Persia 2390 BC
America 2110 BC
India 1830 BC
Scandinavia 1425 BC

Technologies:
Pottery 3500 BC
Writing 2270 BC
Ceremonial Burial 1950 BC (Persia)
Code of Laws 1600 BC
Masonry 1575 BC (India)
Iron Working 1425 BC (Scandinavia)
Map Making 1350 BC (Byzantines)
Mysticism 1350 BC (India)
The Wheel 1350 BC (Babylon)
Warrior Code 1350 BC (Vikings)
Horseback Riding 1350 BC (Americans)
Philosophy 1350 BC
Republic 1350 BC

1000 BC:
Firaxis score: 203
QSC score: 3,372
City #: 8
Population: 17

Expansion wasn’t very good until Republic. After that Athens became a 4-turn settler factory.

The barbarians were a constant problem and one I dealt with using only warriors. I had several hoplites but didn’t want to start my GA off early. There was some barbarians near one of my workers that was being guarded by a warrior. When the worker was done I moved him but forgot to wake the warrior. Arghh, one worker gone.

Amazingly I haven’t been in a single war so that’s good.

Sorry there isn’t more but up until now everything has been rather quiet. I hope it stays that way but realize typically it doesn’t. I need to speed up my research.

Edit: I don't use Mapstat (though I do have it on my computer). Basically I ran it at the 1000 BC mark and than shut it down.

1000 BC report:



Firaxis score: 282 A rare event in my games, I'm leading in score
QSC score: 2852

Cities: 9 and 2 settlers
Research: Republic in 28 turns. I have all the AA techs except Con, Cur, Lit and Poly.

Military: 2 settlers, 7 workers, 1 warrior

I only have 3 contats, so the tech rate is a bit slow. I'll probably go for UN or SS. No wars yet (probably no wars ever), though my army is really weak.

I'll give this a bump. Are we ready for a later spoiler yet?

I didn't realize there was a later spoiler. I thought this was the only one.

Not that it matters since I still haven't finished.

Yep, this is the only spoiler. We just had one spoiler for the other two games so...

Update.

Played to around 1360 AD (not sure of exact date) today. Previous play session was a short war vs. the Indians, after which I made peace with 2 cities left (although the Americans and Babs soon finished them off). I start moving my units back to take over the two remaining Persian cities, and just as I finish them off, Babylon demands Iron. The prior turn a source had appeared in my territory, meaning that theirs probably dried up. Well, I already have the local Saltpeter supply under control, and if they don't have Iron, that means spears & longbows from them. Which are pretty damn easy to handle with Muskets.

Since I'm going for ToA 100k, research went along the bottom line of the MA tech tree, with 1-scientist research going on MT right now, for the Academy. Despite around 40 elite victories, I haven't got another leader since my second Hoplite army was built, so I'll need to build my Armies. With Athens at 22spt, that's going to be slow going, but still worth it. (I might be able to MM 23spt once in a while, but I'll need to join up a worker once in a while too.) Babylon was building Newton's before the war started, but since the Americans and Scandinavians are both at war with them, and I don't think they're that far along on the tech tree, they're not a threat yet. The biggest problem with America right now is that they have muskets, so securing/disconnecting their SP supply will be vital once I go to war with them, after taking over babylon. Once they're out of the way, I should just be able to rush libraries everywhere, as well as the occassional Cathedral, and cruise to 100k around 1900-1950.

My current military is stalled against Babylon, but that's going to change soon - a stack of 67 cannons, 18 muskets, and a hoplite army just moved next to a city, and there's about half a dozen American knights there as well. Also, Babylon's been sending out Pikes to try to pillage; I've been redlining them and they've been retreating back to the city, but there's at least 9 in the city right now. So, I'll let the american knights attack, then I'll redline them again, and take the city. Rinse and repeat. Do not hold upside down. This end up.

Anyway, things are looking pretty good. CivAssist says my current 100k date is around 2010, but I haven't done as much settler cramming as I would like (I can fit at least 40 cities into tundra, desert, and coastal areas) and not too many cities have libs either. Every city I take/build reduces the 100k date by about 1/2 a turn, and every library by about 1 turn, so like I said, should be pretty easy to finish this one off.

Methos said:

The barbarians were a constant problem and one I dealt with using only warriors. I had several hoplites but didn’t want to start my GA off early. There was some barbarians near one of my workers that was being guarded by a warrior. When the worker was done I moved him but forgot to wake the warrior. Arghh, one worker gone.

Click to expand...

Your Golden Age won't start if your UU wins vs. barbs. And barbs make effective Hoplite trainers too

My motley crew of warriors, trebuchets, and hoplites led the Greeks to a domination win at 410 AD on the Monarch game (I also played the emperor start to 1000 BC, and this monarch one past 410 AD for conquest purposes, but havent finished either game). A quick rundown of events:

4000- Build city, set to warrior to explore.

3000- Sometime around here found the Indians (my warrior was sent east and then north). They have an undefended city; consider it destroyed.

A few turns later my attack with 6 warriors against 2 spears in the Indian capital fails by one measly redlined spear. Bah.

We also found this city around 1500 bc:

No Iron for You #s 2 and 3 were made on the border of Persian territory. The Byzantines, and the Babylonians were next, the bab DOW happening one turn after they completed the pyramids. I was reticent to take on the babs and initiate their golden age so I allied them against the persians before I was ready to move in on them. These wars took a while, and heres the minimap at 50 ad ready to march on the strongest civ, the Persians:

You can see a straggling Indian city near my core that I had to gift due to dastardly enemy troops wandering about. Since I didnt have to worry about pikemen, the Persians folded quickly to my slow moving but effective stack(s) of doom.

This game really shows the effectiveness of bombard units. While playing through to conquest, both the Americans and the Vikings had iron, and therefore MDI and pikes, but it was still easy to subdue them. I havent finished the conquest part yet, and dont know if I will but it was definitely an interesting game.

I would like to say more but there isnt much to tell. Early attack to cripple my first neighbor I find, and control the iron was the only strategy I had. Other than that it was just bombard everyone to death and take over with my warriors, while building roads to the next opponent.

Nice game killer. I didn't know whether you were seriously gonna do it. Tht was a good strategy to deny their Iron.

It would be interesting to hear how many battles your warriors won against redlined spears percentage wise. Also, how many catapults and other units you had at the end.

I had equal parts warriors, cats, and trebuchets, about 50 of each. I didnt intend for that to happen but it just happened to work out that way. I put the math in the other thread but a warrior will win 71% of the time against a fortified redlined spear, so I figure I lost 3 out of every ten battles, maybe a little higher when I would get REALLY crazy and attack 2 hp spears.

Oh, yeah, I was playing this game, and as it happens very often, I forgot to track the date. I woke up from the trans around 1200s, so I decided to forget about a 10AD and 1000AD spoilers. I won by UN vote, with bribing everyone.

I forgot the victory date, but I think it was in the 1400s. Not very early ba HoF standards. Tone?

Greek builders, huh? Man, this was quite a battle - thank you X-man!
My plan was to follow the idea of a builders game, and it went quite well in the beginning.
QSC: 10 towns w/ 19 citizens + 1 Settler, thats 301 fireaxis.
I tried to play the game peacefully and expand my borders by culture. All very well, but the Persians ate up India and became very strong. And X-man - curse him - is always hungry for more. When he sneaked me, I even had to go into Mobilisation. My very first time to do that ever! After losing 3 or 4 Outpost-cities I could keep him at bay. At least, everyone else liked me now. Anyways, I had to landblockade the tiny Byzantian Empire - to keep the beautiful Theodora alive! That´s right, Xerxes had by then exterminated everyone else, so I needed the beauty to be able to call for a vote at all. This was done and won in 1545 AD, obviously later than Pentiums date.
If I learned something in this game, it´s that you can´t play a peaceful builders game with Xerxes next door. I ended up paying for 50 MI, Inf and Artys each.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I played on Emperor.
Anyway, big fun playing this one
Are there plans for IF#4 yet?

@Twonky: sounds like Xerxes was a viscious warmonger.

If anybody gets some ideas for the next game, post them in the IF #3 game thread.

Middle Ages

590 Troy founded.
570 Marathon founded.
450 Halicarnassus founded.

AD
290 Perfect Timing! I get a SGL with Music Theory...but on the same turn:


That was getting to be a decent city too...
I checked mapstat...I had 1043 culture to their 1130...what bull.

320 Sistine Chapel in Athens.
330 Leonardo's Workshop in Athens...thanks to Aristotle (SGL).
350 Forbidden Palace in Thermoplyae.
490 JS Bach in Delphi...on the same turn though:


I get a few neighbors to help out.


500 The city survives and Golden Age!
550 Enter the Industrial Age...Hammurabi is getting dogpiled.


EDIT: I forgot about the stats...seems like everyone else did too. oh well.

I'm gonna try to win this with artillary in the IA.

I've just finished and will be posting my game report in stages (1345 space victory) but I just wanted to say what a great game and especially well done with those military victories.