mm12:Roman Challenge AWE

This is quite doable for Rome with Iron but quite hard and requires careful and efficient warmongering. The goal is to take over your continent with Pretaoreans and then build up an efficient empire that dwarfs your remaining opponents. I will play out a few starts to make sure we have Iron reachable and don’t start with more than 3 other civs on the continent.

Settings:

Emperor
Always war.
No Tech trading. I don’t think it’s possible without this.
2 Continents.
Epic speed.

Mark
Greebley
ThERat
Katank
TMcC

I would be willing to try this if you would have me. Not sure my skills are up to this level yet, but I am willing to try.

this might be very very tough, but no tech trading should give some bonus here. So, if you think I would be suitable, I am in

Great to have you two warriors. With no tech trading I think it is possible. I tried it with trading (really didn't think about it) and I had a huge empire but could't keep up in tech.

Will you have me for this SG? AWE sounds like fun (perhaps in a masochistic way).

Epic is very good. We'll get more maneuver time.

AWE?

Sounds very challenging. I'm interested, but doubt that I'm up to it considering the only AW game I played was as Persia on Prince, but if you don't mind having someone who might need some help occasionally...

I guess my question is how well you feel your understanding of tactical warfare in Civ4 is. We could help with the game strategy, but probably not the minutae of when to attack and when not to minimize losses.

If you think you can get the kill ratios of 5 kills to 1 loss or better (on defense at least), and can handle at least monarch or Emp non-AW level play, then I for one would not object to you joining. If you don't think you meet the above, then my feeling is you would be better off trying some easier AW game first.

(Of course, this is just my opinion. Mark is the one to make any such decisions. The only reason I speak is that in another AW game we had one player that had 5x the losses of the rest of the players. That would be a sure loss here)

Greebley said:

I guess my question is how well you feel your understanding of tactical warfare in Civ4 is. We could help with the game strategy, but probably not the minutae of when to attack and when not to minimize losses.

If you think you can get the kill ratios of 5 kills to 1 loss or better (on defense at least), and can handle at least monarch or Emp non-AW level play, then I for one would not object to you joining. If you don't think you meet the above, then my feeling is you would be better off trying some easier AW game first.

(Of course, this is just my opinion. Mark is the one to make any such decisions. The only reason I speak is that in another AW game we had one player that had 5x the losses of the rest of the players. That would be a sure loss here)

Click to expand...

Good points raised there, I should probably have explained more clearly. I've recently got comfortable on Emperor (almost always on Epic though), generally winning by Domination. If, as can sometimes be the case, I'm fighting against more advanced units then I do have a tendency to use a lot of suicide cats, and maybe more than I should, as well as being a bit too aggressive at times.

Edit: I'll start a practice game or 2 in a bit just to see how I do

I agree here, this difficulty level leaves no room for experiments. You really need to know what you are doing, it will be a brutal game, trust me.

So, you should be able to assess yourself.

Preamble/4000BC: We have a very nice start (I tried a few:we will have Iron nearby and not too many opponents). Gold hill, 2 FP and lots of forest and a cow. Can’t get better than that. I found in place. (see 2000BC pic). I begin research on wheel. Why you ask? Because I want pottery to cottage those FP. Forget the cows. That is 2 techs for 1 extra food and 2 shields. Bah. The biggest problem I have found in this type of game is rapid expansions effect on the economy. We must be able to keep up in research while expanding aggressively. Hopefully we will get substantial war income but if we don’t play it very carefully we will bankrupt ourselves and stop our progress. We must very aggressively take out the other civs on our continent w/o going broke. Key techs for us besides IW are Monarchy to grow our cities, construction for cats, and CoLs to whip courts in newly captured far flung cities and curency. I would say we get out with not too much over our $$ limit of Prats and identify the metals to pillage first. If we can face only archers we won’t even need cats. This is the very best way to keep the kill ratio at what is needed, have only archers vs Prates.

3880: Hut give Mysticism, BW would have been better but well take it. It is on the way to Monarchy which we will need. I’d love Stonehenge but too many other priorities in this game.

3600: Hut gives scout. Nice. Rome hits size 2 and instead of finishing the warrior I switch to worker. Send exploring warrior back for protection. I think we have a bit of a grace period of safety from Barbs but a wandering AI warrior will attack.

3480: Wheel->Pottery.

3440: Hut gives 32 gp

3360: Furs are in the South. Scout survives a wolf.

3000: Pottery and worker both finish. Start cottage on FP and continue warrior build. On to the metals. Research->BW.

2640: Meet Bismark exploring the tundra in the S.

2200: BW in Start IW for our army

2120: Barb Archers are afoot.

2040: Scout is wacked by barb archer.

2000: Summary: We will grow to size 5 in 6 turns and the gold should be hooked by then. IW due in 22 but will drop when we grow and work the gold. We have 3 lowly warriors and are working on a Rax. You could switch to a settler at size 5 and chop time it to finish with IW. When the Iron is hooked up you can chop some Praets and have at it. Please consider very carefully whether to keep a city as the costs will be critical. To start we should keep only the best sites. Good luck-you’ll need it.

nice start, good choice on cottages first, this will help big time. How many turns did you play and how many should we play during the first rotation?

I think once we have praets, we can go nicely after the AI and stall any progress they made.

Mark
Greebley-UP
ThERat-On Deck
Katank
Colony

Take 20 turns the first round. Colony I put you in. If you played AWP and play comfortably at Emperor that should be fine but it is up to you. We must be very careful though if the tide turns at a Waterloo for us we will not recover at this level.


My thoughts on this are that aggression is important. Replacing troops is not going to be as big a problem as funding them and getting new ones to the front. Loosing a couple of Prats 5 turns from home is no biggie. Loosing a stack 20 turns from home guarding Iron/copper allowing the AI to get Axes is more of a problem. I think the key will be keeping metals out of the AI hands as much as possible. As good as Prates are there is unacceptable attrition with axes. In the open field they are like 99% vs archers which can make for some great upgrading opportunities.

We should keep it clear about how many cities we can afford. That type of thing can really cripple us. At least we are not playing no raze. That would be masochistic.

I think we should raze the enemy cities for now, I don't think they would be valuable for us unless they are close to our borders (doubtful). And of course, I would send out prets immediately for oppression strategy.

We can then expand at our own pace to keep the economy in sync. There are more flood plains in the west that look pretty good for cottage gallore.

Mark1031 said:

Take 20 turns the first round. Colony I put you in. If you played AWP and play comfortably at Emperor that should be fine but it is up to you. We must be very careful though if the tide turns at a Waterloo for us we will not recover at this level.

Click to expand...

I think I'm going to have to give this one a miss, simply due to lack of experience at AW games. That and my first practice game reminded me that I have a bad habit of losing my concentration in long wars, making some bad mistakes occasionally

Well, if you need a fifth I would like to play.

Mark1031 won't be so silly to not let you join. I am pretty sure we can really use your contributions here, T_McC

Well I played us to 1500 BC (20 turns).

I worked the gold square to get Iron Working more quickly (saved 7 turns).

I built Barracks, Worker, and started a Settler. This was helped by chopping two forests out of our bounds.

We beat a Barbarian Archer with our warrior (on Forest-Hill).

Decided to go for Meditation to start heading toward Monarchy. We do need Agriculture, however, I bet our second town will also have floodplains making Monarchy seem more important than Agri.

We have started Mining the Iron. We will be able to build Praetorians after the mine and a road on the Iron square.

It looks like there is good (floodplain) lands to the West. That is where I would consider putting our next town. I would place the town so we get both the sheep and the wheat with a border expansion.

save

we got mysticism, priesthood, then agri and animal husbandry
finally went for monarchy

finished the settler, that founded Antium.
The location was selected for 2 reasons, less desert tile though some overlap with Rome and
behind a river in case it has to face attacks

build a praet with a forest chop, follwed by another, then went for another worker, and chopped a praet that will be done in the IT
Rome grew to pop 5

1 praet is going west while another is at home for defense, defeated a barb archer on defense with praet
there is a barb coming from the south threatening our fog buster warrior
we might want to put him into a forest, next player's choice

we should try and get a border expansion for Antium, but we need obelisk (I don't like it) or better a library for that

our land, Rome is at happy limit already, worker is connecting cows, we should then help to get cottages up for Antium
in the south there is nice land to settle, which we should do fast, Antium can grow fast and then go for settlers while Rome can build military


our western praet is at the doorstep of a barb city, however we can spot the German borders already, so please send him up there
maybe we send the second praet there as well since we now have another praet next turn

First welcome TMcC we have a great team for this. Maybe it will be too easy. Second, Nice fast play. We are developing well. Having the FP cottaged all around will be very important. The faster we get to the key techs the faster we can swallow the continent. I like the second city as a cottaged settler/worker factory. There are furs to the S and with Monarchy we can grow nicely. I agree on forgetting the Barb city for now and focusing on taking down Germany. Capturing some workers for military roads should also be a priority. I know it is a bit early for thinking about this but we will need a very strong Navy in the future so strong coastal sites are important for cities.

Mark
Greebley
ThERat
Katank-UP
TMcC-On Deck