T_McC03 - Guns and Bowses (Vanilla C4, Emperor)

[T_McC]

An element of the game that added a great deal of challenge to Civ III was lost in the transition to Civ IV. It was always satisfying when one could overcome a resource deficit and still win, but the balanced starts of Civ IV make it almost inevitable that every civ will have Copper/Iron, Horses, and Oil (or at least Uranium) in close proximity to its starting location.

This leads to fairly cookie-cutter aggression strategies on the part of the human, and infrequently decisive AI-AI wars. In Civ III there was always the potential of a runaway-AI swallowing up its neighbors if there was a resource gap to be exploited, but I've rarely seen such a thing in Civ IV.

So I propose we play the "resource-deprived" role.

Variant Rule: We never build a military unit that has a resource requirement. No Axes, Swords, Maces, Crossbows ... or Chariots, Horse Archers, Knights, Cavalry ... or Tanks, Modern Armor ... or modern Naval units ... or Air units. Oddly enough, Mechanized Infantry does not have Oil as a requirement, but I seriously doubt those guys are riding bicycles so those are out too.

We are allowed to have the resources and improve/work the tiles. We are also allowed to build the buildings that have resource requirements or production doubling.

All victory conditions will be enabled, but we can only win via Domination or Conquest. Heh heh, we're bringin' back the dreaded Longbow Rush!

The game is not Always War, but the troop mix will look like it. Lots and lots and lots of artillery to support our offensive Archery units, powering our pre-Industrial age conquests.

I want to play this on Emperor and use Mali (that's the only Archer-based UU). Landform is open although I am thinking Continents for the spectacle that will be a required naval invasion. We may also play with Raging Barbs since we have the early UU and can fairly easily train them up using Barbs. I would also like the Barbs to found a couple of cities since those should be easier to capture pre-Catapults.

Who will join in this masochistic pursuit?

[Mutineer]

hmm... I see problem here.
You undestand that will mean never have any collateral damamge or siege units after catapults (opps, artilery seems does not have resource)? and no any navy, as all navy starting from Frigates has resource requeroment.
and no greens.

The only units that do not have resource requeroment are:

Warriors, archers, catapults, artilery, longbow, Muskets, Rifles, Infantry, Marines, sam Infantry, Mex Infantry.
Galeys, Caravels, Galeons.

[ThERat]

are you sure that can be done on emperor? sounds a bit tough to me

[SpriteSODA]

well, you still have musketmen and rifles and infrantry, so i'll advise you to play as france/Mali

[pigswill]

Might I venture to suggest that you consider a variant banning city-raider promotion instead of resource-base; that way you leave a balanced approach, navies etc. and still avoid the CR2-3 Axe/Mace/Rifle rush.
However you decide to deprive your civ it won't have any impact on AI/AI conflicts.
The chances are if you go for no-resources you'll end up with CR catapult rushes protected by archers/longbows.

[uberfish]

Oracle -> Feudalism slingshot!

[Mutineer]

I am not that sure it is posible to do Feodalism slingshot on Emperor.

If we consider to try this, I see only 2 posible Civ candidates.
Mali or French.
If play Mali, then Feodalism is not needed in hurry, as Skirmishers will be good enogth on start. Beelining to constraction thought will be compalsory.
Attacking befor constraction would be very dificult, do no think it will be practical, even with skirmishers.
But Cats with skirmirshers support will work.

Now, question, How upgrading will be handled?

Cats do not need resources, but canons do. Artilery again does not need resources. Greens seems do not need resource.

In addition, if we can not use Mex infantry, even if it does not need resource then it mean that if we did not win with Infantry we will have no chance.

T_McC - unswer to our conserns.

So far the only cource of action I see would be:

For Mali
Beeling to construction, first war cats/skirmirshers.
Beelinging to Gunpowder/Nationalism/Chemisry
Second war compain.
Avoide Steel
Beeling to Rifles to replace Muskets.

Beeling to artilery
Thurd war compain.
Beeling to infantry.
Shot down research and try to win.

Should be relativelly easy on Monarch, could be posible on Emperor.

[uberfish]

I've done CS slingshot on emperor/immortal from good starting position, and I think feudalism should be easier to get to as monarchy is cheap. If we were mali, skirmishers would be a backup plan then.

England probably better than either Mali or France. Maybe too easy.

[troilus]

Maybe someone could write a mod script for a game variant called 'scarce resources', where only two or three of each strategic resource is present on the map when selected? That might bring some of that 'do I got it?' tension back.

[T_McC]

The previous posts hit most of the important awkwardness of the game: The only units capable of CR promotions are Artillery, no modern Navy whatsoever, a rather non-traditional tech path, time pressure to win in the Industrial Era ...

I believe not having access to Mech Inf isn't going to be a killer here. Marines hold up well on defense vs. everything but Modern Armor (and if we're fighting Modern Armor we'll lose to a Spaceship anyway), and the solution to every other problem is more Artillery. I had forgetten that Cannons required Iron, but rules are rules ...

I agree that England is too easy Or at least, too straightforward strategically. Redcoats are comically overpowered.

I will amend the settings a bit. While continents are really tempting because of the colossal mess a naval invasion would be (not to mention really complicating the tech path. Astronomy or Chemistry? or Rifling?), I think we're better served to first try this on a Pangaea. If it works, then we can try a Continents map. We can also do without Raging Barbs. I've played a few starts and while the Barbs do promote your units nicely, too much of the game can hinge on the Barbs winning some bad dice rolls. No reason for the game to go south just because a Barb Archer got lucky. So the proposed settings are:

Difficulty: Emperor
Landform: Pangaea
Size: Standard
Civ: Mali

I like Mali better than England to more easily allow for an early war, and better than France because the Musketeer "advantage" is pretty well useless given that we'd have no other 2-move units. I think Financial will be important for two reasons: (1) There will be a lot of troops lost in any war, so most cities have to be improved for production instead of commerce. Being Financial will let us get more out of our limited number of economic cities. (2) This is also an exercise in Diplomatic AI manipulation. We need to be amongst the tech leaders when we get to Grens/Rifles. The easiest way to do this is to stir up trouble before that. Being a bit stronger economically should help that along.

The upgrading question is pretty easily answered: Cats can be upgraded to Artillery, but not to Cannons. Warriors can be only be upgraded to Grenadiers or Rifles.

It sounds like uberfish and Mutineer want to play, but I can't tell whether the other posters do or not. You should be comfortable playing on Emperor and experience in heavy war games would be very helpful. We can do a roster of 4, 5, or 6.

I'll roll a start tonight and see if we can fill out the roster. I expect this to be a glorious defeat, but I'm willing to be suprised

[Mark1031]

I'll give this a try. It sounds suicidal.

[T_McC]

Here's the start. The Warrior has already been moved to reveal the Wheat. The best tile for the capital appears to be the Jungle E of the Warrior, although that would be spotting the AI two turns at the beginning of the game. Not a big deal unless we wanted to chase a religion.



I'll post the save once we have a roster and decide who is leading off. And we discuss where to build the capital ...

Definite:
T_McC
Mark1031
ThERat {New!}

Probable:
Mutineer
uberfish

[ThERat]

count me in as well

[uberfish]

Count me in, be a nice break from the usual axe rushes people insist on doing

With two lakes the initial settler position would be quite promising for a commerce city, but having one visible hill and starting with neither seafood nor fishing are strikes against it. So, I agree with the proposed jungle spot.

I'd still like to try Oracle/Feudalism slingshot and having gems is a plus for this.

[T_McC]

OK. With four confirmed I'll go ahead and start tonight. I think the tile W of the settler is a good spot for the 2nd city, with an emphasis on commerce. Financial Civs make Lake/Lighthouse tiles real nice. The jungle tile 2E of the Warrior may also be a good spot for the capital, leaving the Wheat for a northern city. But we're S of the Equator so the terrain N of the plains hill should be jungle/grassland. One more move with the Warrior should make the choice clear.

We start with Mining and Wheel, so I will very likely start with Agriculture and a Worker. We want the Gems in play ASAP. The other possibility is to start with Mysticism, then Ag to better time the discovery of Farming for when we'll have a worker and the need to farm (first worker task is mining the Gems).

[Mark1031]

The jungle spot looks great. With gems we should be able to get the Feud slingshot and since it goes through Monarchy which will take care of happy issues it seems the play to make. IMO we should maybe grab myst first and see if with the gems we can grab Hindu. Then Ag->Arch->Feud.

[T_McC]

T_McC03 - Welcome to the Jungle

4000 BC (0)
Move the Warrior and post screenshot.

3920 BC (2)
Build Timbuktu. Getting a late start makes me think we won't be able to chase Hinduism, particularly since the worker will take 15 turns.

End up picking Mysticism to keep that dream alive, we'll need to go down this path for Monarchy/Feudalism anyway. Other choice was Hunting to open up Archery. I do think we need Agriculture very soon.

3800 BC (5)
Find Marble to our North. Tough location due to food, so will be a mediocre city site. But the Oracle looks rather do-able.

3760 BC (6)
We meet Louis in the North. Not a bad opponent to have close by, he should build some wonders for us.

3680 BC (8)
Buddhism falls.

3640 BC (9)
I just can't see Hinduism lasting for 13 more turns so we head for Agriculture.

3560 BC (11)
We meet Huyana. He'll be an early friend who we can catch religion from, but he was not the founder of Buddhism. I expect him to go Hindu any turn now.

3440 BC (14)
We meet Izzy, who founded Buddhism. Always good to have a crazy person in the game.

3320 BC (17)
Worker built, start on Warrior. Slowly ... Working the Corn instead of a Forest to grow to size 2 faster.

3240 BC (19)
Ag in. Start on Hunting to set up Archery. If Hinduism doesn't fall in the next couple of turns we could have had it. Oh well.

3200 BC (20)
And right on cue, Hinduism is FIDAL. We would have missed it by 2 turns.

Mine completes on Gems and our research goes up by 7 bpt, shaving a turn off of Hunting.

3120 BC (22)
Oh goody, Tokugawa is in the game too! We won't be the only outcast civ. We still haven't met the founder of Hinduism.

3080 BC (23)
Hunting in, on to Archery. We need Skirmishers to fight Barbs since we won't have the option of using Chariots or Axes in lieu of Archers.

3040 BC (24)
Win vs. a Lion. This start is interesting because I haven't found any good bonus food outside of our capital, but we seem to have a decent amount of land to expand into.

2880 BC (28)
Archery in and start on Pottery to open up shortest path to Writing and a Library. Start Skirmisher in Timbuktu after having put 1 turn into Barracks.

2800 BC (30)
Fin.

We are growing rather fast now, Timbuktu will be size 4 in four turns and hit a temporary Happy cap. I haven't connected the Gems or the Corn to the city yet as the worker has been scrambling to improve tiles before the Capital grows into them. We have a lot of jungle around this start so we could use a 2nd worker fairly soon after the first settler.

Louis already has Writing, so I sign Open Borders.

[T_McC]

And now the pictures:

Our North


Marble is nice. Desert + Plains is not. We may be in competition with Louis for this spot.

Our West


The blue circle indicates Wines.

Our East


One nice thing is that we have all three Granary resources close by so health shouldn't be much of a problem.

It's too late here to try to dotmap this territory.

On research: I didn't see any notices of people adopting Slavery so Bronze Working may not be out yet. Maybe none of these other guys start with Mining? We should probably get BW before settling our 2nd city because even though we won't build units with metals, it's still fair play to deny them to the AI. I can all but guarantee that we have Bronze within 5 tiles of the capital given the variant restrictions.

I'm almost paranoid enough to believe that the plains S of Timbuktu, around where our settler started, will contain Bronze, Iron, and Horses.

Roster:
T_McC (just played)
uberfish (Up!)
Mark1031
ThERat
Mutineer (???)

I think uberfish is ~ the same time zone as I am, so this should allow other folks to comment before he plays. He'll play 20 and then we should be on 10/turn.

[Qwack]

My bet is you guys will win this game. Strong lineup . I was thinking about starting a SG on immortal level with the variant that we cannot ever build axes. This is similiar enough so ill be lurkin this game. Good luck to you guys.

[Mutineer]

Put me in roster, will be fun.

I loaded the save and I am not sure, what is our plan?
Did we give up on oracle?

Wll seee what uberfish will make of it.