Ares of the Centurion v0.5 AAR

Refar

Deity
Joined
Apr 10, 2005
Messages
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This is my first game with the mod as previously i only started it to try the graphics. So this is not a presentation of a good strategy - Just playing into the blue and collecting some impressions.

The Settings:
Played version 0.5 of the mod on BTS 3.17

Standard Map with 10 Random Civilizations (Us and 9 AI).
Prince Difficultie.
All Victories but Time.

We drew Ares of the Centurion and will be playing wearing the roman pink color.
We are AGG / IMP - a so-so mix - AGG should fit the hostile setting nicely. IMP is not one of my favourites. None of the traits does give us a economic bonus to leverage.

The Starting Location has Gold (allways good to have) and Copper (not a strategic ressource here, but still a nice production boost). The location is immensely food pressed, so is - as turned out later - the entire map. Goes along with the setting of a post-nuclear wasteland.


Opening: Despite hearing rumors about dangerous mutated wild animals roaming the radioactive wastelands, i order to start building a Worker while researching Construction for mines. The survivor unit stay close to the city. Still can rexplore a little bit, traveiling on some of the ancient highways.

Turn 11: A huge glowing radioactive spider comes out of nothing and ambushes the Survivors, who are fortunately able to repel the attack - barely. More animals are closing in. Travellers even tell stories about something called "Deathclaw" nearbye.
Start regreting not having built a military unit first.
The decimated Survivors unit is retreating into out ruined city hoping to have better chances to survie attacks in familiar defensive location.

A few turns later the Worker is ready moves out to mine the Gold. Building fast Barracks from AGG, so the troops that are going to be trained can receive better training to increase they chances of survival. Then chain-build Survivors for exploration and protection.

Next Research project is Small arms for some post-apocalypric Slavery and better military units.

Turn 40: With the re-invention of small arms now Guardian units can be trained, who will be a good match for the animals. And i really need those. The mutated, extremely agressive animals chewed through almost all of my survivors by now (4 built, 3 eaten).

Which Agriculture done i am researching administration for Buerocracy now. It's time to bring some order to the wastelands.

Met some other surviving triebes by now. All led by some dubious personalities who cant be trusted. I will have to deal with them sooner or later, to bring unity into the wastelands and head into the future as united people.

The closest is Shiro of the Ronin. He preaches the Vision of Monarchy - him self beeing the monarch, i presume. The people leave in poverty under his ruthless, unwise rule. I begin by freeing some of his hard working servants, and making them work for me. Also pillage all his improvements, in a struggle to make him realize the falsity of his ways.


Turn 52: After re-inventing and clarifieng the principles of Administration, introduce the new Leadership Doctrin to my people by proclaiming the rule of Buerocrates and re-introducing slavery. A controversial measure, but to ensure the survival of the humanking, some minorities do have to sacrifice some. The people must understand this. And after a short period of unrest, they do.

Slavery is only applied on a small scale however - with a constant shortage of food the population growth is too slow, so we can not risk loosing too many people.

Reports that our last and most advanced scouting parties fallen victim to the animals reach New Rome. They were only able to rediscover a small portion of the land around us. They did however meet travelers fom far west and est. So there is more to come. We will have to resume exploration at some point. But now we have more pressing needs.


Turn 75: We need to stop Shiro from spreading his faulty Vision among the other Survivors. And we need to move swiftly, before he can spoil to many. Kyotos untrained defenders can not stand before our power and the fight for survival is over for Shiro.


In the meantime research progress on Combustion and Salvaging revealed oil deposits and some derelict facilities, which were not comletely destoyed by the past war.
Focusing our research on Civic Projects next. As soon as the doctrin is formulated we will switch to state property. Personal economic interest does harm the big cause of survival. (Low on food, not enought surplus to run more than a few cottages, boosting Production seems to be a good idea. Also State Property is it only means of Maintenance Reduction avaiable.)

Building Refinery in New Rome right after combustion is done - some fuel would be nice, but first of all i want to run some Engineers. It hurts a bit to run Specializts beeing short on food, but then again - the happy cap is low anyway, so too much growth is not needed. And without wonders it is the
only way to get a great person.

Turn 111: Start Researching heavy Weapons. I got Oil and it is time to get some Depots rebuilt and running.
In the meantime taking a poorly defended city from Chen.


Turn 127: Researched Heavy Weapons. Now it is time ro rebuild my Depot. I am also going to take another Depot one from Debbie, who does not know how to put it to good use anyway.


Turn 132: A Tank was made ready for action in my Rebuilt Depot. Unfortunately with empty fuel tank. I did not think to have a Fuel Truck ready there, so the Tank will have to wait one more turn before it is going to kick some butt.


Having those rebuilt Tanks allowed me to to secure that gems deposits near Nottingham from Debbie (White to the east), to completely dispose of Chen (Right to me West, now gone) and also to take another Depot from big but softly defended Stein (Grey to the west).


I was thinking about slowing down and rebuilding the wavering economy a bit. But Kylobite and his vassal Max felt powerful and enthusiastic for another war.


Turn 188: Found out why Kilobyte was feeling so bold... He got a stack of tanks stockpiled on a depot. Unfortunately he missed a tiny detail - the fuel... He did have a few Nukes tho :mad:.


The Closing: With the economy in the tank and no improvemnt in sight i directed the research towards Feudalism. Nuking and Burning enemy cities with my Tanks to get some gold to keep going. Which the military forces coming from the Depots most cities went to Wealth production to support the economy.
Untill finally...


That was it.

Some notes and a bit of feedback coming up next post.
Here are a few saves attached - the start and a autosave soutn the victory. A few others without any particular significanse - just those i happened to have form where i interrupted the session.
 
Overall the mod has a nice, athmospheric feel. The terrain, high barb rate and the unortodox unit "aquisition" all contribute here.

Art / Cosmetic Notes: All are minor only.

* Crossbow Motorcycle should use Ranged-Mechanical art define - Tank work well as base. Right now they seem to be rushing into the enemy.
Observed on Barbarian Motorcycles and on Choper units. (Choper might be intended to be melee ?)
* The fuel track looks a bit smallishly scaled in the game, despite being so long. Actually it is because it beeing so long - you had to scale it down, to fit into one plot. I would suggest making the trailer shorter (maybe 25%) but increase the units scale. This way it would still fit into a plot, but the engine would look bigger.
Very minor:
* Sevage Plant - there is another graphic by Asioasioasio which might be better - on the current graphic the building looks a bit too clean. Barely noticeable in game tho.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9150

Gameplay Notes / Impressions: Those are all impressions a noted while playing and in no particualr order. So they might have been based upon situational or not really accurate observations. And of course even if i say "should" or "must" on some - those are all just ideas.

* As general observation: due to the overall food poor terrain the game felt very pressed in terms of economic development. The food shortage goes with the setting and is fine, but perhaps other means to improve economy can be found. First ideas in this department were:
--- Forest could be of some use (No Chopping hammers is fine tho). Maybe some improvements - Hunting Lodges (food), Lumbermills (Procuction/Commerce).
--- Highways might give some economic bonus on a tile - commerce or productivity depending on improvement.
--- Additional food from farms with some mit-tier tech.
--- Additional food-sources from buildings - maybe Hydroponic Farms or Moisture Condensers as city buildings to boost the food on per city base
--- Additional sources of income - no good ideas here.
* We need the couthouse or other means to reduce per city maintenance to come back.
* The ability to clean Fallout at some point of the game would be nice. Not only because of the initial pollution on the map, but also because of the Nuke happy AI. (I keep wondering - in overall Civ4 context - Firaxis is soing all to mark the nukes with a stain - Global Warming, Extra WW, Diplo :mad: - and yet the AI happily fires every single Nuke it got :crazyeye:)
* Missile silos could produce other Missiles as well (Cruise missiles i.e.) to keep them usefull while reducing the overall probability of a Nuke - most of them should have been used up while causing the apocalypse ;)
* Overall on "Rebuilt units" - those might need a nerf. Some restoring is nice - adds a nice unique touch/feeling to the mod. However in my game i completely stoped building units in my cities and relyed exclusively on restored gear once two heavy depots cmae online. Ideas:
--- Reducing probability of appearing, so player can not rely on restored units alone.
--- A counter for Tanks seem in order.
* A Depot/Bunker/Armory must be worked by a city in order to produce something / or need to be garrisoned in order to work (Need to check if the AI will get that...)
* Some animals could be more/less dangerous than others. For example Deathclaw could be a bit stronger and move faster.
* Movement along highways should be limited to motorized units. (Is this even do-able ?!) At any rate i was a bit surprised, when my Survivors got that huge speed boost on the highway... A foot unit does not have the means to fully leverage the highway...
* City Ruins should give defensive bonus (Perhaps to some subclass of units only - foot units ?)
* Popping a Sam Infantry from heavy weapons depot was unexpected. Perhaps those are better produced by the Armory/Amunitions ?
* Garage was useless in my game - i only gained access to it after i already had Heavy Weapons Depot. At that point i did not felt compelled to build any wheeled units in my cities. (Tho this might be different with another research path).

Possible Heavy Bug:
* In my game the AI ompletely failed to use the Fuel Tracks. That might be because i was playing on 3.17 rendering some of Davids scripting useless - tho the refuling buttong did work for me without any problems, and the message abeut "Fuel truck refuelled units" did pop up.
I have some ideas/thoughts on the subject of refuling in general and AI refuling in particulr, but i would like to hold them off till i know if this is only caused by me using the 3.17 patch, or if it does happen on 3.13 as well.

I have seen a lot of those stacks...


How did it look in your games ? @David and people running 3.13
 
Lots of detail here. Great!

Some replies, more or less in order to your post.

I agree adding some wonders will make specialists easier. I have in mind "Voice of the Badlands", which requires bunch of radio towers; "Thunderdome" which I already mentioned which enables units to get XP; and "City Lights". I'm not sure how to do that, but in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome there is a good inspirational speech about how the first city that gets electric lights turned back on will improve the world's morale. What other sorts of wonders make sense?

I am curious to know if your economy flatlined. Mine often does unless I concentrate on cottages. Did you reach zero gold and lose units due to strikes?

Good point on the size of the gas truck. I don't have the model files, but I saw you had requested asioasioasio to send them. Cutting the size of the tank ""should be"" easy. (Speaking as a total illiterate on 3D tools :)

I will look into the other sewage plant. It does look more post-apocalyptic.

Low availability of food is intentional. But, maybe it is *too* low. I have thought of a mid-tier tech "tractor farming". If you have fuel available, then you can put up improved farms with higher food yield, but the yield goes back down if you don't have fuel. I haven't quite figured out the mechanics for this. I don't want to burn a whole fuel truck to refuel one tractor.

I intentionally took out scrub fallout. The scope of the game is pretty short (seasons) and that seems like a big project. Actually if you start throwing nukes around, you can block passage by mistake. That is why the rad-immune promotion is pretty important in the late game.

I will look into cruise missiles and other possible units for the silo. I cut the probability in half just before 0.5, maybe it is still too high.

You write, "a counter for tanks might be in order". Do you mean, a max number of tanks which can be built? I certainly never imagined a single stack of 20 tanks as shown in your screenshot. I will definitely have to consider having depots slow down, or stop producing after a little while. Do you think that would be enough?

I would like to find a way to avoid having foot units travel fast on highways. I can't find any way to have some units use the highway and some not; I had a thread about this a few weeks ago and I did not find any solution.

Excellent suggestion that ruins should provide a defensive bonus to foot. And also probably a defensive penalty to wheeled. I'll add that.

Regarding the garage, one difference between my games and yours is that I use the utility truck quite a lot. The Road Warrior and Weapon Mount promotions mean it can easily outperform a guardian, plus it moves faster. You might try utes in the next game and see what you think.

If the AI is not refueling, that is indeed a huge bug. I will investigate.
 
What other sorts of wonders make sense?
Unfortunately good creative ideas is what i not have here :mischief: One thing i came to think about is - as usual from my side - fallout inspired - "The Water Merchants" - it was kind of syndicate there, that controlled the water market in a significant area. Might add extra trade routes or something.

I am curious to know if your economy flatlined.
It did flatline. In the end i was loosing ~50 gpt with slider at 0% science and all cities building wealth...
I could however avoid strike - had some gold stockpiled and went on a little bit of city burning rampage in the final stages of the game.

Low availability of food is intentional. But, maybe it is *too* low. I have thought of a mid-tier tech "tractor farming". If you have fuel available
Yes i see how it is intentional and it does fit. I think it just too many things stacked together.
Your "improved farming" idea might be enought of a remedy.

I intentionally took out scrub fallout.
Yep, again - i see how it fits the setting. It just does stack badly with generally poor terrain, pressed economy and Nuke happy AI.

You write, "a counter for tanks might be in order". Do you mean, a max number of tanks which can be built?
That is actually bad spelling i guess :blush: I mean Anti Tank Unit. :blush:

I certainly never imagined a single stack of 20 tanks as shown in your screenshot. I will definitely have to consider having depots slow down, or stop producing after a little while. Do you think that would be enough?
Stop producing as in "out of stock, forever" might be too radical - those depots are fun. Turning down the probability and maybe introducing a limit might be good.
Like a player can have 2 active tanks per owned depot or something.

Those 20 tanks came from 4 depots. I actually had 28 active in the end + 4 lost over the course of the game. 32 produced tanks from 4 depots over the course of the game might be a bit too much, but not too ridiculous. But since they barely got destroyed it stacked up.

I would like to find a way to avoid having foot units travel fast on highways. I can't find any way to have some units use the highway and some not; I had a thread about this a few weeks ago and I did not find any solution.
Oh, i see. I almost suspected that. Unfortunately i dont have any solution :(
 
An anti-tank unit is easy, I can add the standard AT unit along with tank, artillery, SAM infantry produced by the depot.

I will definitely implement a slowdown rate for unit production at depot/silo/airbase, and definitely try to find a mechanic for tractor farming.
 
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