*Spoiler3* Gotm17-Carthage OIL+RUBBER

[cracker]

This is the main spoiler discussion thread for Gotm17-Carthage to discuss game progress and dealing with resource and trade issues all the way up to and including COAL, OIL, and Rubber.

Again take a few moments to read this introduction carefully to make certain you DO NOT run afoul of the new spoiler rules.

Every player must pass ONE of two tests in order to be able to view or participate this spoiler thread. These two tests define a dividing line where knowledge and events prior to the line may be discussed but knowledge that you may have from later in the game may not be included.

For Gotm17-Carthage:

• your Carthaginian civilization must have FULL WORLD MAP visibility and the technology rights to see the locations of OIL and RUBBER. OR
• you must have ended your game in a Victory or defeat before entering the modern age and have already submitted your game for scoring and analysis.

Essentially this thread is intended to be a discussion of game play issues other than world map exploration up through the Industrial ages and nothing beyond that point in time. If the AI civilizations are more advanced than your version of Carthage in the Regent level game, this should not be an invitation to proceed with discussion of the Modern Age Technologies or Strategic Resources.

Special Topics:
We are particularly interested in how you dealt with locating and acquiring any resources that you felt you needed to accomplish your strategic objectives.

You have a lot of ground that you can cover in terms of who you whacked or you you were whacked upon by from the end of any status that your reported in Spoiler thread number1. Remember to report your overview of how you discovered the world using Spoiler Thread number 2.

Please discuss how you incorporated the Stock Exchanges and the repositioned Wall Street wonder into your play.

Please report the positions and effects of any commercial docks or Ports-of-Entry if you can do so without creeping forward into no man's discussion land.

Please DO NOT discuss AIRFIELDs, RADAR TOWERS, or CIVIL DEFENSE in this discussion thread.

here is also a link to the Gotm17-Carthage score calculator for the Jason Scoring system, to serve as a reward for those players who read these instructions:
Gotm17-Carthage Jason Score Calculator

Hope you are having fun!!

[drewshark]

Wow! I actually get to be the first to post in this thread and I am very excited. Anyone familiar with my situation must be wondering how a man with a newborn can have the time,...well I must confess I have been on the road for 10 days working and have had way too much time to "Civilize."
Anyway, I am not done yet but have reached the requirements to post in this spoiler. I am really torn at this point because I have had to change my target victory condition several times. Anyone like myself that did not acquire coal early from someone else at this point has no railroads, hampering production. I have been able to keep up in scientific production, but I never did seriously consider attacking another island area to obtain coal. I really wanted to win this game via Culture, but at this point, I don't think it is possible. Furthermore, I have made too many MPPs with other civs in the hope of solidifying peace on the planet in case I wanted to build the UN and go for diplo. victory. That has not worked either. I don't think I planned all this out. As it stands now, I have just about built the UN and am ahead 2 techs on America and at least 3 on everyone else with Persia, Rome and England closest.
I really thought TOE was going too be necessary to jump ahead in the tech race so I prebuilt it a bit. Unfortunately the Americans beat me to it, building it very quickly. I was surprised when I was able to catch up and jump ahead by pursuing the the middle part of the tech treee, trading around to catch up with Lincoln and then jump ahead my researching flight first and ignoring amphibous warfare. America kept after it and I went ahead with fission. I guess my scientific production is better than I thought (and maybe I've been playing too many monarch + games).
I am proud to say that although there have been scattered wars, I have been dragged into, I never fired a shot, just sat at home building up culture and military. What I cannot figure out is what to use my workers for at this point. I cannot acquire coal and the Americans have an untapped source right in the middle of their continent. They have an entire 20 tile area with no developements, cities etc. with coal right there. I don't get it. Anyway, I guess I have been too lazy to set up military plans accross large ocean expanses and don't plan to now. I do have 2 rubber sources and have solidified my military on my home islands area, but I just think its not worth going into war just for coal. In summary, all is well and I will have victory soon, but not in the preferred way or by the desired date due to my inaction.

[Zwingli]

Now that the bumps have been worked out, I'm really enjoying this GOTM. Congrats on an absorbing setup Cracker.

Now for some resource based difficulties:


Once Steam Power came in, it became apparent that no coal existed on the starting archapelago. Also, no other Civ had coal available for trade at the time.

I had almost no offensive millitary and no desire for extensive warfare which might break my profitable luxury deals. Greece possesed two sources of coal, but one of them was unconnected and lacking a trade harbor.



This was the plot: declare war on Rome, land on the hill incense, found a city, rush a harbor, connect the coal with workers, and trade Greece a tech for coal. Rome was of little threat to my homeland because of the great distance between us, and I could make peace at the earliest opportunity. Thus, I scraped together a hoplite and some warriors along with a settler/workers.

The plot started off according to plan, but something went wrong...

[zagnut]

Yes, the lack of coal quickly became apparent. What also became apparent some time during this time period was that the home islands, even after taking out Egypt, did not contain enough land to achieve a diplomatic victory. The Info Center says that you have to have 25% of the land and/or population to get on the Security Council to vote.

Viola, the answer to my problem - invade Greece. They have enough land to put me over 25% and a source of coal. I did invade them early on but stopped because the supply lines were too great. However, now that I have Transports and strong naval vessels, it should be no problem to take over Greece very quickly. I have Tanks and they don't even have Infantry. Right now I sit on their doorstep ready to invade next turn. Once I take their limited territory I will have 28% of the land, according to MapStat.

One interesting factor, there were no inter-continental wars by any of the AI civs until about 1750 when Germany declared war on the Romans. The Germans then made alliances with all of the other civs against Rome. Now only I am not at war with Rome. The current year is 1804.

Thus far I have built 3 Ports of Entry in Carthage, Hippo and Memphis.

The fact that we had no coal was matched by the fact that several of the civs had no rubber. Germany was begging me for rubber forever, but I would not give it up.

[Zwingli]

When I landed, a road already existed on the coal and to the site of Calaris. When the harbor completed the next turn, I noticed Greece still had 0 coal available. Investigations revealed that the Greeks had traded coal to Persia during their production turn (after the "human" production turn). I didn't know he could do that!

I immediately pillaged the roads to my city to break the trade rout, but it was too late.


With my shoestring millitary, the best option left was to wait 20 turns for the Greek-Persian coal deal to expire (due to Alexander's having no coal), reconnect the trade rout, and trade for the now available excess coal.

The 20 turn delay on rails will have cost me around 6000 mixed gold and sheilds by the time I finish (currently at Radio). What a fiasco.


Coal at last

[Zwingli]

zagnut,

It looks like you have found an alternate means of obtaining coal.
Tanks vs. sub infantry is no contest.

Edit: deleted UN advice.

[Birdjaguar]

My plan was for an UN victory. I hit the industrial age in 1375 and raded/gave my world maps for polite status with everyone in that year. I discovered steam power in 1420. And yes no coal. I ended up trading Sci method to the zulus for it in 1750. Oil was my biggest concern. You cannot win wars without oil. The TOE gave me refining and reuseable parts in 1605. Oil was present on the barb island to the far south so I sent two settlers there to take over the island. Someone had settled in the middle so I settled on either end (one city on the oil). They soon flipped and gave me the entire island.

In the 1770s the whole world (except me) ganged up on te zulus, but little was accomplished. Rome was my close scientific rival.

In 1786 I started my prebuild for the UN

[drewshark]

Originally posted by zagnut
What also became apparent some time during this time period was that the home islands, even after taking out Egypt, did not contain enough land to achieve a diplomatic victory. The Info Center says that you have to have 25% of the land and/or population to get on the Security Council to vote.

I believe this only pertains to who is the opposing candidate when you vote for U.N chair. Anyone can build the UN and win via vote, I believe, even if you have 10 tiles under control and have built it. I believe the 25% land applies to the 2nd nominee for the U.N. Maybe someone else knows in more detail. In my game I was able to take a vote with just the starting area plus ex-Egypt.

{fixed your quote tags - crkr}

[Singularity]

I left out any deep report of my middleage since nothing shocking happened then. I took Egypt with relative ease, besides the last city of Pi Ramesses on the small island east of egypts main. That city where showered with golden luck, and it took 6 cavalries to finally subdue the city.

After I had scouted most of the world I had a very juicy target in the Rus/Amer/German continent. A large continent where I could found my urgently needed FP, with much landmass centred on the donut shaped continent. Germany had wiped out most of Abe's cities, leaving him isolated on the northernmost island with a single city. Russia seemed to have escaped the carnage with 5 large cities on the eastcoast.

My cavalries landed around 1300 in a rather large fleet of 7 caravels.

Map from 1340:

Resupplying the army was hard work. I had to wait for a while to press forward, as my ships kept returning with reinfocements. The great lighthouse helped me somewhat giving my caravels extended reach. By 1420 I had seized all of the continent.

New York prooved to be a gift from the gods:

Notice the iron works in progress, with rivers, coastline and what not. Coal was secured, and my railroads would soon cover all my lands. Oil and rubber where both on my home archipelago, but securing coal and two additional lux resources on the new archipelago did wonders for my growing cities. The german/russia campagn only gave me one leader. But that was only what I needed to kick New York into high gear to become the mega city it was destined to be + it had an allmost ideal corruption zone control of my most productive cities on the new continent. With Hoover Dam I soon spent less time on my native lands, and put all strengt into transforming my 'donut' into prime lands with some optimal placed cities for heavy production and commerce.

Still in the industrial age in 1600's(due to low tech trade with AI and underdeveloped AI tech) my MPP with persia kicked in, and I decided to use my cavalry once again on England. My major opponents(if you can call it that) are Persia and Greece. Both have all resources, and was the only ones able to give me a desent offer for my older techs.

Here is a map from 1675:

[dales]

The resource I needed was coal; I had both rubber and oil within my territory.

The decision for where to get coal was not difficult, just annoying. The Aztecs were very far behind tech wise and had very little gold- they were an easy pick. The annoying part is that it would take a dozen plus turns to get to them.

I got there, and wiped them out. Annoyingly though, I ended up at war with Germany somehow, a war I paid no attention to because Germany was down to 2 cities far away from me. But wouldn't you know it, after the Aztecs were eliminated, Germany landed and took the one city down there that had coal within the boundaries.

So I had to hurry some offense to take it back.

But at this point, I felt I was comfortably in control of the game

[Megalou]

Failed plan:
In my first attempt to solve the coal problem I brought two settlers + some riflemen and cavalry to the unsettled island mentioned by drewshark. The surrounding "reef" was torn by American-German warfare so I managed to found a reef town to sail through towards the island. I traded Americas territory map a couple of times to check if the island had come within the American cultural borders (in which case settling there would be out of the question). Alas, the American borders swallowed the territory just as the settler was going to jump onto the coal!

Successful plan:
Zulu was at war with Iroquies, looking to lose. So it felt pretty safe to found a city in Zululand with some cavalry and infantry. To do this, I had to rush barracks in the reef town and upgrade the riflemen in the boats. The reef town was then abandoned. I signed an alliance with the Iroquies against Zulu. Having good relations with Iroquies also meant that a harbour would not have to be rushed. The coal city stood for a long time, until the Iroquies finally turned against me. But by then new coal had already popped up in two other places within Carthagenian territory.

With a little luck, I could also have prevented Iroquies from taking the Pyramids and Sun Tzu from Zulu, but I was afraid to risk my precious few cavalry to attack Zimbabwe.

The time span between the actual failure of the first plan until I had the coal town in place was 8 turns, which was pretty alright considering how discouraged I was first!

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by cracker
here is also a link to the Gotm17-Carthage score calculator for the Jason Scoring system, to serve as a reward for those players who read these instructions:
Gotm17-Carthage Jason Score Calculator

If I have known about this Calculator sooner, I would have ended my game with at least 1000 more points. Anyway, thanks for a great game. I have a lot of fun - one regret and no complain of any kind. My only one regret was that I wasn't able to resuse Cracker from that mountain of fire.

[Yndy]

The first thing that I was dying to tell you about was the fact that I had a city in the Greek-Roman archipelago since 10BC! It was a conquered city! I was succesfully experimenting a tactic first revealed by Moonsinger: taking a city across a sea without a navy.

As soon as I met Greece and Romans I declared war to Greece and bought Rome into the war. 8 turns later Greece was willing to give me a town if I broke my alliance with the Romans and made peace with them. It appears that the computer values the price I paid to the Romans for the alliance in addition to the benefits of peace itself. So I got Knossos at 10BC.

I was going for domination and as I discovered Navigation I attacked Greece. My initial forces were the Swordsmen from the Egyptian war and some 10 Longbows. It was the first Civ3 game where I used Longbows as Greece was defending with Spears (I thought but of course they were Hoplites) the odds would be 60% on my side. They were about 50-50 in the end and the Longbows with the swords got 4 cities until the Cavalry arrived. I was building horsemen like crazy and upgraded them as I got Cavalry around 700AD (I think). The rest of the game was played with Cavalry. They proed very effective against Hoplites, Legionares, American and Russian Pikemen, German Spears (Got Germany in two turns), Zulu and Iroquois Musketmen and Babylon Bowmen (also got them in two turns at the end of the game).

I did researched allthe way to the tanks but in hindsight I should have built more Cavalry and finished them all much sooner. Logistics were a pain and Airports came too late to help me (thought they did help).

I never brought the AI to my tech level and they never met each other. In 1300AD three of them had Navigation or Magnetism (Persia, Iroquois and Zulu). Only Persia got to explore a bit as the other two were busy figthing each other and me in the same time. Persia only discovered my starting Archipelago but they did discover Nationalism so they were never a target. They also had the last lux I needed and I kept paying them tech for it.

It was a great game but I should have went the fast tech way to finish it faster. I will in GOTM 18.

Edit: Cropped attachement. So did I Moonsinger. So what was your victory condition? Domination here. Should have had Diplo or SS for a higher score.

[Moonsinger]

Yndy,

Congratulation on talking Knossos at 10BC (without firing a single shot). After rushing the barracks and rushing new spearman in every 2 turns, by the time you discover navigation, those spearmans would become Musketeers. Wow, you would have an army of Musketeers right in the Roman and Greek backyard within 20 turns or so. I'm looking toward to hear about the rest of your story.

Originally posted by Yndy
So did I Moonsinger. So what was your victory condition? Domination here. Should have had Diplo or SS for a higher score.

Well, I won by culture victory in 1880 AD. According to Jason's formula on this thread, I will end up a lot lower (1880 AD is way too late for a good score). In any case, this game is a testing ground for new tactics. I have learned many new stuffs and can't wait to try it out next month.

[ltcoljt]

You guys are telling too much good stuff. I would never have thought of the tactic of getting a city without a war! I also did not understand the advantage of keeping citizens happy early or how hard one must push for early conquest or how important it is to build sixty seven billion towns.

I might creep up on someone soon.

In my game I had to ship calvary to take Sparta and secure the coal and it took me to 1310 AD. Argh.

Anyway, is it okay to use the calculator before you finish the game? I am finished with a space race win in 1778 but for future reference is this allowed? Cracker?

Anyway, this was not only my first GOTM but the first Civ3 game played to completion so I am very happy to have won at all.

ltcoljt
goatherder

[ltcoljt]

What the heck is a port of entry? As for commercial docks and stock exchanges I built those in all of my prime cities.

Insofar as the Hoover Dam can someone explain to me what is the big deal about it?

Also, Singularity, how did you make use of New York? Did you relocate your palace there or build the FP?

Had plenty of oil and rubber but when I saw that I had no coal I order the execution of all barbarian workers cause I think one was Cracker.

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by ltcoljt
What the heck is a port of entry? As for commercial docks and stock exchanges I built those in all of my prime cities.

The port of Entry is only for the V1.29f. It's "kind of" the equivalent of the Commercial Docks in PTW.

Had plenty of oil and rubber but when I saw that I had no coal I order the execution of all barbarian workers cause I think one was Cracker.

No offend to Cracker, but that's very funny!

[zagnut]

Originally posted by drewshark

I believe this only pertains to who is the opposing candidate when you vote for U.N chair. Anyone can build the UN and win via vote, I believe, even if you have 10 tiles under control and have built it. I believe the 25% land applies to the 2nd nominee for the U.N. Maybe someone else knows in more detail. In my game I was able to take a vote with just the starting area plus ex-Egypt.

You are apparently correct. Here is the explanation from the Info Center:

"Diplomatic Victory
The diplomatic victory condition is enabled after the United Nations wonder has been built. Once built, the UN will meet periodically to vote on a leader. Any civ that receives a majority of votes from the U.N. council wins the game. The catch here is that in order to even be on the U.N. council (and thus eligible to be elected U.N. leader), you must either control 25% of the world's territory or population. The civilization who builds the United Nations wonder automatically gains a permanent council position. There are always at least 2 candidates -- the civilization with the next largest population is used if there would only be one candidate. "

If you build it you are automatically on the Council. However, if you miss it and still want to be included in the vote, which I think is essential, then you must control the 25%. I never knew that until this game. Usually I control much more than that by the time the UN is available. However, Cracker gave us all some good surprises on this map.

[Kaiser_Berger]

Just the same as everyone else, I was distraut over our lack of coal. The easiest route would seem to be throught the weakest nation, so I prepared cavalry for an invasion of the thrid world nation like Aztecs. In the meantime, I managed to trade Greece for their extra coal, paying some high prices for it. After the 20 or so turns it took my fleet to get there, my limited supply of cavalry sliced through the Aztec nation in about 5 turns time. After a harbor was rushed, Carthage would never be denied of the wonderous supply again.

[Singularity]

Originally posted by ltcoljt


Also, Singularity, how did you make use of New York? Did you relocate your palace there or build the FP?

Good questioin. I got the leader a few turns after I captured New York, at the moment I was contemplating moving the palace to New York and build FP at a better location to combat corruption back home. But I didn't have the shields to it as I still was at wartime production. So I ended up using my GL to build FP in NY.

It would benefit my game to have had a palace in the south as the area has more potential than my own islands. But I'm somewhat unsure if I can build a palace in NY, and still be able to produce FP? Or will building a palace 'over' a FP erase the FP from my production menu as if the city was razed?


--------

Originally posted by ltcoljt


Insofar as the Hoover Dam can someone explain to me what is the big deal about it?

There are two main reasons for getting this very attractive wonder:

1. It gives you a pollution free Hydro Plant even in towns without rivers within the city radius. Alternatives are Coal plants that puke pollution like there is no tomorrow, or wait for solar/nuclear plant which is unavailable untill modern times.

2. On a large continent you save heaps of gold, just like the Pyramids and Sun Tzu would have done.