Rat45 CCM - Gideon's Band

Settings: CCM biq 1.7.1, Israel, huge world, no barbarians, continents, 60% water, wet/temperate/5 billion, normal AI aggression, deity.

Conditions: In our latest attempt to keep the AI competitive past 1500 AD, we cannot hold any enemy city beyond the turn of capture, unless it contains a Great Wonder. Retaining a city until the end of the turn of capture for tactical reasons is permitted. Thus--and bearing in mind that settlers are autoproduced at a fixed rate for the first half of a CCM game--our expansion should be severely limited until we become able to build settlers halfway through the Industrial Age.

See Judges 7 for the title--the Lord keeps arbitrarily reducing the size of Gideon's army before he's permitted to smite the hosts of Midian, very much in the spirit of this variant.

The roster:

Northern Pike
Greebley
CommandoBob
THeRat
LKendter

4000 (0): After making recon moves with all three of our units, we see this:

It's irritating that no river tile takes in both cows, but having a city right on fresh water is less important in CCM than in C3C, given that we aren't agricultural.

{Posting the screenshot, I find that Photobucket has been “improved” into a piece of garbage. A typical Internet experience, and you can’t even complain because it’s free. }


3950 (1): We found Jerusalem next to the two cows. We start building a scout and begin min-researching The Wheel.


3750 (5): We found Samaria in a promising location, and begin National Symbol there.

Jerusalem scout --> National Symbol.


3650 (7): It looks as though we're in the northeast corner of our continent--good for defensive purposes, bad for making early contacts.


3550 (9): Our worker arrives back at Jerusalem after his recon tour and begins his real career.

Jerusalem National Symbol --> scout, Samaria NS --> Worker Houses.


3400 (12): We discover the Austrians about fifteen tiles west of Jerusalem, simultaneously as they discover us with a scout reaching Samaria. Unfortunately they seem to have other contacts, and won't give us Warrior Code for Polytheism, even if we top the deal up with all our gold.

Jerusalem scout --> warrior.


3300 (14): Samaria Worker Houses --> warrior.

3250 (15): Jerusalem warrior --> warrior.


3150 (17): Jerusalem warrior --> warrior.


3100 (18): Our western scout makes contact with Egypt. We have no techs they lack, but at least we no longer have to pay monopoly prices to Austria. So we send Polytheism, 43 gold, and 1 gpt to Austria for Warrior Code--a onefer and no bargain, but Polytheism will lose all value as soon as Egypt and Austria meet, and WC is important in CCM.

Samaria warrior --> warrior.


3050 (19): Jerusalem warrior --> warrior.


3000 (20): Excellent--the warrior pathfinding for the settler we'll soon receive discovers a cow, six tiles NE of Jerusalem.

Our western scout discovers the Dutch, and we see this...

...which is surprising, given that the Dutch unit is right next to Egypt, and Egypt has WC and Poly. We can't make any trade of two techs for two techs work, so we just send William WC and 1 gpt for The Sail, which seems promising since Austria doesn't have it. Unfortunately no tech trade quite works here either, so we just take 52 gold from Austria for TS, again on the grounds that the tech could lose all value at any moment. The extra gold isn't enough to interest the Dutch in a second tech deal. So the whole sequence is slightly disappointing; but still, we end up with The Sail for nothing, which is important when we'll soon found a coastal city.

The cities of the plain:

The settler we'll soon receive can found our third city at 1 on the screenshot. The warrior already in the area and the warrior that escorts the settler will make up the garrison of two. Since it won't have to provide its own garrison the new town can build NS immediately, then start producing ships for coastal recon.

We have two scouts pushing west and south, both apparently with plenty of land in front of them, so we can hope for more contacts soon. Please bear in mind that when a scout discovers a new civ, the worst thing is to push the scout farther into that civ's territory, which will just get it killed by invisible units. It's important to change direction in that situation, or at least to go around the discovered civ.

Samaria should build a scout and send it NW through the jungle after it completes its present warrior.

We want to build Slaver's Hut in Jerusalem as soon as possible, but unfortunately three warriors have to come first: the second member of the new city's garrison, and two to cover the worker, since it's time for that precaution.

The worker's next two tasks should be the irrigation of the roaded tile between Jerusalem and the river, and of one of Jerusalem's cows.

We should keep checking for possible trades with the Dutch as long as they don't have Polytheism.

View attachment Rat45-3000BC.SAV, end of turn

Northern Pike said:

The roster:
Northern Pike (just played)
Greebley (UP)
CommandoBob
THeRat
Elephantium (?—confirmation requested)
LKendter - subscribed to thread

Click to expand...

Our first three cities have bonus food.

We can take credit for Samaria's wheat, since using the movement-two worker to find a good site for the second city is clearly the right play in the CCM opening. The third city's cow is sheer good luck, discovered when we were going to settle that location anyway.

The first three cities will be production powerhouses with all the BGs

LK, food bonus is less important as we can't produce settlers and workers

I'm going to have to pass on this one. I've been pretty busy lately.

ThERat said:

LK, food bonus is less important as we can't produce settlers and workers

Click to expand...

I look at that somewhat differently. Having a +5 food settler pump in the capital isn't an issue in CCM, but having multiple high-food cities matters much more, with C3C's artificial constraints on city growth reduced almost to nothing.

Tusker, I'm sorry to hear that and I hope you'll be back for the next one.

Looks like a nice strong start. Being in the corner has its good and bad points, but I like having a strong defense over extra contacts.

Northern Pike said:

See Judges 7 for the title--the Lord keeps arbitrarily reducing the size of Gideon's army before he's permitted to smite the hosts of Midian, very much in the spirit of this variant.

Click to expand...

Gideon's Army numbered at 32,000 but was reduced to only 300 men. And those 300 men routed the Midianites.

So, in that same vein, do we want to limit ourselves to only 300 fighting units (that is, 300 on the front lines, which would not include city defenders). Or would a limit of 300 cities be more in line with what we want to do?