LotR12 - In AWE of Rome

I start it up. There was no discussion of civilization, so I went with Rome. I've had good luck with commercial in the past and wanted to try it out in C3C. The map seed was Arathorn, middle land pangea, standard-sized map, with everything else random. Respawn AI civs and culturally-linked starting positions were turned off.

Here's what the map generator gave us.


If you're interested in the start, it's
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/lotr12-4000bc.zip

(0) 4000 - The hill to the southwest is NOT on the river (right-clicking shows zero gold for it), so I don't want to found there. There's no sense NOT being on the river, so the settler moves one due west. There are floodplains over there, too, so we can probably get a good settler push out of Rome, once it's up and going. The worker will actually mine and road where he stands first.

Science decision to be made. Bee-line for Literature and try to get the Great Library? Or BW/IW for our legions ASAP? It's certain we can get BW and IW faster than Writing and Philosophy/Literature. BUT, the GL is *so* huge in AW games...and we can get a jump on Writing right now.

As much as I want to beeline Literature, I'm worried about losing early. We can make up for a tech deficit later, I hope, but we can't do anything if we're dead because of a lack of reasonable units. BW started @ max. Well, just selected, actually, because we have no cities yet!

BTW, by the mini-map, we're almost dead-center of the world. That is NOT a good thing. We might well end up with 7 foes coming from 7 different directions. It could get very ugly very fast.

(1) 3950 - Rome founded by the river. Warrior ordered, due in 5. Science set to max. BW due in 23 turns.

(5I) Warrior and mine complete. Barracks ordered next -- due in 7.

(6) 3700 - Warrior goes out for minimal scouting, so we know where to found our next city or two.

(9) 3550 - Cow spotted to SW. Good looking second city site in that direction, which may serve as the settler pump, while Rome does military. At least, that's what I'm envisioning a mere 9 turns into the game.

(10I) 3500 - Rome grows and stupid governor-thing makes an entertainer.

(11) 3450 - I put the Roman citizen to work and raise lux tax to 20% to compensate. BW still due in 13. Barracks due in 1 with no loss.

(I) Barracks complete. Archer ordered. I want to not push TOO far over our unit allowance too early in the game.

(12) 3400 - We're losing 1 gpt for barracks upkeep. We'll just have to deal with it for a while.

(15) 3250 - An English warrior appears in the west. Oh boy. We have one warrior to our name and a nearly-completed archer. The English have Pottery and BW on us but lack Warrior Code. Warrior Code and 7 gold isn't enough for both techs, though, unfornately. Warrior Code does get us Pottery and all 10 of Elizabeth's gold, however. Pottery will be a nice tech to have. I didn't like delaying IW by not trading for BW, but we're only 7 turns away AND Pottery is a very useful tech. It's closer to actual value for WC this way. Anyway, we declare war, of course.

On the plus side, we can afford deficit research a little bit longer....

(17) 3150 - Archer completes in Rome. He'll stay there to defend the city a bit until the warrior can make it back. That lets me put science back to 100%. Unfortantely, we can't finish BW before we crank out another archer. And then we really should do a settler, I'm thinking.

(18) 3100 - An Ottoman spear appears near Rome. D'oh! The Ottomans have BW and Masonry but lack Pottery and Alphabet. I could get both techs with just Alphabet and most of our cash, but this is our only chance to get value out of Pottery from him, so Pottery+Alphabet for BW, Masonry and all 10 gold he has. And then war is declared. This is getting ugly fast....

IW is due in 36 @deficit research times, not counting what will happen when we send off a settler. Archer build changed to spearman. We can now also build walls, which will probably be a necessity before too long.

(I) The Ottoman spear retreats in fear of our mighty army! WHEW! I was worried he was going to step onto our mined, roaded bonus grass and make the game depend on a vet archer attacking a regular spear in the open REALLY early.

(19) 3050 - Warrior into the city and archer out to peruse the west, where the English warrior was moving towards us. Keeping him safe is critical, however.

(I) Two English warrior come into view.

(20) 3000 - We have one archer and one warrior right now.... But a spearman is due in 1. That could be changed to an archer at the next player's liesure.

Lone worker sent to floodplains to irrigate and then road, for MM purposes.

The world as we know it...


The game:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/lotr12-3000bc.zip

The Roster:
Arathorn -- Just played
Arizona_Steve -- UP NOW
Ridgelake -- ON DECK
T-hawk
OPEN

It's not looking easy, boys and girls....

Arathorn

Things I forgot to say....

The Ottomans appeared just north of the oasis to our SE. They were more than one turn away from our improved square, I guess. English appeared straight west, initially.

I had envisioned our second city site to be one NE of the cow to our SW. We can move there in one turn from Rome, once roads are established. It could/should be a worker/settler factory, while Rome focuses primarily on military.

Depending on need, I would either do a settler right after the current spear or one more military unit before the settler, but we need our second city up and running fairly quickly.

Expect both the Ottomans and the English to throw all their starting units at us, so the next several turns will be dicey.

Since it's so crazy so early, 10 turns/player starting immediately. I reserve the right to go to 5 turns/player if/when things get even rougher (and larger).

Arathorn

From playing back to back AW SG games I saw right off that it will take 2 turns crossing the river until ENG.
Also I had a lurker question that I would like to learn from. I see that the lux is not connected and you look to be heading a road to new city. What is the reasoning behind not hooking it?
Any hoo, I enjoy reading your exploits Arathorn and look forward to seeing you guys pull this off. The mid start will be tough though. Good luck all!

I have never played an AWE before, but I would like to try...

A, just beaten by Aggie .

@barbslinger -- It won't take two turns to get from Rome to the second city site if we're intelligent about our roads. Roading where the worker stands now and then the grass one square to the set will allow a unit to move SW, W, S from Rome to get to my proposed second city site in one turn, well before Engineering. It's true that moving SW, SW, SW (the "natural" way) would take two turns, but that's where human ingenuity comes to the fore. And it will take two turns to get BACK to Rome.

As for not hooking up the lux...we don't NEED it just yet (the MP are taking care of our happiness concerns) and the floodplains will not only be good to road, they can be irrigated for a third food even in despotism, which helps with MM possibilities as well as connecting the two cities (desirous ASAP in AW). It's partly a judgement call and partly a matter of improving the squares most likely to be used first.

@Aggie: You're in!!! Glad to have you!

Complete Roster:
Arathorn
Arizona_Steve
Ridgelake
T-hawk
Aggie

@Stapel: Ouch. By a mere couple minutes as well. You're first substitute if we have a drop. Thanks for the interest.

Arathorn

Glad to see this one get off to a quick start - it should be nice and brutal for you guys

Good call I think on IW over Lit, especially given how fast you found 'friends'. Hope for iron nearby...

I do need to get into an AWE someday, but plate is too full for something that intensive. I wish you guys luck!

Charis

I have it. Will play tonight. It looks like there's more than enough excitement for the next 10 turns...

On techs: I have noticed that Literature is the "Polytheism" of C3C - in other words it's proven to be an excellent tech for 50 turn research as it is very low on the AI research priority list. I propose that we research Iron Working -> Alphabet -> Writing -> Literature. This should give us an excellent shot at the Great Library. Another research line might include Masonry and Mathematics (for Statue of Zeus, if we can get some Ivory), although these techs are generally researched much faster by the AI.

More Edit: Realized that Rome starts with Alphabet.

Mathematics for Catapults should be highest on our priority list, I think. To keep the casualty ratio down on Emperor, we're going to need them, and soon. Iron Working isn't useful without iron; we've got very few hills/mountains around, no workers to go hook it up, and remember that Conquests gives out less strategic resources.

I agree with Arathorn on the next city site.

Literature is far down the road at this point, and I'm not sure if we can spare 400 shields away from military to build the thing. No wonders from GLs definitely makes AW harder in Conquests. It'll depend on how many more foes we find ourselves fighting.

BTW, Arathorn, why'd the worker improve the bonus-grass north of the river? It lost an extra turn moving back across afterwards. I would've gone for the BG to the southeast instead; after improving that the worker could reach a flood-plains in one move. River commerce is nice, but commerce can wait in Always War...

10 turns should be plenty. I expect you'll see a good 8 units in those 10 turns, which should be stressful enough, considering that we're still awfully weak.

We DO need to decide on a research path. The GL is very nice and helpful, but AWE could be won without it (at least it used to be possible). Having a solid defender so early might be the ticket to go without it. I'm just not sure we can dedicate a city to building the thing as early as we might need to.

Philosophy, if we could get it first, would give us a free tech and might be worth trying @ max, once we get Writing. There are no easy decisions.

After Iron Working (this has to be a priority, to see where Iron is, if nothing else -- especially since I started BW right away), we have two good choices.... Math and Writing. We got Masonry from the Ottomans, so we could go straight to Math. Math gives us catapults, which we KNOW we'll need, but Writing is on the short path to Literature. Tough call. I don't think Ivory will appear anytime in our near future.

Thinking about it a bit more, I think I'd do one more unit (archer or spear) before doing the settler.

Arizona_Steve: Be very wary of happiness. The MP in Rome is keeping it happy now, but if/when you need to move units out to protect our worker and/or improved squares, make certain you check happiness EVERY turn. We can't afford a Rome riot right now.

Edit:@T-hawk: Our borders hadn't expanded to include the bonus grass to the SE yet is one reason. Second is that commerce really is important in AW. When you're teching yourself, those little bits of commerce are incredibly important. We did lose one worker turn, but the river bonus, over the next 50 turns or so until we get another square improved, is almost a half tech. I'll give up a worker turn for that.

Arathorn

How about this - if we see iron is not nearby, then go for Mathematics as we'll NEED catapults very soon. If we do have Iron, Legionarys can hold things together and we can go for Writing-Philosophy. (Keep an eye on the other civs and see if any of them get Writing too soon for that to work. Also, how many other commercial civs (starting with Alphabet) are there on the F10 screen?)

As for the worker - of course it'd get to the river square eventually, probably after it improved the northeast BG square, since that square is adjacent to the square in question without going over the river. I tend to think of worker labor as invaluable in the early game, worth giving up a bit of cash for. It's a minor issue, to be sure.

I started to write about the research path and then gave up. I don't know which C3C tech will yield the best trade. Knowing the opponents will help. Anyhow enjoy.

Well, there's nothing like a good challenge. Two civs met before 3000BC. I forget how many units they start with on Emporer. I did note that no-one mentioned what version of Conquests we are playing this game on. Tavis mentioned that version 1.15 is to all intents and purposes the next "non-beta" release (after the localization team has got their hands on it), so I am going to go ahead and play with that version.

(0) Inherited Turn
So what have we here? Two English warriors are heading our way, able to attack Rome in three turns. We currently have a warrior and an archer in the city, and a spearman due this turn. I decide that offence is the best form of defence, and switch the spearman build to an archer. We're currently at five shields per turn, and Iron Working is not due for another 28 turns.

I hit F10, and our opponents are:

Portugal (Expansionist / Seafaring)
India (Religious / Commercial)
England (Seafaring / Commercial)
Ottomans (Scientific / Industrious)
Korea (Commercial / Scientific)
The Celts (Agricultural / Religious)
Netherlands (Seafaring / Agricultural)

Meaning that all except for the Ottomans and the Celts start with Alphabet, so I expect Writing and Mathematics to appear fairly quickly.

IBT:
The two warriors move onto a hill. It looks like they're headed for the worker. Two more English warriors appear out of the fog, three tile North of Rome.
Archer completes, spearman ordered up.

(1) 2950AD
We're in a bit of a pickle. I would like to move the two archers out to cover the worker, then attack the first pair of warriors when they move towards Rome. This would leave us vulnerable to attack from the second two warriors the following turn. There really is no easy or good solution. OK, assuming we win against the first pair of warriors, I can only get one of the two attacking units back to the city the following turn (one attacker moves onto the tile formerly occupied by the warrior). So I would rather have two archers in the city than an archer and a warrior.

I cover the worker with a warrior and an archer, and as Rome is size 3 now, I increase luxury tax to 10% to avoid a riot.

IBT:
As expected, the first two warriors move next to Rome, and in range of our two units. The second pair moves onto the mountain to the North of Rome. And a third pair of warriors appears out of the fog behind them. I'd really hate to be playing the turn where our capital is overrun and we lose the game...

(2) 2900AD
We're helped a little by the fact that the first pair of warriors moved next to the city, so I can use the archer in the city to attack (he will move back to the city afterwards).
Vet Archer vs Regular Warrior - we win, losing two hitpoints, but as compensation we get our first elite unit.
Vet Archer vs Regular warrior - We win without taking damage.
Our warrior moves back into the city and drop luxury tax back to zero, and science to 100%.

IBT:
The second pair of warriors move onto the spices (I'm surprised they didn't move to pillage the mine).

(3) 2850AD
I fortify the elite 3/5 archer and the warrior in the city, and move the other archer back in. With the defensive bombard of the archer, I believe we have a better chance of winning if we fortify in the city, as opposed to attacking the warrior pair.

IBT:
Regular Warrior vs Vet Archer (unfortified) - Bombard fails to hit, and we lose our vet archer while redlining their warrior.
The second warrior in the pair does not attack, and the third pair joins them.

(4) 2800AD
Guys, this is looking ugly. We have one regular warrior and an elite archer in Rome vs three warriors + 1 redlined warrior.
Our Elite archer LOSES against a regular warrior, redlining it
Our spearman will be trained one turn too late. In retrospect, I should've probably pop-rushed, but that's not something I normally do in my solo games. I just didn't think of it until it was too late.

IBT:
Our regular archer loses to a regular archer and...



Well what can I say? It started off OK, but at this stage in the game, a few bad RNG rolls can decide it. I could reload, I could screw around with the order I attack things, but at the end of the day, I prefer to be honest and post the turns as they happened.

...goes back to his corner and awaits the inevitable cries of ...

Wow, didn't think that would happen. Too bad about the pop-rush miss. I was really looking forward to following this game.

Well, that hurt.

I'll start another AWE as Rome, on a differently-named map...probably REVENGE or some such thing and play 30 (to try to avoid this happening again), but not until tomorrow or the day after.

The first turns are just so critical and so hard to predict. Bummer, Arizona_Steve. I'll look tomorrow (when I'm fresher) to see if I have any suggestions for "next time".

Arathorn

I had a feeling this might happen, so I made a point of being detailed with my turns, so that the elite players among us can suggest an alternative strategy.

I think my big blunder here was not pop-rushing the spear.

My first try on AWE, my first loss and I didn't even play It looked ugly at the end of Arathorns turn already...

My condolences, I was looking forward to lurking this game.
It has got to be some kind of record though, the shortest SG ever.

I would've played it differently, I think, depending on a spear to defend Rome and hoping the archer and warrior could take out the first pair of English warriors. Might well have lost the worker with my approach, though.

Not attacking with the 3/5 archer and hoping for bombard was interesting. I ran some numbers in an excruciatingly long meeting today and it's awfully close either way. It comes down to the expected success of the bombard rate and the necessity of healing. Too close to call either way.

Not whipping the spear? I wouldn't have thought of it either. Whipping my capital makes me feel all queasy. BUT, there was a bigger issue. After the archer completed, if you were going to build another unit, why not sacrifice two food to get the spear a turn earlier? Rome was at 6 spt on two improved bg, one bg, and itself (4+1+1). Going to the spice would've given 7 shields and I'm pretty sure a spear one turn earlier (gets a bit dicey with the timing of their landing on the spice forest).

All in all, no major weed. Just a tough opening position. That's my take, anyway.

Arathorn

I'd like to suggest that our "rematch" is played on a large map with 8 civs. It'll give us a little more "breathing space" to get some cities up and running before we're at war.