SGOTM3 Rome - Team Sesn

[M60A3TTS]

To give the team a status, it's 1270AD, and essentially our defenses have collapsed under the weight of too many cavalry. I'll play it through of course, but Romeo will not have much left to defend when I'm done. I'm trying to get an army back to Rome, but it may fall in the next couple turns. Sorry guys, no rabbits to pull out of the hat this time.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

No worries, I was wondering if I'd even see this again. Just fight till the end!! (I know you will anyhow )

 

[M60A3TTS]

Pre-turn @ 1250AD: With the door again open in the east, there’s no real hope of salvaging this. The Americans and German cav and knights are just roaring down the autobahn, and we’ll just be swamped shortly. In comparing the 1150 and 1250AD saves, our military can’t keep up with the losses we are sustaining. We went from 101 units to 83, and our income has dropped from 162 to 148. But rather than follow an intelligent path and defend the cities to the end, I will of course attack the enemy and take the consequences. That said…

Cats 2/4, vet legion kills reg red Russian pike clean, promotes.
Cats 3/3, vet legion kills vet red Bab cav, lose hp
Elite legion kills vet red Bab cav, lose hp
Cats 3/5 Vet legion kills vet red US cav clean
Cats 3/3 Elite legion kills vet red Bab cav clean
Elite legion kills vet red Bab cav, lose hp
Elite legion kills vet red Bab cav clean
Vet legion kills vet red German cav, lose 2hp, promotes
Army attacks vet Eng cav, redlines him, he retreats
Lose elite legion knock 1hp off Eng cav
Lose 2 more legions @ Ravenna trying to drive off German knight
Elite legion kills reg Greek hop, lose hp (Note: “Bab” may be “Germ” in some cases. No matter, they’re all bad guys)
Convert clowns to taxmen in several cities. We are not managing towns well if this is going on.
Up sci in 60%, Gunpowder in 2.

IBT- Lose 3 more legions around Luncatorium and Brundesium. Get some troop replacements.

Turn 1 (1255AD)
Elite legion kills Eng red cav
Cats 3 / 4 vs vet Bab cav, elite legion kills same
Cat 1hp off Germ vet LB, elite legion kills same
Cats redline vet Rus pike, elite legion dies clean vs same
Same thing happens to an elite 4/5 legion, he promotes
Vet legion kills 2/3 US musket clean, promotes

IBT Aesonesium falls under a pile of Bab, English cav
Ravenna is lost to the French with the help of American and German knights and cav

Turn 2 (1260AD)
Gonzomonium is recaptured from Japanese vet cav and horse with Army and 2 legions.
Vet legion kills red Eng cav @ Gonzo, lose 2hp.
I get Aesonium back, along with 323 gold using Army, then legion.
Kill redline Eng cav by Gonzo
Hurry production in several places to spend down the cash Liz was kind enough to donate to our cause.
Suicide use of elite lgion to try to capture Ravenna back vs 3hp dug in musket. Lose clean.

IBT-German cav burn Aesonium to the ground.
Germans capture Antium

Turn 3 (1265AD)

Slayers kill reg French cav, but are down to 8hp.
Kill reg Bab LB by Palmyra
Need forces in Rome
2 saltpeter in our area, but neither roaded, nor likely they ever will be.

IBT

Cav keep a coming, killing legions and capturing our cats

Turn 4 (1270AD)

Move legions to defend Rome.
Vet legion kills red Germ cav
Slayers kill a reg English LB
Vet longbow retreats 2hp cav, and redlines him
4 legions and 2 cats defend Rome

IBT

Gonzo elite legion fights to the death against Jap cav, creating MGL . The Great Leader is killed in his diapers, as it was the sole defender. The town is burned.
Rome is under attack from German cav but holds. A legion in Luncatorium holds off 4 US knights, killing 2.
I let Lungdunum riot. Now I’m not managing well!

Turn 5 Miss 1275AD somewhere

Turn 6 (1280AD)

Caesar won’t go quietly. Move army to Rome, cut lose two legions from Rome that kill 2 red German cav by Antium.
Legion recaptures 4 cats from Germans and uses them to redline reg French musket.
Slayers to Veii.
Elite legion retreats Jap cav, recapture another cat of ours, send it back to Veii.

IBT

Luncantorium gets another US knight to its credit, but falls to another one.
More legion losses to the cav, and once again they have our cats.

Turn 7 (1285)

Take potshots and lose a legion trying to bump off Jap cav

IBT

English cav readlines trying to get at Neocal. AI movement into our core.

Turn 8 (1290)

Not much, just defending

IBT

Babs building US
France wants to talk, but I have no time to discuss their surrender.
Hey look, the Greeks FINALLY get iron and build swords.

Turn 9 (1295)

Kill a Bab cav by Pompeii

IBT

Americans lose knight at Byzantium, it holds.
Americans cut our iron
Babylon wants to talk about surrender too. Talk to Emperor Romeo, dirt-bag!
We're defiant Xenophobes and proud of it!
English cav capture Neocaledonium.

Turn 10 (1300)

Legion out of Pisae kills red Jap Sam.
2 English cav killed by our gallant legions at Veii
Move 2 workers NE of Nicomedia to build an iron colony to reestablish a source.

Score: 888 and we’ve survived to the next player!

Post turn comments: 53 units remain in our army. Chemistry in 10 @ 0gpt. Guess the AI had to mobilize to make it a fair fight. AI is also doing the normal stupid stuff like pillaging useless tiles. Hope to see us fight off infantry in the near future. Wouldn’t that be a story? The AI isn’t paying much attention to our Southeast territory, not that I blame it. English are bored as even their Man-O-War fails to bombard anything.

And the save

 

[SesnOfWthr]

What? Is that disdain from the AI?!?! Don't they know who we are? Oh, right......

Romeo is up. Can he survive long enough to give me the glorious indignity of losing?

Stay tuned!

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Romeo, will you be able to grab this at all? You implied over the weekend....

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Well, after 4 days, I guess I can take a subtle hint.

Romeo does not want to grab this, so I'll take it now.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

IHT - open up the save up and quite a sight meets me. Doesn’t look like it’ll take long now. Although we still have 17 cities, only six or so are viable. The rest are all the tundra/mountain towns. Units are every where. Not ours. We’re down to 2 armies. I count units from no less than nine civilizations either within our borders, or about to be.

What a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, eh gents?

I’m going to put the over/under at ten turns. Personally, I think I might be able to beat it, but only because of the crappy terrain they’ll have to cross. Barring a miracle (or more accurately, a series of them), I don’t think I’ll be handing this mess off to anyone. As Larry the Cable Guy might say “git’er dun!”


Hit Enter.

Lincoln goes first. Two knights make quick work of Byzantium. Japan only manages to get a vet leg in the open. Monty launches an assault on Palmyra: vet legion defends and promotes against 4 LB’s. Redlines the sword before finally falling. Germany gets the next crack, and only manages to snag a vet legion in the carnage, and barely at that. I now see an interesting thing: a german cat exerts a zoc over a bab cav. Babylon moves on Pisae: three cavs kill a leg and an elite pike. A french cav loses to an elite leg. Greece wins vs vet leg in Londinium.

1305 ad (1) - Rome riots due to the loss of two luxes. A few others want to. I bombard 4 times, 2 of them successful.

IT - Elite pike wins vs 2 US knights in Caesarea. Vet leg in wins vs 2 cavs, promoting during. I watch England use our cats to bombard the terrain. Caesarea falls to Fr cav.

1310 ad (2) - Rome leg->cat. Elite leg wins vs rl cav. Go 2 for 4 in potshots again.

IT - Things happened fast and furious in this interturn. We also lost no cities, so there were no pauses. I can say that we lost two or three units, three workers, and the Slayer army held off 4 cavs and a LB in Veii.

1315 ad (3) - Nico horse -> LB. Lugdunum legion -> LB. Horse wins and promotes vs 2/3 spear. 2 for 4 cats.

IT - Bab cav takes Hispalis, and a second takes the nearby workers.

1320 ad (4) - Rome cat -> cat. Veii LB -> cat. I build an iron colony, if only for a couple turns, change as many builds as I can to legs.

IT - It takes two cavs and a knight to kill the vet pike guarding Londinium. However, it only takes on knight to kill the elite leg in Cumae. Vet legion in Pompeii dies to a cav. It takes 3 more cavs to get the vet pike and take the city.

1325 ad (5) - Cats go 1 for 3.


IT - It takes a half dozen cavs of varying nations to take the two legs in Lugdunum.

1330 ad (6) - Rome cat -> cat. Cats go 2 for 4.

IT - Vet leg in Hippo Regius takes a knight and an LB before falling. Vet pike takes one cav out with him in Nicomedia.

1335 ad (7) - Veii cat -> spear. Caesaraugusta leg -> cat. Cats go 3 for 6.

IT - Strangely, the Jap cavs kill the horse defending our colony before attacking the elite spear in Aurelianorum, 2 tiles away. Either way, both are lost. 2 bab cavs make short work of the two legs in Caesaraugusta. 2 cavs kill the leg in Nicopolis.

1340 ad (8) - Rome cat -> spear. Artaxata spear -> spear. Cats go 4 for 7. Now down to three cities.

IT - No battles, though it looks like Artaxata may fall to the six cavs that just surrounded it.

1345 ad (9) - Elite leg in Artaxata kills cav out of spite. Cats go impressive 6 for 8.

IT - Artaxata falls, but not before our reg spear kills a 2/4 cav. Army in Rome holds off five cavs and finishes the round with a single hp.

1350 ad (10) - Veii spear -> spear. Cats go 2 for 4.

IT - We lose a legion in Rome, but hold otherwise. Japanese complete US.

1355 ad (11) - Rome spear -> spear. Cats go 2 for 7.

IT - Our cities are attacked by 8 cavs and 2 knights and we lose a single leg.

1360 ad (12) - Cats get their aim back and go 5 for 7.

IT - Although it takes some 15-20 units this turn, including two cavs that lost to spears, Rome finally falls. And then there was one....

1365 ad (13) - Veii spear -> spear. Cats go 1 for 2.

IT - It turns out to be the English who get the honors....

History remembers Caesar the Meek.


Thank you all for volunteering to undertake this bit of insanity with me. Though the end was not the desired one, we have nothing to be ashamed of.

>>>FINAL SAVE<<<

 

[SesnOfWthr]

I'm kind of a visual person, so....

 

[mad-bax]

Although it was my intention that this would be a game that some teams would lose, I feel bad. I hope this doesn't put you off playing the next game.

Despite the loss, well done and well played guys, with a few breaks here and there it could have been a different story.

Please post in the spoiler thread and describe your tactics there, so we can all compare the differences between a winning and a losing game. Thanks.

 

[TheNemesis666]

thanks MB, and no I'm not deterred. I think we all knew from the beginning that this would be a tough variant. All round it was quite an enjoyable game.
Thanks to the rest of team sesn for a fun game (even if it didn't finish how we would have liked), it's been great playing with you all.

 

[romeothemonk]

Sorry guys. I was off in Lala land for a while, and didn't pay much attention to Sg's. This was kindof a bummer. I would of played this out to the end, but I didn't see the post of M60's turns.
It was fun to play with you guys. I hope we can try again next time or something.
Next time we must be less cautious, and when we have an opening, drive full strength towards it.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Considering how things turned out, I’m still considering what fundamental mistakes were made. Did we micro-manage towns enough? Probably not, but to the extent things worked against us, there would seem to be more to it. Would killing Greece right off have helped? They were in such a bad start position, I’m still not convinced that made a difference. England hit us with far more, so maybe they would have been the better choice to beat on. Build selections? I thought at times maybe we needed a few more workers to speed development. Again, don’t know if that was significant. Maybe it was the time we started the GA. I thought for sure it would be best to wait and do it in Monarchy, but maybe that was a serious mistake. We might have gotten that MGL sooner to build the GLib. At the same time, Germany did get it relatively early. It just seemed with what few towns we had, we needed more of an impact. Having only played C3C lately, I really wasn’t ready for this game at the beginning. The shelf-life of the legion in this case was long enough without medieval infantry that maybe a despotic GA would have worked better for us.

As far as the variant goes, I thought while the 20 turn rule was a challenge, it was the idea that you couldn’t keep a city that was a rally killer. That removed any hope we could ever catch up in tech by capturing the Glib. And it didn’t really allow for anything other than an AW end-game. I would have preferred something like declare war on contact, and with each civ you can have 20 turns of peace at a time of your choice, then back to war for the duration. That would have created more imaginative opportunities for strategy.

As far as fighting went, I thought we were pretty good. Killing cav with a horseman or archer isn’t so tough, once you have the technique down. Redlining regulars with cats and hit them from superior terrain with vet units will result in a kill more often than you would think.

Thanks to all. Although the end result was a bust, it was worth the time.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Some very concise thoughts, M60.

IMHO, the real killer was the ill-timed GA, and the lack of MGL's. I think we overestimated the power of the legs, and should have tripped the GA right away. Our only hope was to get a large swatch of land early, and simply outproduce the ai's.

I really hate blaming our failure on the lack of leaders, but I think the GL could have made an immense difference.

You're also right that it was worth the time, loss or not. I learned quite a bit from this game, met another player, and had some really intense turns. The only thing that was missing was the "W". :shrug:

 

[romeothemonk]

Hmm, tough to say. I think the biggest killer was the fact we went with archers instead of Horses really early. It was my first real lesson in Civ3, speed kills. I am really surprised we didn't use it better.
I think that the limited use of archers, plus the retreat and hit and run tactics of the horses, coupled with our over production of archers kinda hurt us. I was really bummed with the lack of timely MGL's. I still got the trifecta in 4 turns, then pulled another couple later.
This was a solid team and we should do it again or something. This was the one SG that I was checking several times daily for updates. (Still don't know how I missed the last turns, someone must have deleted my email notification).

 

[M60A3TTS]

I'm sure you're all as disappointed as I am that we didn't even earn the wooden spoon as a consolation prize! See what a little effort doesn't get you?

 

[SesnOfWthr]

We didn't?!?!

If it was grs's team, I already warned him about touching my wooden spoon...

 

[Mauer]

Congrats on not being the spooners. Looks like poor Mistfit can't seem to get any luck with a possible #2 spoon.

 

[romeothemonk]

You guys up for SGOTM #4??
I might be. I like Variants. Especially when we can lay down the Hammer.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Sorry Romeo, I don't think it's going to come together this time around. Nem is already on another team, Tal never resurfaced, and of course can't speak for him, but gathered Sesn didn't feeling like playing a 5CC game.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Actually, I was rather interested in the 5CC, as I have yet to play one. I am doing a 3CC now.

The real problem - *looks at sig* - is that I can't be sure I would be able to play my turns in anything resembling a timely fashion. I am consistently falling behind in the ones I have now. And no, I didn't just sign up for them all, more like expressed an interest months ago, then all the games got started at once.

Nem PM'ed me to inquire about this, and I told him much the same thing. If I thought you guys had interest, I would have explained myself to you too. As it is, I'd like to get back together for our own little revenge on SGOTM, but maybe for SGOTM5?

And I haven't heard a peep from Tal since he dropped out of this thread.