ALC Game 22: Arabs/Saladin

[kazapp]

Okay, I got my butt handed to me by Louis. He teched so far ahead of me it was ridiculous. I had Swordsmen facing off against Crossbowmen. Not pretty.

I'm abandoning this particular attempt at a Saladin game. I think you guys were right, my two weeks away from Civ while I waited for the new computer had me playing sloppy.

Watch for Saladin Take 2, coming soon.

I would really like you to replay the same map.

You might not be aware of it, but I feel you have been consistently lucky with your random map generator.

This Saladin map provides sparse resources - not awful, but certainly less generous than your average.

It would be very interesting to see you pull off a win with these conditions.

If you don't like having knowledge about the map, perhaps a new random map, but with the resources switched for those of this map?

Good luck,
Kazapp

 

[Peluin]

At the risk of beginning to clutter up a thread where I have no right to...

Sorry to hear about the failed attempt, but you're not the only one who got beat up but Louis. I shadowed this game for a while and played along similar lines except I didn't go after an early religion.

Spoiler :

Anyway, in short, I rexed out to 6 cities by 1AD but soon quit when I realised just how powerful Louis was. He had 13 or 14 cities by that stage (including a few barb ones he captured), and a substantial tech lead. We were all the same religion and pleased with each other, so there was not really any room to move diplomatically to start wars and the like. I saw no real possibility of a win, and decided to just see how the official attempt panned out. Not much better by the sounds... I'd be curious to know if anyone else shadowed this with better luck.

My shadow result as I remember it...

Spoiler :

I too forewent the early religion. I spat out the decent sites close to the capital (coastal pigs, sheep down the river to the west) and Louis began to anger me. I actually managed to cripple him with a sword/axe/cat army, but Suleiman started getting awfully dangerous with all those gems he had. Also, with Louis out of the running (but not quite destroyed), trading options got really limited. I was leaning towards scrapping the effort when my hard drive crashed and I lost the save. I figured I could certainly survive long enough to watch someone build a ship, but possibly not a whole lot more. Nasty map.

 

[vormuir]

Can I add my voice to those who'd like to see how this played out?

Maybe it's embarrassing, but it's also really interesting and educational. It would be good to have a post-mortem, too.

Thanks,


Waldo

 

[vicawoo]

There's one way to beat someone in a stronger position. Invade early with some archers, and camp his land and pick off workers while you tech.

 

[Fetch]

Well that stinks, but we learn more from our failures than our triumphs. We'll get him next time.

 

[Scarredroman]

Louis and Suleiman probably swapped techs like they were going out of fashion. Swordsmen against Crossbowmen, what an ouch. Made me wince.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Phew. In my shadow game I grew to occupy all the decent city spots, then having high production and not a lot of other options, geared up for war. I decalred war on Louis without having the ability to bribe Suleiman, and the next turn, although pleased with me, he joined up. I've yet to play ahead any farther since it's such a headache to withdraw your Stack of Death and try to defend undefended cities on another part of the border.

I went back and dealt with Suleiman's troops that were behind my borders and dealt Louis the deathblow. I declared war on turn 205 and I think around turn 245 he was completely defeated. I cut one swath through Paris all the way to his western border, then my reinforcements captured the cities along the South, saving Tours for last. The entire time I was running a negative cashflow at 0% science, and since I somewhat foolishly decided to keep all his cities, and continued producing units (for the hereditary rule happiness partially) I had to stop as soon as I wiped Louis off the map. I had to build research in my former cities and run as many merchant specialists as I could feed, but I was able to stabilize, tech to Engineering, and now on turn 281 I'm almost ready to declare on Suleiman to complete the conquest.

Now who gives a . .. .. .. . about my game? I don't. However, for most of my war with Luis he was researching Machinery. It was around 15 turns from completely when he started on 215, and would march about four turns ahead until I captured another city and set it back two. He only finally finished researching it on turn 243. So, if you do redo the map, just focus on building units earlier. To be honest, I'm not sure what you could have been building instead. I founded cities in the same location as you and they all are more suitable for production than cottaging.

When you prioritize construction and have primarily production oriented land (hills and food) you can't help but bring down an opponent before longbows.

 

[Daedal]

I'd like to see another attempt at Saladin with this exact setup. You do know who your neighbors are and where their capitals are, but everything else can change the next time around. It's a difficult map to play and I think it'd be educational to see it redone. This time around: no early religion > REX > conquest > rinse > repeat.

If you really want to roll another start (I wouldn't blame you, I hate playing the same map twice) at least have somebody make a map that's similarly difficult.

 

[Artichoker]

The resource map we saw during the city settlement phase was clear evidence that this was a resource-poor map.

How was it resource-poor? Clearly, we had more than enough Food resources...and we also had early discovery of a Copper source, allowing us to save beakers by delaying Hunting and Archery.

The major deficiency was in Happiness resources. This deficiency made it much less economical to pursue a sit-back-and-wait strategy, because then the growth of cities would be limited.

I have the opinion that Saladin's traits, especially the Protective trait, are more suited for these borderline win-lose situations, where victory or defeat hinges on the survival of your cities. It is in these situations that we really have the opportunity to leverage the strengths of the Protective trait.

 

[Froggie818]

Okay, I got my butt handed to me by Louis. He teched so far ahead of me it was ridiculous. I had Swordsmen facing off against Crossbowmen. Not pretty.

I'm abandoning this particular attempt at a Saladin game. I think you guys were right, my two weeks away from Civ while I waited for the new computer had me playing sloppy.

Watch for Saladin Take 2, coming soon.

Please define getting your butt handed to you. Did he wipe you out completely, or did he just successfully resist your onslaught (or somewhere in between)?

If the Arab people have NOT be completely wiped out, I'd be very interested in seeing you continue this game. (I admit I skipped a large number of the ALC's once I realized they were still going on and I wasn't reading old news, but have you ever completed one where you had to recover from a war going very badly for you??)

If you HAVE been wiped off the face of the Earth, it could still be educational to post your experience, so we can all learn from your mistakes (many of which, admittedly, were made earlier in the game). For your next game, I would agree with using this same map. Yes, you know the lay of the land and who your neighbors are, but think of it as a small compensation for the resource poor area in which you're starting.

Looking forward to Saladin 2: Revenge of the Arabs.

 

[Roxlimn]

Replay the map. Replay it until you win it, I say. There's a definite advantage to knowing the lay of the land, but not much more than what good scouting would have told you anyway.

 

[Tyrant Roger]

I don't think it would be in the spirit of the ALC to replay a known map with known opponents. Replay Saladin sure, but the unknown map and opponents is a major part of the challenge in the ancient era.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Replay the map. Replay it until you win it, I say. There's a definite advantage to knowing the lay of the land, but not much more than what good scouting would have told you anyway.

Not entirely. Knowing where the strategic resources are going to be before discovering the requisite techs is a definite advantage.

 

[Roxlimn]

Of course. But then, that kind of info is such a bomb that it's easy to know when it's influencing your decision and then to deliberately ignore the information. I was assuming that in replaying the map, Sisuitl will be trying his darnedest best not to factor in knowledge he shouldn't have.

 

[Artichoker]

Of course. But then, that kind of info is such a bomb that it's easy to know when it's influencing your decision and then to deliberately ignore the information. I was assuming that in replaying the map, Sisuitl will be trying his darnedest best not to factor in knowledge he shouldn't have.

Even then, I don't see the strategic resources being a big factor.

Discovering Copper early was definitely a plus, but wasn't Bronze Working the correct decision, anyway?

Later on, for Iron Working, as I recall Sisiutil gained Iron Working during a trade, which was correct.

Animal Husbandry resulted in empty-handedness, but then, couldn't we just say that Bronze Working was clearly better, even before knowing the results?

 

[Roxlimn]

Exactly. We know quite clearly when the knowledge is making a difference, so it should be easy to filter out the influence of the information.

 

[JackRules]

So You got beat playing as Saladin on Emperor. Can't imagine that's ever happened before . Now, winning with Saladin on Emperor...that would be a rare event. Glad you are going to give it another go.

 

[Nares]

Knowing where the strategic resources are going to be before discovering the requisite techs is a definite advantage.

I think this would be a factor if the resources had affected city placement. The fact is, the resources did not affect city placement at all. Indeed, the only city I can see being prioritized by revealing a resource, that is the iron city NW of Mecca, was the city I personally found least important to settle.

In my own shadow, I found both Louis and Suleiman to be major annoyances. My diplomatic skills require some sharpening, but these hardly seemed to make a major difference.

Louis and Suleiman didn't seem to be the trade partners some here have suggested. Actually, they were useless for trading; they pursue different tech paths, so they're constantly sitting on monopoly techs.

While the start could have been played differently, I think it would require a major shift in gameplay to produce a victory. The major problem here is that this start called for very early war, and Firaxis has done their best to eliminate early war. You can conceivably run a pillage war, but war weariness would be crippling, and thanks to the desert, distance maintenance would have been even more crippling.

 

[NaZdReG]

my only spin on this.. at immortal perhaps stealing the techs to keep up would have been better. go for the great wall and try to hit for a gspy as your 1st then infiltrate the damn french. you could have then stolen 2-3 key techs and kept pairity with him for a little while

NaZ

 

[Froggie818]

While the start could have been played differently, I think it would require a major shift in gameplay to produce a victory. The major problem here is that this start called for very early war, and Firaxis has done their best to eliminate early war. You can conceivably run a pillage war, but war weariness would be crippling, and thanks to the desert, distance maintenance would have been even more crippling.

Sounds like a challenge to me! All the more reason I think that (if he's actually been wiped out in this game, as I mentioned above) he should replay this board. After all, these are supposed to be Challenges, right?