ALC-Sorta: Julius Caesar of Rome

[Sisiutil]

It's interesting how you can play a game as complex as Civ IV for years and still find yourself learning things. Or maybe re-learning them. In any case, I played an interesting game recently and decided post a write-up because I found myself learning (re-learning?) several things and thought I'd share.

First off, this is not like the old ALCs where I played a few rounds, sought advice, and then played some more rounds based on that advice. This game is pretty much over. But as always, I'd enjoy and appreciate feedback.

Now, on to the game:

Level: Immortal
Civilization: Roman
Leader: Julius Caesar
Map: Archipelago (Size: Standard; Sea Levels: Low; Landmass Type: Snaky Continents)
Game Speed: Marathon
Custom Game Settings:

• Advanced Start
• Choose Religions
• Number of Civs: 10

So, maybe a few comments on the settings to start.

First off: Immortal level still? Yeah, every now and then I try a game on Diety, get my butt whupped, and drag my sorry tail back to Immortal level. One day I'll crack Diety, but this was not that day... er, game.

I do love playing as the Romans, because Praetorians, come on. I'm also a bit of a Roman history nut. Marathon speed adds to the fun because Praets stay relevant for sooooooooooo long. Although in this game that got more complicated...

Archipelago with low sea levels and snaky continents creates some very interesting maps--usually big, twisty pangaeas or close to it with several choke points. This map was no exception.

And I added three additional civs to add to the fun.

Here's the start:

I will be the first to admit that I load the dice a bit when playing as Rome. Specifically, I'll regenerate the start until I get something like this. I am usually looking for a coastal start with seafood (the map settings I described above practically guarantees that), and I'm also looking for some sort of substantial commerce tile (gold, silver, or gems) to help me get to Iron Working ASAP. In particular, I want to have Praets available before the first barbs become a problem. Then I wanna Praet-rush somebody. If I can get some river tiles to provide some early cottages with a +1 boost, so much the better. Call it cheating if you want, but it's my leisure time and I'll spend it how I please.

The Advanced Start also helps because I spend a good chunk of that start-up gold on Bronze Working. Then I can research IW and after it, the Wheel. Even if I'm not playing as Rome I still use AS on Marathon speed just because otherwise I find the first 100 turns or so to be extremely tedious.

Here's a look inside Rome:

Besides Bronze Working, then, you can see I spent the rest of my start-up gold on one tile improvement (fishing boats), two Warriors, two Workers, and one additional citizen. I kept the change as a random event safety fund. I can't work the gold mine right away, but the two workers mined it immediately, then spent the rest of their time pre-chopping forests.

It was a darn good start for Rome, very promising, but getting such a good start always makes me nervous. Why? Very often when the RNG gives me such a lovely start, it seems to want to mess with me in some other way. Such as, "Yes, the gold mine ensures that you'll soon get to see just how far away your only source of iron is, sucker!" Or, "Yeah, nice start, and I gave you iron nearby... which you'll have all to yourself on your isolated little island!" Or, "Enjoy the only decent land in the middle of the desert/tundra, loser!" Fortunately, not this time, but the map presented other challenges.

I started exploring. As you might have figured out, I started pretty close to the north, what with the crabs and the tundra and all. The continent snaked out in three directions: one relatively small branch ran to the east where I found Joao of Portugal; another big blob was to the west, inhabited by Napoleon of France and Mehmed of the Ottomans; and another much longer branch extended to the south, where at first I only met Isabella of Spain, but later found Darius of Persia, Qin Shi Huang of China, and (phew!) Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia. That meant that all but two of the map's 10 civs were on my big, sprawling, snaky continent. So, lots of Praet-munching potential.

I started using the BUG mod's wonderful dot-mapping feature to plan my cities. This site I chose to Rome's south proved especially fortuitous:

Another really good city site: coastal, two food, some rivers (though no source of fresh water for the bonus), some hills... very promising. One thing I love about Civ's many potential tile improvements is that you can pretty much transform a city site into whatever you want it to be. With this one, I could farm everything to make it a specialist city, cottage everything to make it a commerce/science city, or use watermills and workshops to turn it into a production powerhouse.

Well, a few turns later IW revealed a source of Praet-makin' metal on the tile immediately SE of my chosen city site. I decided that this would be my HE city/unit pump, so it was gonna be watermills and workshops all around. I also had some luck with goody huts, scoring a Scout and, thanks to him, a couple of techs: Masonry and Sailing. You know what that means: on this type of map, which practically guarantees that everyone's gonna have a lot of coastal cities, the Great Lighthouse was looking very attractive... and within reach. Or so I thought...

To be continued...

 

[Benginal]

Pleased to see you back! I'll be following with interest.

 

[Manco Capac]

Or maybe re-learning them. In any case, I played an interesting game recently and decided post a write-up because I found myself learning (re-learning?) several things and thought I'd share.

You are the creator of those beginner advices articles...you could reread your own articles.

BTW, according to some conventionalism vigilantes, marathon IMM equals to more or less between Monarch and Emperor on normal speed because of the increased advantages of warfare for the human who beelines and prepare minutely its wars.

 

[Manco Capac]

Weird...10 turns of universal peace.

 

[Sisiutil]

So I founded Antium and while Rome focused on pumping out Praets, my second city built a workboat, a monument, a lighthouse, and then worked on the Great Lighthouse. You can also see that Joao was getting way too close for comfort. As you'll see, he had very little good land to expand into in the east, so he had no choice but to come my way. He'd already founded Oporto as part of his Advanced Start. (In fact, I've noticed that this is a common approach among the AI, playing as many AS games as I have: they prefer to spend their start-up gold on an extra city or two.) But founding Guimaraes right on the edge of Rome's BFC was just provocative. Okay, maybe I deserved it--I had stolen two Workers from him shortly after meeting him. Still, I am Caesar of Rome, I have Iron and Praetorians, meaning someone's gonna die. Poncy little jerks founding cities WAY too close to my own go right to the top of that list. Hence the stack o' Praets massing right next to Guimaraes.

I razed that city, captured Oporto, and pressed on to Lisbon. The Portuguese capital was also coastal, very much so, with two crabs, one clam, one deer, a lake tile, marble, and several forests and a couple of hills. When playing as Rome and Praet-rushing I will usually make my first captured capital into my GP Farm, since capitals (like this one) are usually excellent sites with a surplus of food. With marble in my hot little hands, the Great Library was looking attainable too.

Here's what the eastern end of the continent looked like:

But I was counting chickens. I got some bad news on the wonder front: someone else completed the Great Lighthouse when I had just under thirty turns on it to go, probably less, because I still had some forests to chop. I was disappointed, but I took my lumps (and my consolation gold), went to 100% research for a while, and pressed on.

Here's the land to Rome's immediate west:

You might notice a problem developing here. There was a real dearth of decent city sites surrounding me. Aside from the resource tiles, most of the land in the north could not be improved or worked--and those city sites would not provide enough food to work all the resource tiles, either.

So what about expanding south?

Isabella had other ideas. While I was building Praets and the GL and bashing Joao's behatted head in, she was building settlers. She claimed the city sites east of Antium that I had scoped out. Not a big loss, they were mostly desert, but as I said, I was running out of places to found cities. Izzy also claimed what turned out to be a mostly-desert island south of Lisbon (now renamed Ravenna, because, y'know, ROMAN).

So what? I hear you cry. You are Caesar of Rome, you have iron and Praetorians, yadda yadda yadda. Go kick Izzy's cute little tush! Well, Izzy also found a source of copper. Eww. And started building Axemen. Double eww. So much for Praet-rushing her.

I had also made what turned out to be a diplomatic mis-step. Thinking that after Portugal was conquered I would just turn around and attack Spain, I did not convert to Christianity (which Isabella had founded) when it spread to my cities. I was hoping to adopt Islam, which Mehmed had founded and Napoleon adopted, to keep the civs to my west happy and pacified while I stormed south.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men...

I did manage to capture the barb city of Circassian (which I renamed Circassium, because, y'know, LATIN), but that was a lonely bit of good news.

Islam did not spread to my cities, not for a very long time, but while thinking and hoping it would, I ticked off my southern neighbours by refusing to convert when they came asking--which they did, a LOT. Without a shared religion, Nappy and Mehmed weren't too happy with me either. I was struggling to get Rome converted to being my commerce/science centre, Ravenna to be my GP Farm, while building a barracks, then a forge, then the HE in Antium. I also wanted to settle the northern city sites so I'd have those resources for and for trade. All of which meant I wasn't building units, so my power rating was dropping. Fast. Which is not good when you're surrounded by civs at no better than Annoyed or Cautious. My economy was also struggling and I was dropping behind in techs. Then I noticed Isabella massing a stack on the border south of Antium, while Napoleon was doing the same west of Circassium.

AAAAARRRRGGHHH!! This had been SUCH a promising start! How had I messed it up so bad?

 

[Manco Capac]

War gallore isn't always the path of victory.

 

[Sisiutil]

The answer to how I screwed this game up is pretty simple: I was playing the map I wanted rather than the one I actually had.

Well, I decided to take a drastic step that I do every now and then in a situation like this.

I travelled back in time.

That's right, I re-loaded an earlier save--just after I founded Antium. That's when I decided things had started to go off the rails--when I just missed out on the GL.

Again, is this cheating? To some of you, probably. I don't do this all the time, but every now and then I play a game and realize I made some mis-steps, or I just want to see how things would play out if I chose a different strategy. I think it's the writer in me: all writing is re-writing, so you don't abandon a story that doesn't work, you go back and revise it so it DOES work. It's also a way to learn and improve. Yes, I now had some prior knowledge, but in a complex game like civ, changing the past can also change the future.

So this time around, I didn't bother with the monument in Antium. I built workboat-lighthouse and then started on the Great Lighthouse. The borders would pop soon enough once the wonder was built. I also got less precious about chopping around Antium. You know, of course, that the yield from chopping improves if the forest is within your borders; well, I had delayed chopping forests outside of Antium's borders (which was most of them) until after its borders popped. In addition, I was "saving" some of the forests that would have been in Antium's third or even fourth ring until the borders expanded to that point--thinking to contribute to the building of a forge and/or the Heroic Epic.

Well, screw that. You're in a wonder race, stupid. You're always in a wonder race--you can never assume you're not until much, much later in the game when and if you have espionage points out the yin-yang and can see exactly what everyone's building. So I chopped like a madman, chopped anything and everything that would contribute a few hammers to Antium and the GL, then whipped it to completion as soon as that became an option. This time it worked. I built the GL, and as expected, it provided a huge boost to my economy thanks to the coastal-trade-route-friendly map.

Another change I made: I adopted Christianity. Again, play the map you have, not the one you want. I wasn't going to be attacking Axeman-rich Izzy anytime soon, not without Catapults. Islam stubbornly refused to spread to my cities. The other civs in the south all went Christian, which meant that my next (eventual) targets lay west: Napoleon and Mehmed, the Muslim infidels (heh, yes, ironic, that).

Here's a look at Spain:

The deep south--China, Persia, and Ethiopia:

And the west--France and the Ottomans:

There were several benefits to the changes I made. First off, the GL meant that when I founded those crappy but coastal ice cities, my GPT went UP. Yeah. Of course I should have gone rushing madly after the GL on this map, which is ideally suited to it.

Converting to Christianity won me the four southern civs as allies; they all went to Pleased quickly, with most of them closing in on Friendly soon afterwards. Combined with my improved economy, this tremendously boosted my tech-trading--especially when I had civs at Friendly prepared to offer me monopoly techs.

As expected, the Christians and Muslims hated one another (sigh--don't they always?). This meant that as I acceded to every request from my Christian allies, including ending trading with Napoleon, who seemed to really tick them off, I won more diplo points. Nappy started getting aggressive, demanding tribute (crabs one time, about 70 gold another); I caved both times because, once again, I needed a long peaceful stretch to found my northern resource cities and build up my southern ones to their specialties.

A couple of times I spotted a French stack massing outside of Circassium's borders. I had already moved the bulk of my forces there to reinforce the city. But hey, I had Christian brothers and sisters of the faith who despised Muslim Napoleon and a slight tech lead--so more than once I was able to bribe Isabella, Darius, Zara, and/or Qin into declaring war on France, which prevented Napoleon from declaring war on me since he had other fires to put out. I did have to fight him a couple of times when my Christian allies asked me to join in on the fight I'd started (yeah, oops, but at the same time, predictable).

When that happened, Napoleon did this:

Yeah. He massed his stack on the hill west of the city, pillaged the mine, and then... sat there. Afraid of my own stack massed inside the city. Afraid of getting attacked on open ground.

Hoo boy, was I lucky in the map here! My westernmost border city, my vanguard against my biggest threat, had the benefit of no tiles with a defensive bonus on the enemy's side of the BFC. No hills, no forest, no jungle. Nappy didn't even dare moving down to pillage the iron mine next to the hill he was squatting on. So Napoleon and I sat there, glaring at each other, in a Mexican stand-off. Well, until I had enough Catapults; then I murdered him. We made peace, lather, rinse, repeat; I earned two Great Generals that way.

Thanks to my generous Christian allies, a bustling economy, and a growing tech lead, I was barrelling along. I built the Great Library, started lightbulbing my way towards Liberalism, won the circumnavigation race (and met the two remaining civs: Elizabeth of England and Shaka of Zulu), and started researching Nationalism and planned to build the Taj Mahal for a Golden Age.

I usually try to go after the TM in a Rome game, and I specifically try to use it for one of my favourite tactics, a GA military build-up. Basically, once I get within 30 turns or so of completion of the TM, I start pre-building military units in my cities. When the TM is done and the GA starts, I switch to Vassalage and Theocracy and start pumping out all those pre-built units with their extra XPs and promotions. Just before the GA ends I switch back to more economic civics (usually Bureaucracy and Organized Religion). This time around, the GA military strategy wasn't quite as awesome as it can be because I only had a few cities capable of producing units: Antium, Ostia (former Guimaraes), Ravenna, and Circassium. Rome was building the TM, and the northern tundra or ice cities, even with a whole lotta whippin' goin' on, were not in any way ready to produce military units.

Nevertheless, I still managed to produce a pretty decent stack o' doom, mainly because Antium was such a powerhouse production city and had been churning out units prior to my pre-GA build-up.

NOW things were going to get interesting.

 

[Htadus]

My goodness. That stack is bigger than all the stacks I ever put together.

 

[Sisiutil]

You are the creator of those beginner advices articles...you could reread your own articles.

BTW, according to some conventionalism vigilantes, marathon IMM equals to more or less between Monarch and Emperor on normal speed because of the increased advantages of warfare for the human who beelines and prepare minutely its wars.

I could see that. The main reason to play marathon is because you get to war a lot more, and let's face it, humans are better at war than the AI, so it does give you an advantage.

Weird...10 turns of universal peace.

I believe that's a feature of the Advanced Start option.

War gallore isn't always the path of victory.

No, of course not, though I didn't particularly war as much as I usually do in this game. Quite often, playing with these settings as Rome, I can manage to take out a second opponent. I was kind of hoping for that in this game, but Isabella obtained copper and built up a good-sized defensive Axe force in her cities. I probably still could have gone after her, but it might have been a series of Pyrrhic victories, losing way too many Praetorians, including highly-promoted veterans, taking her cities. Another advantage of Praet-rushing is you're often left with a good-sized force of highly-promoted units for later wars.

Another thing that often happens when I play this way is I'm left with a choice after my first war: war again, or REX. Rushing an opponent often opens up a large area of the map for me to settle (since they died before getting the chance to do so). But if I go to war instead, other civs will likely rush in and settle the area, even if it's far from their own. In this game, that was the case, but the land I opened up to settlement was that northern ice region. Still, while they weren't the best cities, they benefited from the GL benefits and they made resources available (silver, furs, deer, crabs) that not only boosted my and but also allowed me to trade. Lesson learned: don't eschew sub-optimal cities in regions of poor terrain.

My goodness. That stack is bigger than all the stacks I ever put together.

And I hate to tell you, but for me that's a smaller stack than I usually build. Remember I really only had three cities pre-building units before the Golden Age. Usually I have 8 to 12!

 

[Robert FIN]

Nice write-up! Just thinking of what in the earth can beat that stack in that time.. This is nice to watch because I've joined to the forums after ALC. Good job !

 

[Mantic0re]

...
I usually try to go after the TM in a Rome game, and I specifically try to use it for one of my favourite tactics, a GA military build-up. Basically, once I get within 30 turns or so of completion of the TM, I start pre-building military units in my cities. When the TM is done and the GA starts, I switch to Vassalage and Theocracy and start pumping out all those pre-built units with their extra XPs and promotions. Just before the GA ends I switch back to more economic civics (usually Bureaucracy and Organized Religion). This time around, the GA military strategy wasn't quite as awesome as it can be because I only had a few cities capable of producing units: Antium, Ostia (former Guimaraes), Ravenna, and Circassium.

I'm confused. I thought if I started building a Praetorian I could not pause building this one and begin working on a 2nd Praetorian without finishing the first. This limits the ability to store hammers for civic bonus tricks. Even if you mix in siege it still seems like your limited in how many units you can prebuild. What am I missing?

I'm also curious about how much/when you whip in this war preparation. How much Whip Anger do you typically allow in your cities in the 10-20 turns before you declare on your target? I'm still learning and playing Monarch and have recently re-discovered the whip. I think my last Cuirissar war saw ~150-170 turns of whip anger in 2/3 of my cities. It was probably too much but with trades I was able to keep the culture slider to 10% or less and that seems like a good trade for that much production. Not sure how that can be beat honestly. I've always wondered if I should alter my whipping patterns before and during GA's. Love to hear your thoughts on this.

 

[Killroyan]

Woohoo, Sisiutil is back with a game. I can hear some warhorns

 

[Sisiutil]

I'm confused. I thought if I started building a Praetorian I could not pause building this one and begin working on a 2nd Praetorian without finishing the first. This limits the ability to store hammers for civic bonus tricks. Even if you mix in siege it still seems like your limited in how many units you can prebuild. What am I missing?

You're not missing a thing. You're right, you have to build one type of unit, say a Praet, then leave it in the queue when it's one turn from completion and put another unit ahead of it, say a Catapult or a Trebuchet, and so on, and so on.

While normally this would limit the number of units you can pre-build, using this with the Taj Mahal is usually perfect timing because that almost always coincides with the Medieval era, which is positively replete with different types of units. In my best cities I'll have a queue with a Praet, Catapult, Trebuchet, Longbowman, Pikeman, Knight, War Elephant, Maceman, Crossbowman, Musketman, and, if it's coastal, a Caravel and another naval unit or two depending on what's available.

If you attempt this in the industrial era it isn't nearly as powerful because your land-locked cities can usually only produce 4 different units: Rifleman, Grenadier, Cavalry, Cannon.

I'm also curious about how much/when you whip in this war preparation. How much Whip Anger do you typically allow in your cities in the 10-20 turns before you declare on your target? I'm still learning and playing Monarch and have recently re-discovered the whip. I think my last Cuirissar war saw ~150-170 turns of whip anger in 2/3 of my cities. It was probably too much but with trades I was able to keep the culture slider to 10% or less and that seems like a good trade for that much production. Not sure how that can be beat honestly. I've always wondered if I should alter my whipping patterns before and during GA's. Love to hear your thoughts on this.

Surprisingly perhaps, I don't do a lot of whipping as part of this TM/Military Pre-GA Build tactic. I may whip some units in cities with significantly better than to at least get a couple of units pre-built in the queue before the GA. Then, during the GA, toward the end of it, I'll whip some units in my biggest cities so that they are produced before the GA ends--i.e. with all those lovely extra promotions. Usually just one whip per city, though.

I'm restrained with the whip at this point because I'm about to embark on a HUGE war (probably the first of several). There will be lots of casualties on both sides (I will lose a lot of siege, that's inevitable), battles in foreign territory, cities and workers getting captured--all the sort of stuff that contributes heavily to war weariness. This will probably be a long, hard war because I'm most likely doing this to finally take on the big, bad board leader, who has already conquered another civ or two, has more cities than me, has had a much higher power rating than me (up to this point)--it's gonna get messy.

The casualties are gonna pile up fast, because I have the forces now to press forward. No pausing for a peace treaty to rest for a few turns or anything like that. Depending on the AP situation I may have to also defy a resolution or two, and if my enemy manages to bribe other civs to join against me I may lose trade access to some resources. Managing may become quite a challenge, so I'm going to want to whip judiciously and minimize the amount of lingering whip I have to contend with. In fact, once the GA is done and the war starts, my top build priorities--even in my production cities--often especially in my production cities--are contributors.

 

[Shalvan]

Just offtop:
Too bad there aren't any Carthaginians to kick Roman butts in this game

(Carthaginian history nut in here)

 

[jihe]

In particular, I want to have Praets available before the first barbs become a problem.

Come on, is that really necessary? Poor barbs.

 

[Sisiutil]

Just offtop:
Too bad there aren't any Carthaginians to kick Roman butts in this game

(Carthaginian history nut in here)

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Come on, is that really necessary? Poor barbs.

Considering that, in my single-minded pursuit of Iron Working and a source of iron, I'll have nothing but Warriors to defend my cities until I chop some Praets--HELL YES.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Great story! Please continue to enlighten us, Sisiutil.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Gwaja]

Sisiutil,

I am THRILLED to see that you are playing an online game for all of us here. Your ALC series was an inspiration for me personally, and the games were not only just educational, but very fun to read as well. It speaks volumes about your knowledge and dedication to keep so many of us engaged... for as long as you did. I tried to emulate what you did, and quickly learned that it just isn't easy to do.

I've been away from my beloved PC with my Civ 4 for the past month+, away from home.... and the day that I get back to checking out the forums, I see THIS! Welcome back and I hope you stick around more often to teach us a thing or two more. ^_^

It'd be interesting to see how you take your game from here. I've never played on Marathon settings so some of the differences between playing on normal speed and marathon are quite evident here, so I am just trying to soak it in.

I, too, am in the process of an ongoing game with Rome (but Augustus)... still in progress and haven't updated in a month+.... as soon as I get settled back into my normal daily routine back home here, I shall continue.... ^_^

Long live the ALCs!!

 

[i_imperator]

dunno if its just me or if anyone else is having this problem but it looks like your images are gone (which is strange because they were working a few days ago). Im very much enjoying this game by the way

 

[Sisiutil]

dunno if its just me or if anyone else is having this problem but it looks like your images are gone (which is strange because they were working a few days ago). Im very much enjoying this game by the way

I think it's because I no longer pay for my PhotoBucket account, so I think my bandwidth gets used up partway through the month. It astounds me that people are still looking at the old stuff enough to do that. Anyway, come back on Feb. 1, the images should be back (for at least a couple of weeks...).