All Leaders Challenge Game Strategy Session: Montezuma

[pigswill]

My guess is that Gandhi's military build-up is a by-product of his astronautical pursuits so he'll probably be focussing on that rather than wars of aggression. You need to take him out or at least divert him sooner rather than later.You've basically got no intel on his heartland so that seems important. Might be worth focussing on his resources rather than his cities in the first instance, park a couple of stacks on top of his aluminium and oil and wait for him to come and get you.
Tech wise think about communism for state property which may help with costs. Unit wise, I go with tanks. Maybe a couple of battleships in case he decides on amphibious assault.
Civics wise:Once you've got pentagon theolgy and vassalge gives you Lvl 4units from the factory floor which is worth thinking about despite the economy so maybe you just accept slow research until you've polished off Gandhi.
General comment:You've adopted Monty's AI approach fairly consistently: military at the expense of infrastructure which is fine to start with but you're beginning to struggle at this point. Good luck!

 

[The Tyrant]

You've adopted Monty's AI approach fairly consistently: military at the expense of infrastructure which is fine to start with but you're beginning to struggle at this point. Good luck!

OMG, he's right. This has turned out to be a very instructive game already. If you play as Monty, then play as Monty. I can just imagine what Gandhi is thinking right now.

 

[pigswill]

Following on from that,the question is really wether Monty's approach is the optimum use of his traits. With any leader its a matter of compensating for their weaknesses as well as maxing their advantages. Spiritual improves as the game progresses so maybe you build the infrastructure first then set out to conquer the world.

 

[vormuir]

Well, maybe Qin would have been unbeatable by now... but, you know, I really hate fighting Gandhi in the late game. He and Roosevelt seem to be the two tech monsters. They're both Financial, so I guess that makes sense, but they zoom along even faster than the other Financial civs. I haven't seen a game where they weren't ahead of me by several techs by the 1900s.

I would declare war ASAP, as his tech lead will only grow. (N.B., ASAP doesn't mean immediately. Get those tanks rolling first.)

BTW, my cultural win with Monty came with three religions: founded one, snagged the other two when I took out the Inca. Annoyingly, he'd founded Christianity in a two-point tundra city on the edge of the Antarctic built purely for access to Marble. I would have much preferred to raze it (since I already had Marble) but what can you do.

Anyway. IME superior production plus better tactics can usually win against (slightly) superior technology. German jets and buzz bombs didn't stop the Red Flag from flying over the Reichstag, right? So get in there and mix it up.

cheers,


Waldo

 

[vormuir]

Further to "playing as Monty":

Monty is a warmaker. In my game, I wiped out one neighbor, and joined the Romans in taking out a second. I wasn't good enough to try for a domination win, but I was comfortably the biggest and strongest civ. I went for the cultural win because I wanted to try that... I could have won the space race just as easily.

That said, traits are means, not ends. Monty's Aggressive and Spiritual traits give you the tools to smash out a good-sized empire. What you do with that empire is a separate question.

So, in the current game, it's a bit late for a Cultural win, but you could easily win a space race against Gandhi. Sure, he has a tech lead, but you have so much more production that this is totally a viable option. In this scenario, you'd probably still go to war with him -- but not to conquer him. Just to raze a couple of cities quickly and clip his high-soaring wings.

Means, not ends.

That said, I'm looking forward to your dom win. It's not the only way to go with Monte, but it sounds like it will be really satisfying.

Good luck!


Waldo

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

But what I'm thinking my first, principal objective should be is to drive straight out from Novgorod into the Indian heartland and take Madras.

I like this strategy and use it a lot myself. It's a way that you can basically turn Novgorod's vulnerable, central location into an advantage instead of a risk. Go in, quickly take out one key city then pull back to heal, reinforce and fend off the counterattack. Repeat. From Novgorod, you can take out Madras, Bangalore, Lahore, and Hyderabad (not to mention nearby Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) all with equal degrees of ease/difficulty.

@vormuir: Neither Gandhi nor Roosevelt is financial, but I do agree that they seem to be very good in the late game, even if that isn't the explanation.

 

[Fetch]

Did I overlook the save game? I can't find it.

 

[vormuir]

D'oh! Thanks, Doc. My bad.

-- Gandhi just beat me in my latest game. Prince level, standard everything except fractal map, I was Inca. Had a medium-large continent to myself... which is not as wonderful in Civ IV as it was in II or III; I couldn't tech-trade or interact with anyone but the Arabs until 1500 or so. But anyway, I was doing fine until around 1900, when Gandhi just took off like a damn rocket. Got four or five techs ahead and just stayed there. Beat me in a space race, and handily -- I was still 10+ years away from completion when he launched.

My experience is that Gandhi is harmless when he doesn't have a good-sized empire. If he has a decent resource base to play with in the late game, though, watch out.

In the future, I think I'm going to target him earlier!


Waldo

 

[Sisiutil]

Good stuff, everyone. Thanks!

I am thinking I should indeed build Infantry, then Tanks and Marines when they're available, before going after Ghandi. I like to have an edge, and I don't have much of one at the moment.

I'll have several factories on-line in just a few turns, so almost all my cities can start pumping those units out very quickly, very soon. I like the idea of Vassalage/Theocracy/Pentagon for Level 4 units, simply because I can compensate by deleting some obsolete units of that level and below if they have no desireable, or easily-matched, promotions. But I'm going to wait on switching civics until I after get the much-needed Industrialism tech ASAP.

But you're right, I have to go after Ghandi as soon as I'm able. He will be pursuing the space victory, as he always does; that's probably what drove him down that tech path, as several of you surmise. It will give me a few more turns to build infrastructure and units and collect gold for a few choice upgrades. I also have to get both oil wells built and plant protectors on them, for all the good that might do.

In the meantime, I suspect Ghandi is building the Apollo Program somewhere right now; if the timing works out, by the time I attack, all of his production may be devoted to spaceship parts. That would be sweet; I've noticed the AI is extremely reluctant to change production once started. Though if the AI feels significantly threatened, it is capable of doing so.

Pigswill, good suggestion on the tech path; once I have Industrialism, I'm off after Communism and SP. I want to be able to match Ghandi in the spy vs. spy game, too, if only for the intel.

My upgrade strategy is to upgrade a few of my very best Grenadier and Rifleman units to Infantry for the stack, then reserve some gold for upgrading defensive units on the spot wherever Ghandi decides to counter-attack.

This will be challenging, but fun. I don't expect to finish this war tonight, but I do expect to start it. Stay tuned...

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

(Gandhi) and Roosevelt seem to be the two tech monsters. They're both Financial, so I guess that makes sense

Nope: Gandhi is Industrious/Spiritual, Roosevelt is Industrious/Organized. My suspicion is that they are still doing it the old fashioned way: money.

Gandhi can usually land an early religion, which having more time tends to spread further, so the Shrines are more lucrative. Roosevelt is saving a bunch of money on his car insurance groan. Both are getting a boost in wonders, when they miss a wonder, they are in effect getting 50% more cash back from the hammers they invest.

(Mansa and Washington are the leaders were Financial replaces Industrious).

 

[Nares]

Well, since they take the city defenses to zero in one turn, you don't have to have them advance in front of your stack. If they approach with the stack, they barrage at the beginning of the turn and *poof* no defenses left, stack attacks. If you always assign city raider to every seige unit, then Thrar's method would be better -- it would give more flexibility when you need it. I prefer to fully specialize my seige units, though, so using four per stack for taking down defenses is better for my play style.

In my game, I hit Ghandi first as I was starting up production on my Macemen with the remnants of my Axemen/Jaguars mixed with Catapaults. With units like that, the only things I needed to move to the next enemy city were the Catapults (usually escorted by the few War Elephants and Horse Archers I had built out of Axemen/Jaguar boredom). There, they were usually met by stacks of my new Macemen.

Later, I moved my stacks of Catapults to meet stacks of Knights outside Qin's cities. I chose to go heavy Knights in order to finish the war sooner rather than later. I was at no loss for production, owning 2/3s of the continent, and the time saved in travel more than made up for the losses. Then again, I was ages behind in tech (didn't discover Gunpowder until after clearing the continent, but I did end up winning the space race).

 

[Sisiutil]

I had an other sit-'n'-think about vormuir's suggestion--regarding Ghandi and the Space Race.

That's a very good point. I now have more than enough industrial capacity to beat Ghandi to it. He has a tech lead, but not a huge one.

A war against him is necessary nonetheless, as you say, just to be sure. Besides, the Pentagon is bought and paid for. Gotta use it. What I plan is to attack him as per my plans above and take out at least 2-3 cites--probably Madras, Chittagong, and Jaipur, especially because the latter 2 are in annoying locations. Then see what happens. If it's a close fight, I may sue for peace and go away satisfied that I've left him unable to compete with me, then turn space builder.

But if the war goes my way--like it did with Qin despite my concerns--then fugedaboudit; next stop, Delhi! After that, it's on to Flight and so many Bombers that all of Greece will think the sun is in eclipse. I'm pretty sure Bizzy will let me base a few planes in his cities...

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Don't forget the diplomatic victory option. It sounds ludicrous after all this warfare, but it seems a safe bet that chuckles will vote for you, so once you tae over the former Indian territories you might have enough votes for a win.

Diplomatic is basically the lazy man's domination. You say, "Look guys, I'm clearly about take over the world. Are you really going to make me go through the exercise of kicking your ass, or can you just agree to be a gentleman about it and concede?"

 

[Sisiutil]

(11th Round: to 1952 AD)
Ah, war...God help me, but I do love it so.

A computer game version of it, at any rate.

I didn't go to war with Gandhi right away; as discussed above, I wanted to wait until I had an edge. Nonetheless, the game didn't lack conflict, as Bismarck and Alexander went to war yet again and started swapping cities:

As I expected, Bismark asked me to join in:

And I agreed. It gave me a chance to kick Alexander's butt offa my continent. I razed one of his pathetic little cities down along the tundra, but there was no way to get to the other one by land because it was enclosed by Gandhi's borders. I was moving a Galleon down to ferry troops over to it, but decided, what the heck, let's see if the G-man will give me an Open Borders agreement.

Well, guess what? It's amazing what a few turns of peace will do. Open Borders it was! I took the opportunity to send my best Cavalry unit, with a movement promotion, to scout all of India's cities. As I had suspected, the bulk of Gandhi's forces were in his capital, Delhi:

Oh, no! I now faced the dreaded Ellipsis of Terror!

I sent a Caravel down there, and it was able to dock inside Dehli. This enabled me to scroll through all the units in the city, pre-spy, and see that there were only a couple more units than was listed on the screen. Those three little dots suddenly became a little less intimidating.

And it turns out Alexander becomes quite a wimp after you raze a couple of his worst cities:

Okay, he wasn't going to give up Rocketry, but that's no real surprise, is it? But look at that--all his gold, his world map, and 13 gpt just for 10 turns of peace. All for losing three really pathetic little cities (2 to me, 1 to Bizzy).

Gandhi was now trying to be all buddy-buddy:

I turned that one down, of course, but a few turns later he showed up offering me this deal after he completed Rock and Roll:

I hesitated, but after thinking it over, I agreed--after I got him to throw in some extra gpt. Why? Well, consider this: what would Gandhi need Aluminum for? Right--the space race! Remember how above, I said that when I attacked Gandhi, he might be devoting his production to space ship parts? Well, giving him aluminum guaranteed he'd be building his space ship rather than beefing up his military. (And yes, it was delicious to find out he had none; I had four sources myself once I got the mines set up.) Noticed he's pleased, too. This deal seemed like one more thing that would make him relax and believe we were buddies now.

HA! You FOOL!! Montezuma's only friend is DEATH!! I shall have to introduce you, my little Indian bumpkin...

And look at what my buddy Bismarck offered me:

I've never played a multiplayer game, but it occured to me that something like this would be a very sensible and probably very common strategy there: you and a teammate split the tech tree between you. Every time each of you discovers a tech, you trade or even gift it to one another.

In terms of war prep, once my factories came on line, I started producing Infantry. Once I finally got Industrialism, I started building tanks. Then I researched Communism and Democracy and changed civics completely:

Yep, total war civics. Well, except maybe for Emancipation, but I'd soon be dealing with war weariness and didn't want that additional happiness problem as well.

As for the war, it's going quite well. I've captured or, in a couple of cases, razed over half of Gandhi's cities now. There were some tense moments at the start after I declared; I sent the bulk of the forces that had been sitting in Novgorod east to take out his smallest cities that lay on my southern flank. The next turn, he sent a stack of Artillery at Novgorod. He nearly took it; defense was down to a Grenadier and a couple of leftover Longbowmen. It was not fun watching helplessly as my Marines and Infantry fell to the Artillery onslaught.

But he didn't take the city, and on the next turn I was able to shore it up. If you check the civics screenshot above, you'll notice that I'd been stockpiling gold. As soon as I saw Novgorod was Gandhi's main target, I upgraded every unit in the city that survived the first attack--including those two Longbowmen. The next turn, Gandhi faced Infantry and even a few Marines I'd built and managed to move down there quickly, thanks to my railroad network.

Novgorod held while I took out most of India's southeastern cities with a huge stack of--get this--Riflemen, Grenadiers, Cannon, and, yes, a few leftover Catapults! All it was missing was a few Axemen, but I had finally got around to either upgrading or...wait for it...axing all of them.

Many of these supposedly-obsolete units gave their lives as they fought bravely against Infantry and SAM Infantry, but they won the day. Most of them have now, themselves, been upgraded to Infantry or Artillery (as appropriate) as a reward for their achievements.

I am now in the process of taking India's core cities. Madras has fallen, as has Kolhapur and Karachi. All now fly the Aztec flag in their city squares. I have spies now, located in most of Gandhi's remaining cities. He is not long for this earth.

I did get a little overconfident at one point; I started switching my production back to infrastructure and split my forces into three stacks. But casualties and healing time are making me go back to producing units until the war is done. Then I should have a good-sized army ready to go overseas to Greece. (I have, however, changed civics from Vassalage/Theocracy back to Free Speech/Free Religion for the monetary, happiness, and reasearch boosts.)

In terms of tech, I'm not doing to badly. No one has a clear tech lead anymore:

And, regarding victory conditions, I think I'm making good progress towards a domination victory. I have 4% to go for pop--that's as good as got--and 20% to go for land. There are almost 100 turns left, and keep in mind I'm going to soon take Ghandi's biggest cities and their land:

It's hard to say at this point, but I suspect I will need to take at least some of Alexander's cities to get to that magical 64%.

Oh, one other thing--I got a Great Artist!

What should I do with him? He could be used as a culture bomb in one of India's cities after conquering it, of course. Or I could burn him for beakers--nearly 2000 towards Radio, which would probably save me 3 turns and let me start building Bombers. Thoughts?

 

[pigswill]

Maybe I was being a bit negative earlier on. You're doing ok. Only thing I might suggest is keeping your GA to get that last bit of territory from Alex with a culture bomb.
Is it worth 10 turns of peace to see what techs you could extort from Gandhi?
If you're going for domination and you're heading overseas then maybe research towards composites for modern armour.

 

[The Tyrant]

"I've tasted blood, and I want mooooore." Hehe...

Looks like things are going well. Domination appears to be the goal to shoot for. As for the GA, I think a culture bomb would help getting closer to that 64%, but not in an already-existing city. At first I was thinking the same thing that pigswill suggested -- saving the GA for a last-moment just-in-case culture bomb. Then I had another idea.

As you wipe Gandhi off the map, any city you capture can be cultured up pretty quickly. You won't have to worry about pushing his borders back because you're eliminating him. Once the borders expand the first time (full fat cross) it will take a while to expand beyond that, and even then most of the expansion would probably overlap with another city, meaning less overall addition to the % of land tiles owned. Also, the GA will be practically useless for pushing back Greek borders because of all the culture built up over the length of the game. So, the GA wouldn't be terribly useful for a culture bomb in either an Indian or Greek city.

Using him on a captured city would only achieve what you would be able to do another way in the time allotted. It would do it a little quicker, but it wouldn't be getting maximum use from him. The way to get maximum use from him would be to fill in some gaps on the map. I would create a settler to go off and settle an area inland (you're going for 64% of *land* tiles), and culture bomb that city for a quick land grab. Just use him wherever he could fill in the most number of tiles that aren't otherwise likely to be within your borders in the next 100 turns.

 

[pigswill]

Tyrant:nice idea for GA. It also depends on how many of Alex's cities Sisiutil needs to take and the sequence he takes them. If he heads up from the south fr instance then each city taken pushes Alex's culture border north leaving gaps around newly taken cities. If he starts with Athens then he'll end up with a different set of culture borders. At the same time borders will be expanding back on his continent so it's going to end up a last minute judgement call. Having said all that I still think that saving the GA as a culture bomb to edge over the winning line is the best way to use it.
Addendum:A settler and a missionary and build a theatre would be enough to grab another twenty tiles anywhere before the end of the game.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

As it looks to me as though the danger of spoilers has passed....

Montezuma's Shadow: I accepted the invitation and downloaded a copy of the start to make my own try at it.

A post mortem report has little of the give and take of the dialog that has been running here, but hopefully folks will have feedback to improve my game.

Enjoy

 

[Sisiutil]

Agreed, I'm going to tuck the GA away for a rainy day.

And Tyrant, I was thinking the same thing RE: another city. There's a choice area in the middle of the continent just northeast of Moscow that is mostly hills and jungle. A great spot for a city that can quickly grab some more land tiles.

Keep in mind that I will soon be grabbing the Statue of Liberty from Ghandi, so I can put one free artist in any city that needs to push out its borders faster. Can't remember if I need a theatre in that city with SoL; doesn't it work like Caste System? I'll find out soon enough.

VoiceOfUnreason, thanks for posting your game. It was interesting to see what you did the same, and what you did differently. As I look back on my own game, rotating enemies may have been a better strategy rather than relentlessly pursuing their elimination. It would have clipped all their wings back and made them less formidable as time went on. Certainly Gandhi would not be so troublesome right now if I had taken a handful of his cities a few centuries back; when Hatty or Qin offered me techs for peace, I could have rounded on him. Oh well, hindsight and all that.

I am determined to finish this game off today--at this point, the end is clearly in sight, and I don't think there is too much to be gleaned strategy-wise from this point on. I will, of course, report back on the results.

What I would like to do, however, is conduct a post-mortem of the game--which you can see I'm already starting to do. Should we do that here, or should it be a separate thread?

In addition, should we do another thread like this for the next game, which would be Mao?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

What I would like to do, however, is conduct a post-mortem of the game--which you can see I'm already starting to do. Should we do that here, or should it be a separate thread?

Your game, you are in charge.

My gut feeling is that the post mortem belongs with the game (the pre-game, not necessarily, that's a place to talk about general strategic and tactical considerations, rather than adaptation of those general considerations to specific circumstances). It puts most of the reference material readily at hand, minimizing the number of context switches required to follow along. Readers can "download thread" and get everything, rather than needing to track down the other two/three/hrair topics.