Asterix the Gaul -- Or: How to get the biggest bang out of the Gallic Swordsman

A Training Day Game based on the Celts

When I was a little kid, the most famous comic book series in Western Europe (second probably only to the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck series) was The Adventures of Asterix and Obelix. It is 50 BC. Imperator Iulius Caesar is ruling the entire known world. The entire known world? -- No, there is a little Gallic village still refusing to buckle down to the Roman Rule! Asterix and Obelix are two Gallic warriors constantly defying the mighty Roman Legions that are sent forth to subdue the rebellious village.




In their daily life, they encounter many exciting adventures involving lots of barneys with the Romans and lots of tasty wild boar...







A while ago, the idea for a new Training Day Game evolved out of a discussion about how to best implement an efficient early war-mongering strategy based on the Celtic unique unit, the Gallic Swordsman. As we will be exploring some special Gallic Swordsman strategies and tactics, I thought that Asterix and Obelix and their struggle for freedom from the Roman Empire would be the perfect motto of this game.

So fellow Gaulish brothers in arms: come and join our noble cause!

What is a training day game? CommandoBob has just published an excellent description of how it works. I wouldn't be able to express it as well as he did, so I take the liberty to copy his description over here:

This is basically, what we are going to do. However, for this particular game there will be a few more extra points or modifications:

• Every player will always play his set of 10 turns (20 turns for the very first set) take notes during the game of what he/she did and why, and then turn the save and the notes in for review. Then we will discuss the results in the team, the experienced veterans will give feedback and tips to the novices, and then, when proceeding with the next set of 10 turns every player has the choice to continue from his own .sav or from mine.
  Why don't we just pick "the best" .sav and all continue from that point? The reason why I don't want to do it this way is that sometimes a decision, which appears not so good short-term, turns out to be very powerful long-term. So something that looked very strong during the current 10 turns or even during the following 10-20 turns, may be strategically inferior to something that looked very weak during the first 10 turns.
  To give you a simple example: in some starting locations it is better to build an early settler, in others it is better to build an early granary. If you pick the wrong choice, your initial REX during the first 30-40 turns may look much better than the other choice, but after that time the long-term potential of the other choice may start to unfold and leave the original choice crawling in the dust...
  By playing the game "my way", the novice players will have the chance to compare the effects of certain strategic decisions over a long period of time. They can see first hand, how their game would have developed, if they had taken the other path some 50 turns in the past, and this should be a very instructive learning experience for them. You don't get the effect of learning long-term strategy by only concentrating on the very small time window of the current 10 turns.
• As the purpose of this game is to explore the power of the Gallic Swordsman, the victory condition will certainly not tend to be going to Alpha Centauri... This is more likely to be a quick and dirty Domination or Conquest victory condition.

Ok, I hope that besides the topic of "how to whack your neighbors with Gallic Swordsmen", the student will also get some learning-by-doing experience about the following general early-game topics:

• assessing the start position and selecting the best capital location
• efficient early worker management
• setting up a settler factory
• managing the "Republic Slingshot"
• getting the most out of trades with the AI
• expansion and city placement
• military tactics
• making the most out of a Civ's traits (in this game "The Celts": agricultural and religious)

 

Participants:
Puppeteer
Lanzelot
splunge the 2nd
creamcheese
Aabraxan
Glasnost
Freeven
Sparthage

Lurking:
darski
Elephantium
AnthonyIII
Desertsnow
Arexander
Pacioli
RickFGS
Bowsling

I will keep this list up-to-date.

 

Ok, I took a random generated map with default settings (standard, continents, 70% ocean, everything average). However, I made two small modifications to the game:

• I changed our starting position just a bit, so that the game will be as instructive as possible and some of the standard early game stratagems can be illustrated clearly and implemented smoothly.
  (No, I didn't beef up our start... In fact, quite the opposite: I removed a cow, so that this game will not be too easy for you... )
• I made sure that the Romans will be one of our opponents, and that they have access to iron...

So here is our start position:



Our opponents:



Oops, no, wait a minute... Got something mixed up here... Let's try that again...

Our start position:



Our opponents:

 

Ok, for now I would like all active players to check in and at the same time indicate their preferred difficulty level.
At first I thought, we should do this as a quick and dirty Warlord game, but now it looks like, most of the contenders would like to have it a bit more difficult. Perhaps we should just play it a whee bit above everybody's usual "comfort level"?

I'll take down the votes here.
Puppeteer: Emperor
Theov: Monarch
Lanzelot: Warlord (or Demigod)
splunge the 2nd: Emperor
creamcheese: Demigod
Aabraxan: Anything is fine. Comfort level: Emperor
DeXteR_: ?
Glasnost: Emperor

Once we've decided that, I'll post the start save, and then all of you got one week to try your hands on the first 20 turns and hand it in.

 

Yeah, we will definitely need some of that Zaubertrank...



("Zaubertrank": magic potion)

 

Well, only if you have to work really hard and need to press the last grain, the last shield and the last coin out of your starting position, you'll learn the "high art of MM"... If you always play starts with two wheat and three cows in the BFC, you never have any incentive to improve, because the game "plays itself" on auto-pilot so to speak, and you would win even if you let the governor do the tile assignment...