AW... and now for something completely different

[darski]

Well i did give it a try and it did not go well... all things considered

I am still alive but I believe I just got mapmaking and moving right along, It gets rather boring in a way. oh yeah it was Warlord.

I had no money at one point and was losing workers and catapults as fast as I could. i had no science and no luxuries but I did take out Babylon and four more of their cities.

Not a great day for the Persians. when I realized that they got to Pikemen, I figured it was over. My immortals did the job. They were all I had for the whole game. I only got horses when I razed Babylon and took their site
It might have been a great tale. I might yet write it out.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

Persia is my enemy! I just destroyed Persia. Typical tale of the mighty Greeks. Your Immortals cannot stand against my 300!

I'd be interested to hear the tale. I like stories... and Pizza too!

 

[darski]

Persia is my enemy! I just destroyed Persia. Typical tale of the mighty Greeks. Your Immortals cannot stand against my 300!

I'd be interested to hear the tale. I like stories... and Pizza too!

Welll sheesh, nothing like kicking a girl when she's down

 

[darski]

I think I have the save... it is really bad but it is here

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/109509/Xerxes_of_the_Persians_AW1060_AD.SAV

If that works

 

[Norton II]

A few thoughts from looking at the save:
-Your forces seem to be scattered. If you can get a sizeable stack together, you should have no trouble finishing off the Babs. Also, it wouldn't hurt to switch some of the spears you're building to cats or immortals--that way you can cover your eastern front as well.
-Why are you researching at 10%? If you raise science to 50%, you can get HBR in 2 turns instead of 8, and with 507 gold in your treasury, you can sustain that rate of research for some time. Since you're quite a bit behind in tech, you should run research as high as you can from here on out.
-With all that jungle, you need more workers as soon as you can afford them. You should get some more cities built, too; with 25 spears, you should be able to protect your settlers without much trouble.

I'd try to give a more thorough analysis, but I have to be at work early tomorrow morning.

 

[darski]

The Zulu have suckered me out of about 20 of my cats already so that hurts my ability to oppose them

to be honest, I had no (less than $0.00 )money and no science (none, nada, zero, zilch) for so many turns that I just gave up caring about it. Getting it up to 10% was a major undertaking at the time i did get to do that. I haven't thought about it since.

I think the major problem in this Always War game is that I got plunked in the middle of Jungle (no movement for cats) had no horses and met two civs in my 1st 10 turns and in the same turn. I believe that my war has kept them seriously behind on techs as well because the Babs have just started building Pikemen.

It was foolish of me to try an AW game as i am still too shaky on most game concepts but I did manage to stay alive this long and never lost a city.

Believe it or not, the spears have saved my bacon on many occasions in this game. Maybe it's because we have all been backwards but they have done the job. They are cheaper to make and I can send one out to cover an Immortal who just had a fight.

I have been working mostly slave labour most of the game because the game took away my own workers when I had no money. I had no money because I had a large army to wage war. it's all very circular

Well, maybe another year I can try this again, but not any time soon.

 

[Aabraxan]

It was foolish of me to try an AW game as i am still too shaky on most game concepts but I did manage to stay alive this long and never lost a city.

If you're still alive and never lost a city, it wasn't foolish. I've only looked at your screenshot, but I see 3 cities out of 12 building temples and the only ones building cats are behind the jungle. How many temples have you built? Are you over the unit support limit or are buildings eating your budget?

Norton's right. If you've got 500+ gold, you need to be running deficit research or buying techs, if you're behind. If you're in the lead, consider selling techs for gold. See if you can grab a monopoly on something for trade bait.

 

[MAS]

How did you manage to lose the catapults? You shouldn't be losing catapults.

consider selling techs for gold

you can't buy or sell anything in an AW game... Except maybe on first contact, but thats still a luck thing more than a strategy to build on.

 

[Aabraxan]

you can't buy or sell anything in an AW game...

Oh, yeah. Oops.

 

[darski]

How did you manage to lose the catapults? You shouldn't be losing catapults.

I am not quite sure what is going on with the movement in this game. My (fresh) immortals will walk out of the city (on roads) and stop dead in their tracks on my territory. meanwhile my cats kept going with a couple of defenders so then the Zulu had an SoD just waiting - 15 guys are going to wear down a couple of spears no matter how valiantly they fight. my spears did cost them at least 3 combatants each. Well then my cats were just sitting there waiting to be taken away. There was a complete stalemate at Swazi and it was getting very tedious to be getting them down to red-lines everywhere and not being able to finish them off. While this was happening, I had a continuing combat going with the Babs as well.

The Zulu were sending 10 and 12 units at a time and always refreshing them. But they started sending fewer and lower quality so I did think that maybe they were out of steam and I could move the battle to their city instead. Didn't work. I thought the AI didn't think that way... with a deceptive lowering of units to draw me out of my city... but they did it or it just happened that the walking wounded were refreshed by the time I got there.

 

[darski]

I have been considering the start that I got on this game. Most of the grassland that you see in my area is cleared jungle. Now I was playing with the other graphics set so I didn't realize how vast the jungle area was. I had mostly Jungle, Forest and Plains.

Would it have been reasonable to give this up and start over in trying this AW? It seemed like you blotted your copybook if you didn't play what you were given..

 

[Aabraxan]

Would it have been reasonable to give this up and start over in trying this AW? It seemed like you blotted your copybook if you didn't play what you were given..

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this (especially the "blotted your copybook" part). That said, if you think a restart is necessary, go ahead. You could restart from the original save, or start with a whole new game. Having to spend tons of worker-turns clearing jungle undoubtedly slowed down your empire's progress. Perhaps more importantly, this one was a training exercise. It is a game, after all, and it's your game.

 

[darski]

yeah, I did get through it and I know that I wasn't paying attention to things that mattered... like science and budget. It would have made more sense to start again but the graphics fooled my eye to start

Blotting your copybook is a bad thing to do if you grew up in the English School system. I didn't but I read a lot of British fiction

 

[gmaharriet]

I am not quite sure what is going on with the movement in this game. My (fresh) immortals will walk out of the city (on roads) and stop dead in their tracks on my territory. meanwhile my cats kept going with a couple of defenders

I'm guessing that the cats did not start in the same tile as your immos, and that only your immos had to cross a river. Until you get Engineering, your units will stop right after crossing a river, regardless of whether or not they seem to have more movement points.

I thought the AI didn't think that way... with a deceptive lowering of units to draw me out of my city... but they did it or it just happened that the walking wounded were refreshed by the time I got there.

No, they don't think that way, but it's possible they sent home units to heal. With a barracks they heal in a single turn and can come back for more.

 

[darski]

I'm guessing that the cats did not start in the same tile as your immos, and that only your immos had to cross a river. Until you get Engineering, your units will stop right after crossing a river, regardless of whether or not they seem to have more movement points.

This started in Swazi all together and all going to the same place.

there was a road space from my town to my 9 tile city border I would have thought that cats had more restrictions than Immos.

Whatever, this game is over for me. I will try again another time but i am going to check these items in other games to see what happens.

 

[MAS]

It is pretty standard practice to generate new starts until one pops up that will guarantee some level of enjoyability.

Most people would restart as soon as their first set of scouting units find out they are in the middle of jungle.

AW is already a big training exercise, there is no need to make it even harder with a bad start, unless you are a masochist.

 

[darski]

It is pretty standard practice to generate new starts until one pops up that will guarantee some level of enjoyability.

Most people would restart as soon as their first set of scouting units find out they are in the middle of jungle.

AW is already a big training exercise, there is no need to make it even harder with a bad start, unless you are a masochist.

it really was because of the new graphics that I did not recognize the jungle. I did think it was forest but I had committed to it by then. I think it has something to do with that dour Scots background. (dour Scots background and masochism = same difference )

 

[Norton II]

So basically, you moved up a level, played AW, drew a start that put you in a jungle-ridden disaster area, got a leader that wouldn't work, had your economy crash, fell way behind in the tech race, lost 20 cats to the Zulus--and stuck with it until after 1000ad. might cover it, but would probably be more approprate.

I think this game is winnable. Your enemies probably aren't that far into the MA, and you seem to have enough forces to defend your empire while you build up your economy. If you want to restart or begin a new game, I wouldn't blame you, but I might try to win this one from your current save if you don't.

 

[darski]

thank you. It is so nice of you to say that.

I did find an earlier save and I got the Pyramids with my GL. I am still thinking the graphics glitch that froze my game did something there.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/109509/Xerxes_of_the_Persians_AW875_BC.SAV

This save should have the GL in War Now IIRC.

I would be interested in seeing what others do with this. I know that my inablity to keep the whole enchilada in my little pea brain at one time works against me.

I have been thinking that a little thought might let me get somewhere in that game. just studying the last picture could help me.

Those Zulus just keep piling on and I couldn't get to them through the Babs. If I had it to do over, I would raze Swazi, it was a waste of time, effort and personnel

 

[darski]

One thing I did finally remember... someone asked about building temples and I realized that corruption was starting to be a factor and the Less Corruption fix flags buildings for anti-corruption. I was trying to keep some money coming in. the cost would have been borne by the uncorrupted commerce.