AZ-07: A Tale of Not That Many Cities

[jammerjun]

Or we could just turtle against Wu (but I don't see the point here, except levelling troops).

But putting us in the warmongering basket because we settled too close to the Indian is a bit odd. We should we have done sit and watch and/or no retaliation ?

On the military level I believe only Aztecs and Siam are up to the par or am I wrong?

 

[Habanerius]

azaris you are playing up your turns or do we need more discussion? I don't want to hurry anyone, if you need more time it's fine with me, just so we know you haven't disappeared (too).

 

[azaris]

The situation was: we're at war against Wu and Ramkhanwhatever is a powermonger. No problem.

Turn 163: I cash rush a barracks at Delhi, with aim to make it our military production city. Units are moving to the Chinese front.

Turn 164: I rush a longsword in Delhi. A barb pikeman lurks near Athens.

Turn 165: Killed a cho-ko-nu and a longsword near Grand River. Our ally Hanoi is being surrounded by Chinese armies. I guess it doesn't pay off to be our friend.

Turn 166: Wu's attack on Hanoi is... less than successful.

Turn 167: Currency -> Chivalry. I bribe Kuala Lumpur on our side. I also sell gems and spices to Siam for cash to prevent them for DoWing for 30 turns or so.

Turn 168: Kuala Lumpur is bribed to be our ally. Less culture for Siam, more troubles for Wu. Monty gives whales for gems. I annex Onondaga because we have spare happiness and it is a good production city.

SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION V WILL CONTINUE

 

[azaris]

LAST WEEK ON: SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION V...

Anyway, I got an order to grab the nearest Chinese city and make peace. Can do. The game has since been patched so I spend a few minutes having to promote all our units. The new diplo interface makes me go 'huh?'. Apparently now only the Siamese hate us for being warmongers. Go figure. I send all units towards Nanking that I can spare.

Turn 170: We capture Nanking and raze it. I then make this extremely bizarre peace treaty:



We have 26 unhappiness, I will wait for it to go down a bit before ending my turnset. Cities are building happiness buildings. Wu is still going at Kuala Lumpur.

Turn 171: Wu turns her attention from Kuala Lumpur to Rio de Janeiro. I'd rather she attacked Siam.

Turn 173: Arabia publically denounce Siam. I don't know what that means but I like the sound of it. Our unhappiness is finally down as Nanking burns to the ground so I burn one of our three GGs to get a Golden Age!

Turn 174: Chivalry -> Engineering.

Here are the demographics on turn 175:



Not so bad, we are in GA and can afford to grow our population a bit thanks to the spare happiness (+9 ). Another policy will pop soon so that is another potential 6 turn GA. I would concentrate on building our economy for now. It's good that Siam seem to be losing the trust of the other AIs. I still don't see how we're able to compete against that monster...

UP = Habanerius (I guess)

 

[Habanerius]

I have a look around, we're at peace. Onondaga is running some nice production and will finish a courthouse next turn. I should get a worker down there to improve on that.

I can see some pixels of a CS border in the east, will check that out.

I search for the diplomatic relations infos the patch promised and find this after a while:


That's it? Somehow I expected something a little more useful. When and how did we ask Siam not to settle near us?

We're researching Engineering. The Forbidden Palace has not been build yet, we could go for Banking. Otherwise Chemistry would be nice.

I guess if no one declares war on us i will do some scouting, and peaceful expansion. I will start a settler at Mumbai, we should get a city east of Wu at the hill line to contain her. We should also get a coastal city, maybe on the marble north of Delhi?

I will play later today.

 

[Habanerius]

T176: I sell spices to Monty for 300G. Rama-whatever realizes that we're no warmongers and goes back to friendly. Wu denounces Siam.

T177: Wu bombards Rio with a lot of her crossbow UU. I ask her to make peace but the price is too high. Rio is still allied with the Iroquois btw, guess nobody told them. Siam build the Brandenburg Gate. I decide to research Physics. I meet Bucharest in the east, their allied with Siam.

T178: Siam denounces us. Wu makes peace with Rio. Siam declares war on the Arabs.

T182: Not much going on, i clear 3 barb encampments during the last turns. Now researching Theology. I have to adopt a policy, after some thinking i decide to go with Patronage. A diplomatic victory seems to be our best shot and patronage can save us some money there. I also bribe Rio and pledge to protect them. Hovering over the status bar in Rio says we're getting +3 food in our capital, the info ball on the right of the screen says +4. I'm confused.

The building list in Delhi also looks a little strange.

Really Firaxis, we had to wait ages for this patch because of "quality control" and "testing", maybe buy the testers some glasses and teach them how to read?

T183: Rama-whatever bombards Mecca with artillery and catapults (seems the AI still doesn't understand how to upgrade units) and captures it. He also DoWs on poor Wu to celebrate him entering the modern era.

T184: I found a city near Wu and pillage the road connection. This is a nice defendable spot.

T185: Our research agreement with Monty gives us Machinery. I sign a new one and sell him incense. Rama-whatever is hostile again since he now again believes we're a warmongering menace. Yeah, right.... This game is still a mess, the patch changed nothing. I'm really getting frustrated, instead of fixing the game they try to milk more money by offering DLCs for ridiculous prices.

 

[jammerjun]

Got it.

Will play tonight or tomorrows, kidlets are a mess (and one is ill).

 

[Habanerius]

Btw, i don't think Harun will last much longer. Which rises the question if we should act.

Backstabbing him and capturing the 2 cities near us would have the advantage of moving our currently best production city to a more secure position inside our borders (besides controlling 2 more cities).

But there are some downsides so I'm not sure if its a good idea:
- Rama-whatever already believes us to be warmongers and we can't win a war against him.
- The terrain west of those city is a desert -> terrible defensive position against what soon will be Siam.
- If we're very lucky Harun may yet survive, leaving him as a buffer between us and Siam.

 

[azaris]

Any news, jammerjun, or should we assume a family emergency?

 

[azaris]

I think we should see this game to an end. To that effect, I played until turn 203. It went pretty much as expected, Arabia was gulped up by Siam. I suppose I could've tried to cheese it by blocking their armies with my units, but what's the point? While waiting for the inevitable I sold a lot of luxuries and pumped everything to Siam's city states. I did manage to grap a couple of them, but then Siam declared war on us.

At this point I'd chalk this game up as a loss, unless someone is masochistic enough to try and fight against a mega-army of riflemen and artillery with knight and longswords.

Save included for posterity. Thanks to all the participants. Better luck next time.

 

[Habanerius]

Thanks for starting and finishing this.

I think we did ok against all our early enemies, and I don't see what we could have done against Siams.

Originally i thought about replaying this to see how some of our early game choices like the location of the capital or Mumbai affect the game but I'm far to disappointed with the patch to continue playing Civ5. The sad thing is that I actually like many of the ideas/changes made in general, but Firaxis apparently doesn't have to will or the means to fix them to work properly.

 

[jammerjun]

Sorry for not showing up for the last bit of it. Holiday time and a baby in hospital (for pneumonia alert - everything's fine now) drew me off gaming a bit.

About the game I agree with Habanerius as we did our best. Siam didn't get bullied enough by its immediate neighbours. What's wrong with those AIs ?