Bloody annoying games

[Justicar333]

Ever had one of those Civ sessions where you run through every expletive you know twice, have a beer, and go through them again? Here is your place to kick back and grumble. To start, my game this morning.

Prince difficulty, huge map, marathon speed, Calabim, 22 random civs. Starts out well enough, manage to lay claim to 5 cities of land with only minor overlap. Dig in, and start teching for CoE.

Know how there is always that one civ, chosen by some mischevious deity to out tech everyone.. well this time it was another Calibim. First they pop up AV, which spreads across the world pre stigmata. Even into my own empire, with no roads connecting me to anyone. Then she suddenly starts adding vassals, lots of em. She's only got 7 cities, but.. phew. Steamrolls the neighbors, and now, at turn 614 is steam rolling me. An alliance between her and Hippius, with 8 vassal states.

No one will ally with me, vassal to me, even join the fight. Their angry from my sitting out the early insanity to try to build an empire. Oh well, time to start a new game. And much as don't want too, think it's time to turn vassals off.

 

[Kael]

I played the Elohim in my last game. I played 5 sets of 2 player teams. 2 random good teams, 1 random neutral team and 2 random evil teams.

I get paired with the Luchuirp and we are happyily building together, I rush for rangers while he rushes Barnaxus out and starts wandering around splattering orcs. Life is good.

As we spread we find that the Hippus/Amurite neutral team along my east border and the Clan/Calabim along my teamates northern border. We are playing on a creation mapscript but we have usually large shared borders with these two instead of the usual chokepoints. Im not to worried about the Hippus so I send my single ranger out to explore some unknown valleys to build xp and grab goody huts. The clan doesnt bother me to much yet either because theres a little land between them and my teammate and they arent fielding big units yet.

Then the other evil team pops Hyborem and he lands in the open area between my partner and the Clan. Suddenly all three are rubbing shoulders and not to happy about it. Because the Clan and Hyborem share an alignment the Clan decides that the best way to fix this problem is to declare war on the Luchuirp and I.

I turtle up and pull my ranger back, the Luchuirp does the same. Im not ready to launch and army and although I have a couple decent defenders in my outlying cities my capital is still sitting with the origional warrior and adept. The clan rushes some lizardmen through and up to my capitals front door. Rather than risk losing my capital I hit the emergency button and cast sanctuary. All enemies are kicked out and I beging preparing for war.

My partner is doing fine, has wood golems and a leveled up Barnaxus at the ready and it doign a great job of defending against enemy attacks. With him between us and our enemy Im feeling good that I will be able to get a decent attack force together by the time saqctuary is done and be able to threaten the clan enough to surrender and maybe gobble up a few cities int he meantime.

My sanctuary is almost done when I see it. A huge hippus force building up on my border, sitting just outside the wall, horse archers, horseman and more ready to rush into my lands. Sure enough the second my walls drops I hear the trumpets of war and the Hippus rush into my lands, grabbing 2 well defended cites on their first move. Hyborem decides he wants some too and joins in the massacre with the clan to cplit apart the Luchuirp lands while the Hippus claim mine. So sad.

 

[smurven]

Its pretty exciting to hear how much better the AI is getting

 

[Adrogans]

I have to say in the last two games I have played Mahala has been the bane of my nation. The first time was Playing as Malakim on a Tectonics Huge map and I met the others on my continent (Ljosalfar, Calabim, Khazad, and Doviello) All of a sudden the Mahala takes over the Ljosalfar then the Khazad. I'm stuck on the penninsula tip of the continent so I see this happening and am like crap start building my forces and also pop Empyreon. While setting up my defenses (had a nice mountain choke point) someone pops Infernals right in the middle of this mess. So the Doviello attack, joined then by Infernals, then Calabim. 400 turns later thanks to the ratha hold spell (forget the name) I was able to hold them off and start fighting my way out and was like yeah good going. Mahala takes a ship and drops the war machine right smack in my lightly defended homeland. I finally kill it, but it destroyed my infrastructure so 300 turns later we are still trading blows, but I was able to kill off the infernals and calabim but damn what a game this is.

Started another one cause I was tired of that conflict for now (will continue that one later) I play the Sidar and get stuck between the Hippus to the north but they were freindly so I let em be Lanun to the east and Amurites to the northeast, I was in the southwest of the continent. I sit there building my 4 cities and pop ashen veil which spreads like crazy like mentioned before I wonder why? So my entire continent that I know of is AV and then the Lanun are destroyed - by the Doviello I am currently fighting with the Hippus and Amurites against the Doviello and all three of us put together are barely holding the line (mainly me but the Amurites are doing ok too, Hippus are strangely weak). Man how do they build so many units so fast? Sheesh.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I've had a couple games lately where I have been ambused out of the blue in the middle of a war.
Most recently I was the Bannor, following the order all by myself, but generally helping out some others in their wars. I defeated Charadon rather far away, using mostly demagogs that left when I killed him. After awhile my heroes were getting bored, so when Decius of the neutral Calabim asked me to declare war on Falamar I agreed (still holding a grudge from him taking some Doviello cities out from under me). A turn to two later Luchuirp, who were huge, allied with Basium, and between me and my Doviello colonies, declared war. Crusade saved me, but I lost Donal Lugh. Thinking I could rez him with sphener cheered me up a couple turns, until he was killed. Ultimately I lost all the old Doviello cities. I made peace with the Luchuirp, for a price, but the Lanun I underestimated and they were able to take a nice city of mine that had city of 1000 slums. Down to a few cities, I bought them off, turtled up, then finished the final altar of Luonatar for a win from last place!

 

[KillerClowns]

My very first Doviello game, on the Earth2 map for laughs. I started out in North Africa, and figure that the best tactic for the Doviello would be to conquer, like there's no tomorrow. So I devour the Hippus in South Africa and the Kuriotates in Italy, and countless barbarian villages, figuring I'd be able to catch my economy up by going straight for Education and city states.
Guess what? I never made it. Soon, my army was being disbanded, my tech was stalled, and my only source of income was pillaging the Lanun with Lucian, who was carrying Orthus' Axe. The rest of my attack army had long since been auto-disbanded by the strike. Inevitably, the Lanun finally killed Lucian. It was about then that I said "screw it" and gave up.

 

[JustinianVII]

A game sometime back as the Lanun. Tasunke was a nearby neighbor, and DoW out of the blue quite early on. My borders with him were not defenseless, but neither were they well-defended enough to take on his horsemen. One city fell, could've lost the capital and any chance of survival had one of my Warriors not gotten a rare lucky battle in combat and crippled an attack wave. However, his Commando horsemen pillage most of my improvements and force me to tech BW and Warfare right away to fight back. I eventually take back what is lost and push on to wipe him out with a horde of Swordsmen, but the damage was done; he set me back enough so I didn't found a religion and fell behind in tech.

 

[KingKeeper]

Had one game as Khazad (with 17 AIs), had a really good Start with some Huts/Techs and Lots of Eco trough Resources (Gold, Whine etc). Had a lot of AIs around me so could only see my part of the Continent (one big pangea). I was at the far western Edge only 2 small KIs behind me. I easily outtech both and conquer them (i think they where Lurchip and Calabim). At this Point i had 3 times more land than at the start. But was still only second in the demographics. After some Brutal Fighting with a Elf that hit their Worldspell (I hate Treants -_- ) i finnaly found my real Foe. The Doviello: Countless Stacks of their Champion-Typ Units (cant remember the name...) gives me a long bloody Battle and even with better Tech Lost in the End. As my big Army was Smashed i peaked into the Worldbuilder... Doviello had conquered nearly the complete Pangea and had kicked 12! other Civs out of the Game. Me and a Elohim behind his Walls where the Last stand against them. Never had such a Powerfull AI on Prince.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Worst I've ever had was shortly after .31 came out. First game with the Sheaim in it, immortal difficulty.

As the Lanun, I out-expanded everyone, out-teched everyone, and had a pretty decent army. The Sheaim were like "screw you, here's like 30 of the reworked Pyre Zombies, courtesy of our immortal-level production bonuses. Let's see how highly promoted units handle that."

Saverous was my only, ONLY strong unit with mobility at the start of the war. (was relying on the raider trait for speed) This means that anything that attacked a pyre zombie stack would end their turn next to it and quickly be overwhelmed by explosions. (If they were normal axemen I'd be able to end a turn next to them in a forested hill or something and watch a ton of them commit suicide.)

Quickly rushing out mobility axemen, some heckling from Hemah, and the sacrifice of 2 cities allowed me to fend off the stack then strike back with a vengeance, but it set me really far back. I'd otherwise have been able to make it to the other continent 100 turns earlier or something and do something about those altars the elohim were building.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Had one just tonight where I had a nice set up as Svartalfar, with 2 gold mines, a corn and a wine in my capital. I expanded to four cities and had just founded leaves when both Flauros and Charadon declared war at the same time--about turn 105 on normal speed. I fought it out until they took 3 cities, alas, kaput.
(Gonna get revenge in the current game, I hope.)

 

[xienwolf]

I normally play Pangea, but decided to do Continents for one game, things didn't turn out so well for me especially since it was probably my 5th game of FfH, way back in .23 or so.

I was playing as Elohim, and this was back far enough that you could gain contact with other Civs via your sight of the Unique Features. I had Valin Phanuel, since I was trying Order for the first time, and I had summoned Basium on my continent down in the Tundra to see what having him around was like. I saved my game in case I didn't like playing as him, and swapped over. It was alright, but I gave him a really crappy city, so I reloaded and swapped back over (the one thing I did like was that the old me kept on opening up trade windows to give me random things for free. Typically junk that was useless, like sheep). I thought that my scouting attempts for this game were HORRIBLE, and I didn't realize that the Clan Capitol was on the very tip of our landmass; in my mind he was at a choke-point leading to all the other Civs. I thought this because I knew of a Unique Features just a little ways beyond where I was blocked from scouting by his territory in the early game.

Anyway, Jonas Endain LOVED me, but I guess Basium had a problem with him, cause a few turns after he was summoned, he was waltzing through my land to pick a fight. That meant I was fighting too now, and I had a warrior and an adept/mage in each city, nothing else except Valin. Jonas was also Order (thanks to the lovely instant Acolyte spawns allowing me to spread it to all my cities with the first Missionary, so I gave a few to him and much the same happened), so as Basium smashed him, Basium was gaining a ton of Angels, he just wasn't doing much with them.

Anyway, I manage to fend off Jonas' initial few waves of attacks, and build myself a decent attack force. I am still working on getting an Arcane Barge in each of my cities (I built almost entirely on the coast because the Arcane Barge was another thing I was trying out for the game), so I have only built up one attack force, of meager size. I retaliate and snag a couple of cities, but as usual I forget to build replacement troops and defenders, so my forces dwindle quickly. I'm ok with this as I assume I can handle anything that poor Jonas tosses at me, because his tech is REALLY far behind me.

This is when it starts to qualify for this thread. See, it is important that I am the Elohim, and this is back when that meant instant contact with the entire world. One of the early things I did was agree to Open Borders with the Malakim, I figured it wouldn't hurt with how far away they seemed to be, so I abandoned my usual policy of NEVER signing open borders.

Bit of a mistake that.

The Malakim wound up getting trounced in this game. Quite uncharacteristic of them in my experience. This meant that they were considered the "Worst Enemy" of the other people whom I was aware were out there. To include Keelyn.

I founded FoL and Order. The Malakim founded RoK. I lost track of who founded OO, because Jonas and I were both Order, the rest of the world was AV, with Keelyn having the Holy City.

While I am sitting there deciding when to finish off Jonas and FINALLY connect to the rest of the world through the choke-point I am SO convinced that he is holding, and finishing up my fleet of 1 Arcane Barge per city, I suddenly have a small square of Hell Terrain pop up on a corner of the land which isn't in my Territory. I think that's kind of cute, but annoying, so I divert a barge and a mage over there to sanctify the tile. By this point I have a few spare mages, most of them running around casting Spring, and I have placed a Priest in each of my cities as well.

Just as the mage and Barge are finally arriving at Hell (those things are SLOW), a ship lands near one of my cities and offloads a few Balseraph units, who have just declared war on me. Valin has insane movement capability and happens to be in range, so I pop him over to polish off their strongest defender, then I whip out some Ring of Flames action, a few fireballs, and attack with my recently war-promoted Axemen (with Iron Weapons). Stack dead, ship nearly dead as well. I clean up the ship with the Arcane Barge, and decide I am happy to have built them.

Problem is, these ships sweeping in and dropping off a pack of troops keeps on happening. One ship each turn pretty much, till I finally get to the point I can't kill the whole stack. Then they proceed to walk right through my territory, ignoring every city, and setting themselves up in the one corner of the tundra which neither Basium nor I have bothered to settle (but I have some borders which ought to cover it shortly, and Genesis should hit just after that to make them worth settling).

These troops sit down there for a while, and I keep tabs on them with some Hawks to make sure no settlers show up. I also make peace with Jonas and start setting up my war forces near these enemies on my land. Next thing I know, I have lost the city that served as the Balseraph's first beachhead. No warning, never sighted a ship off the coast or anything. Just sat there "Waiting for other Players", heard some noises, then was informed I was down 1 city, courtesy of Keelyn.

I reload back a few turns, shuffle over all the troops I can get to the city before the big event, and in pops a 6 Movement FLEET of ships, offloading at least 20 units and nearly taking my city even fully defended. Next turn the same thing hits me and the city is lost.

This begins a cycle of MANY reloads for me. But the next 3 reloads don't have the invasion happen on the same turn, nor the same location. She waits a few more turns and hits me from the other side. Then next time she springs me from the other side the turn right after the reload. It was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for me to predict where she was going to hit, and even with Hawks I couldn't see far enough to spot her ships before they landed the forces and swept in on me.



Since I suck at war and wanted to learn, I played through that reload a LOT of times. Never did manage to fend her off though. Since then I have seen so many posts about how the AI can't do war, and how the AI completely FAILS at naval invasions, and I have laughed each time and held off from spouting my horror story

 

[MalkutX]

Faeryl: "Arendel, the beating I'm about to lay upon you will be indescribable. I'm so far ahead of you that it isn't even funny, and I've just dispatched my entire army into your lands. Expect a visit from Alazkan soon. Are you ready to be sl-"

Arendel: "March of the Trees."

Alazkan & Co: *SPLAT*

Faeryl: . . .

Arendel:

Faeryl: "I hate you . . . SO FREAKING MUCH!"

 

[Fafnir13]

Wow at Xienwolf's. That's some impressive stuff coming from the AI. Weird...but the Balseraph's are the only guys I've also seen do a reasonable naval landing. Must just be a coincidence.
I'm afraid my tale isn't quite as entertaining, but it's had its moments.
Started out as Svartalfar playing my first game on monarch. I conquer my nearest rival's (Balseraphs put up a good fight with hunter, freaks, and other assorted), and unleash Hyborem upon the world. Since there were some upgrades to them (and I really wanted to play a "destroy the world" style game again) I switched over to them, spawning right in the middle of my own territory. Excellent, I say. All these ripe cities to conquer. About a hundred turns later, I'm still struggling to take out more than a quarter of my old civ. Doesn't help that they've got mithril and sheut stone whilst I'm stuck at iron. Hyborem even had the misfortune to die once to a random beast of agares. Since I'm playing without loading (makes it more challengin/rewarding for me), this was a major concern and had me acting far more cautious.

So, that's the general situation. The first "Argh!" moment was taking out the capital. Cretins had gone and built the soulforge there and had it well stocked with various units. Building up troops to take it out took forever as stacks of mithrilled champs lead by agares and eidolans (sp?) kept making incursions into my conquered lands. I finally had the city on the ropes, made a number of risky attacks that paid off and almost had everything in the city dead, including the near limitless supply of flesh golems that, or course, were spawning from the destruction. I've never seen soulforge used so effectively, and really should have been putting my efforts towards other cities...
Anyways, one turn away from capturing, Minister Koun of the Hippus shows up with a huge stack and takes it for himself......fine...didn't want it anyways....

So now I've got troops heading back into the other svartalfar lands. It was a Fractal map that made a pangea which wrapped around the entire hemisphere. Pretty nifty. The Svartalfar portion is almost like a bulge in a hose that's squeezed on both ends, making for convenient chokepoints. Beyond those is a crazy land filled with all sorts of civs that, surprisingly enough, weren't making much headway in wiping eachother out. I left them alone, intent on taking out the Svart, and heavilly fortified my western most town (eastern border of my territory is, at this point, Svart and friendly Mahala). Then the Hippus decided to make a call. Second "Arg" moment. I'm not sure how many there were. Horsemen, horse archers, rangers, some champions, and some catapults to boot. I had my entire empire (of about 10 cities at this point) pumping out sects of flies and longbowmen and gating them into the walled town. Fell after one turn. I'm now stuck with my main force gridlocked on the Svartalfar frontlines and a huge force of Hippus taking me from the rear. Through continuous production, the ever efficient gate system, and ring of flames, I was eventually able to push back the encroaching army into the city they'd taken. Took a good three turns of hammering away at it before I got it back. Don't know how they build so many units...

On an un-"Argh"-y note, a strike force of mine was able to penetrate Svartalfar lands and take out their only source of mithril. Made conquest so much easier. I was pleased to see such a realistic tactic work so well. Too bad the AI didn't know to prioritize that force and get them gone. Although I suppose that would have left their northern lands open to Hyborem and his hordes....

Anyways, the third "Argh" moment was much simpler than the others, but quite good. Hyborem and co are destroying Illian lands when the Sheim show up at a newly conquered city with a minor stack. Okay, I can take care of this easily enough. Get a few of my profanes down there for Balors, a little litch action for wraiths, and a smattering of other tough troops. Take out what I can and hunker down in the city, confidant I can take whatever they dish out. Stupid, stupid Shadow. I had a ranger nearby, but didn't think to take him to that town to help with defense. Lost one profane and one Litch to the bugger. Brought the ranger over, killed him, then found out I'd also just gotten Orthus' Ax. Wow...not bad for an AI. It was about the most efficient and devastating use it could have had on me.

Then there's what I'm calling (seriously, I put a little sign there that says so) the Field of Flies and Feathers. I'd got an army that was cutting to the west, razing a line of isolated hippus town, and an army that was amassing for taking out the minor annoyance slightly norther known as Bassium. He only had one town, so I figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I combine my northern armies and march on the place. He sends out a stack that, when hovered over, goes off the screen in unit descriptions. Right. Ring of Flames, attack with all sects of flies that have 96% or higher chance of victory, summon some wraiths and specters, now let's see how that stacks doing... Still goes off screen. What's that number down there? Why, it says 53.... Yup...53 angels (most of which at three stars or better) in this stack plus the rest. Oh crap...
Everything that was out of move I left for dead, fortifying with summons that had survived their attacks, and moved the rest of my units (riualists, mages, litches, Balor) over to a nearby fortress.
The guys that remained were wiped out to a man, but it was certainly an epic struggle. All in all, about 25 angels were killed, I lost maybe half that in wounded Sects. Move in next turn with more summons, more ring of flames, sects attacking, got the number down even lower. Another turn and I had the monstrous thing taken care of. Gack...never seen so many units. Then I check up on the other stacks that Bassium still has. There's one of 35 angels, a good 20 over there, and I'm not sure how many he's got in his capitol.... Geh...I need more Sects....
I called it a night there. I'm sure I can take it out...eventually... This is what I get for not taking them out sooner.

 

[Ecofarm]

Playing a bottom 5% start just because it is MP and then people take forever to click in. And then, when you finally have something that you might do something with, they have to go.

/thread

These unexpected losses to the AI are great games.

 

[PacoDeth]

Let's just say a game between friend and I, and 6 Computer AI. I have Runes and he has Order, we even manage to get a few races to take runes and SLOWLY spread it very early on. About mid game, EVERY single one of the computers switches to Leaves, it spreads like wildfire as someone just spams out the Leaves spreading units (sorry, can't recall their name). So in a few turns, everyone hates us.

On the plus side, I got Charadon to switch back to runes with me after tons of Thane spreading, and my friend got Janos of all people to switch to Order after he mistakenly went to war with us and go squashed. Decius and Falamar decide to declare war on us within a few turns apart, then about 5 turns later, about 4 or 5 more people go to war with eachother. Everyone just really hates everyone else all the sudden! So a very annoying game has turned into a quite interesting game.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

two turns left in the game I am ahead by about 500 points. Then the last turn the Svarts and the Lunan get a permanent alliance beating me by 4 points

 

[Caradoc]

It's about turn 160. My third city has just founded FOL and is building a Fawn. I also have a couple of well promoted Warriors and a Hunter. The reason the Warriors are doing so well is that the city is near a choke point where there must be several Barrows on the other side. For the last hundred turns, there's been a steady stream of Skeletons pouring thru and I've been shuttling warriors to a Forest/Hill to keep them at bay.

Thanks to my Parrot, I can now see five Skeletons lined up to come through. So I vacate the city to add the Disciple of Leaves to the Forest/Hill outpost and bring the Hunter home from her explorations. Just as I am feeling like I'm braced for the attack, Orthus appears. I figure its going to take the bad guys a few turns to break through, so I start to bring up reinforcements from my other cities, figuring they will arrive by the time Orthus does and by then I'll have finished the Fawn and got the Hunter home and maybe he'll be weakened enough to stop.

Then an Azer spawns right next to Orthus. Game, set, match.

 

[TheGreatSteve]

Playing as the Kuriotates, got some real nice city sites lined up. Capital has a bunch of food resources and a couple gold, my third city will have the Remnants of Patria, it's going well. So I start exploring the world around me. Then, from the north.

"Long has this tundra been ours to hunt, you think you can just claim it?"

From the east

"We shall be fast friends indeed, as long as you can afford it"

From the west

"Don't listen to the stories, we don't betray and kill ALL our allies"

Yeah. I've got ocean to my south, the Doviello to the north, Faeryl in the west, and the Hippus to the east. And the way the map is set up, none of them border each other.
Sure enough, Mahala rushes me. Bypasses my closest city for some reason, which gives me time to rush reinforcements in. I end up throwing back the attack, get a lucky Lucian kill, and persuade him to end the war. About 5 turns later, Faeryl declares and takes out a settlement, kills a bunch of my guys but can't take the cities. I finally manage to end the war. Things seem to actually be going okay, I'm planning a long-term strategy, it's great...
Then Tasunke declares. An absolutely massive stack of horsemen, he uses Warcry, and in 10 turns my empire is just gone.

 

[LetsBoogeyUp]

Yeah, those hippus are down right brutal...

 

[RogueThunder]

Although, this was Fall Further. I suppose it applies...

Started a game... Dont really remember who I was...

Pre turn 100, huge game standard # of computers, prince dificutly, raging barbs and barb world on... All but me and 2 AI dead. Most of the world was covered in barbarian cities...
Orthus entered the game and became a force of nature, aquiring sevral peices of OTHER equipment... *shudders*

Around turn 120, another computer fell. Then, the last around 144... I won the game by lasting the longest... >.< And that was pretty much cus the last two were protecting me by location...

All the game left me thinking was WTH?...O.o