[BTS] BOTM 195: Julius Caesar, Always-War - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[Tobiyogi]

All you needed for this game was praetorians and catapults (and some longbows/axes for stack and city defense) and I guess a conquest win in the early AD's would be possible - in particular if attention is paid to choking in the BC's.

I would have never expected that such an early conquest victory is possible, but if I look back to my game, I must admit that all the civs which I had succesfully choked were staying at 1-2 cities. So going in and conquering a civ can be done much easier and faster than usually. But I see it only in retrospective... During my game, i was playing a "normal" game, keeping on the research, building infrastucture, and then going for conquest slowly by slowly....

 

[ZPV]

Nice game, Mitchum!

If I were to play the game again, I would settle a city in the desert to get iron and Praets online ASAP. Once you have Praets, Conquest is fairly trivial, especially if you've choked and worker-stolen the four nearby AI. Don't forget, the sooner you hit 'em, the weaker they are. The four nearby AI had been denied access to metal and horses (the other four had them) and all of the AI were a LONG way from longbows so I only faced archers, axes, a couple of swords and a handful of chariots and spears.

I think a game that focused on getting iron hooked up ASAP could finish before 500 BC. This is what ZPV was suggesting here ( ZPV):


Praets and cats cost about the same but Praets can come much sooner so you can kill 'em all with their pants down while the inept AI try to survive the raging barbs.

Exactly - my longbows captured Karakorum, which has Iron, in 3xxx BC. So I had it hooked up there at around 2000BC, and a road built back to Rome shortly afterwards.
If you find them both early, and win two 65% battles (or level up on the barbs so the odds are better), you could get Karakorum and London, and just reduce the amount of work you have to do to win.

Unfortunately I thought I still had to tech for a long game (i.e. building more wonders, trying to generate a GS, etc), so I tried to get cute in my war against England by attacking with not quite enough units. I lost a lot of time that way.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I would have never expected that such an early conquest victory is possible, but if I look back to my game, I must admit that all the civs which I had succesfully choked were staying at 1-2 cities. So going in and conquering a civ can be done much easier and faster than usually. But I see it only in retrospective... During my game, i was playing a "normal" game, keeping on the research, building infrastucture, and then going for conquest slowly by slowly....

Almost everyone made the mistake of erring on the side of caution (maybe the pandemic is making us all risk averse except @Mitchum who has clearly gone rogue inspired by his orange leader ). The extra advantages (raging barbs, two longbows, great people) and the level (Monarch) clearly made this game a lot easier than expected.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

I never played AW before - so I played many test games before this BOTM. Some of them, especially the ones when I was trying to pull some Great Artist or Great Spy shenanigans, where like we were warned of - endless stacks of units arriving, parking in my territory in forrest I did not manage to chop yet and staying there forever . I noticed that actually games that seem tough - with AIs starting very near and a chance of loosing capitol quickly - were actually the easiest, since AIs were easy to harass. Games with AIs starting far away, with me e.g. at the end of hot dog shape Pangea were the worst - AIs were too far to harass them efficiently and after peaceful early game endless stack begin to arrive and all I was doing was defending, limited to 3 cities Part of the problem was that to make sure that my test games are not too easy I made most tiles not visible in a screenshot dessert

After these grueling trial games I decided that the real game will be long and grueling, in some of the attempts I even was developing an espionage economy to steal an Iron Working, starting to set it up at turn 130 So I decided that to recover economically from these brutal attacks - and to see what is coming - I really need a Great Spy, so I prioritized building a Great Wall in the second city before T75, to make sure my 2nd GP will be a Great Spy. Well, the real game was an opposite to what I was expecting - I never even got the 2nd GP and really regretted not putting GWall together with Stonehenge and would actually love another GPriest and GSpy would be absolutely useless ( and I normally love them, my favorite GP probably).

So what happened? Almost nobody harassed me, like in my test games, where LB had to escort the worker and protect key improvements most of the time. So I was becoming braver and braver, venturing further away and harassing AIs more. Looks like those things are luck depended, iirc I stole most workers (2) from Lizzie. She was not following a religious path and although I attacked her earlier than Mitchum had already 2 cities (maybe started to build settlers since workers were stolen? ). Since thinks are going well and harrassed nearby AIs acted rather helpless I decided to forgot it is supposed to be a scary AW and just tried to play Rome - beelining IW. Earlier, I connected copper but did not build a city there to be flexible with my another settler and even delayed it a bit to coordinated with IW - and got rewarded, Iron was connected early . Anyway, since it was early on it took me a while to build a Praet stack and once it was ready, I was not too far from cats, so decided to wait for the. So I am not sure if connecting Iron early was crucial, since I was relying on cats heavily. Anyway, from then things became - easy I was even thinking that I should change my early game and always harrass AIs like that - and then I remembered that I am normally not starting with 2 Longbows

I kept building units and killing AIs one by one - that part was easy What was not easy was the temptation to build wonders, research techs, build economy, etc. But nevertheless, I persevered

Around turn 120-130 I realized I am doing really well. Indeed, when I checked dates now, some of the early AIs, I killed them even earlier than Mitchum! But of course later I got complacent and was not managing my army that well, so I finished well into the ADs, ~220AD iirc. Anyway, I never had that many cities by 1AD - given it was Epic, but still. Most of the game felt like I was in a zone - so I am really curious how my score would compare. I normally play for the highest score and was typically taking domination victories, since at later time they are faster than conquest and more flexible. Here, it was my first conquest win. And apparently I have an until recently well-hidden for AW.

But if your experience was different - like advertised never-ending unit stack arriving in your territory - do not feel bad. This game seem to be very non-linear, gravitating toward one of too extremes - either you managed to choke and quickly kill some AIs, while still underdeveloped - or you let them run away and then things were snowballing and getting out of control quickly. Like in most of my test games

 

[Fine_Distinction]

Contender save, 220AD conquest.

Butcher's bill: (sorry don't know how to put it in spoilers)

Note that it was not that bloody at all - produced way too many praets, most never reached the battleground even .

All it took is just 12 killed prates and 17 cats! I am still amazed , I definitely played it somehow above my normal level: I had 28 workers at the end, I built just 2 . I was very lucky worker stealing this game, normally I suck at it. On the other hand, since I was trying to keep it elegant and surgical, not bloody and brutal is probably why I did not finish even earlier

 

[undead]

The conquest started with praetorians, then catapults (not that many) and a few elephants.
The enemy didn't bring catapults for a long time. Later, longbows appeared.
Trebuchets joined the conquest which ended suddenly with domination at 1320AD.

 

[kcd_swede]

It took me 3 tries, but I finally won this one. Of course, I submitted my first (incomplete retired) game, which was going OK up until the French got ahead in tech. Then when a stack of artillery showed up aganst my cannons... I rage quit. In that game, I did Great Wall pretty quick, the Pyramids, and Oracled for Civil Service. Specialists kept my tech rate up, but I was too greedy trying to keep too many cities I captured. Razing them is the way to go, since the AI spends more resources on settlers which are easily picked off, and your own army doesn't get spread out on defense.

In my winning try (#3) I used pretty much the same strategy, except I took out England with the longbows, then used the longbows to pillage and harass the AI... as well as gain map knowledge. That worked much better, along with razing all cities that could be attacked from more than one direction, no matter how juicy they were. The east cities could build stuff, Rome built units, and others whipped down to the ground for support units. Catapilts, Praets, and war elephants mostly. Nobody got even close to feudalism before I won Domination pre-1000AD. OK, prior map knowledge let me be more aggressive with the LB's than I dared in my official attempt. Live and learn!

Thanks for a fun game... and thanks to Covid I actually played it until I won and was able to learn from my mistakes (unlike my normal play). Oh... and don't mention my 2nd try... I call that experimental. Best to stick to what you know.

 

[WastinTime]

Thank you for a very memorable game. It was a wild ride.
My goal, the 'impossible':

Religious/Diplo Victory (?)
How did that go?

looking for that elusive, 4-tile island that can support 2 cities as my vassal.

A 4-tile island large enough to support 2 cities is needed to create a colony. As I said in pre-game that derivative Civ for Rome would be Justin.
I beat down everyone by 1AD and searched the corners of the map.

No island big enough.
Game Over

Game over? not so fast, evil map-maker. I had a backup plan.

Spoiler Capital :

Yep, just after 1AD I moved my Palace to an island. It had 1 forest so it took a while to build.

Spoiler Welcome.... :

And that was my entire empire:
1 population

I gave my entire mainland to Justin

Things I knew were gonna happen:
1) +10 diplo for freeing him
2) -3 DoW, -3 War spoils relationship which grows to -8 = (-11 total)
3) after I get my cities back, i'll get -1 'war is going badly for us' diplo
4) Plan was to get +7 shared religion, +5 civics, +3 shared war.

Learned a few things.
1) You can't get shared war diplo with someone you're at war with, so scratch that.

2) Justin is forced to DoW the entire world (except me), and then I DoW him
Nice, but I don't get the shared war bonus, and they eventually make peace.

3) Justin gets all my cities with ALL my culture
So I have to attack my old 60% defense capital.

4) My units don't teleport out of his culture when I automatically DoW.

I disconnected all my metals so every city (I had about a dozen) is defended by 2 of Justin's warriors

With 1 population, I was paying massive unit costs and supply costs (like -150gpt)

I was planning to move chariots on roads to attack cities in revolt. But none were. Culture prevented me from moving, so I couldn't retake all my cities on the same turn I created Justin. And he could start whipping more defenders!

I left Justin a city and got mine back...
Panic! I still had to fight Japan a bit so I couldn't go into STRIKE,
but I was losing over 100 gold/turn because now I had 1 capital city and one gigantic colony with colony expenses.

Not only that, but... All my cities are in revolt now!
Panic again! I get massive 'yearn for motherland' anger, so everyone is so angry they're starving and no one can build much wealth.

Quick! rebuild the palace on the 'big island'.
But I don't have any forests left at my old capital and everyone is angry!
I put the Palace in a different city that had 2 forests. It still takes a while to build.

Also, I settled a city down south for silver+fur. I needed that happiness!
So instead of leaving Justin there, I take it.
It autorazes! at size 1. I forgot it never grew. I just worked the silver mine.

Disaster hits!
Justin gives me -2 'you razed one of our cities' diplo hit.

I'll never get him Friendly now.
Game Over

Or is it?
The good news is, I'm not going for any speed record here. So I have a few hundred turns to figure something else out.
To be continued....

 

[Fine_Distinction]

Wow, sounds impressive - thank you for the report!

Thank you for a very memorable game. It was a wild ride.
My goal, the 'impossible':

Religious/Diplo Victory (?)
How did that go?

[..]

I disconnected all my metals so every city (I had about a dozen) is defended by 2 of Justin's warriors

[..]


Disaster hits!
Justin gives me -2 'you razed one of our cities' diplo hit.

I'll never get him Friendly now.
Game Over

Or is it?
The good news is, I'm not going for any speed record here. So I have a few hundred turns to figure something else out.
To be continued....

My favorite part so far was disconnecting metals - so that J's cities are protected by warriors only.

Hoping you will figure out a way to an "impossible win" - you can do it

 

[WastinTime]

Religious/Diplo Victory (?) Part II

It's too bad I was so focused on re-building my Palace to stop colony maintenance.
Cus now I have to do it all over again.
This time, I don't have a forest to chop on the island.
I have to build the Palace at 5/turn. That's with the OrgReligion bonus.
I use the whip overflow of a scout (kill him), and then 1-pop whip the Palace to completion.
My capital is Ravenna (again) (see image in Part I)

But in the meantime, I had researched Code of Laws and whipped courthouses everywhere.
I also built up about 3000 gold waiting for the Palace to complete. I'm in no rush.
Disconnect metals again.
Position my axes & preats right next to my cities (cus I learned they won't teleport)

This time, I plan to leave 2 cites that shouldn't give me '-1 close borders' (which is another neg mod I had going with Justin)

Grant Independence!

Spoiler Who did I get? :

Sweet
I start at +5 Pleased. (10 for independence + 1 for first impression - 3 Dow -3 War spoils relations)

I will quickly get -1 war going badly and -5 more on War spoils relations.

I should be able to get +12 Friendly by adding +8 religion +5 shared civic (Theocracy).

Should be a breeze, right?
Zara takes my religion and Theocracy as expected.
After a while, makes peace with Toku & Isabella (yeah, I kept her alive in a size 1 city for unknown, emergency reasons. What if raging barbs captured Toku's cities?)

I see that Zara starts with like +6 first impression with Isabella . Then eventually will get +8 religion. +1 peace +1 OB, etc. IIRC, they were at +18. Given the choice, Zara would vote for her.
No problem, I'll keep her at size 1 and my opponent will be Toku.

Well, Toku is piling up the +diplo too. It looks like he will have +12 Friendly too.

I need a Plan B
Ok, how about I move Zara to a Confucian city, then he will have to drop Christianity. I can do Confu also and now the AI won't share religion with him. It just means that our votes will not be doubled.
But I have way, way too many votes anyway.

Check the fine print. It's easy to forget: I have to get out of Theocracy in order to be able to spread a non-state religion. I've got no problem with anarchy, take OrgRel to be able to do a missionary.
Whip a settler.
Don't forget to grow the city to size 2 before letting Zara take it so it doesn't autoraze (like before)

I try to tease out a catapult or something with worker bait. He comes out of the city, but won't bite
Retreats. So, This time I block him from returning, force feeding him my worker. Then to be safe, another one. Finally, next to the city, get captures it. I re-take my Christian cities.

Oh, right. Zara is in Confu alright, but now he's not a member, so no vote can be called to win.
I'm also concerned he will just switch back to the AP religion and Toku instantly jumps to +12 again.

I need a Plan C
Holy War!
While still Christian and Zara now Confu, we get a vote to have ALL christians DoW the infidel Zara.
No new neg mods for me. But Izzy and Toku DoW Zara. He no likey that.

I switch civics again (and back) to make another Confu missionary. Spread that to the last Christian city Zara owned. Why?
I believe that with 2 confu cities and 1 christian, he won't switch out of Confu.
I wait for him to get a couple archers, and do the 'corral thing' to lead him to the target city.

Even in Confu (no vote doubling) I have to whip 6 population and put avoid growth on about 5 cities.
(I need to be less than 75% so my vote alone won't get me victory.) I need Zara's one vote.

Alright, I got my pop low enough to call for a vote! It's 1495AD if that matters.
I have 29, and 30 are required to win (note: that # can change between turns, and the vote is canceled in some cases). Luckily I'm nowhere near a Time Victory yet

Spoiler Results are in... :

 

[Mitchum]

@WT Nice working getting a Diplo win in an Always War game. Sounds like it was a lot more challenging than you expected but you still pulled it off.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

wow, was not easy - but you did it!

my head just spins from reading all these diplo machinations - but it is highly enjoyable This game, I kept it very simple - just