Can someone do better here? (Brennus IMM)

[Pengu]

until 1770 AD
Sigh, I am just getting bogged down getting nowhwere. You'd think 40 cavs and 40 artillery would do something. But with julius having over 100 units in 2 stacks it becomes hard. And then he belines combustion so I can't send much reiinforces. Doesn't matter he doesn't have infantry or artilley when he has endless supply of units or that he wins half the fights are 35-40%. If he was the only one left i might pull it off but by the time I get him Hatchet and Sulieman will be in space
1806 AD
FINALY took a city so he's down to 19. This what happpens when an AI gets to expands as much as it wants. Just to give a picture as to what it took to gain this ONE city:
Roman units killed: 98 cavalry, 43 riflemen, 15 curassiers, 23 artillery, 17 anii tank,8 pretorians, 4 pikemen, 4 war elephants and 3 longbowmen. And with railroads he just slams into my stack over and over again.
Until 1868
F After I took some of Julius core cities his unit spaming finally stopped. My economy is crippled now cause of war weariness and emanipation and I just thought I would cap if I took outhis vassal Gengis[. But even down to 9 cities(while I have 32) he refuses to give up. Meanwhile Suleiman has modern armor and mech infantry and everything else. He will win space soon enough BUT what is even more worrying is hatchet who stopped teching after Industrialism and went culture. She's 40 turns away from winning which means I have to cap Julius as quickly as possible, If I can stop her I might cicken out and get a diplo win :/it is such a pain to fight modern armor and mach inf with tanks and artillery.../ISPOILER]

 

[Pengu]

1880 AD loss
Well, Julius just refused to cap yo me. I have no clue why as he was down to 4 cities. hen my treaty ran iut with Sulieman and Julius peacevassaled to him. Then hatchet built the UN which made it impossible to win diplo as she liked me but Suleiman would not vote for me. If Suleiman had built the UN her votes would had been enough to win. And I can't conquer the UN now while at war with Suleiman. I took 16! cities from Julius and took out his vassal and he just refused to cap. Haven't seen that before...Also love it when the continents are made so one civ gets almost 20 cities and the other 2 gets 4 and 5.

 

[sampsa]

Someone create a non-BAT save so we can enjoy CPK demolishing the map!

 

[lymond]

wb save

 

[antimony]

Thank you @lymond ! How to do that for future reference?

 

[lymond]

Thank you @lymond ! How to do that for future reference?

Well, one first needs to be able to open the save. Pengu is using the BAT mod which I always use anyway. I opened the save in BAT > Open WorldBuilders > Click the Save button.

 

[sampsa]

Need to remember to add archery to barbs, also.

 

[Deaf Metal]

Thank you @lymond ! How to do that for future reference?

This version of the bug/bull mod can load bat saves: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/taurus.677586/

 

[Fippy]

@Pengu the most common reason for cap refusal are weak vassals with no army, and leftover Civs with very few cities.
AIs compare their own strength to all others combined..and think they are still fine (ofc they are not really thinking..it's all code ).

 

[sampsa]

T50

Spoiler :

Fast, sloppy play, but I think it's decent. Agri-AH-arch-min-BW-(fishing) Lost the scout, so went archery just to be safe, also because I really wanted that cows+gold spot as 3rd city. Would be too risky with warriors I think. 2 warriors can spawn bust south, now sending 3rd warrior there to allow coast scouting. 3 archers ready to push north. Will overflow+chop to a boat in 2nd city so it can scout the east. If there is seafood, want to settle it asap (need galley obv). I think 4th will go 3S of cap to claim crabs, unless better spot up N. Land isn't that horrible, there is plenty of (also due to CHA), can go aesth for marble wonders (some fail gold obv).

 

[Pengu]

@Pengu the most common reason for cap refusal are weak vassals with no army, and leftover Civs with very few cities.
AIs compare their own strength to all others combined..and think they are still fine (ofc they are not really thinking..it's all code ).

Well, he had no vassals and had not much army left. I had 30+ cities and 60-70 units. I had killed over 200 units and he had 4-5 cities left. And then he just peacevassaled instead

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Spoiler T124 :

Thanks @lymond for creating the save!

My reasoning about a no food, isolated map is to create food support (i.e. Great Library) or hard commit to writing early.

So with the marble sitting there, I elected for:

T50: Agriculture, AH, Mining, Masonry, Polytheism, Priesthood. Let's assume getting Aesthetics --> Great Library is the solid long run play.

Skipped across to the gold and cow first. Two sentries to the south suffice, and 3 warriors + a scout are working to clear the top. Paying less on maintenance by keeping cities empty thanks to charismatic. My target is Oracle --> Aesthetics, and say screw it, I don't have enough tiles to cottage yet anyways.

T83: Arrived at Literature. Cities settled, 1 for growth, 1 for happiness. 1680 BC Oracle sounds reasonable on Immortal...

T115 - 1 AD check-in. First great person was a scientist from city 3, and built an academy. Second great person was a prophet.. at ~50%. 3rd great person was a scientist at 80%. Thinking about taking a golden age to get to Optics faster. Moderate amount of failgold from Temple of Artemis.

T124: Arrived at Optics, using the golden age. Expected T129 4th great person. Kind of having bad luck on fail gold - I've got nearly the full build for Parthenon and Statue of Zeus in my capital. Someone got a general in a far away land not too long ago, so overall this is promising. Going to read spoilers now.

 

[antimony]

Spoiler :

I tried settling at the same location as OP because I would have probably made that mistake as well, not having read the comments. Definitely slower than what the others have done above, the best path I figured was:
- Fishing while starting worker, then stopping to build a boat, then resuming worker while researching Mining;
- worker out, improving gold, researching AH and starting a settler at size 2
- with AH improving plains cow, when that's done stop settler to grow to 3, then back to settler, researched BW before Agri and Masonry, but that was probably a mistake, even though it only delayed improving wheat by a turn.

Settled wheat-marble city then much later (I think around T60) cow-gold to the west, got Oracle->MC on 1200 BC which is pretty late (shockingly no wonder at all was built until Stonehenge 1 turn before my Oracle).

Despite the starting gold, tech path was the limiting factor here for Oracle->MC since you need BW and Pottery. If I had had @CarpoolKaraoke's idea I could have got Oracle->Aesthetics around 1500 BC probably, though I still needed the Wheel due to capital not being on the river. Also going that route I would have delayed city 3 to around T70.

Anyway, that's much more of an academic exercise than a serious attempt at this map, since we already know SIP was much better in this case.

 

[antimony]

Well, he had no vassals and had not much army left. I had 30+ cities and 60-70 units. I had killed over 200 units and he had 4-5 cities left. And then he just peacevassaled instead

Comment here is relevant:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...mechanics-of-capitulation.364486/post-9187360


Basically it's not only you vs. them but how they compare to the average power rating of all Civs left on the map even vassal Civs that typically have low power, that's what @Fippy meant I think.

Also Julius resists capitulation higher than the average leader, not sure where in the calculation that part shows up though.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Spoiler T134 :

Played on to astronomy. I think this game is a wrap - I've gotten some ideal conditions to work with here:

First of all, everyone I've meet is in the stone age. No one has currency.

I suspect it's because of the map generation and holy war. Julius Caesar is in a nominal 1v2 against Montezuma and Genghis and winning. He has 10 cities compared to 6 for Montezuma and 4 for Genghis.

Shaka and Hatshepsut are likely isolated from the rest of the world, seeing as they are worst enemies and have no open borders. So effectively, every civ is playing as if on isolation?

Demographics indicate perhaps the majority of AI do not have land...

 

[sampsa]

@CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

I like it very much that you wanted the cow+gold spot so much that you claim it with 2nd city! Was impossible for me due to lost scout, which can have huge consequences.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

@CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

I like it very much that you wanted the cow+gold spot so much that you claim it with 2nd city! Was impossible for me due to lost scout, which can have huge consequences.

Spoiler :

Yeah! I think it's a pretty good deal - settling cow+gold vs double floodplains is a net +5 in commerce, counting trade routes and maintenance costs. This seemed key to funding up to Priesthood.

It also allows for a 7-turn advance horizon on incoming barbarians at a very cheap cost of 45 hammers (3 total warriors + original scout). Which, after building 2 more warriors, saves the 97 beakers + production required for Archers.

 

[Gumbolt]

Key thing about cow/gold site is fog busting. If you cram a lot of cities near capital you need a good 7 or so units to help clear barbs. Settling in place is a great production capital for wonders/settlers. If you can beat the AI to cuirs then capturing AI cities won't be hard. Limitation will be number of cities on a small land mass.Not all AI will be spamming to 10-13 cities. So there should be some manageable targets. Colonial costs will be a pain outside of state property.