Civ 3 GOTM#3 *Spoiler* talks

[Ripley]

My game is currently at 1685 AD. Hasn't gone particularly good, but it's a lot better than the last one where the Romans handed me my arse on a silver platter.

Built my capital where I landed and pumped out some warriors. Sent one north and one west, and one east. They found coast and then converged to find the Japs. Thought 'what the heck' and took them on. Easier than I expected it to be. Then proceeded to settle the area's in between.

Had no horses so I took on the Persians for theirs. End of Persian capital. Babylonians declared war as well. Made peace with them after wiping one city. They were about to attack one of mine with 20+ men. Continued to decimate the Persians before making peace. A small Persia is better for me atm than no Persia at all.

Finally got hold of chivalry and started pumping out Riders. Declared war on Babylonians and cut them down to size. France keeps getting bigger. Babylon and Persia go to war. England and France settling to close for comfort. England makes demands so we go to war. It's a quick end to their colonies on our continent and peace is made. I start just giving techs to the Indians. I think they are going to need them. Egypt disappeared long ago.

Babylonians take Persian city at choke point between France and everything else. France declares war on me. A quick end to their colonies near me follows, and I take the forementioned choke point city from the Babs. Persia is not making headway on the Babs so I send workers to build their lands up, effectively giving them iron and access to their immortals. Never done that before.

Start hording pikemen, musketeers, and riders in the choke point city as France sends forces numbering 50+ at it. Rush built walls. Frances rush is soon over with minimal casualties for me. My riders head in to their lands and start running amok on their improvements. France wants peace. Silly France. No peace for you.

England is doing the Indians over big time. They will become my main rivals.

Working my way towards frigates to keep England at bay. France and the Babs will be cut down to a small territory each and I shall leave them at that with no access to iron, horses, or saltpeter. The Persian capital will have to go eventually.

I'm finally seeing the benefits of taking my time and thinking through each step. In all, I'm enjoying this game very much. I'm #1 on the histograph, but want a domination victory.

To the dude who turned the English continent into a game reserve. Love it.

 

[ProPain]

Well, game's over and won for me in the great year 1645AD.

My last post ended in 500AD when I was fighting the Persians and the Babylonian's. The Persians were an easy kill since they had only 2 cities left. The Babylonians were a bit harder but when the war was halfway I discovered Chivalry which meant Riders

The Chinese riders quickly took the Babylonian cities and then only France was left on my continent. I got a right of passage agreement with them and after positioning my troops I took over 3 cities and razed Paris. Then the whole war slowed down. Joan tried to resettle Paris several times since it was her iron city, so i had to raze it a couple of times more. Besancon reverted twice, and in the end I razed it out of frustration. I had hoped to make peace with Joan to regroup, extort the last tech she had and maybe get another ROP agreement but she refused contact. Eventually I had to take France city by city. Even when my troops massed around her last city and she was down to her last defender she refused contact.

After the conquest of France it was 1385 AD already (time flies when you're having fun) and the English had managed to sent a gally over to my continent and founded a city on the icy plains south of Bejing. Hoping they woulnd't manage to get more troops over very quickly I let them be and started shipping my riders to the english/indian continent. They both gave me right of passage so I could take my time to position my troops. I also made it to cavalry so I positioned a troop of at least 4 units (riders and cavalry) next to all Indian cities and took out India in one turn

That left me and Elizabeth. I didnt have enoough units to take out England in one turn so I decided to go for the southern part and the important cities first. After a turn or 10 everone was in position and I took about two thirds of england. Feeling real good about myself I ended the turn thinking i could finish the whole game in 2 more turns. But then.. major disappointment.... Domination victory......

It felt like a kick in the groin. Having the ultimate feeling of conquest victory stolen from me really wasn't what I expected.

So thats a lesson learned for the future. Always watch your territory size. All things considered it was a great game to play and the first one i finish with a win for the gotm competition. Although it isn't a great score, it's a huge improvement over the the first two GOTM.

The game left me wondering though if it's possible to have more than 1 great leader at the same time. During this game(and all my other games I ever played on civ3) i never got a new great leader when I already had one. Only after using the one I had I'd get a new one. Does anybody know if it's possible to have multiple great leaders?

Thats that, on to GOTM4!

ProPain

 

[ProPain]

BTW I saw some really weird AI behaviour this game. after I razed some Indian cities which were surrounded by English territory a barb encampment sprung into existence. The english reacted by sending in a force of 50+ units! I loved it since they used all there offensive units for it and left all their cities with just 2 defensive units.

Has anybody seen this before? If so it makes for an interesting strategy. Raze some cities, wait for the barb camp and accompanying AI invasion, declare war, take his exposed cities.

ProPain

 

[Matrix]

I never saw Elisabeth I as a good stragegist, ProPain.

Anyway, I finished too. I mean, really: I'm finished. I'm done for. :slay:

The Persians were way too strong. When looking at the replay I know what went wrong. I just didn't expand fast enough. I was the smallest Civ the entire game. That's waiting for swift and clean kill.

I did some killing as well, though! Got the Japanese. Now these cities also belong to the Persians.

I guess I'll never learn this game.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by ProPain
But then.. major disappointment.... Domination victory......

Ouch, I feel for you ProPain! All that adrenaline and no place to go.

My vote, FWIW, would be to have domination victory disabled in future games. It is a pity. The comments in the GOTM#2 thread about enabling it, so that playing out to 2050 would not necessarily be THE way to get a max score, made a lot of sense. But now things look different to me...

The problem with the domination victory is that it is a fuzzy target. This might be ok when one is going for it, it seems not too bad to just have to keep taking land till you win. (Not great though, it isn't a clear goal that you can plan toward, and even when going for it, it would take you by surprise. There'd be no chance to savour the last few turns of homing in on victory.) The flip side, of wanting to NOT meet the condition, is worse. When you don't want it, you need to know how to avoid it. That was an ongoing worry for me through a large part of my game, not knowing whether I'd trip over it. And once I stopped growing I still wondered how much more land I could have taken, how much did I not have which was available?

In terms of going for the maximum score, I think that a normal size map is the only case where enabling Domination could make a difference. On a tiny or small map, early conquest is very likely to give the highest score. On a large or huge map, a 2050 win is very likely to win, even if Domination is enabled. (A large Panagea with the right layout might be an exception.) On most normal size maps my bet is that early conquest will win only if it is Panagea. I could well be proven wrong when the results for GOTM#3 are in of course. If I'm right, then enabling domination, in addition to the problems with it, still won't fully even up the scoring potential for early win vs. 2050. (Not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not commenting on whether that is a desirable principle, just on whether enabling domination would acheive it.)

I wonder if domination could be interesting as a goal on tiny and small maps? Might there be cases where it would be faster to acheive domination than conquest?

Custom maps might make a difference. I think that domination might be a fastest path to victory on a map (of any size) with a lot of tiny islands and a reasonably high difficulty level (at least Regent, might require Monarch.) With a setup like that it could well end up being faster to dominate than to conquer. And the maximum possible score by 2050 would be lower, giving more time for an early win bonus to be competitive. I don't think the random map generator would do for this particular case - Archipelago with 80% water still seems to generate fewer and larger connected land masses than I'm thinking of.

 

[SirPleb]

Since this is after all a spoiler thread ...

I got to wondering again just how close I was to domination in my game. I loaded a save file and experimented. The results are quite interesting and may explain why the domination formula has been so elusive.

By trial and error addition of cities I found that I had been very close to domination. But the tests were very confusing - I tried to refine the number by settling on chosen spots on peninsulas, to get the desired number of land tiles. Then the number of cities involved seemed to change the results! I started suspecting that water tiles do after all affect the result in some way.

Using just land tiles I learned that claiming 18 tiles more than my save game was ok, but taking 21 more triggered domination. I'd come too close for comfort. I couldn't easily refine the number further using just land tiles.

To test the water tile theory, after claiming 18 more tiles to be just under the limit, I gave the little island off the south coast of the main continent to the English. That removed roughly 45 tiles from my sphere of influence. I then settled additional land tiles to determine the new limit. I could now claim exactly 24 more tiles before triggering domination. 25 more was too many. So that meant that the island had counted as 22, 23, or 24 tiles in the total land count! (Not precise because the earlier part of the test had left an unknown number of 0, 1, or 2 tiles still being claimable.)

On looking around the island, I can see only one explanation which fits. The island's land, plus the surrounding coastal tiles, comes to 22 tiles.

Aeson, this could well explain the varying results you got. Suppose that the calculation includes coastal tiles and is after all a fixed percentage. When counting land tiles only, the percentage would appear to be higher than the fixed number, and the smaller the land masses, the larger the percentage would appear to be.

So here's what I think the formula really is:

threshold = 2/3 * total(land tiles + coastal tiles)

It might be 66% instead of 2/3, hard to guess.

And, in calculating how many tiles the player owns, the count is the number of land tiles + coastal tiles within the player's sphere of influence.

It may be that this is a bug. The Civilopedia says "of the world's land surface". Considering which units can move there, I can't seriously consider coastal tiles to be land surface. It seems likely that the program, when counting land tiles, has something like a "<=" test against tiletype instead of a "<".

Back to serious spoiler info: Based on what I claimed in the game and the above info, the threshold on this map can be viewed as follows. To be 1 tile under the limit, take all of the main continent including its coastal tiles, then take 51 additional land+coastal tiles off the continent. (Slight adjustment could be required depending on how much of the area around the little island just off the north coast falls within one's sphere of influence, compared with the amount I have.)

Thunderfall and Matrix: Just how carefully was this map created? (I apologize, I do not know who is the Creator Of The Map.) I wondered if it was carefully crafted when I started playing and my exploring warriors found no big food bonuses anywhere nearby. Was this map carefully made to reduce early pop rushing? Now it turns out that taking all of the main continent, plus just a little bit, will trigger domination victory. Random chance? But it would have taken a lot of work to make it this way!

 

[Matrix]

Originally posted by SirPleb
Thunderfall and Matrix: Just how carefully was this map created? (I apologize, I do not know who is the Creator Of The Map.) I wondered if it was carefully crafted when I started playing and my exploring warriors found no big food bonuses anywhere nearby. Was this map carefully made to reduce early pop rushing? Now it turns out that taking all of the main continent, plus just a little bit, will trigger domination victory. Random chance? But it would have taken a lot of work to make it this way!

Usually Thunderfall makes them. But I want to make them in the future. Basically, it doesn't matter. We look at what you want and what would be fun and we try to vary it. As well as the rules. GOTM II was without domination. (Thunderfall probably did that because he won with domination. ) Perhaps we'll disable two things next time. We'll see. (Teasing you is also virtue in this case...

)

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by DeltaV


I had the same problem! I had taken the main continant, and the English had the other one. I was building up my army and transports to make a massive invasion. I had most of the English navy bottled up in a 10x3 area, surrounded by my ironclads, destroyers and battleships (I hate those nusiance attacks on my improvements, so I wanted a quick victory over their navy). But a couple of turns before I was ready to invade, the game crashed. I even tried going back to my earliest autosave, but but it would crash every time at the same date. I had to start over. I'm running WinXP on a dualie Athlon system, and sometimes games mis-behave on SMP systems, so I figured that was it, but it still crashed if I forced civ3 onto a single processor.

Guys:

see here for an alternative to the go into anarchy work-around. I think that it crashes when trying to evaluate happiness of a city on the cusp of disorder. War weariness may have indirectly caused this.

 

[ainwood]

Well, finally finished my first GOTM on time - finished the last one too late.

Started off founding the capitol where we started. Built a warrior to go exploring, then an archer, then a settler. Founded Shanghai to the north on the coast. Then found the Japanese. Built a couple more archers, and then took out the japanese. Started building more settlers for expansion.

Found the Persians to the North. Saw that they had much-need horses under the capital, so promptly took that over. The persians were pretty week (no immortals yet), so I was happy just to defend. Occasionally they would found another city, and I go to war with them, take a city and demand another for peace. One such city I got was on the choke point between the trapidly expanding French and the Babylonians. Eventually got Riders and wiped out the Persians. Built the forbidden palace in kyoto. Built up a force of Riders with the intention of cutting back the french. I had them and the Babylonians at war, but with me controlling the choke point, the french couldn't get through. They had around 30 units taking a step into my territory, only to send them back when I threatened them. I built up forces in the choke city, and eventually attacked the French. In one turn, I had basically crippled them. Some knights got through, but the Babylonians mopped them up. I got a great leader, and used him to build a new palace in Susa, which was near the choke point, and central to the french and babylonian territories on which I had my eye.

By this time, I had cavalry, and started to take the French lands, mainly razing the cities. Kept one or two, and had some flip back (including Paris, which had 3 wonders including Adam Smiths). Eventually wiped out the French, and quickly resettled the land, although not before the Babylonians and English had dotted a couple of cities down.

Then I just went into harvest mode, building up all my cities with many captured and own workers, getting closer and closer to tanks. When I had tanks, I built up a reasonable number, and declared Blitzkreig on the Babylonians. Literally wiped them out in around 5 turns, altough again hampered by a couple of flips, as I didn't raze any cities, thinking that the blitzkreig would reduce the flipping.

Again, back to harvest mode, until I had modern armour. At this point, I landed four transport loads of modern armour on the english, and took their five main cities in the first turn. Decided to keep these, and raze the smaller cities. Had quite a few flips, but the english were cut off from resources, and the new defenders were riflemen (they did have infantry orginally). Wiped out the english in a few turns, and then went back to harvest mode. The indians started building inthe gaps where the english had been, but that didn't really concern me. The english had been the nearest rivals, and I was going to build for a spaceship in 2050.

Rush-built libraries and temples in the english cities to expand them, to reduce somewhat the opportunities for the indian expansion. Then wham! Domination victory. Doh!


Looking back, I was way to slow. Should have taken the French, and probably the Babylonians much earlier. Didn't take the french till around 1600s (I think) and the Babylonians til the 1900s. Left it far to late to reap the benefits, and hence I ended up with a fairly low score. Still, at least I'm on the board....

 

[FriendlyFire]

Some newbie Help please

I cannot get the replay to work? what gives it use to work but now it don't any more. Not in prefs hmmm Iam using 1.16f

Anways Luckly i read this. I want a cultural victory since domination is no fun.

P.S as of 1.16f culture defections are more likley as i found out to my cost. Damm I lost 12units to a defecting city that HURT !! I found the best way to supress cities is make sure everysingle one is HAPPY. Make as many entertainers as need. This greatly reduces cultural defections. (Has worked so far)

 

[Rhandom]

I forgot to submit for GOTM #2, a ral shame, because it would have been the highest scoring defeat :/

This one has gone well - got a settler off the first hut, took out japan in the first 30 turns with 2 warriors, and they respawned in the French area of other peoples games, hampering their growth. I got iron, and built a huge force of swordsmen to take out the persians, who repawn at the toe of my leg of the continent. Apparently with a bunch of troops, because they send up a nasty force of archers and cavalry which nearly takes my southernmost city. They fought off two groups of elite swordsmen before I took them.

In fact, turning elite seems to make my swordsmen more vulnerable to dying. I've lost 6 elite swordsmen to unfortified archers, and several dozen to regular troops of all sort. I'd say I've lost about 2x elite swordsmen as veterans.

Anyway, I take out babylon, then move against japan again. I had blockaded access across the ithmus between the two first continents, and the attack opens that up, causing the french to move 4 settler groups towards it. This put me in a quandry - I wasn't going to let them settle in my cleared out persian area, and really wanted to take their slaves, but I wasn't ready for a war with France quite yet.

So I laid the trap below for them using 3 troops and a city to hold them about 20 turns (200 years?) while I finished off japan (see next post for image). I kept thinking - what the hell would it be like to be born into the tenth generation of a group of settlers surrounded by enemy soldiers for 200 years? Anyway, I crushed them when starting the war with france, and now I have about 20 french slaves runing through my territories and being sacraficed to build up the formerly japanese cities.

I hope to eliminate the last resistance by 1000 AD, and am building a galley fleet to attack england before a naval war can erupt and while the riders still rule. With the great lighthouse, I can easily cross the ocean without caravels.

I'm just going to go for conquest or domination. The thought of micromanaging until a bug ruins my game isn't appealing.

 

[Rhandom]

heres the trapped settlers

 

[Genuis]

My game is almost finished...1750 AD and Gandhi has one city left...when I run into a bug.

It seems that at the end of one turn while the captured workers are doing their auto moves the game suddenly freezes and keeps switching back to the same two workers who don't move. Has anyone else run into this problem?

Anyway I might try your anarchy fix...

Helpful hints:

-The old Babylonian city of Uruk can build the Iron Works once you get it. I used my 2 Great Leaders to rush it and the palace and by now it is producing 66 shields per turn. It took just 7 turns to get the Military Academy (which is useless since it takes so long to get armies over to the other continent.)

-Heroic epic is definitely worth it. I got 2 leaders in 5000 years before it and probably 6 more in the 700 years after it.

-Start conquests early and don't stop your warmongering very much. I wasted at least 1000 years total when I could have been conquering the other continent.

Some weird things:

All the posts I read before said that England was hard to take out...I found it amazingly simple once I had conquered the Egyptians since I had the forces there anyway.

Gandhi was harder just because it is hard to move Cavalry over mountains which is basically his entire empire.

 

[ProPain]

Originally posted by Rhandom


In fact, turning elite seems to make my swordsmen more vulnerable to dying. I've lost 6 elite swordsmen to unfortified archers, and several dozen to regular troops of all sort. I'd say I've lost about 2x elite swordsmen as veterans.

I've had the same experience/feeling too. I did some tests on it. Took an old game an fought untill my elite unit lost a battle. Usually you don't have to wait that long for this to happen. Then reloaded and used a veteran from the same square to attack the same unit. More often than not this one will win the battle.

A better test will be to take an old game and attack a unit with an elite unit, score result, reload and attack same unit with a veteran one and score that result too. Then continue and do the same for a 100 battles or so. I never tried that because it's too time consuming. BUt even without this more scientific test I still think there's some bug with elite units fighting.

When I have choice fighting a battle with a veteran or an elite unit I always use the veteran (seems strange I know). For the same reason I always upgrade my elite units too. In my opinion being veteran is better than elite. Only drawback is you won't get great leaders from veteran units but I don't seem to get that many of them anyway.

BTW Speaking of great leaders. Still don't know if you can get more than one great leader at the same time. Has anyone had a second great leader before he used his first one?

ProPain
:flamedevi

 

[SirPleb]

I don't remember every having two Great Leaders at the same time. But that doesn't necessarily mean much in my case, I tend to use them quickly.

I haven't noticed an imbalance in odds with elite units. I like to get as many Great Leaders as possible and I play to maximize the odds of getting them. It seems to work, I feel like I get a good number of them in most games. (At a guess, 3 to 5 on a normal size map, with conquest proceeding fairly quickly, no monster drawn-out wars. With long term wars I'd expect to get more.)

To maximize the odds of getting Great Leaders I play like this:

1) After the first few moves, never build regular units. All fighting units are built in towns with Barracks. Seems like a good idea anyway, regardless of going for leaders.

2) Keep elite units in the front lines of battle. Use veterans to guard towns behind the lines.

3) With very rare exceptions, always fully heal units before fighting with them again. Using an elite with 3 hit points (in effect, using it as a regular) is I think a terrible waste of a chance to have good odds with a 5 point elite. I let the battle move a bit more slowly, the enemy will still be there a few later and he probably won't use those turns as effectively.

4) When odds are not great in a particular fight, and I have a choice, I use veterans first, then elites when the odds improve. I tend to attack with stacks of units - single units on many fronts are, I think, much less effective than a small number of stacks. As a side effect I often have a choice in my stack as to whether to fight first with an elite or a veteran. I use the elite first only if odds are well in my favor. Where I draw the line varies depending on other factors relating to overall position, sometimes I draw it at 3:1 in my favor, sometimes at 2:1. This is perhaps an unusual technique, I don't know if anyone else uses it. It is based on my thinking that the chance of getting a leader changes what might otherwise be the obvious best approach. I want Great Leaders! (It also assumes that I can produce veteran units at a reasonable pace and that I am in overall control of the war.) As an example, suppose I am attacking, with Swordsmen, a town on hills defended by a fortified veteran Spearman, everyone with full health. And I have a choice whether to use a veteran or elite Swordsman. The elite Swordsman has a 55% chance of winning. The veteran has a 42% chance. In this situation I'll start with the veteran. Odds are slightly in favor of him dying but if so, odds are that he has softened up the defense a bit, improving the elite's subsequent odds. If the veteran wins there's a chance he'll upgrade to elite and be more useable in subsequent battles. One must remember that all of these events are not based on huge probability margins - just as the veteran sometimes wins and upgrades to elite, sometiems the veteran is used and just dies without softening the defense, and sometimes even strengthens the defense by upgrading it. Not to worry, keep doing it, overall the odds seem to come out right.

5) When odds are good in a fight (so the decision in the previous note doesn't apply), I use elites first at every opportunity. Use them first when attacking towns. Also use them to take cheap shots at passing units when possible. E.g. if the other Civ is sending some units past my advancing forces to hit my cities. Even if my cities are well defended, I sometimes send an elite unit off my general attack plan by one step (usually no more than one step) to attack a weak unit and get yet another 1/16th chance of getting a leader. When another Civ is nearly beaten, before taking their last city or cities, I'll delay a couple of turns if there are weak wandering remnants of their army, and if I can reach those units with some of my elite units. Those last wandering enemy units represent chances at getting a great leader which will be gone once the other Civ is wiped out.

With all that fighting with elites, I can't honestly say that I have felt that things come out (overall) any different from the expected odds. Of course sometimes elites lose fights where they had very good odds. I'm fighting high odd fights often enough with them that I expect to lose a bunch of them. 4:1 is great odds, but it still does mean that I'll lose one elite unit every 5 times I fight at those odds!

I'm not saying that there isn't a bug somewhere which makes the odds come out wrong in play! There could well be one which is hits other style of play hard, I don't know. I'm just saying that in my experience with my style of play it does feel like the odds come out about like they are supposed to.

 

[Squiggy]

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that Veteran units are actually better in combat than elite units. The "real-world" explanation for this was that elite units become cocky, overconfident and spoiled.

So it makes sense to keep the Veterans on the front lines rather than elites. The downside to this is that you don't get quite as many great leaders.

One possible strategy would be to put veterans on the front lines and rotate them out once they gain elite status. You will eventually be left with a good deal of unharmed elite units, which you can throw at your enemy's weaker units and (hopefully) get several great leaders in a short time.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Matrix

We look at what you want and what would be fun and we try to vary it. ... Teasing you is also virtue in this case

Absolutely, teasing us with it is great! All we know so far about the next one is the English. (Hmm, so Great Lighthouse triggering Golden Age is probable. Can't think of other obvious consequences so far...)

Since you factor what we want into it, here are some thoughts from me FWIW:

I'd prefer not to have small (or tiny) maps in general. I like a longer game. The big problem with small maps, I think, is that very rapid conquest becomes THE path to maximum score - the game may not even reach the Middle Ages. And on many such maps I think that luck in early attacks and exploration, good or bad, can have too much impact.

I'd love to see a medium size or larger map where early conquest was the goal. I.e. a map where conquest is what we are trying for, but conquest would require a long campaign, at least into the Industrial Ages. I don't think this is possible without adding a customized scoring system - the built-in score in any such game would favor playing it out to 2050. I don't have an opinion on whether having a game of this type is so desirable that it merits introducing an external scoring system.

As I mentioned in an earlier note, I'd like Domination to be disabled in future games. It seems to me to just not work well as a factor.

One thought for something different: It might work to have a small map where the only enabled victory conditions are spaceship, culture, and retirement. Take conquest right out of the picture, so that the only ways to get an early win bonus require longer term planning and effort. (Disable UN because it does not require these.) By my (very rough!) calculations, on a small map with 80% water, the bonus for a win before the mid to late 1800's has a chance at beating a retirement win at 2050. I'm not sure whether spaceship/culture by that date on such a map are viable goals, anyone have thoughts on this?

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by ainwood

see here for an alternative to the go into anarchy work-around. I think that it crashes when trying to evaluate happiness of a city on the cusp of disorder. War weariness may have indirectly caused this.

Thanks ainwood. I think you are right - unhappiness in some city seems to be the key. I rechecked my crashable 2049 and there are a couple of cities which pop up with revolting people before the crash. Strangely, zooming to the revolting cities shows the laborers to be 100% happy. It is as if there has been a sudden huge fluctuation in hormone levels which threw them for a loop. Setting entertainment to 100% didn't help in my case. Finding the right city would be quite a chore due to the large number of cities...

 

[Rhandom]

"With all that fighting with elites, I can't honestly say that I have felt that things come out (overall) any different from the expected odds. Of course sometimes elites lose fights where they had very good odds. I'm fighting high odd fights often enough with them that I expect to lose a bunch of them. 4:1 is great odds, but it still does mean that I'll lose one elite unit every 5 times I fight at those odds! "

I think the odds are a great deal lower than that. The odds of losing a single exchange are 4:1, but the odds of losing 5 exchanges in order to die are extremly small. Especially if you are fighting regular units.

I hit a really bad run of numbers where I lost a lot of elite swordsmen to regular archers when I was attacking- a few on hills, but none fortified. In contrast, I lost zero veteran swordsmen to defense 1 regulars the entire game, unless they were on mountains. Could be a bug though, god knows theres enough of them.

 

[Rhandom]

Oh, finished the game, 1305 conquest. I invaded the second continent in about 1050, right when I got caravels. Started with england, then took out egypt and india at the same time with well excuted inchon landings to avoid some of the worst mountain travel.

The computer played a dirty trick on me, the egyptians respawned with 2(!) settlers on the far north (where I had simply destroyed the english tundra cities). I know they had no boats, I kept a blockade against their triremes, and hadn't seen one in 10 turns. Just to be sure, I went to the earliest autosave after finishing the game, when egypt had no cities, and explored the area thoroughly by land and sea - no egyptians. They simply were given free stuff in 1290AD as their last city fell. I expect that nonsense early inthe game - in fact, I think it gave me an advantage when the japanese respawned in the french area, inhibiting their growth from what other people said they had to deal with.

But to delay the game's end after everything was already done - that's just annoying.