Civ 3 GOTM 7 *Spoilers* Thread

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Regordete
But I think getting out of that bottle neck is a key to doing well on this map. The trouble is, by the time you see you're in a bottle, the Russians have already corked it.

I agree with your analysis. Fortunately, the Iroquois are expansionist. I built two scouts and this is what happened. Notice I still haven't headed north, but will let a warrior do that as it will probably deadend in tundra and ice mountains. Well, I was half right.

The scouts will split up, one heading east and one west. I found the chokepoint in 3300bc and met the Russians in 3150bc.

 

[Elfi Wolfe]

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee
Hi Elfi,

Your game sounds fairly similar to mine, as far as similar goes at this level.

Wish your luck on your end game war, I think it would have been pretty dicey for me to have survived as long as you have.

CB

I did well with the japanese, they are far away on an island so my little navy was able to stop them and with 3 transports landing on a island I got 2 of their Cities before I asked for peace.


now it is 1770

And the Persian just declared war. First invasion is 80+ units. my whole army is only about 100 units.
So I have no choice but to order a nuclear strike against the invasion force.

I expect a world war and the death :skull: of most of my Civilization.
:mutant:

to bad the scores are :
Iroquois 3227
Rome 2759
Japan 2646
England 2561
Persia 2473
Egypt 2361
Russia 1070 dead
Germany 422 dead

PS. I have never used a nuclear weapon in Civ3 so now I get to find out how much they have changed from Civ2.

PPS. is there an award for the most radaited planet? from spys I guess there is about 100 nukes between everyone.

[Image edited by Thunderfall. Please crop away those white spaces in your image in the future. ]

 

[Elfi Wolfe]

This is for the player who hasn't used Nuclear weapons.

about 50-70% of military units die.
The Footprint looses all improvements, becomes worse terran, and are poluted (grassland to plains, plains to desert).
Cities are reduced 50%.

The civ affected, (by land, or unit hurt) will then use nuclear weapons, even again a nation that didn't use nuclear weapons.

All non-aliagn Civs declare war. (so if you are planning to use nukes, get all non-align civs to be in an alliance vs the civ you are going to attack.

GOTM

Use 2 nukes in the first turn of the invasion. 1st nukes is against the major invasion force (over 80 units, + 2 armys), the second is against the remains of one of my cities (persians captured and razed the city). Estimated dead, 60 Persian military units.
Next turn Persia Launches all ICBMS and several tactical nukes, 5 Iroquois cities get hit, and 1 Roman city.

Over the next 2 turns Persian cities get Nukes from several Civs.
At least 9 cities are Nuked.
Several Naval concentrations are also nuked (tactical nukes from subs)

So far I have counted about 25 Nuclear strikes arround the world.
The nuclear strikes on cities are devasting, with large numbers of workers need just to rebuild 1 cities over 20 turns.

ps use of nuclear weapons also increases war weirness

 

[ainwood]

Just to re-emphasise the point, beating the Russians was not only possible for me, it was actually quite easy.

I put salamanca down on the starting point, built a couple of scouts and a granary then just went warrior / settler / warrior ad-infinitum (well, for around 10 sets anyway). As soon as I had around 6 cities (one built on horses), I built a road, switched to barracks and started building mws in all cities.

I brought two scouts back to "watch" the russians. They hadn't developed the iron (even though it was right next to a city), so I attacked. The first move was to use a scout to pillage their horses.

Partway through my campaign, they did develop the iron, but NEVER restored the roads to the horses. Hence, I had to deal with about 3 pikemen (max), and the rest were archers and spearmen and only around 3 horsemen.

Can't remember what year it was, but it was only around 100 ad at worst - the AI developed fuedelism half-way through my campaing (didn't help Catherine though! )

And I got one great leader to build the FP.

 

[JoeM]

Well it took too long to get MW's for me to try that, Russia was much more advanced, though the war I did fight with them they only sent piddly archers and spearmen at me.

Hmm...meybe my fear held me back, I saw their Iron and feared swordsmen, all my advisors kept telling me how crap I was and I listened.

 

[ainwood]

Yep - a faint heart never won a fair lady (and all the other cliches).


The only way to win on deity level is to attack (IMHO)

 

[Elfi Wolfe]

Originally posted by ainwood


The only way to win on deity level is to attack (IMHO)

Not True, I went though almost all the game without attacking and had gotten first places due to economic development.

I'm only in a nuclear world war because I was attacked.

 

[Zur]

A quick question on the initial build sequence for Salamanca. For all the people who did Scout, Granary, Settler, how do you know that barbs will not appear in the early game, or how would you deal with them if they popped up?

Also, is it good to pop the 1st hut immediately because barbs could appear and then you'd be screwed without any warriors.

 

[Elfi Wolfe]

If I remember correctly the exploration trait, means nothing bad pops out of a goodie hut.

and I first was building a warrior, and when the first goodie hut pop a settler I changed productions to a grainier.
I don't even think I ever made a scout, still got the scout you start the game with

 

[Elfi Wolfe]

If anyone has seen the intro movie for SMAC, that is about how my game ended. I made a ship and got out of the area.
Nukes would fall every few turns (mostly Persia and Rome)

Still don't belive my end score. 4949.

I think I won because I got 2 settlers from the first 2 goodies hut.

then 2 tech that no one had and I did a big trading early on and trade the 2 techs + money for more tech and just keep trading with everyone, about 20-10 turns before I made the Great Library. All the trading made the civs like me better.

well the game can take over 40 nuclear weapons and no major effects. In Civ2 once poulotion hit a certain point everything changed to jungle and it was very hard to keep cities fed. This doesn't happen in Civ3.

um let the next month not be deity.

 

[Sullla]

Congrats, Elfi! Though I shudder to think what Aeson or Sir Pleb would have done in this game with 2 goody hut settlers.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Elfi Wolfe
well the game can take over 40 nuclear weapons and no major effects. In Civ2 once poulotion hit a certain point everything changed to jungle and it was very hard to keep cities fed. This doesn't happen in Civ3.

That's probably for gameplay purposes. They don't want to make the player pay for it when two or more AI's go at it with nukes. There "should" be severe climatic problems for all civilizations.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I had no intention of participating in this GOTM, because I know I am not ready for Deity. So I decided to try something just to see what would happen.

I never built a city! I just had my worker, settler, and scout exploring! I sent my settler east and the scout south and then west. Traded communications and maps to get me just 2 techs (currency and construction) short of entering the middle ages! With a little more careful planning I might have been able to squeeze 1 more tech out of the deals. I ended up buying Literature for 40 gold and never did get the government techs. Even if you have only 2 gold, some AI will demand that from you, so I spent most of the game at 0 gold.

My settler freely explored most of the Russian, German, Persian, and Egyptian territories. They ask you to leave, but you usually can spend hundreds of years in there territory before being forced to leave (just don't keep popping in and out of their territory). Since they eliminated the exploit of where you could plant forests in AI territory (to starve them), I was irrigating Russia's mines and mining their irrigation!

After awhile I got bored with moving my units around (and my map wasn't worth selling anymore), so I just fortified them wherever they where. Eventually my settler that was down by Egypt got forced to move out and ended up on the other side of the world by Rome. My barbaric Iroquios people were dumbfounded to see Roman bombers and English battleships.

Without a city, you get no notification of wars so I had to guess who was at war by watching the cities exchange hands. Of course you get no notification of when someone declares war on you, until you've lost your scout or worker.

1730 A.D. Egypt killed my worker. Got peace several turns later for free (because I had nothing to give!). 1796 A.D. Persia kills my scout. Got peace for free with them too. But they signed a trade embargo with Japan against me (how can I even trade????). Shorty after signing peace with Persia, Japan lands 2 infantry and 2 cavalry right next to my settler, so I knew it was over (my settler was trapped on a peninsula, so it couldn't try running). Rome was polite to me during the Egyptian war, so Rome and Egypt must have been at war.

I out-survived Russia and Germany, who were both taken out by Persia in 1250 and 1380 A.D., respectively. Persia was on the way to domination when I lost, they were in the process of conquering Egypt. Funny thing is, the AI entered the modern era around 1300 A.D., yet no one had finished the spaceship when I got killed at 1814 A.D. I finished, with of course, 0 points. Persia had 4500+.

 

[Zur]

What I was really wondering was how is an initial Scout, Granary, Settler build sequence possible for Salamanca without taking a very big gamble of not getting hit by barbs in the 1st 10-20 turns, or even a close neighbouring civ. Anyone has anything enlightening on this?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Good question, Zur.

If the barbarian difficulty level had been set to 'Raging', alot of people would have been in deep trouble. I wouldn't worry about enemy civs, because if they send any units at all, it will be more than just 1 warrior can defend against so the game would be lost anyways (on deity, the AI starts with 12 free military units, so would likely send at least 3 warriors at you).

I got killed in a deity game once, after I had built 2 warriors and had just produced my first settler!

 

[Aeson]

I built Warriors instead of Scouts planning for barbarians. Didn't take long to see the error in that though, as it was apparent early on (within ~20 turns) that there were no barbarians.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Lawrence
Actually, the key to do early atack in this time is STICK to the initial peninsula. Build 5-8 cities then keep producing MWs then GO!

If you waste time in making settlers to the other peninsula you will never be in the position to attack, IMHO.

I think this is an important point - on this map, and generally at Deity level, you can't pursue two build strategies at the same time early in the game. If you're going to go military then after building your capital region as quickly as possible, it is important to devote all production to military buildup. If you split the production to work on two strategies your military strength won't be high enough.

There are twists to this because of what sometimes helps toward military buildup. I hurried some early temples because that would allow me to capture cities in my assault instead of razing and replacing - the investment in temples was done to avoid needing a higher investment in settlers during the assault.
Edit: That particular tradeoff is especially attractive when playing a religious Civ as in this GOTM because temples cost only 30 shields.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Zur
A quick question on the initial build sequence for Salamanca. For all the people who did Scout, Granary, Settler, how do you know that barbs will not appear in the early game, or how would you deal with them if they popped up?

I don't worry much about defending against very early barbarian attacks. If they happen, they happen. I figure I'll lose less by letting them hit me a bit than by losing expansion time. If I see them coming I'll try to rush or change production in the town they'll visit to minimize the losses. This thinking applies more at Deity level than at others - the barbarians are much stronger at Deity, to the point where a single warrior is not a good match for them. An early minimal defense isn't a good bet at Deity level, not against an early aggressive rival or against barbarians. So I usually don't build any at the start.

 

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Sullla
Congrats, Elfi! Though I shudder to think what Aeson or Sir Pleb would have done in this game with 2 goody hut settlers.

I could have gotten 20 settlers and it wouldn't have mattered. I was struck down by AI sabotage of the stability of my save games

A very dirty and effective tactic if you ask me!

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by SirPleb
I don't worry much about defending against very early barbarian attacks. If they happen, they happen.

I agree. Even on Deity and Raging, I am rarely subject to attack for several turns in any case, so I nearly always build a scout first. Once you know the strategic situation by exploration, you are in a much better position as far as expansion or aggression.

By the way, good play SirPleb, and a "game worthy" method of dense build, i.e. geared to the position and the terrain. As I have posted before, on higher levels, you generally want a little denser build. With this position, and so little arable land, having a couple of extra cities early is a good idea.

I went with a standard build, for the challenge. I attacked the Russians in about 170bc, and built the Forbidden Palace in Kiev. I was caught up technologically in the Industrial Age. I owe everything to my able diplomats for keeping me out of trouble at crucial moments in the game.