Clash of the Warmongers

[ABigCivFan]

1635AD: Ragnar is using Cathy's land to attack me, so I dwned Cathy, she came with some Cossacks and canons. Note I had pilllaged that single road connecting to my city so her cannons had to stop there before attacking.



1635AD: My veteran forces took care of her stack.




1635AD: 2 task forces to raze 2 viking cities. Leonidas the GG Born! Did you watch that movie 300? Such a great movie, acient epic at its best! I made a 2nd MedicIII cav with him. Now I can effectively storming cities on 2 large fronts.




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1640AD: Using commando cavs to kill Viking cannons before they cause any colla dam on my stacks.




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1650AD: Cease fire with Ragnar to take a break. I can declare anytime.

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1655AD: I asked Cathy to surrender, she complied. I intended to leave her some power so she serves as a nice war ally and buffer between Alex, Nappy and me.




1655AD: I gave her railroad so she could build rails for my forces enroute to attack Alex in the future.



1655AD: Switched to OR to mass build factories and coal plants.




1655AD: Build screen. I have very high production capacity thanks to Ank Wat. Built temples in all cities to use the super priests. Note I was using the combo of Uni. Suffer and Slavery to rush bunch of stuff in the newly captured cities.




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1715AD: Focused on infrustructure, Prod ranked 3 times as high as the next AI. power fell behind a little. Nothing to worry about since the AIs prob did some mass upgrade to cannon. With my prod power, I could catch up very quickly.



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1735AD: Industralization. Mont Rushmore, Iron works with in 1 turn, several other wonders within a few turns. Once this is set will focus on mass produing units.




1735AD: Cathy trade. I also demanded her to research medicine to lower its research cost.




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1740AD: Ironwork city, it will be the city of choice for other important wonders in the future. Building Pentagon.




1740AD: HE/WP city, churning out super units of every kind every turn.




1740AD: Manu Goods curve. It's been said many times that it is the industial might that win wars in modern times. So is in Civ4.




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1750AD: Built SOL. Wonderful synergy with Merc and Representation given the number of my cities.



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1770AD: Wall street/Budda shrine city. Great for financing my mass unit upgrades.



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1790AD: War machine. The plan is to reach rocktry, mass upgrade cavs to gunships, combined with CR3 tanks/Arty, the AIs should have no answer to that kind of military might. Note I have 7-8 Military Academies (GG built or captured) in my top unit producing cities; combined with Forge/factory/coal plant/Police State, even the Immortal AIs could not match that.




**At this stage of the game, I think Military Academies really shine. Imagine having 7-8 good production cities with MAs building mixed 2 promotion units every 2-3 turns. With Charismatic, I send these 2 promotion units to the front, mix them with good artillary support and other veteran units. I then use these units to mop up to gain that important 3rd promotion (mostly CR3). They could often gain that promotion after just 1 battle.

However in the early phase of the game, Instructors are very important since you need them to build those 2 promotion units right away, and there are not that many siege units and veteran units to allow green troops to gain promotions quickly.


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[r_rolo1]

I have just one word: Impressive!!!!

Let's see how much time Alex and your future ex-buddie JC will last....

 

[Morgrad]

Fan-freakin'-tastic thread.

You definately taught me about 50 things. Now go grind the AI into the ground under the treads of your tanks. =)

 

[ABigCivFan]

1802AD: I had built a giant railroad networking spanning my entire empire including Russian territory. This allows a very mobile war effort and also allows me to take on multiple AIs. Alex had vassled Ragnar and Monty, I declared on the evil axis after I upgraded my large veteran cav forces to gunships.

Remember this super longbow that single-handedly help Teo in Medeval times? Here he is kicking ass again as an infantry. He defended this Russian hill city, and he killed 5 viking Artilary in that first turn of the war. So one way to deal with collateral damage is use very strong defenders to kill AI arty passively. Each Arty could only deal minimum damage on your defender, so he will always defend and killing more Arties.

I gave the AIs the 1st turn to attack so I can gauge how much artillary power they had. I will first need to reduce their Arty counts before sending large stacks into their territory. And this super infantry is doing a fantastic job at that.




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1804AD: After his attack, Ragnar had a stack laying siege on Tenesburg, I launched couter attack. If you look carefully, Cathy's 4 infantry took lots of Collateral Damage, they alleviated some damage from my units. My forces healed up to 40HPs with Medic3 and Combat4 after Ragnar's attack.



1804AD: Ragnar landed near a city I just captured.



1804AD: I was prepared for him, Railroad allow me to concentrate my forces on contigency situiations like that. I completely destroyed that stack.




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1810AD: My siege force at the gate of Viking Capital. I captured it the next turn.



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1814AD: After killing large number of Greek/Viking Arties and Cavs, I pushed into Greek territory.



1814AD: Unit summary. War maching running at full speed. I still have some cannons they reduce city defense by 20% per turn, not bad and no need to upgrade all to arty. At this stage, CR3 tanks are by far the best city taking units. So Arty and gunships are great support units. Arty to bomb defense and against large enemy stacks, Gunship for utility purpose against weak units and units in the open field, and later enemy tanks.



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1820AD: Split 2 battle groups for Aztec capital and a viking city. No need for overkill SODs now.



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1822AD: Aztec capital fell. Monty still has 1 stupid 1 tile island city north, i will need Marines to raze it, several Aztec cities has large number of "Yean to join monthland" mob, so I need to raze that last city.




1822AD: Alex had been significantly weakened. Look at his defenses in large cities.



1822AD: Alex repeatedly tried to land on my back yard, I killed his landing stacks. And now I have combat3 battleships to protect my coast.



1822AD: Althout it is modern times, I still have 1 city dedicated to Budda missionary production, now buddasm had spread to 52 cities, giving huge gold in shrine city. Also they give me free view of almost all Rome and French cities. The benefit is inmeasurable.



1822AD: My army of workers to railroad newly conquered territory, this is vital to bring reinforcements to the front.



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1824AD: Battle of Sparta. I have a highly promoted stack here, feel like using an Elephant gun on a mouse.



1824AD: Great winning odds with CR3 tanks against Infantry.



1824AD: Sparta captured. After you capture a city, you should always rush some good defenders into the city if you plan on keeping it. You dont need many of these CG3 infantries, just rotate them to the newly captured cities.



1824AD: Sending 2 commando gunships to scout the next 2 target greek city defenses.



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1826AD: I learned my lesson about overkill with too large SOD for 1 city, so now I split my forces into smaller but elite city capturing battle groups, here in the pitures there are 4 such stacks going after 4 cities simultaneously.



1826AD: My 2 Medic3 GGs are sitting in 2 front base cities to heal. These wounded units will be fresh to attack within 2 turns. This is how I keep the pressure on the AIs, concentrated, specialized forces with fast healing bases.

 

[ABigCivFan]

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1828AD: Always look for killing opportunities, in this case I use Nappy's rail net work to attack a straggler Greek city. Alex just took that city from Cathy, and he had a large forces of Arty and Cavs in that city; fresh meat for my veteran gunships and tanks. I always target arty and cavs as priority kills since they can deal the largest damage to my forces(Alex is one tech from gunship).



gunship's mobility shown here.



1828AD: Easy mop up, got some of the gunships an extra promotion.



1828AD: JC massing troops along our borders. I see those Cavs as gunships since he is 1 tech from gunships.



1828AD: Although JC is friendly with me, but I had to be careful. I tried to bribe him in attacking someone, but he said "hands are full". So I start my own build up against him. I showed 2 of my defensive/offensive stacks in my 2 cities in this picture. I rather attack Nappy since he has all the wonders I want. But had to be precaucious against JC. You never know.



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1832AD: Coastal patroling Battleships preying on Greek transport.



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1834AD: Fast changing Greek/Viking landscape. I counted 13 cities in resistance. Blizkrig campaign in full motion. Note I had research slider on 80% consistantly. My large number of cottage powered commerce cities are self-sufficient in maintaining the empire, it requires miminum amount of micro-Manage. I probably will keep Police State until the end although Representation will give instant 600+ beaker/turn boost (2000+ beaker/turn currently).



1834AD: Dem Chart.



1834AD: Kill/Lose ratio so far (about 624 to 97 add in the 11 Tanks I lost not shown in the pic or about 6.4:1) I already spent about 30 hours on this game, since we want to achieve the victory, hope wont take too much longer.




1834AD: I captured Greek capital. Here is the Power curve.




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I was not able to bribe either Nappy or JC, I suspect they had an alliance. So I need to be prepared to fight them both at the same time. My veteran forces in the Western front should have a field day against Nappy, I will probably send 1 Medic3 to the Northern front against JC. At this time, I am playing at a slower pace since there are so many new units for me to move every turn, I already reached 41%(45% achieved) population requirement for the Domination win, I hope gaining the rest of 20% required land would not take too much time. I will not play on Large maps anymore, just too time consuming to achieve Domination.

My save at 1834AD exceeds 500K limit for upload. Let me know if you want it.

 

[CivSetä]

Really entertaining thread!

 

[stuge]

Yeah, it's like Warmongering 101.

I can't believe that you're pulling this off on immortal.

 

[tycoonist]

wow. great game. i really learned some stuff here, especially the power of highly promoted units and also bribing targets into war to keep their power low

 

[Kev]

Tremendous showcase on the power of the Charismatic trait and plain overall strategy.

I noticed that when you were one turn away from Communism, Cathy was still researching that tech (4 turns away). Is she still not trading with you or is there a specific reason why you would not want to direct her research? I suspect that you just have 'enough on your hands' to quote a phrase, but thought I'd ask.

 

[ABigCivFan]

I noticed that when you were one turn away from Communism, Cathy was still researching that tech (4 turns away). Is she still not trading with you or is there a specific reason why you would not want to direct her research? I suspect that you just have 'enough on your hands' to quote a phrase, but thought I'd ask.

Cathy would not trade. But I guess I could direct her to research down the "health" (Refrigiration) path to cheapen those techs. Although it takes a long time for her to research anything.

The only reason for me to research Communism was that I wanted to see if I could get Permanent Alliance with JC, but it turned out that I could not. So I still had to mass troops at the Northern front.

 

[tycoonist]

The only reason for me to research Communism was that I wanted to see if I could get Permanent Alliance with JC, but it turned out that I could not. So I still had to mass troops at the Northern front.

how the hell are you paying for your army and cities without state property???? your maintenance must be gigantic

 

[ABigCivFan]

I have a giant economy powered by mature cottages. You saw that my Budda Shrine/Wall street city can generate 250+ gold/turn on 80% science and 400+ gold/turn on 0% science.

Also I have almost 2+ Ank Wat priests in all cities, they give 50+ gold/turn. And plenty of Gold from other Civs.

My economy can easily absorb the maint on new cities and pay for army costs. Check out the 1790AD save if you want a closer look.

 

[cabert]

how the hell are you paying for your army and cities without state property???? your maintenance must be gigantic

state property doesn't help to pay for units.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that you're better off with either free market or mercantilism when you have lots of troops.

 

[frob2900]

state property doesn't help to pay for units.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that you're better off with either free market or mercantilism when you have lots of troops.

Lots of troops = (if you are competent) Lots of Territory, so I'd still go for State Property if I had it. The city maintenance saving are enormous.

 

[cabert]

Lots of troops = (if you are competent) Lots of Territory, so I'd still go for State Property if I had it. The city maintenance saving are enormous.

It's not a 100% winning solution because :
- state property only reduces the cost, it doesn't bring in anything (food for production excepted)
- if you're competent with loads of troops, you're certainly conquering cities = looting gold.

If I'm warring a lot I often prefer mercantilism over state property, but everyone his own.

 

[frob2900]

- if you're competent with loads of troops, you're certainly conquering cities = looting gold.

If I'm warring a lot I often prefer mercantilism over state property, but everyone his own.

Umm.. what era are we talking about here? By the time State Property comes in looting gold isn't going to help finances a lot (in the industrial/modern era one has expenses/income on the order of 1000 gpt, where state property will save you a hundred or a few hundred gpt) How much will looting 10 cities in 30 turns give you?

 

[cabert]

Umm.. what era are we talking about here? By the time State Property comes in looting gold isn't going to help finances a lot (in the industrial/modern era one has expenses/income on the order of 1000 gpt, where state property will save you a hundred or a few hundred gpt) How much will looting 10 cities in 30 turns give you?

true enough
looting large cities brings something like 300 gold, but it certainly doesn't pay the whole expenses.
I still favour mercantilism, but it may be irrationnal.

 

[ABigCivFan]

We can not generalized the benefit of Merc Vs. SP in this game, there are a lot more considerations.

If you check out the save at 1790AD, you can do a lot better analysis.

1) if you look at some of the last sets of the pictures, I was running 80% science with a small per turn gold deficit which means whatever I was running (Merc) was not that bad.

2) Merc gives ~30(about the # of city I have) free specialists, I have temples in all cities and Ank Wat. Which means 30/turn + 60 base /turn. Apply all the modifiers to these base hammers, you get a LOT more production as net output. For newly conquered cities, free Engineers/Priests means you could get those courthouses/Granaries/Theaters built that much faster.

3) SP only reduces distance to palace costs but NOT # of city costs IIRC. The distance to palace costs is probably a little more than 100 gold/turn, have to double check the saves. I prob have less than 5 workshops in my empire and 0 water mill, so SP is not that great for me at this point. I could however get a little more gold from foreign trade routes if swithed. But all those are marginal compare to the HUGE production bonus Merc gives during war time.

 

[madscientist]

I thought state property ELIMINATES the distance to palace costs, not reduce it.

A truly AWE-isnpiring came. Very well played.

 

[frob2900]

true enough
looting large cities brings something like 300 gold, but it certainly doesn't pay the whole expenses.
I still favour mercantilism, but it may be irrationnal.

You'll also be paying for that looting in the form of war weariness, which forces you to raise the culture slider. Mercantilism is generally good in the midgame (after the AI gets mercantilism) but after scientific method/biology I usually am large enough to consider state property ASAP.