Clash of Warmongers - BTS - Gandhi

[ABigCivFan]

We had fun last time playing the Warload version:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=226970

I just got BTS last week, and started playing this exciting new warmongering game.

Here are the settings:

BTS3.13/Immortal/Pangaea/Standard/Normal speed/Aggressive AIs

Participating warmongers

AIs:
Boudica
Monty
Alex
GK
Shaka
Stalin (many people hate this guy, so throw him in)

Human:
Gandhi (There are so much potential and versitility with the Phi/Spi combo, I would love to be a little creative this time)

Here is the 4000BC shot, all are welcome. Have not finished the game yet but I had a blast.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Given the large amount of trees, floods, i decided to get 2 fast worker out quickly.

Tech: Bronze, AH, Wheel, Potery

build: worker, worrior, worder (chop)

2480BC, a random event gave me +2 health!




2240BC: Chopped a settler. My worrior spots 2 gold hills, will settle those 2 golds.




1880BC: Chopped 2nd settler to settle copper/horse/rice. Note the gold city is pressed by Russian culture.




975BC: Stalin built GW and is pressing my culture, will Rex him.



950BC capital, all hammers.



875BC: Stalin built some wonders, prop have high culture defense. So need a sizable Axeman/Chariot. I have 4 workers chopping army in Capital.




625BC: Ready to invade with 8 CR axe and 2 chariots, 1 medic 2 chariot from fighting barbs.




550BC: My Axeman ran straight into Russia capital, with 60% culture defense in 550BC already.




550BC: lost 3 Axeman and captured Moscow.



550BC: Moscow has the GW and Pyrimid! Very lucky.




400BC: Choking Stalin, my forces are everywhere, taking defensive grounds, pillaging mines/horses and etc.



325BC: Captured another Russian city, Stalin gave me Monachy for peace.




75BC: Moscow born a GP, bulbed Theology to found Christian. I wanted to found as many religion as possible to take advantage of the Spiritual trait. Cheap temples means many prophets in cities, if I can build Wat, that will take care of all the productions. since capital is food rich with all the floods, i intended to go all out SE.




50BC: Alex declared a while ago, this interesting event stopped our war.




25AD: Declared on Shaka to the East, my intention is to capture that precious Marble city.




125AD: GS bulbed Philo to found Tao. I do this often if I have chance to build Wat. Note Moscow had claimed stone from Russia. But Ank Wat in 375AD.




375AD: Generous Boudica.




400AD: Careless Genghis, ran his swords against my fortified Axeman. I got a 2nd warlord, used on a Medic3 chariot.




475AD: Monty captured that Marble city from Shaka, so i am going after him.
Need Marble for GL and HE and etc. Note there had been lots of fighing among the AIs, teching slow, and we still fighting with Axe/Swords/HA and etc.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I love warmongering with Gandhi. This should be a lot of fun.

During your previous game, we discussed whether the BtS AI would be better at taking down (or bypassing) fortresses of the type you used.

Your comment was that the AI needed to:

1) Bring more siege weapons to a siege
2) Reduce the cultural defense to 0% before attacking
3) Build more Siege weapons in general
4) Give better promotions. i.e. only CR promo to siege

My experience of BtS has been that Standard AI does do somewhat better on the offensive - certainly brings and uses more siege, promotions also seem to have improved a little - and is slightly less predictable, though it still has trouble choosing the best place to attack.

I've found AggAI has a Monty-like tendency to attack even when there's absolutely no hope of winning (no amount of HAs are going to crack a city defended by CGII Rifles, Washington!), but, when it can keep up in tech, the AI is tenacious enough to make a turtling strategy more dangerous for the player.

On the defensive front, both Standard and AggAI generally protect their cities more effectively, but the advent of espionage gives the player a huge new advantage when attacking.

Thanks to the AI's increased willingness to whip defenders, I've often found the most effective approach to be quick, surprise attacks on my enemy's flanks - taking (and usually razing) two or three minor cities in the first few turns, before condensing my armies to conquer the core cities. Mobility being crucial, I've tended to use more all-mounted stacks than I did before - again, espionage makes this a more effective approach than it was in Warlords.

I look forward to seeing your take on warmongering in BtS.

 

[ABigCivFan]

600 AD Got Marble from Monty just in time to boost GL/NE production in capital. Wat priests helps a lot.




660AD: Civic switch to Caste and Pacifism, taking full advantage of the Philo trait to max out on Science. Soon I am swamped with Great Priests. Built 4 shrines in the game for extra gold and culture; and spread the religions vigorously.




980AD: Need to keep the guys busy, bribed GK to attack Shaka. They both are to my East, Boudica and Stalin to my West, Alex to my south, and Monty to my south east. I kept good relationship with Boudica by switching to her religion, lots of trades and giving her tributes. My Pyriamid powered SE gave me a decent science advantage so I was able to manipulate lots of tech trades and bribes. Also very important, when you fight early, you will have decent power curve all the time which is a good deterent factor for AIs.




1010AD: Growing GS to bulb Education, with 88% chance i still got a GProphet.





1020AD: The culture war is extreme over that stone tile, under Caste, I put all available pop as Great Artist to keep Moscow's culture high. Note both Celts and India has 24% culture on this tile, if i am 1% lower, I would lose the stone.
I was lucky, Boudica was pleased with me and left Moscow along for a long time. She chose Stalin and Alex as her victims.




1030AD: Boudica the diplomat, everyone is pleased or even friendly with her!





1050AD: WWI, Alex got dogpiles.




1080AD: Alex's SOD on Monty. It is good to have scouts everywhere so you know what units/Promotions the AIs are fielding in large battles. So I could prepare for future fights.





1090AD: Boudica's SOD on Alex. I had a HA in the hotzone watching the fight.

Note Boudica has many CR2 Cats, and she is sending a large number of reinforcing troops to the front, good for keeping the pressure on Alex.




1130AD: Boudica CR SOD. Looks nice, however, this SOD is vulnerable to strong knight/Curis attacks since it does not have adequate Anti horse units (Pikes).




1130AD: I burned a GProphet for a golden age to build universities in all cities.




1190: Reached Liberalism first, took Astronomy as free tech. Used a GArtist bomb to gain more culture in Moscow which has been engulfed by Russian and Celtic culture push. That kept my precious stone safe.

 

[ABigCivFan]

1290AD: GM from Economics. 1900 Gold trip. A Strong SE can give you a few GMs which can really fuel your research and unit upgrade. Under Caste, you can have unlimited Merchants in your NE city, very very cool way to get extra cash.




1320AD: Capital, focus on Research. 300+ beakers.




1400AD: I had my HE city constantly pumping out the strongest units through out the game - Axe/HA/Mace/Knights/Curis. And send new units to Moscow. Whipped wall, Castle and stuffed it with CGII longbows/Crossbows. Just waiting for Boudica to attack anytime. With wall/castle/GA bomb, it is quite a hard nut to crack for any AI.

Switched to Theocracy and going full military production.

Here is my SOD in Moscow. Lots of Combat2 knights, CRI+Accuracy trebs, cause i found out it took longer to bomb down the cultural defense these days, so accuracy finally has its day in my book.




1450AD: When I concentrate my units on the West Front against Boudica, I could not afford Monty who is gaining power back stab me in the East, so I bribed him to play with Shaka. I did pay a very high price for this bribe.




1460AD: My plan agains Boudica is to get to Canon and Curis/Cav/Rifle first and use these tech advantage, concentrate my forces in one point (Moscow sicne it has all these juicy wonders) to defeat her decisively. I pick the fight here and She will pick the time since I am just waiting for all these upgrades sitting behind fortified walls. She can attack anytime at will and I am capable to lauch a strong counter attack with a fast healing medic 3 unit.

To upgrade this many units, I need cash, here is my capital growing a GMerchant.




1500AD: Boudica attacks with a huge SOD, The problem is she is facing my well fortified mix forces, so everything she threw at me had a tough couter, here is the pethetic result. She lost 20+ units in this single attack!




1505AD: With my medic3, most defending units healed within 1 turn and able to lauch a awesome couter attack, As I had observed before, the AIs lack adaquate couter against mounted attacks, my Cuirassiers torn them apart. here is the result:





1510AD: Boudica has Temple of Zeus, I realized the importance of this wonder after this single battle, with so much War Wariness accumulated in one turn, my cities gained 3-4 unhappy faces! So my priority is to capture this wonder first and bring the unhappiness to the enemy! I checked F9 screen and it said it was located in Vienne, how convenient, right next to Moscow!




1525AD: Just when I was ready to capture Vienne, the AP stopped me!




1525AD: Power curve. Boudica within 5 turns.




1525AD: Kahn is the only one please with me at this point, I gave him some military tech, he turned friendly. I need him to be fairly strong to neutralized Monty/Shaka to the East.




1540AD: 2nd Trade mission, another 1900 gold. Right on time to upgrade the Trebs to cannons and Curis to Cavs, and CR3 Maces to Rifles.




1540A: Switched to OR and back to building mode, build jails, banks/markets all over to finance the war. Paying for many troops.




1545AD: 3rd GG, build Mil Academy in HE/WP city for faster units, this is great synergy.

 

[ABigCivFan]

1570AD: Got the cash, upgrading 10 Trebs to Cannons.





1575AD: Completed Taj, using the GA to rush WP, Ironworks and other culture/economics building.




1580AD: Shaka is beanten badly by Monty, Monty has grenadiers. So I gave Military Science to Shaka so he can compete better against Monty.




1615AD: My war civics for full Military production.




1615AD: HE/WP/MA city. This was my 2nd city which claimed the 2 golds.
It was not the best location but had to make that decision quick.




1615AD: Bring all the allies I can.




1615AD: Power curve, Monty is becoming a super power with his early beelined Grenadiers and canons.




1615AD: My unit summary, mostly mounted and cannons. Cavs and cannons are overpowered against Boudica's knights/eles/longbows/maces.




1620AD: Ultimate bribe. Monty against Boutica. I dont even have to do much now, haha. To do this I had to bribe Monty to stopped trading with Boudica, then Bribe Monty to stop fighting Shaka, Then bribe him attack Boudica. So It is actually 3 bribes!



1620AD: WWII.




1625AD: Going after the Status of Zeus city, I had high spy pts against Boudica early on, so used 2 spies to support city revolt (bring down culture). 1st one failed, 2nd one succeeded.




1625AD: After 7 CR cannons barrage, the collateral damage is devastating.




1625AD: After cannon barrage, cavs/Curis/Rifles moved in for the kill. Slaughter.




1630: Captured Status of Zeus.




Will be on business next week, try to finish after I come back.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Your screenshots appear to seriously bugged. Easy to fix, hopefully you have originals still left? Run a crop script through all them and upload again to hosting site. Sadly methinks that currently this is unreadable.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Your screenshots appear to seriously bugged. Easy to fix, hopefully you have originals still left? Run a crop script through all them and upload again to hosting site. Sadly methinks that currently this is unreadable.

yeah, i have multiple monitors. Should have pressed Alt-Printscreen instead just printscreen. I will try to fix these pics prob next week. Do you know of a way to run the same crop automatically on all these pics in the same folder?

Edit: never mind, seems IrfanView can do the trick.

 

[Bureaucracy]

Yes, someone like me does not have that high a bandwidth, and these shots just kill me, waiting for all the images to load and only getting very little data for the effort. I was liking your past Brennus game, but they also killed me with all the screenshots of every silly tech-trade deal, when a simple sentence could have told us all the same thing. I was going to warn you here about that.

I also was looking forward to this clash of the warmongers game, but I am a little dissapointed due to the start. While you were off building cities, you had an agressive AI right next to you who did nothing to hurt you. He still did nothing when you were even giving him culture pressure. The answer became evident when we saw he was not building an army to kill you, or even defend himself because he was wonder spamming.

So when all is put together, you got a second capital in the BC years for free (ok, it cost you what, 3 axemen?)

You also got a free Scotland Yard in the start
Free Pyramids
Free Stonehenge
Free Great Wall

Forget about the free granery, you even took his Oracle away while nerfing the AI who built it too!

What I'm trying to say here, is that this is one of those 1/100 to 1/1000 games where everything goes your way and everything lands in your lap right from the start. I don't blame you at all for wanting to play it out, as most of us would love to.

But for us who are reading this story, there is nothing for us left to turn the page after this. We know it's a sure win here. This is synonomous to starting off with a modern tank or two in the BC era. It is great when it is you when you are playing, but watching someone else ramming modern tanks into spearmen is just too boring.

I think these combo of things is why there is so little response to your game, whereas your Brennus game from the past was vastly different.

Good luck.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Yes, someone like me does not have that high a bandwidth, and these shots just kill me, waiting for all the images to load and only getting very little data for the effort. I was liking your past Brennus game, but they also killed me with all the screenshots of every silly tech-trade deal, when a simple sentence could have told us all the same thing. I was going to warn you here about that.

I also was looking forward to this clash of the warmongers game, but I am a little dissapointed due to the start. While you were off building cities, you had an agressive AI right next to you who did nothing to hurt you. He still did nothing when you were even giving him culture pressure. The answer became evident when we saw he was not building an army to kill you, or even defend himself because he was wonder spamming.

So when all is put together, you got a second capital in the BC years for free (ok, it cost you what, 3 axemen?)

You also got a free Scotland Yard in the start
Free Pyramids
Free Stonehenge
Free Great Wall

Forget about the free granery, you even took his Oracle away while nerfing the AI who built it too!

What I'm trying to say here, is that this is one of those 1/100 to 1/1000 games where everything goes your way and everything lands in your lap right from the start. I don't blame you at all for wanting to play it out, as most of us would love to.

But for us who are reading this story, there is nothing for us left to turn the page after this. We know it's a sure win here. This is synonomous to starting off with a modern tank or two in the BC era. It is great when it is you when you are playing, but watching someone else ramming modern tanks into spearmen is just too boring.

I think these combo of things is why there is so little response to your game, whereas your Brennus game from the past was vastly different.

Good luck.

Yeah, I did rush this one out and it was only the 3rd BTS game I played. It did seem easy after I killed this wonder spammer Stalin in the BCs, but it did gave me some challenge since i was sandwitched among the other 5 aggressive AIs. Diplomacy still played a big role in keeping the AIs fighing among each other and gifting key military techs to weaker AIs to neutralize the powers.

I am also disappointed about AI's ability when waging war, they still crash and lose 30+ offensive units against my fortresses in a single turn, and still leave their stacks exposed to my strong counter attacks, the battle aginst the strongest AI still was over within 2 turns. I want to see better unit mix in AI's SODs and especially Medic2 or even Medic3 warlord units given they all get multiple warloards for heavy fightings.

Anyway, It seemed easy but I did have some nervous moments in this game when Kahn, Alex declared out of blue. Though Boudica attacked with huge SODs but I was well prepared for it. It was fun.

I did post some key Tech-War bribes in the screens, not silly tech trades, but the screens were messed up. I will propably start a new thread and get everything correct. Thanks for the input.

 

[Dirk1302]

Another immortal slugfest, i remember the first one quite well, was fun to play.
I'll try this when i've got some spare time, this sort of game tends to take a long time since you're at war so much.