[C3C] COTM161 Persia Regent

[templar_x]

In Conquest of the Month 161 you rule over the Industrious and Scientific Persians, who already know Masonry and Bronze Working. The Persian Unique Unit is the Immortal, a better Swordsman.

This game was designed by me, templar_x. (And hopefully this time the bix file was the right one and works!)

Starting Position

Scope of the Game

• map size: standard
• everything else about the map: unknown
• Barbarians: unknown
• 7 AI civs

Edit: The civs are pre-selected, and I tweaked the map a little bit (ok, quite a bit ) to offer some challenge on Regent but hopefully make it playable as well as interesting for everyone! Hope you guys enjoy this game!

Time Plan

• The game is released on Oct 1, 2022.
• Submissions are due by December 31, 2022.

Game release page

Spoilers and discussions are free. Use your judgement!

 

[Più Freddo]

I saw the starting location and thought "ooooh", but then I remembered: Right, this is Regent.

Judging from what is visible, we have only one food bonus, which limits us to 8-turn Settlers. So we can have a sh#t-load of veteran Warriors from a Combo Factory, upgrade them, get the Slingshot, start the Golden Age, build a Forbidden Palace. Having many Warriors limits the problem of not knowing much about the game setup. It all adds up!

The starting location is a real teaser with those unreachable BG/Oasis tiles 2N and 2S and water at 3N, N, S and 3S. There is just no accomodation! 1NE could be an improvement, but who knows!?

I'm looking forward to this game. I will most likely go for Space again.

 

[LaSalle]

The Immortal is a very strong unit available with iron working, only one tech away and viable well into the middle ages. A mass upgrade of warriors to immortals and then an early conquest or domination victory might be in line. That is of course if Templar_X has not tricked us and placed iron far, far, away.

 

[Ruin]

This game's been out for 20 years and I'm embarrassed to admit I've never played as Persia. Really looking forward to this.

 

[AlanH]

Hi templar_x. Did you send me the start file?

 

[templar_x]

Yes, Alan, I indeed did. To your "new" email address... didn´t you receive it? pm me please if i should send it again / to another email address. thanks!

 

[AlanH]

PM sent.

 

[templar_x]

PM answered

 

[Captain_Jack]

I think I will settle one NE from the starting location. I do hope iron is readily available, but I am expecting resource issues.

 

[CKS]

The starting location is a real teaser with those unreachable BG/Oasis tiles 2N and 2S and water at 3N, N, S and 3S. There is just no accomodation! 1NE could be an improvement, but who knows!?

Not only that, but the far north and far south water could be fresh or salty. I'm thinking 20k, as always, and I'd prefer to have a coastal capital. I'd wander a bit to get both fresh and salt water, but wandering for two turns in two different directions does not make me happy.

1 NE is better than staying put, so I'll definitely move somewhere.

Can anyone tell if the tile 2 E is sand or water?

 

[Più Freddo]

I'm thinking 20k, as always, and I'd prefer to have a coastal capital.

Perhaps the right time to do 20k in the second city?

 

[CKS]

On Regent, having a palace prebuild is not usually necessary, and the delay in founding a second city puts you back a lot, so I'd prefer doing it in the capital, even if that means a land-locked 20k city. I think I'll send the settler NE and the worker SE. Depending on what I see, I may have the worker go south and/or the settler go north to have a look before settling. I probably won't go E to check if that tile is water or sand since I don't want to give up my fresh water.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

This one was pretty easy. Once I saw the wheat tile and how it was next to a river I thought "oooo good spot for 20k city." Turned out there was actually a better spot with a cow, but since I settled in place the other spot would be more corrupted.

The neighbors on my continent didn't bother me. I actually picked a fight with both of them and destroyed them both so I could have the whole continent to myself. Immortals made it pretty easy. I saw in the replay that I actually caused both civilizations to go into their golden age, but that didn't save them from destruction. On Regent level it's really easy to stay ahead tech wise, so I didn't try too hard to find the other nations. Found the Dutch pretty quickly and then found the Egyptians. Waited till printing press to make contact with the other nations because ships kept sinking.

China and Sumer fought each other until the point Sumer was one city. It was kind of funny because sending a spy to Sumer's one city caused them to declare war on me. I just enlisted a different civ to destroy them and didn't bother sending anything over there. For the most part it was pretty quiet until near the end when the Dutch randomly decided to send a landing party to my continent. By that point Egypt and Greece were the only others left. Egypt had destroyed China. I responded to the Dutch invasion by attacking their homeland. They got Egypt and Greece to go to war, but it was pretty easy to fend everyone off with flight and artillery. After I destroyed the Dutch I made peace with the other two. Didn't feel like destroying them (probably could have) because I knew I'd get the culture victory. Managed to get it for my entire civilization instead of one city.

 

[Captain_Jack]

COTM_161 Persia @ Regent

Thanks to Templar_x for creating an enjoyable game. I had easy access to all the resources I needed, and the many wars I fought were mostly unforced. There will be nothing to learn from my game, but I did stubbornly decide to invade the opposing continent. My first expeditionary force was all my left-over Immortals and Spearmen after I was a bit more advanced. I thought they would take Bad-Tibra easlily, but they were slaughtered. This became a national shame, and a second larger and more advanced expeditionary force of infantry and cavalry was sent. This too was beaten badly by the Sumerians forcing a beach evacuation and a change in government.

The new leadership finally assembled a massive invading army with Marines to take Bad-Tibra and secure a safe landing zone so my boys wouldn't die on the beach. This succeeded and after many wars with the locals, who all were always furious with me, I managed a domination victory, my first ever.

Meanwhile, what is wrong with this deal?: (the Ai is so unreasonable)

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Yeah same deal happened with me trying to trade for luxuries with Egypt. And I didn't want to give them tech.

 

[Più Freddo]

If your empire is much larger than theirs, they value Luxuries much higher for you than for themselves.

 

[Takeo]

I wasn't settled on a type of victory before the game was started up and figured I would just decide along the way. Very few notes were taken in the first half of the game, so I have had to go back into some of my saves to figure some dates out (game is finished and submitted on 10-14).

*Spoiler Warning*

Spoiler :

VICTORY CONDITION
I started without a set goal in mind and didn't decide on Conquest until well after 10 AD. This indecision probably set the win date back a number of turns, on top of having to research to the tech to allow ocean travel.

EXPLORATION
Built 2 curraghs to explore and the second one sunk trying to get over to what ended up being the Netherlands; the first survived four barb galley attacks and finished up searching out our side of the map. It would be around 650-700 AD before any galleys were dedicated to suicide attempts and at that point one survived 4 turns at sea!

TECH ADVANCEMENT AND TRADES
It was fairly typical for Regent with researching almost everything myself, and easily completing a Republic slingshot. The AI provided only Alphabet, Warrior Code, Ceremonial Burial and Mathematics. A goody hut provided me with Mysticism. Also got an unneeded Monarchy at a later time in a trade. Going all the way to Navigation and Military Tradition took up a lot of turns, with no help from the regent AI. I left Babylon out of loop with any tech gifting because I didn't want to contend with Pikeman, unfortunately the other continent made it to the Medieval Age on their own.

WAR AND CONQUEST
Around 690 BC? the Romans 'desired' one of my techs. I only had 2 horseman and a few warriors scattered around chasing after barbs, but I defied their request, and they declared war. Only had one barracks in my core and wasn't even close to having Iron hooked up. I set several cities to building horseman, with some of them being just regular experience. Bought a barracks in Antioch, the city closest to Rome, and then bought a couple of spearmen. Waited...and only 2 Roman warriors showed up and one of them was conscript. Turned down research and spent a lot of money for nothing. Then after waiting a few more turns, they gave me Neapolis in a peace treaty. Later on, the Netherlands also made a demand. I refused and they being a Seafaring Civ, I figured a galley would cross over but I never saw anything.

• 450 AD- DoW on Rome.
• 460 AD- Golden Age starts.
• 590 AD- Rome destroyed.
• 620 AD- DoW on Babylon.
• 750 AD- Babylon destroyed.
• 820 AD- DoW on the Netherlands.

William conveniently leaves some coastline open so troops can build up before they attack.

• 880 AD- Netherlands destroyed.
• 890 AD- DoW on China, alliance w/ Egypt, Sumeria & Greece vs. China to get most forces to the south and I would eventually attack up to the north.
• 1000 AD- DoW on Greece and naval landing 66 units (including 51 Cavalry).

Greece provided me with a 'Great Military Leader' on consecutive turns of the war, with one being on the small northern island. I feared leaving the Army at sea for a turn, but there were enough ships around so I could ship-chain the unit to the main continent.

• 1130 AD- Greece destroyed.
• 1140 AD- DoW on Sumeria.
• 1160 AD- China destroyed, after providing a leader.
• 1200 AD- Sumeria destroyed.

Was lining up troops to go after Egypt and for the first time noticed walls on all of their towns. Hit F7 and Egypt had the Great Wall built in Heliopolis, which was way up north. After all the deals & alliances I have broken, Cleopatra grants a RoP. Awesome! I'll take that deal. Sent two Cavalry armies up to Heliopolis, while everyone else was lining up or healing. Then-

• 1250 AD- Egypt destroyed.
• 1260 AD- Conquest win.

@templar_x thanks for a fun map!

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Commenting on Takeo's game.

Spoiler :

Ouch, you ended up going the long way to the other continent. I noticed on the map that there was a few places where there was only coastal squares and no sea squares near where the Dutch were. I suspected that another area by the Dutch that had coast but no sea had land close to it. I was right and managed to find the Egyptians, but my ship sank. Rather than send another ship I just decided to grab printing press and traded contacts with the Egyptians.

 

[Takeo]

Commenting on Takeo's game.

Spoiler :

I noticed no sea squares near where the Dutch were.

Spoiler :

I never even noticed the absence of sea squares. There apparently is not enough of a visual difference between the sea and ocean graphics I'm using.

 

[Quintillus]

Spoiler 1000 BC :

A Regent game, that should be easy after last quarter's Demigod game, right? Right?

Reply hazy, ask again later.

-----

I like to switch up strategy rather than just go for the optimal one. This may be why I never get a Fastest Finish, but I enjoy it. This game, I decided to go for Iron Working, and once I had Iron Working and a good amount of scouting, decided to go for a resource denial strategy, of Iron in particular. Sure, I could have just archer rushed everyone, but it's more fun to try something different.

Two of my Warrior-scouts parked on the two Iron sources I found near Babylon, and one near the Iron by Rome. I pumped out a bunch of Warriors in general, and didn't especially hurry to connect my own Iron, after all, my rivals weren't going to have any, so why rush? I'd hoped to get Right of Passage so I could park indefinitely, prior to Rome/Babylon roading their iron. I also expanded quickly towards Rome to establish a Dyes monopoly. There was some thought of a peaceful strategy of making sure we were the supreme military power as the only one with Iron, while also raking in the dough exporting Dyes, funding lots of science... yeah we'd be a bit of the neighborhood bully not letting anyone connect iron, but we'd be a peaceful neighborhood bully.

It didn't work out as planned. Rome sent out a Worker to road their iron a few turns before I got Map Making via Philosophy to get rights of passage. I had two Warriors in the vicinity by then so I declared war and sent them to take the Iron hill, while starting to send a Spearman up to reinforce. Rome would send some Archers out, one Warrior would be lost but so would a Roman Archer, the Elite Warrior would survive (no leader yet), we'd retreat from the iron but never let it fall out of our sight. A Roman Archer sent towards our Dyes city would be dispatched by two Warriors. We would lose a 10-shield unit for a Roman 20-shield unit, things were going okay, and they still weren't getting any iron.

I still had some idea of roping in Babylon for a military alliance against Rome, though for some reason the option didn't appear even after I had Writing and an embassy.

-----

But as the Roman war started to unfold in an acceptable fashion, we noticed 4 Babylonian Warriors heading towards the city halfway between Persepolis and the dyes city, which was located 1W of the Wheat.

Were they just chasing barbarians? It looked more and more unlikely, if so, the should have been going farther southeast.

Sure enough, they declared war and we went from zero wars to two in about two turns. Thankfully we had a chance to fortify a Warrior who was en route to Rome, we didn't lose all of our defenders, and within a couple turns we had local numerical superiority, thus not losing a critical city. We also sent a couple other Warriors to block the strait between us and Babylon, on Mountains. Still, Babylon defeated one of our Iron-blocking Warriors with a Bowman, starting their Golden Age, and meaning they would get Swordsmen at some point.

Now it's 1000 BC, we have two wars, still don't have Iron (though we should within 50-100 years), and everyone on the continent has 5 cities, though ours are the largest.

Thus, it's interesting. If this were Emperor, I'd be more worried, but it's still interesting. Thankfully we have a bottleneck against Babylon, and the Roman Iron is on a Hill so we should be able to Spearman-rush it and deny them Legions effectively. Hopefully we can peace out Babylon before they go the long way around (or just let them crash into Spearman-mountains forever), and if so we should be able to defeat Rome with Immortals when we feel like it.