COTM59 - Spoiler #2

[civ_steve]

COTM 59 Spoiler2: End of the Middle Ages

Reading Requirements:

1. Must be able to research an Industrial Age Technology.
2. Must have contact with all remaining civs and full knowledge of the map.

Posting restrictions

1. No maps showing Industrial or Modern resources.
2. No discussion of Industrial Age (or later).
3. Absolutely NO discussion of any other active 'X'OTM Contest

Fun map?? I thought the monster continent loaded with emperor AI's would be a good challenge (or advantage). How did the isolated civs (Egypt to some degree, Russia and Germany, do? Did you get a GA with your NumMerc's or with Wonders (or at all?) How are you doing at the end of the Middle Ages?

 

[CKS]

Open, 20K
The middle ages cruised along, with one exception. After education I take a detour to music theory as I lose out on Knights Templar and don't want to switch to university or FP and lose some shields. Unfortunately, I lose Leo's as a prebuild with 401 shields in the box, a 400 shield palace and two turns to go on MT. I maximize science, regardless of the cost, and still can't get it down to 1 turn. I take a save to a different computer to run CivAssist (I have a new computer running Vista. It is fast, but CivAssist doesn't run on it. My old computer was too slow to run both CivAssist and Civ3 at the same time.) and discover I'm only about 25 beakers short. Luckily real life intervenes, giving me time to realize that I can join some workers to make more scientists. 9 workers gets me music theory in one. It does exacerbate my usual not-enough-workers problem, but it was a trade I was happy to make.

I get a golden age at the end here with a Numidian Merc, not exactly planned (because I wasn't thinking about it when I attacked) but coming at a pretty good time.

210 cathedral
150 mongols land on island, make peace
300ad sistine chapel
410 education - go music theory as KT is no longer available
490 2 turns to go on music theory&lose leo as prebuild. 401 shields in bin, 400 sh palace - need 2 cities for 500sh, have 1 set, 1 in 1 turn - no help. Maximize beakers, join some workers after discovering I need another 25 beakers. Some riots & a little starvation, but I get MT and swap to Bach's. I don't change anything else so that I reap the punishment for my beakers.
540 Lots of trades, getting chemistry, metallurgy, and lots of money for MT and iron
580 Bach's
590 university
790 Shakespeare's Theater
890 declare on rome, ally egypt&greece
940 GA starts, magellans

 

[Lanzelot]

Fun map??

It sure was...

Well, I thought I had a pretty good game going, but somehow it just "fizzled out" I still don't know, where I went wrong strategically. I hope that some of you, who went for Domination with Knights, will share their experience here.
As I said in the previous spoiler, I entered the MA in 975BC and got all first tier techs from the scientific civs. I then decided to bee-line for Military Tradition, because of the following reasons:

• Two close neighbors (Greece & Rome) have 3-defense UU, which is no fun fighting with Knights
• I already knew that the map is a very long stretched Pangaea, so Cavalry would reach their target faster
• We just did a Knight-Domination in SGOTM14, so for a bit of variety I wanted to try the Cavalry-Domination now and get some experience with that...

I started conquering Egypt with horsemen in 570BC, but that went very slowly. By 290BC I had captured only 2 towns and failed twice to take Thebes - not many losses, but the necessity to retreat & heal & try again took so much time. (Around 10AD I had traded Chivalry from Babylon and then that war was over quickly.)

In 290BC I triggered the GA with a Numidian Mercenary and used it to good effect: Leptis Magna, which had just finished the FP, started Leonardo's Workshop and did 30spt, so finished it during these 20 turns. I also finished the remaining turn of Gunpowder and then Chemistry, Metallurgy and most of Military tradition, so at the end of the GA (80AD) everything was set for a connect/disconnect strategy with saltpeter. At 75 gold per horse this was even cheaper than the usual horse->knight upgrade. From then on I kept taking town after town, interspersed with a few false treaties to get the size-1 towns, but still it took me ages to get around the continent?! I used a galley-ferry between Greece and Iroquoisia to cut the long travel time a bit. At the end some civs had musketmen, but my cavs didn't seem to feel a difference compared to pikes...

Should I have attacked Greece with horses? Or build 20 horses instead of Leonardo's? But the unit upkeep would have eaten all my money, so I would have gotten MT much later and not be able to upgrade those horses anyway because of lack of funds...!

Regards, Lanzelot

 

[Spoonwood]

I don't know about your game exactly, but you might consider buying armies instead of disconnect-reconnect once you learn Military Tradition... at least in some games.

 

[Lanzelot]

Sometimes I do buy Armies, but in this game I didn't. In the beginning I had almost no elite promotions (perhaps 2-3 out of 50 wins!), so the first leader came very late. I build the Heroic Epic by hand (took only 10 turns) and then used the second leader to rush the Military Academy. From then on I had quite a number of leaders and a total of 6 Armies, which was more than I needed... (Used them for cracking musketmen in hill cities; for everything else simple cavs were sufficient.). Therefore I never felt that the 1400 gold for rushing an Army would pay of in this game.

Cheers, Lanzelot