Dealing with Catherine

[shinkicker]

You all have seen it. She's omnipresent in most of our games, it seems: Catherine the Great taking over most of the map by the Renaissance period and STILL cranking out settlers.

Russian settlers have become the annoying fruit flies of our times.

In my last game, I ended up going to war with her and nuking Moscow. In this game, we started closer together and she's finally started showing up on my shores with settlers. Usually unaccompanied settlers.

I made the mistake of agreeing to Open Borders with her. Now I can't wait for the agreement to expire. In fact, I doubt I'll agree to another one with anybody for the duration of this game.

There is a long coastline along the north edge of my continent that isn't worth colonizing for me, but which is probably appealling to the AI due to the coal and gems up there.

So when Catherine landed settlers on my south coast and tried to race through my civilization on her way to the unoccupied areas, what else was I to do?

We played Tetris for a while with our units but I finally got her settler trapped. Now I have destroyers patrolling the shorelines looking for more of her little fruit flies. If she dares to set foot on my continent (I've warned her twice), I'm afraid there's going to be a war. She's not going to like what happens next.

I thought this was a humorous situation though: I'm assuming the settler unit will magically disappear once the open borders agreement terminates and my borders extend to the hex her unit occupies:

What a great use for all those cavalry units

 

[Rime]

That's a mighty impressive Great Wall you've got there. How did you grab this much territory so early?

 

[shinkicker]

That's a mighty impressive Great Wall you've got there. How did you grab this much territory so early?

Population, population, population

 

[Dan Quale]

She's always a juggernaut when I've met her. 40 cities Diety difficulty I had to "tunnel" to her capital to win.

 

[aimlessgun]

I believe when your borders expand to that spot the settler will be moved north, outside your borders. I'm guessing that's exactly what you don't want.

Cathy is indeed a settling fiend. So tend to get eaten up by Bismarck the Beast though.

 

[renkenbd]

Carpet nuke <grin>.

 

[Buccaneer]

So while you were busy Rexing, you were allowing Russia to expand?

 

[carlisimo]

That's a mighty impressive Great Wall you've got there. How did you grab this much territory so early?

It actually expands with your city's cultural borders, oddly enough.

 

[shinkicker]

It actually expands with your city's cultural borders, oddly enough.

Yep, and my Civ is on a culture spree so I can get the happiness policies that encourage more and longer Golden Ages for Darius.

What's not shown in that screenshot is that there are only 3 cities to the north and east that were originally founded by myself. All the cities to the south and west I inherited *cough* from the late, great Montezuma when he, too, defied my warnings not to settle close to my borders. I gobbled up his 4 cities with pikemen and knights wayyyyy back in the olden days and sent him packing to the Old Civ Leaders' Home in the sky.

I believe when your borders expand to that spot the settler will be moved north, outside your borders. I'm guessing that's exactly what you don't want.

As it turns out, that's exactly what happened. I'm now in the process of massing units in key positions to knock Catherine down a peg. Since my culture costs have gone up so much since eliminating Montezuma and gradually assimilating the puppets, I'm planning a punitive war just to burn her cities to the ground and set her back to the Bronze Age. No more annexation. No puppets. Just slash and burn, baby!

The juiciest spot on the north shore was grabbed by Ghandi. I'm leaving him there for now, watched over by some infantry, while I deal with Catherine.

 

[Rime]

It actually expands with your city's cultural borders, oddly enough.

Mine doesn't. It firmly sits where my borders were at the turn I started building it.

 

[SheerTerroir]

I've been having success just fighting off Catherine.

I'm playing on King, Continents and managed to get a continent as China all to myself after wiping out England early on. Whenever Catherine tries to settle a city in my back yard, I just bring an army over, take it out and she makes peace after losing her new settlement. I also keep a large army of scouts (garrisoned in my cities with the Honor +1 happiness for garrisoned troups) so that I can steal settlers when they show up. I've intercepted 3 of them already.

So my policy is containment; keep her out of my back yard. She's yet to develop any real tech to threaten me with. I'm on Rifleman, she has pikemen and longswordsmen..

Sheer

 

[shinkicker]

I've been having success just fighting off Catherine.

I'm playing on King, Continents and managed to get a continent as China all to myself after wiping out England early on. Whenever Catherine tries to settle a city in my back yard, I just bring an army over, take it out and she makes peace after losing her new settlement. I also keep a large army of scouts (garrisoned in my cities with the Honor +1 happiness for garrisoned troups) so that I can steal settlers when they show up. I've intercepted 3 of them already.

So my policy is containment; keep her out of my back yard. She's yet to develop any real tech to threaten me with. I'm on Rifleman, she has pikemen and longswordsmen..

I've noticed that about her. In just about every game, she expands fast and has tons of units, but I don't know that she spends much time upgrading. In all the wars I've had with her, I'm fighing crossbowmen and trebuchets with artillery and infantry.

And in the game before my current one, she consistently had -1 happiness due to over-expansion and an inability to build any happiness for herself.

That's a good idea about using scouts to intercept settlers. After you've declared war on her a few times, do the other Civs start to whine at you?

 

[Jerrymander]

Last time I declared war on Catherine, I had to wade through the 40 settlers clogging her island up to get to her cities.

Jeez.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Oddly enough, in both of my latest games, Catherine got eaten in the adjacent continent as she probably doesn't build enough units during the mid-game. We're talking about waves of pikemen and musketmen just rolling through undefended territory, which kinda terrifies me as the new guy tends to run away with the game.

 

[eviltypeguy]

She's always a juggernaut when I've met her. 40 cities Diety difficulty I had to "tunnel" to her capital to win.

*proceeds to die laughing at the mental image*

 

[SheerTerroir]

War against Catherine produced some hostility from random civilizations but nobody DOW on me for it.

All of this within about 30 turns:

First, I took Catherine settlement #1 (Vladivostok)
I saw Washington approaching and made peace w/ Catherine because he was ready to DOW.
After pushing back Washington (though not making peace yet), I attacked Catherine settlement #2 (Smolensk) and took it.
Then made peace with Catherine again!
Now working on war vs. Washington and trading with Catherine!

Sheer

 

[Infiltrator]

She has an expansionist personality, coupled with the immense cheats the AI gets it's no wonder she's getting so huge if left alone.