GR12 - AWM vs 30 civs, Pangea

[vmxa]

Well done on the detailed MM of our core. That's what we need.

The link to the save doesn't seem to be working.

Thanks. I changed the link name and it now works. I could not get to it to see if it loaded and what the exact spelling was. I Left an underscore in the name.

 

[Greebley]

Roster:
Greebley - Up
ThERat - On Deck
Northern Pike
Beorn-eL-Feared
markh
Vxma - Just Played

I got it.

 

[vmxa]

With engineer specialists, 3x6+1=7 spt, which brings an aqua down to 15 turns. That's how he does it. And once you're there, you're size 6 and can grow for more food surplus and more specialists per city.

I'm not sure why we need coal so bad though, I hardly see anyone we could trade it with and our one source looks deep enough to me

First on the coal, we would need it dam bad, if ours becomes exhusted. That may or may not happen and we may or may not get a new one. All I am saying is I would prefer to have a second just in case. Not a great rush, but why not put it near the top of the list?

Now as to the engineers we did not have that skill, until this last turn so it was not an option.

Second I am not saying you could not make a profit on doing it from here forward. I am only saying why bother? You have to give up the 9 beakers in each place you do this for 15 turns. Then you have rail and maybe irrigate some tiles and finally you have to grow out to size 12.

Having done all that in how many turns, when do you start to come out ahead? If that is some 40 or 50 turns form now, I just don't care about it.

Someone is going to have to take the time to peruse our nearly 200 towns to find those opportuities. Then manage it all in a timely fashion. We just do not need it. If we were in Republic and did not have enough unit support, that may tip the scales.

What is my expection on this hard work? Well if I can get 6 tiles with 4 food each, then I can gain 3 specialist for how ever many turns there are left, after I recoup my investment.

Don't forget we are already about twice as good as they are on research and it will only widen as you gain more towns. I am lazy as I said. I would not even be letting these new place do anything. I would just toss up a beakerhead and let them sit till the game was over and never look at them.

I only said I never use engineers, but I do know how they can be used. It is just that they come to late to make me take the effort.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Good point on exhaustion, it hasn't happened to me in so long I forgot about it.
I have the habit of using every irrigated tile for a specialist at this point in game, but then I rarely play above standard size, and often small. That makes a difference

 

[Northern Pike]

Just a thought about city placement: with rails, CxxC is unnecessary. CxxxC, so that we can claim as much territory as possible without cultural expansions, is more to the point now.

 

[ThERat]

loaded mapstat to look at things again

First off, I agree with NP on the city placement. You can easily plant cities a little looser but still keep cultural borders intact. We want to grab as much land as possible before the internet.

Rome has a ton of money, Greebley maybe you can send some armies (I think 3 Cav armies are good to raze rifle towns) and find them. They only have 15 cities and a single town razed could give us 1.5-2k I think.
Dutch are down to 5 cities, we can gain some easy cash from them.

city count is at 500 now without Persia, expect the city limit pop up soon.

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: Switch the taxmen and adding a scientists to get Med in 5 turns instead of 6 Actually we only need to run 80% science as well. The number of beakers needed must have dropped.. Since the AI are gaining the tech and since we are growing, it is often possible to shave a turn off of getting a tech even if it is impossible earlier. This is another reason I don't try to calculate ahead of time. Things change.

I also switch to temple for any town that a border expansion will do us good.

IBT: A landing near Southern Fort (this happens every turn)

1792 AD: Use artillery to damage boats 1 square away from the coast.
Damage boats next to the coast.
Bomb down landing to 1 hp and attack with Elite units. Get a leader and another Army.
Raze Utrecht for 878 gold. The Dutch have cash
Raze.Rotterdam for 933 gold.
Raze Chempoala (Greek) in the west. Rome has 24k gold. With that we could steal a lot of techs or upgrade a lot of units. I am going to explore the western lands and look for the Romans.
Capture Gronegin. Decide the dutch aren't long for this world and the spot is a good one.
Spend a small amount of cash to hurry settlers. Size 12 towns that are at max food will also make settlers.

IBT: Units move up. No attacks.

1794 AD: Capture Amsterdam It has Magellan's Voyage.
Locate and Capture The Hague. We destroy the Glorious Dutch
Start Capturing Egyptian towns. I can always abandon and replace & who cares if they flip (I will be careful). I think I can wipe them out before the next player has to deal with towns that can flip. Egypts towns are guarded by Pikes
Capture El-Amarna, Pi Ramesses, Alexandria and Byblos. Autodestroy Busiris and Pithom
Get another leader and Army. Note that I am trying to Maximize my leader count by using every Elite every turn they are not healing. Get a 3rd Leader and Army

IBT: No attacks on us other than the normal boat bombardment (which is lessened now we can hit ships at range 2 with Artillery).

1796 AD: Capture Memphis, Heliopolis, Thebes, and Elephantine. Egypt has been Destroyed Our towns are now flip-proof. (still have a lot of units to move this turn)


That is it for today. I will continue tomorrow. Took me 2-3 hours per turn - mostly moving all the units.

 

[vmxa]

First off, I agree with NP on the city placement. You can easily plant cities a little looser but still keep cultural borders intact. We want to grab as much land as possible before the internet.

Rome has a ton of money, Greebley maybe you can send some armies (I think 3 Cav armies are good to raze rifle towns) and find them. They only have 15 cities and a single town razed could give us 1.5-2k I think.
Dutch are down to 5 cities, we can gain some easy cash from them.

city count is at 500 now without Persia, expect the city limit pop up soon.

I got over 2K for 3 cities of the Dutch. We don't have Rome in sight do we? Anyway we should be able to free up some more armies soon with the infantry coming online.

As to the count, I am not sure I understand why we care about it. I mean of course it kills the AI, but they are not adding any towns any how. They are only able to plant in the space we clear as near as I can tell.

So once it is at 512, they are done doing even that. For our part, it means nothing as we can plant as many towns as we have settlers and space for. All we have to do is raze a place.

There was not a lot of open space at the end of my turn and we did not have enough armies to escort many more if we had the settlers. We can now look to use rails and irrigation to make a couple of settler pumps. They can be 5 or 6 turn ones, better if we have the location.

We can rush a granary in few with old units or cash or a combination. Just so we have the settler to plant as town are razed.

One issue with looser placement is that we will not be able to get arties into the new towns. We can rail and cover one or two sites, but that is about all at this time. You only need one tile railed to get guns into a CxxC town and still fire. You need 2 tiles railed in a CxxxC town.

Why do we need more land before internet? Who is going to have the internet other than maybe us? Are you thinking of waiting for the free labs to fill culture gaps?

Right now we are able to plant as many CxxC towns as we want with zero chance of an attack on them. All units that come into range are redlined and killed with zero loses, how much better do we rally need than that?

I don't know what has happened with the Celts, did we ever fight them? No one else that I am aware of could have any serious number of units to even push us. Is it just that we are compelled to crush them as quickly as we can? I can understand that, but me I am plenty happy to turn in as many sets of them doing no damage as it takes to win.

I guess I am just mean, I do not like to even give them a chance to fight back, picking up the pace is the only chance they have to do any damage.

 

[vmxa]

I am not sure I get the temple expansion bit. I mean I understand what you said, by why spend 60 turns, when we can keep planting CxxC and not have any borders to fill. Maybe a few places where the land will not have a town adjacent to fill the borders could be done.

I admit I have not done other than CxxC is so long I forget what occurs, but I do not see how there fails to be a gap if I have town A and town B at CxxxC?

Each gets one tile so it is A#o#B or am I losing my mind again. The o being an open space. Again I do not really care if we make a temple in some of the places, but why not slap a town in the bigger gaps and forget making a temple? That gap is not going to be filled in so long.

I know we probably do not have enough settlers right now to keep the open spaces filled, but that is a shot term issue. Settlers cannot be moved to CxxxC and found a town in one turn, unless you can rail two tiles. They can settle in the same turn with 1 tile being railed in CxxC.

That is something we can do much of the time. This cuts the penetration of their troops. Anyway just a thought and it may not be worth any thing.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Nice going with the elites

Looks like we hit the bottom of the continent at last, now we'll have the opportunity to circle back and avoid the mountains. That's good.

Grabbing more land is a step forward to domination, but leaving tiles off borders is an invitation for thier cavalries to come and sneak us around. This is why, the way I see it, he's been thinking about engineered temples.

 

[vmxa]

Domination is inevitable, it is just a matter of how long, but I am not sure we get there much sooner with looser spacing. That works, if we cannot get settlers out as fast as the land is available to be filled.

That may be the case for a little longer, but we can soon get to the point that we have settlers ready to go as needed. Not a big deal either way at this stage.

BTW how do you engineer temples in a size 1. I can see that in a captured city, but we should not fuss with many of those. I would rather have the slaves. There is no wonder already in existance that I would care enough about to try to hold a city.

Leo's is not bad, but we will be done with most of the upgrades by then, unless it is close to us.

It is not about flips to me, but I can't see risking one either. If a frontline city flips, it could hurt a bit, but what do we gain by trying to hold them? We save a settler. It probably cost us making a temple or filling the gap anyway.

It is interesting to bounce these ideas back and forth, maybe I can see something to incorporate, by getting others perspective.

 

[Northern Pike]

I admit I have not done other than CxxC is so long I forget what occurs, but I do not see how there fails to be a gap if I have town A and town B at CxxxC?

Each gets one tile so it is A#o#B or am I losing my mind again. The o being an open space. Again I do not really care if we make a temple in some of the places, but why not slap a town in the bigger gaps and forget making a temple? That gap is not going to be filled in so long.

Wow, it is a long time since you've done anything except CxxC. In Civ III, a gap of just one tile's width between two of the player's cultural boundaries is filled in automatically, provided no other civ's borders are present to complicate the situation. This is why the smallest hole one ever sees within one's own culture is a square of four tiles, width two. So CxxxC, properly done, involves no gaps.

 

[vmxa]

Ok, I thought that may be the case, but I am not sure when it will and when it won't. It still leaves the issue of not being able to found immediately because you cannot even reach the tile in 1 turn. It still leaves the not being able to get the infantry and arties in and function on that turn.

I guess I don't see the need or the advantage of getting more land with less settlers. I have never run into the 512 limit, so maybe I will see a reason. I still think that the limit will do noting to us.

We can have 400 towns if that is what we need to fill the land. Actually I suspect we will probably go to just slash and burn once we have some tank armies. No need to even fill the land forward. That is what I some times do in the late stages.

Raze and kill any settler pairs that show their faces. Anyway I will do it how ever everyone likes it.

 

[Greebley]

I am playing now and am on turn 5. We are capturing everything rather than razing. Expansion is much faster and we can have temples in 12 turns so its a pretty good deal. No flips yet, mostly because I am killing civs so quickly - Dutch, Egypt and Carthage are gone with two other civs near death. We did hit the 512k limit so cannot fill gaps and need those temples.

We wouldn't be able to reach domination if we go CxxC all the way I don't think - There would be too much empty land.

BTW, if you do build new towns and you want a temple, you let it grow (5-10 turns) and then hire an engineer for about 25 turns total to a temple (not 60)

I should be 2 turns from getting Sci Meth if I play all 10 turns (7 left). The prebuild is 9, but I can reduce it I think with rails on the hills.

 

[vmxa]

Since the AI are gaining the tech and since we are growing, it is often possible to shave a turn off of getting a tech even if it is impossible earlier. This is another reason I don't try to calculate ahead of time. Things change.

The AI knew Med, 10 or more of them iirc. None will know Sci, so we will not have to deal with a reduction, until maybe the last few turns. I doubt even then. If then go Ind we will get at least a second discount and could even see a few more civs learn it as we research it.

After that if we go straight to tanks, we will not see any discounts and calculation will not change. This is why I think we have no use for steals, we will not have any techs to steal other than the ones we skip.

The top dog for the AI will go Elec then either RP or Sci. So it goes Elec - RP -Sci or it goes Elec - Sci - RP. That is about 28 turns for them. We will finish Med - Sci and Ind within that time.

We can then go with Corp as the first to research it. We could also use the ToE to gain Corp and Refine or Steel and then move on. I forget if Steel and Refine are the same price. If they are, Refine is the pick to see where oil is located.

Somewhere along this time we probably will start to dismantle Rome, if we have not already started. They will no longer be a factor in researching. The next best teching AI is far behind them and will never get a tech for us to steal.

If we leave Rome intact for the next 50 turns, they still will be hard pressed to do any of the 140 techs in less than 15 turns. We will do them in no worse than 10 turns and probably more like 8.

 

[vmxa]

I wonder if whomever gets to the first Roman town, could look at how many cities they have and the amount of cash. I am interested in trying to get a handle on how to calculate the amount one gets.

If they still have 15 towns and 24K, I am guessing we get about 1120 gold. Maybe I can refine the guessing with a few more events.

 

[Greebley]

1796 AD: Capture Tiwanaku, Hippo, Leptis Minor. Max town limit is reached.

1798 AD: Carthage, Thiveste, Leptis Magna, Utica, Vilcamba, Isen, Machu Picchu.
Lower science to 50 med in 1
Up to 5730 gold BTW and a Roman border is in sight far to the West. Sent units to Babylon to get us more towns.

IBT: Lose a Cavalry and a Pike in a stack. This is lost 2 and 3 I believe.

1800 AD: Vinho Verde Abandoned. Too close to other town and I am at the town limit.
Capture Ur, Ollyantambo (renamed Tambo), Bad-Tibra, Ur, Kua, Cuzco, Ica, Sabratha The Carthaginians are Destroyed.

Killed 3 civs this turn: Carthage, Dutch, Egypt.

Two civs remain that I own cities of:
Incas have seven cities, Sumeria has three cities.

Other civs in the East are:
Iroquois: 18 cities, Portugal: 4 Cities, Mongols: 27 Cities, Mayans: 13 Cities, and (probably) Vikings: 3 Cities.

IBT: Largish numbers of Roman Rifles going by (My 3 Armies which has found Roman Territory and are pretty far from home). Looks like ThERat will get to fight the Romans again. On the plus side we have Artillery units that are doing nothing because there is not enough units to red-line. Those extra units will be useful when the rifles come.

1802 AD:
Capture Lagash, Anshan, and Der. The Glorious Sumerians are Destroyed
Raze a small Iroquois town.
Inca: Capture Andahuaylas (renamed Andies and is Capitol), Huamanga (Hummang), Vitcos, Arequippa, Corihuayrachina (Corey), Naska
BTW, the fact that Incans and Iroquois and Portugal are so close together and Incans and Iroquois are so close to the same shade of Purple is annoying. You get borders where both sides are nearly the same shade of purple.

I purposefully go and kill Portuguese units before determining if I can take out their last city (which would remove all the units). Leader fishing at its finest. Get a leader which becomes an Army
Capture Juli - Incans are not destroyed. Lovely - they must have a boat with a settler.

Scientific Method in 6 prebuild in 7. We will have overflow and may want to swap the build once we get the tech to save a turn. We only need 600 shields and it will have nearly 1000.

Iroquois are pretty much the only civ on our eastern border now.

We are next to a roman town - size 19.

IBT: Tried to fortify our boats to get some Korean boat losses, but we lose all 4 defense 2 boats to defense 2 attacks.
We declare war on Persia because Rome had a Mutual Protection Pact. I guess that means we met them? Or maybe we declare without ever meeting them? I don't know. What happens if you don't have communication with 1/2 of a MPP that you set off?

1804 AD:
Capture St Regis, Caughnawaga (Caga), Tyendenaga (Tyend), Cattaraugus, Grand River, Niagra Falls, Allegheny, Centralia

IBT: Rome is a war with someone. Maybe we won't see all those Rifles??
Iroquois an Mongols seem at war. The Mongols couldn't reach us before, but now will be able to I see a lot of Cavalry coming our way. It may be interesting. BTW, that could be the issue with the Celts. They just can't reach us (and maybe other civs?) due to ROP issues.

1806 AD:
Capture Salamanca, Oil Springs. The rest of the Iroquois are behind the mountains.
My three Cav Armies in Roman lands raze Veii for 1158 gold. (Edit: They had around 24k at the time)

The Mongols will be a tougher opponent as they have Rifles. So far all the civs we have been fighting have been guarded by Pikes and Muskets, which is one reason they fell so easily. Also they had no Cavalry.

I sank an Incan Caravel, but still don't see the end of the Incans. Decide to replace all the largest Incan towns with our own settlers. Means I need to build more. How annoying. Now I need more settlers

Hmm... Sci Method is in 3 turns. Some AI may have gotten it or our economy grew enough to reduce a turn.

IBT: Looks like it is Rome an France who are fighting.
Allegheny and Mauch Chunk Depose us.

1808 AD: Capture Muscat. Babylons have been Destroyed
Capture back Allegheny and Mauch Chuck. Actually the Allegheny flip is a bit of a blessing as I can now freely put units in the city.
Iroquois: Capture Lagos and Sagres.
Mongol: Capture Tonawanda

I was wrong about the Vikings being in the East - It is China which looks the same color (or it could be both) I meet a chinese unit. We may get a Chinese rush as I suspect they were also blocked by the Iroquios.

I should be able to break out onto the other side of the Mountain range. Note this mountain range is huge - it is the same mountain range we broke past before - it connects the continent both North to South and continues to connect East to West - 4 squares thick in most places.

IBT: Mongol, Chinese, and Roman units are in range for the first time.

1810 AD: Kill a bunch of Mongols in the hills. There is one stack still needing to be dealt with.
Iroqois: Capture Guimare (renamed to Jungleville), Gandesetatiagon, Chondote The Iroquois have been destroyed
Portugal: Capture Emerita, Oporto, Lisbon, Coimbra Portugal has been destroyed
Mongol: Capture Oka, Akwense, Uliastay

Notes:
Destroyed Netherlands, Egypt, Carthage, Sumeria, Babylon, Iroquois, Portugal
Incans remain alive. They had no cities (checked on diplo screen before attacking last city), but might have one by now. We do not border them.

The border to the East is definitely shorter and will continue to shrink.
It appears if there are 3 civilizations to the east left:
Mongols with 24 cities (guarded by Rifles)
Mayans with 13 cities (guarded by Pikes or Muskets (based on tech known))
China with 14 cities (guarded by Rifles (based on tech known).

I suspect ThERat can kill those civs if he plays 10 turns.

I got 6 leaders total. Not sure I wrote them all down. For the latter turns there weren't enough enemies to kill to get leader chances.

We are Razing Roman Lands for cash as ThERat suggested - Our armies are almost healed and should be good to go next turn.

Expect Korean Cavalry I saw some heading our way.

One of the last things I did was try to go through all the cities and make sure at least one unit was in every city with resistance. Note that some cities captured this turn may have (only) armies in them.

I also tried to go through the map and make sure nothing was exposed that could be attacked (I do this every round).

Some MM is toward engineers. We could get more scientists next turn after we get Sci Meth.

We should have plenty of shields for TOE. You may want to switch to TOE the same turn we get Sci Method to save us a turn. Palace build has 4 turns left in wonder city.

Korean boats are a real pain in the behind. Korea must have at least 30 of them and we can't reach most with our Artillery. Expect annoying bombardment.

Two screen shots of the new front line:

A picture of our progress for this turn in terms of land:

The 1810 AD save

 

[Greebley]

I would go ahead and get Hoover. We won't get tanks in time to matter and increased production would be really nice. I probably should have started a prebuild but did not (not that we had anything to prebuild with other than a Uni or Bank). It might even make sense to get Industialization and Ato from TOE and start a Hoover prebuild. We then research Electronics. This would get our Factories online sooner.

 

[Greebley]

After we get Electronics and Indust, I would go for Nationalism and Espionage. The next most valuable thing would be a world map. We totally haven't explored the ocean and might not have 66% on the continent (though it is likely on a pangea). We can steal maps along with any tech the AI has gotten toward tanks (I think vmxa is right in that it won't be a lot, but we also know the AI won't be ahead of us since we can steal to parity). I would keep our money for these attempts.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

This kind of progress is unreal
I'd guess the celts have been a warmongering civ so far and that's why they haven't sent any units, they were already at war underway. ROP issues shouldn't disable them completely from reaching us, not all this time ... this would also explain how they got so big.

Just throwing this in: battlefield medicine? I know we've been using armies and playing in defensive territory, so this is probably not worth a single of the thousand or so shields, but I thought I'd ask.

On a less relevant note, this is a huge mountain chain. I think I've mentionned it above but I'm still for the espionage thing, just in case; it will give us maps at any rate, which isn't to be left aside.