GR12 - AWM vs 30 civs, Pangea

[ThERat]

got it...what an outstanding progress

since we will get ToE in the IT via big picture, here is my new plan which is inspired by Greebley.

I will get us AT and Industrialization. This can be used to shortrush a factory in Washington (which will be used to build Hoover as the city needs a river). Hoover will be 800 shields and Washington might pull 40+ spt. Thus we do have around 20 turns until Hoover finishes.

Therefore I will go for nationalism and espionage. This also means that I will start a prebuild for IA in wonder city via an army prebuild.

Then we go for electronics. This should be still earlier than Hoover and we would have knowledge of a map by then which I agree is really good for proper planning and execution of the war.


I am sure we can pull nationalism and espionage in 4 turns each. We currently only employ 122 scientists and a lot of civil engineers. This can be easily adjusted. As Rome has so much money we can actually shortrush some temples (maybe also disbanding cats).

I plan to build up a proper navy to get rid of the Korean pesky frigates. I do detest shore bombardment.

 

[Greebley]

I think that sounds like a good plan, ThERat.

We do have a lot of Engineers which can be turned off for a while to get science high enough to finish the prebuild. You can make enough scientists so the timing works out right. If we can, keeping engineers to hurry temples is useful & I don't see a need to get electronics earlier than we need it.

Check what techs the AI has and whether we need cash for steals. Ironclads would be worth stealing as well as Corp - though the AI may not have Industrialization yet - I didn't check them all yet. Sanitation for the possibility of larger towns and battle field med wouldn't be useless either.

Note that we have several towns that are squeezed in (such as the town Squeeze ) that we can abandon if we so choose. I didn't abondon them rather saved them for when we want to build cities of our own.


I used all our Settlers that I was going to leave the next player on Incan cities replacement (and I didn't replace them all - there are several that I am starving - cuzco also had good cash from tourism so I kept it). My advice is to keep cities - if you don't we will have troubles filling the lands fast enough. If you are careful, we won't lose any good units (use outdated units to defend/quell resistance or a single Infantry). Once we get Nationalism, we can draft resistance suppression units. I think we can kill the Mongols in 3-4 turns if we do this.

As a side note since we are at the city max, simply razing cities with the idea of replacing them later may not work so well. I believe the AI's do have some land for builds. We were able to build some cities soley because the AI must have razed some themselves.


Note that the portuguese towns were surprisingly less corrupt than I thought they would be. I guess they are not so far from the capitol. We may want to decide if they should be real towns or if they should go for scientists.

 

[Greebley]

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 didn't understand this. Why can't you reach the square in one turn? Since roads already exist you simply RR to the next town no matter how far it is. On my turn I would capture a town and RR up to it, then use my speed 3 or 4 units (depending on distance to next city) to capture the next one and RR up to that one, etc. On some turns I railed to increase our route by 12-15 squares. Probably 60-70% of our worker force and sometimes more were simply laying rails to reach the next city.

 

[vmxa]

Yes if we have enough crews to do that for many towns, that works. If we do that we pretty much cannot do any worker on the rest of the empire. I was not able to cover that many work crews at that time as I had no infantry.

 

[vmxa]

The FTP site is not available so far for the last 2 hours, so I cannot get the save. So I cannot try to verify what is been done by Rome is the way of research.

I still do not see any reason to learn Nat and Espionage. I know Rome is not going to be researching squat and I am sure they will not be going for The Corp before elec/SciMeth/RP.

If we are already cutting them down, they won't get any farther and the rest were much worse off in terms of research. We could get Corp in the time spent on Nat and Espionage.

I see maps as interesting, but little more than that. We will learn the world in due time. Why do we care about Sanitation and Hospitals? Most of our best places do not have extra tiles not worked. Well none do and some do not even have 12 tiles to work now.

I know no one had Ironclads and I would not expect them to have it anytime soon. We could have Destroyers sooner, if we wanted them.

So what is it we are going to be stealing? Research is now like a normal Monarch game, the AI just will not be able to contribute anything, but the cash we take.

Thanks for the gold report, not bad 1150 Vs 1120. Just the not having the exact amount available could make up the difference.

 

[ThERat]

Pre-Turn
check things, scale is huge for sure
MM cities, change corrupt towns to high food and rather have 1 more engineer + more food than 2 shields
stop all market builds in fringe cites, that won't help us, we will never have happy issues there
short rush some settlers

IT select bigger picture and pre-select AT as tech, then go to wonder city to change to ToE
just to get an idea: AT is 14444. electronics 13000, Industrialization 8666

so, we get AT and Industrialization

1. 1812AD
rush factory in Washington, so we can start prebuild next turn

capture Mandalgovi, Kazan, Hovd, Bayanhongor, Tosontengel and Tsertserleg
we made on big round and there is only 1 city left there for us to take then we can move on
abandon Bayonhongor as it is too close to other cities and found another city next to its ruins

send out a knight army to check on Mongol land and we are very close to the Mongol capital
it has the pyramids a very welcome addition

give up Muskat on the Island to free resources to fight the many Cavs we face on each side
found a new city in the west instead

sell improvements that are not worth the maintenance we pay such as markets and banks in the east

2. 1814AD
nationalism dropped to 3 turns, that's great

lose a healthy army taking Karakorum, it was held by 7 rifles
we now own pyramids
capture Tabriz, Ereen, Almarikh
raze Batshireet, too close to any other city, abandon Ereen and found another combat city to reach next place. Now can reach Choybalsan and take it, found Bananacity to fill a big gap

raze Pisae for 1000gold

3. 1816AD
good news is that we have no flips on the IT, with so many Mongol cities that's a real risk

use knight armies to check on the surrounding area to plan military action
take Kahwanake, capture Darhan, Ulaanbataar, Erdenet, Nalayh and Macao (that was Mongol)
while fighting the many Cavs finally get a leader

Mongols are down to 6 cities now, hope to get rid of them in the next 2 turns

nationalism in 2, we still employ around 120 engineers and 220 scientists

 

[Greebley]

Are maps vital? No.

Can they help us form an attack plan and tell us which way to head first for optimal killing? Yes.

We also get to see the opponents forces which I find useful.

So as I said, I rate the map fairly high and worth the side trip. We don't care about Corp, Steel, or Refining so it would be a while to get a good tech going that way and we don't slow things by that much. Nationalism is a cheap tech.

I also find drafting useful. We could really use at least some defender in our towns on the coast in case of vikings, and it also good for worker stack defense and resistance suppression.

BTW you don't have to guard every worker stack. If you do, you will limit how far you can get. You just need to guard the ones in danger. You can sometime protect a whole bunch of stacks simply by cutting a road. You do have to take care that you correctly calculate where the AI can get however.

A final point is that the AI can research ANY tech. They don't for example always go for RP before sanitation. With a lot of AI, the chances of them getting an odd tech increases. I do agreee that RP is much more attractive than an optional tech so the odds still are decent that RP will be first. You probably know all this, but it is worth mentioning. The greater the number of AI, the greater the chances that one of them will head for an odd tech.

 

[Greebley]

Cross posted the previous with your turn log.

Getting the Pyramids is very nice. Our corrupt cities will grow much faster with them which translates into faster science.

Sounds like we continue to make good progress. I am guessing we have 7-10 turns for the rest of the east.

How long will it take to build the <whatever building it is that gets you spies - intelligence agency?>? It would be nice to have it about the time we want to start our attack in the west so we know which way to go (i.e. 7-10 turns). It would be worth a factory rush if that gets the building sooner.

 

[vmxa]

So as I said, I rate the map fairly high and worth the side trip. We don't care about Corp, Steel, or Refining so it would be a while to get a good tech going that way and we don't slow things by that much. Nationalism is a cheap tech.


A final point is that the AI can research ANY tech. They don't for example always go for RP before sanitation. With a lot of AI, the chances of them getting an odd tech increases. I do agreee that RP is much more attractive than an optional tech so the odds still are decent that RP will be first. You probably know all this, but it is worth mentioning. The greater the number of AI, the greater the chances that one of them will head for an odd tech.

I agree we don't have to care about those techs. It is funny that not long ago the talk was about them getting in Modern Age and about us and the Internet.

Yes they can get any tech that is in the first 3 tiers as long as they have the prereqs. That they can get Sanitation is of no interest to me, same as Commie/Facism. They are not going to get very many additional techs such as Refine/Steel.

As we stand now no one has Ironclads and probably never will. No one even has Communism and I know someone will want to research it. No one has Sanitation. No one other than us has SciMeth or RP. No has Espionage.

Only the Ottoman and Rome has even Electricity and they are not long for the game. They both only managed to learn one tech while we researched Elec and RP as well as SciMeth. We also did Med, but that goes back a bit farther.

So that means the top dogs are far slower than us and some other the next civs are without Nationalism. If any manage to get infantry we may care about some of those techs though.

Drafting, yeah it can be used, but is not required. We just get more and more troops and they can only get smaller and smaller. Vikes should not be an issue as we can see them coming and slip over defenders and arties.

Maps, useful, but we can see lots of land with a few armies scouting, if that is a real issue. It is not the trip to Nat that is of significance, but add in Espionage, IA building. Planting spies and then cash to steal, not atrivial investment.

All in all it matters not, that I accept. Anyway it is done and I had my say.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

IA is 200 shields, so not long.

Pyramids also bring the whole aqueduct towards size 7-8 science farm closer to 40 turns total to complete, which is worthwhile for 12+ beakers if you ask me. Not that we should feel obliged to do it everywhere, but we can certainly take the time to MM a little lump of a dozen towns in former Sumeria/Egypt where there's a lot of grass.

 

[vmxa]

Sorry I should have ended with saying that once you decide to not head hard for tanks, then I would agree to go for the IA. I would just forget about trying to steal any of the requisite techs.

I would use it to investigate large cities to see how much I needed to bring to take it down.

Maybe get some of the optional techs if that make sense, I just can't see what they might be.

 

[Greebley]

BTW, I feel your strategy of going for tanks is a perfectly viable one - especially if you hold off building TOE to get the expensive techs - but just not my preferred one.

 

[vmxa]

Thanks, there is often more than one way to skin the cat. My big fault is that I am never in a hurry to finish the job, so I just keep tightening the noose.

 

[Northern Pike]

Brilliant stuff, Greebley and Rat.

I hate to miss the period of rapid conquest now that we've finally reached it, but I won't be able to play again until early September, due to travel. Until recently I would have assumed that there'd still be some work to do then; now it seems highly unlikely. But if the pace happens to slow down, I'll be glad to participate in the endgame.

Anyway, it's probably not premature to congratulate the team on a superb performance. As Greebley points out, our starting position was good tactically, if not from a resource standpoint. But to have achieved this (apparent) victory with a pretty bad civ for AW, from a slow-growth start, is an impressive feat.

 

[vmxa]

Have a good trip and be safe.

 

[Northern Pike]

Thanks.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Well NP, you were a gear in this machine as well as us all, so the (deserved and not premature) congratulations are yours too

And that's me up, I plan on doing this soon (read 2-3 days), re-read the plan and stick to the pre-builds as efficiently as I can figure out.

 

[ThERat]

NP, will you be able to access the net or completely offline? Anyway, good luck in your endeavours.

vmxa, there are several ways to win this game for sure. At the moment we simply steamroll the AI and I hope I can finish taking the east. As long as we fight rifles with Cav armies, it's fine (though I lost 2 armies in 5 turns yesterday night). Once we face infantry, we surely would need some tanks and bombers to help out.

At the moment a map would greatly help my tactical planning. I have no clue where the next cities are and thus have a hard time planning the most optimal approach to conquer as many cities as possible during a turn. While I am clearly limited by the number of healthy armies during a turn, knowing the distances between cities helps too. That's why keeping cities helps a lot to advance faster. Currently I use knight armies to gaze the fog to plan the attacks.

I played until the beginning of turn 5 yesterday and Mongols are gone (so is the flip risk for the pyramids) and we are now turning towards China. Maya has no rifles/Cavs and would be a real pushover. We have nationalism and policemen will help us to fight some corruption as well. Espionage will take a further 4 turns and I hope to post a full map by the end of 10 turns.

 

[vmxa]

We may start to face some metros down the road and that will make even rifles a real strain. We know Rome has the Shakes metro already. Hopefully none of the civs will opt to research sanitation for a long while.

 

[Greebley]

NP, I was thinking about starting another civ3 aw game in September depending on when this game ends.

Will you be interested in playing?

I was possibly thinking of AW on LKendter's world map - either a harder start like greece at monarch or an easier start at Emporer.

Sounds like great progress ThERat. World map by your turn end would be cool. I also agree that knowing where the cities are located will definitely help in lining up attacks with less wasted armies.