Immortal Challenge: War is Peace

[Revent]

@Revent

Spoiler :

Woah, nice warring but how is it possible to still lack alpha? And I thought I was technologically behind. Tech path? What have you done with your ?

Spoiler :

I got very lucky! Monty had no stack really and Shaka suicided his stack on me so met with little opposition. Only issue is was Elepults is very slow and my roads hadn't been designed yet to deal with Shaka so a lot of 1 tile per turn movements, not sure why AI only had 2-3 units per city though

Only 1 GP to date since everything was war focused in all cities and commerce was neglected and the whip was used without prejudice. I'm thinking of going for an Astro beeline and sail for the new world and all of its riches and spices.

@ Revent :

Spoiler :

Good going !
You can backtrack on an AP win if you don't feel like warring anymore. That's fine.
However, you can certainly push for a military victory if you wish so.
With 16 cities to Ragnar's 8, you're in a "can't lose position", unless you make a series of serious blunders.

If the AIs have Engineering already (Castles) and you don't, you "just" need more more Catapults. A stack of 20 catapults takes down castles' defences down to 0 in a single turn...
... so if you move around a stack of 35+ units, you can certainly keep up the conquest. Numbers are all you need when you have twice the production the AIs have.

Where you should head with your army is debattable. Yes, maybe SB is the better target. Or maybe you can head straight to the East and deem SB is a non-issue.
That said, with 1,6 of SB's power, he looks like easy pickings.

Not having either Alpha nor Currency is a bummer indeed.
Maybe you can extort techs from him ?
Usually, a bulb would be the preferred means to get out of the hole and back into the trading game but, here, it seems out of the question (GS bulbs Alpha...).

If you're unwilling to go to war anymore,
You can certainly spend 15 to 30 turns getting back into economic shape.
Grow cities & work commerce tiles and you'll look good.
If you want to get to Currency asap (appealing given the number of cities), how many libraries do you have ? What happens if you run scientists everywhere ?

It's hard to tell without knowing exactly how backwards you are and what your standing army is.
Maybe a combination of extorting techs from SB, getting to Currency asap and then bulbing into higher tech (Philo/Compass) is the way to go.

Any way I look at it, it may take turns, but the game is in good hands.

[sidenote : careful : it seems the Aztec lands aren't fogbusted and barbs are spawning... could snipe a city]

Spoiler :

Just added this into the original post. I'm not SO behind that I can't catch up, but it won't be a stop focusing on micro and just move troops and win game. I will have to work for the win unless I cheese it

Ragnar is on his way to SB (already razed a city) Toku is one turn from his borders and I see Isabella has a stack of 10 units (but no WHEOOH right now). So I just want to grab the juicy capital really and leave it at that. Plus, Feudalism is not far for other AI and Isabella already has it. I forgot SB was hated by all otherwise I would have added Brennus or maybe Catherine who plots at pleased.

I think regrowth is definitely a must here. I don't have enough commerce atm to fund wars and the whip timer needs to die off- I'd need to be capturing a city every two or three turns to keep me from going on strike.

Shaka is off the mainland and is settling the continent below. I think I will leave him be for now. Plus, I have 1 or 2 elephants left from Shaka front and 0 catapults 4 cats and 6 or 7 elephants on SB front now. I'm going to wait a few turns, hopefully Ragnar razes Mound City and the trashy dessert city next to it. I want Poverty Point and Cahokia. The rest, are not worth anything.

To date, since war started and a fair amount of whipping, I have been running 0 specialists and focusing all my cities on war troops ONLY so have only generated 1 GS. So time to make use of that PHI trait and generate some GS to lightbulb me ahead. I'm thinking Astro beeline. Need to tech Compass, Machinery and Optics double bulb Astro.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

I'm going to wait a few turns, hopefully Ragnar razes Mound City and the trashy dessert city next to it.

Tasty dessert city should come last. That's protocol.

Spoiler :

It seems you have some good trades ahead and strike isn't an issue, after all.
You can certainly play up to Astronomy but I doubt it is necessary

Your army is down to scratches, alright. That may be a valid reason to tech up and target only Cahokia.
But on Terra, there's no particular reason to try and be first to Astronomy. You can play it like a regular Pangaea.
No one has Civil Service nor Philosophy...
... Isabella has Feudalism and Theology, Ragnar and Toky have Monarchy...
... yes, you can get plenty of value off of trades.

EDIT : Liberalism --> military tech seems very open, especially given PHI trait and only 1 GP produced so far.

You should take a look at your loss count to get an idea of the hammer cost of your warring (F10, sort by).
Maybe, looking back, you can find some points at which manoeuvring would have saved you some units. Surviving units = hammers spent elsewhere or more commerce in general.

 

[sampsa]

@Revent

Spoiler :

Sell construction for that gold immediately. According to the trade screen you have alpha, so build research until you have currency.

As you probably now see, every city whipping non-stop is not optimal. You should have at least one city designated to maintain a stable economy. Cottages, specialists, wealth/research etc.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Revent:

Are you building those Colosseums for a quest?

 

[BornInCantaloup]

I think there was nothing else to build (that wouldn't cost maintenance) and Revent has just traded for Alpha this turn, maybe ? Or maybe he extorted Alpha from Shaka.
Otherwise, building Research would be a lot better, indeed.

 

[FlyingSwan]

I guess isabella beat you to the barb city of nubian anyway,and from the screens ragnars at pleased or friendly so will act as a buffer to isabella and toku.Happy days.I think now its going to be a hard slog on the road to economic recovery.

One thing I noticed in your initial save was you hadnt focused your spy points on any 1 civ.Its a good habit to get into,usually concentrate them on your nearest neighbour-in this case monty-it just gives you that little heads up on what their teching-very usefull for trades-if you have alpha that is .By concentrating on 1 AI by the time you DOW you usually have enough ESP to cause 1 city revolt,or at least sabotage some improvements-ivory/metal.Then you just switch all your esp onto your next target.

I did say alpha before math in an earlier post,and I think thats why your in an economic hole now,you havnt been able to sue for trades,trade for trades,and building research is not to be underestimated.Maybe you got the elepults out 5-10 turns faster,but long term not so good.Be interesting to see if you go to the new world in the end-tis terra after all.

 

[sampsa]

1000AD

Spoiler :

Started a golden age 520AD and went MC-mach-eng in 11 turns, so it engineering wasn't as far as I thought. SB got to longbows soon after I started the war, so it wasn't fun. Had to suicide a lot of cats.

SB is down to one size 1 city, but it's on a hill and has 4 promoted LBs, so I'll lose some trebs taking it. Unhappiness is due to war weariness. Shaka will be next, then hoping to peace vassal Rags, who should be weak enough for that.

 

[FlyingSwan]

Thought Id do a little write up of my game,sorry I forgot to take any in game screen shots,I just took some pics of the event log.

Spoiler :

Basically the same as revent and sampsa in the beginning with the elepult rush beggining in 25ad.Difference with my start was I had the GW so I settled 1st spy and built scotland yard with the 2nd.I didnt have FEUD for a while and didnt out right kill SB or monty so all kinds of capitulations to the other AIs were flying around-there just too complicated to go into!

Anyhow had a peacefull spell to re-boot the economy and concentrate on tech,I figured I had enough citys now to go for space,especially with the new world to colonise.

Started a chain of golden ages in 1420AD

View attachment 396236View attachment 396237

This basically got me to lib Electricity in 1530ad.This is where espionage realy shines as you can see exactly what the AI are teching and can work out exactly how long youve got before they get liberalism.Had to use a couple of Scientists to bulb physics iirc.

Around this time Id sent off my Galleons to the new world,and in 1630ad China was born.

View attachment 396238

I just kept sending settlers over and gifting captured barb citys to Mao to prevent the AI from colonising too much of it.The only city I kept over there I built the national park in and rush bought all the infra-not a bad city,but not the best ive had-foolishly I had workers auto at this point and they railroaded over tiles I was saving for forests to grow

War inevitably broke out again with toku and his vassals,but this time I had

View attachment 396239

I even gifted some nukes to my new vassal monty,who had no hesitation in using them

At this point I could of easily won conquest,but I was having too much fun so decided to make peace and go for space.Then disaster-no alluminium-shaka had some in his land-no good obviously now id made peace,and then disaster-in Moas land he,d built a wind mill on the alluminium.Figured I wasnt going to get a timely space vic so decided a diplo win,just build the population.Unfortunately the UN vote was too close so I had to do this-

View attachment 396241

Toku was nowhere near ecology so had no chance of clearing up the fall out.So next vote round I got the win.

View attachment 396242 View attachment 396243

Had loads of fun with this game,I could of played it out to time victory,but it was getting late irl.

EDIT I cant seem to get all the picture in the right place for some reason,and now theve printed outside the spoiler and I cant delete them.grrr cpus are not my strong point.Il post save in next post as posting in this one deletes the pictures.grrrr

 

[BornInCantaloup]

FlyingSwan,
You can post screenshots by having a "http://....jpg" or .png or .gif, etc. address in between

tags.

Quote a post where an image is hosted to see the whole thing.

This is the button for the tag :

It pops a window when you click it. Simply insert the address of the image within it.
There are plenty of free image hosting sites around.

If you post large pics, it's better to insert them into spoiler tags.


~~

Any progress with the game, Revent ? Did you drop it there ?
(And don't wait for me ^^ I'm less motivated since I've found out how Terra plays so much like Pangaea...)

 

[Revent]

I will pick this game up either tonight/tomorrow if I have the chance. Otherwise it will be a week as I am going on a trip to Istanbul!

I will read the spoilers once I am to date myself! Thank you all for playing! Great to see some activity around again

 

[Revent]

1200AD:

The irony of that dessert city

Spoiler :

That is ALL that SB has left. I could easily AP cheese it. I've been gifting LOADS to Ragnar and Toku and giving them all my spare resources for free or a few gold. Shared war on SB really helped my cause too and all the AI that matter are friendly with me.

This turnset:

Spoiler :

-Traded for Alphabet, took 2-3 techs and a city off of Shaka for peace, traded for currency and began the economic recovery.
-I did this really cheeky thing where I kept gifting Nubian and Ligurian to Isabella and Ragnar only for it to get taken by a barb a few turns later. I would come in with my chariot, scout when the AI is about to take the city, I take it and then gift it for ++ points. Did it 3 times for Ligurian but then the barbs stopped coming once Isabella settled north.
-Took 3 of SB's cities. Ragnar took 2 in the East and capped him. He's only left with one city now.
-Monarchy, Buddhism, shared wars and gifting techs/resources to Isabella, Ragnar and Toku have led them to be friendly with me.
-Built MoM which in hindsight was stupid as I could have just captured it for myself.
-CS recently came in so have been farming like crazy so the cities are all going to get a growth spurt coming soon.

For the future:

Spoiler :

Could easily Lib MT, take out Isabella within 10 turns of declaring then Toku and Ragnar. That should easily put me over the limit. End game is always much easier than the beginning where every turn matters A LOT.

@The coliseums were placeholders as I JUST got currency that turn and hadn't finished the turn yet. If I had the 'Mids, I would be flying right now but alas the failgold was a necessity to keep me going in war

 

[BornInCantaloup]

^

Spoiler :

Sounds like a fair plan, although you should remember that Domination, on Terra, might not be so easy to trigger (did you actually check the Victory screen for Land % ?). Maybe Conquest is the safer bet. Chain-vassaling the remaining AIs shouldn't be very difficult, from your commanding position.
Good job getting back in economic shape. The 2 fronts Elephant war was also very good.

To me, you've played a good game. Mistakes that stand out happened in the 2000-1000 BC turnset. Your other sets looked good to me.
Especially whipping the Library in Delhi, down to size 3, I feel was a mistake that slowed your expansion down, while it didn't contribute to speed up your research/gpp production.
An additional chop would have kept Delhi 1 size larger. 2 chops would have made it unnecessary to whip. Inserting a settler in the queue (and delaying the Library) could have gotten you the eastern gold/rice city spot.

In retrospect, the maintenance you've payed on units from very early on also affected your research by a lot.

And the Maths-->Construction proved to be a miss, in that it denied you the Alpha trade (somewhat bad luck, there). Tokugawa researches Alphabet early but is tough to trade with. Other AIs on this map can reseach it very late, making it hopeless to trade Alphabet for Maths.

 

[FlyingSwan]

Domination victory on a terra map is a massive ask.Sometimes you can get it if you colonise ALL the new world yourself,and have a decent,but not massive chunk of the old world.Conquest is definately the quicker and easier option.Terra are my favourite maps,although with the aggresive AI on this game concentrating on an early astronomy would of been silly.Nevertheless not going to the new world at all imo sought of defeats the object of playing this map script.There are lots of things to think about,whether you create a colony or not,can you afford corporations or are you gonna stick in state property etc.I was reading some of the G major thread and they used a terra map I believe to get a 770AD space victory.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Revent:

Would be nice if you let the leader be displayed on the scoreboard, that's in one of BUGs options. Didn't read the whole thread, but saw you played India, I'm guessing Gandhi, but don't know for sure. Looked at the first post, but there's no info on that either. Nice game btw. you chose some funny opponents for it, and your diplomacy is really good, with having three civs on friendly, well done . I couldn't imagine, that you went Construction before Currency, that's usually a move one only makes when one can get Currency from someone else instantly, because going for Currency prior to Construction is usually a move that comes with no downsides, as all the begging and trading that's possible with Currency usually pays for the next two or three techs.

Spoiler :

You mentioned war against Isabella. This seems very attractive to me, because she's the owner of the buddhist holy city, which will probably have a really nice shrine. I'm sure that you can bribe Isabella against somebody with your good relations, so backstabbing her would be the plan (as almost always) . I'm not informed on your tech-level, but just a tip for your next session or the one after that: Don't deny yourself the power of drafting Rifles. With playing on a non-Marathon-speed, players often tend to go for Cuirrassier / Cav all-ins, because the speed is so nice, but Rifles are a lot cheaper and they're very powerful. There's nothing that says, that you can't work with a mixed stack of Rifles and Cavs for the first cities, which are usually the hard ones, or if you really backstab her like planned, use two stacks and go for the nearer cities with the Rifle-stack while using the Cavs to sting deep, maybe take the capital directly.
You can also think about vassalising her, as with the religious-distribution in your game, the other civs should remain being friendly even with having shared diplomatic stance.
Only thing I'd hope you'd also do, would be to push for the attack-date as harsh as possible, so maybe produce some pre-Cuirr-mounted-units and upgrade them via one or two GMs, if you're Gandhi, it should be np to run Caste + Pacifism for a little while. Also, don't sit around longer than needed. It's usually possible to conduct war when one has 0.7 of the strength of the target, I think you're over that already, so leave your cities undefended where it's not needed and make use of your military better earlier than later. The decision whether a unit is good or bad is only made in the situation when it fights, if it wins, it's a good unit, doesn't matter what type of unit it is, maybe you can even still do something with Elephants + Siege? We've seen players conquer complete maps and win Deity-AW-games with them, the first unit that can stop them are Rifles, Pikes do cause some losses, but with Siege, even those are np.
If you need to go against Castles, make sure you have enough 5 XP (Theo or Vassalge + Barracks) Siege with you and promote them to Accuracy, 5 XP siege is a gamechanger.
on that gifting away a city that gets conquered by barbs later, so that you can retake it. You can use the same trick when going to war against your next target, gift it a non-hills-city that got neither Walls nor a Castle and watch AI move its troops there, declare war and take it while probably even standing in your own culture and not pay unit-supply.

Those are all ideas that came up to me, hope anything of that helps.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Sampsa:

Seems you really wasted a lot of Catapults against those LBs. I hope you don't feel indulged by this, but it's often better to only suicide 1-2 Catapults agains LBs when Elepulting, because the STR of an Elephant is just so much higher, that it can often have something like 60%+ chance against the LB after the inital 1-2 Catapults. Phants have about the same Price as Catapults, so losing some of them instead of Pults isn't bad, also, this leads to very highly promoted Elephants, and once they got C4, they really rock hard and have something like 70-80% chances even without having wasted 1 Catapult.
I repeat the trick that I also gave Revent, because I wrote it in the Spoilers without thinking about it: You can gift your target a city before the war, wait until it moves its troops there, and then attack it, without the city having Walls, Castles or even 20% cultural defense. You have very many cities and broad shared borders, so this should be np, maybe something for the next target, unless you used that trick already.

GL !

 

[sampsa]

@Seraiel:

You are right, it was one of the least efficient wars I have ever had! Point taken, maybe I should have built a bit more phants and less cats. As a HOFfer, you probably don't play against SB a lot, but you surely know how strong those CGIII longbows are. I faced a lot of them, plus some hill cities of course. A lot of the time the top defender took no damage from catapult...

Have never used the city gift tactic - nice!

 

[Seraiel]

SB is a monster to play against, that I know for sure, because I wrote the analysis of CIV Illustrated 1 on him. He has the strongest Archery units and also the strongest Melee-defeses, and those even resourceless.

In your situation it would probably have been best to scratch the top-defenders with sacrificing Elephants, then sending in very few Catapults, and then cleaning up with Elephants again. Also, while it might be counter-intuitive, but Drill doesn't raise the chance to inflict damage more than CR does, learned that from Pob.

Playing SB onesself is nice, PHI and the possibility to go for a fast a strong XBow rush, so good for most types of games. Got a #1 Spacerace when playing with him lately.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

So I thought, "what the heck ? I dont have the opportunity to play as Gandhi everyday, settling on coastal stone... Maybe I can solve this opening."
3rd attempts, to 2000 BC :

Spoiler :

The first question is Worker vs Workboats.
1 worker costs 60H.
2 workboats cost 60H. Same.

With Agriculture, the worker can improve 3x 4 yield tiles (farm, mine, mine), one of those producing 1 commerce (riverside mine).
The 2 workboats net 4 yield tiles + 2 commerce each. But then one needs a worker (another 60H) before producing a settler.

--> It is desirable to produce workboats early but not necessarily before the worker.
The worker is needed anyway.
--> Workboats shouldn't be slowbuit but rather chopped.

--> Tech path goes Fishing into Bronze Working.
As it happens, the worker can mine both hills and then a single worker turn is wasted.

After the worker is produced, the key objective becomes to build a settler. This requires growth.
So working the rice is better than producing a 5t workboat working the forested plains hills.
When the riverside green hills are mined, however, working hammers is ok :

Spoiler :

After the 1st workboat is done, growth resumes, then the mine is worked again.
After BW is completed, chops can come in.
Masonry is started, so the Stonehenge can be completed early. Early Stonehenge is crucial to an early shrine, which is crucial to religious spread (along with Sailing) :

Spoiler :

At that point, we can produce another warrior (with chop n°2) and grow to size 3 asap to start on the first settler (growing to 4 would only be a delay).
Chop, chop, chop :

Spoiler :

Masonry done, we start on The Wheel to connect the second city.
Settler is out, Worker completes a chop before starting on the gold mine (delays 1 turn) to speed up the Stonehenge :

Spoiler :

Bombay is settled on t34, Stonehenge will be done on t35 (Great Prophet out on t60) :

Spoiler :

Bombay starts on a worker to help with development. It won't grow anyway, so a worker is good.
From this point on, Delhi needs to grow to 4 (on another warrior) before starting on another Settler.

Spoiler :

After completing the gold mine, the worker will chop to speed up the worker in Bombay (then both workers will road to connect the cities). Improving the gold is much better than connecting the cities.
After The Wheel, research is set to Polytheism, Monotheism.

After the worker is done, Bombay can help producing warriors for safety.
Delhi doesn't whip the first Settler, because it goes Settler --> Settler :

Spoiler :

Whipping the first settler would delay the 2nd. However, the second settler can be whipped (104H/100 : minimal overflow for a 2pop whip) and it will grab the eastern gold + rice site. This is the turn the 3rd city is settled and the end of the set :

Spoiler :

3rd city starts on a worker by lack of other thing to do. Maybe that worker will be chopped into.
Bombay switched onto a Warrior after the barb Spear has appeared. It put a few hammers into the Pyramids before that. The city needs to work the gold for as long as we're "gunning" for techs. It will grow as soon as possible, though (preferably on an improved rice, but even a 3F tile is ok).

So... 2000 BC :
3 cities settled, 1 settler out next turn.
2 workers done,
4 warriors out,
1 turn to monotheism.
Next Agriculture is researched, then Sailing. Then AH/Pottery.

Probably this isn't optimal but I think it is pretty good, considering the objectives at hand.
Worst point is that I couldn't meet Tokugawa.
A thing to note is that Sitting Bull, not Monty, founded Hinduism.

 

[Revent]

1535 AD Victory:

Spoiler :

I do have a question. How does THIS happen? I thought SB did not open borders at furious

@Seraiel, thanks for the tips! I just realised that option and have fixed it. I was playing as Gandhi indeed I also misread your post and thought you said that you meant to bribe others to join in on the war with her rather than bribe her to attack Diplomacy was super easy to maintain. Wars against Shaka and SB, Hereditary rule, Buddhism lovefest, gifting cities, capturing and re-gifting, gifting techs and resources and not trading with SB all helped a lot.

This war, I didn't have the chance to gift city and recapture it, but I tried to lure Isabella's troops out by leaving 2-3 cities of mine empty so that she could take them and then I could capture with no defences. and culture protection. Btw, why accuracy? I always go with the one that increases collateral damage.

@BiC, I'm going to try the beginning again to see if it can be optimised fully! I will need to work it out on pen and paper, probably next Monday once I'm back from holiday though. or....I could try it now maybe before I have to head off and I forgot it was a Terra map which makes domination extremely hard to do! :$

 

[Seraiel]

It doesn't matter which stance an AI has towards you, when you share the same war, or if an AI is your Vassal.

And I wrote "take Accuracy against Castles" , because Accuracy greatly raises the bombardement-value of a Siege-weapon, and Castles usually need very long to bombard.

More collateral is only needed when you got very few Siege-weapons, like for the last cities of an opponent before you transform to newer Siege or Mounted, in the other cases it's better to promote to CR because it greatly increases the survival of the unit and stronger units also make more dmg.