LK154 - CCM - Bablyon

[Northern Pike]

Agreed--we need all the Vikings' cities before we revolt to monarchy.

Yes, just use the Leader for a somewhat expensive city improvement. Joe's suggestion of a marketplace in Uruk would be fine, provided there are no accumulated shields in the city at the time.

One way to look at it is that we can't capture neutral workers with slavers, because capture is a function of war. So the slavers have to go through their enslaving process, which usually fails.

 

[Jersey Joe]

Can we even generate another Great Leader when we are not at war? I never had an Elite, Enslaver, Padre, or Lawyer generate a Great Leader.

 

[Greebley]

It would probably be a good idea to lessen unit production and increase income after Viking's initial rush is petering out to help with the transition.

Also plan the deals when we near the switch. The initial switch is hard, but the increase in city growth speed will allow Monarchy to pay for itself. We might have to go lighter on the tech deals for a bit.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

I forgot steam keeps track of hours of play (800 hours). I got the steam version late; I probably played 10x in the years before it when I was playing multiple games at the same time. That would give me 8000 hours of succession game play as a rough average. At the 40 hour 'man week' measure, that is 200 weeks or about 4 man years.

It could be more but I don't think it is less. A best guess.

 

[Elephantium]

Pre-turn: I defend Uruk, buy Feudalism from Canada, and adjust Ellipi (Mosque), Imperia (MM for growth), and Czar's Gold (Mosque).
I also buy Spices for 20gpt + 17 gold from Canada.
This turns out to be substandard as I need to drop the lux rate to 20% to afford it, and Ninevah needs to hire a specialist to avoid rioting
We're at 8.0.2, +1gpt after all this.

Israel completes Philosopher's Stone; starts Doge Palace.
Americans are building Great Cathedral

T1 (875 AD):

Enslaver kills Viking Chariot near Smolensk, no slave.
Mullah captures Viking Scout near Elit.

Canada declares war on the Dutch!
Israel demands 22 gold. I cave.
Multiple civs start building Doge Palace.

T2 (900 AD):

I lose an Enslaver to a Canadian Chariot near Roskova

T3 (925 AD):

Zzz...

T4 (950 AD):

... WTH? Enslaver raids a pair of Viking Workers (one Worker, one Northeuropean Worker), and I get a *combat animation*, resulting in the deaths of both Workers. I was expecting a pair of slaves! Civinator, can you comment?

T5 (975 AD):

The Vikings have left ANOTHER Northeuropean Worker unguarded near Visby, so I have a go at it. This time we net a Slave after the combat animation.

We're desperately short of Enks, so I switch Ninevah to Pike (and plan on building some Pikes in Ellipi and Akkad soon)

T6 (1000 AD):

I'm about ready to declare on Scandinavia, and I need to start moving the Settler to our next city site, so I'm going to pause for discussion.

Cities:


The red spot gets Wheat and two Oasis tiles, plus two Hills and a smattering of forests amongs the plains. It gets three Desert tiles, though.
The blue spot gets two Wheat, four Hills, and only one forest.

Spoiler :

The white spot gets two game and makes an Incense colony seem viable. OTOH, it will require a lot of Worker moves to chop the forests.

Spoiler :

Thoughts?

War:

Spoiler :

On the Viking front, there are numerous expeditionary forces wandering around near Elit, Smolensk, and Cathyton. We can pick them off pretty easily with forces in Elit (plus troops en route from our core). There are 2-3 Scandinavian units in the fog S of Absolut; we'll need to keep an eye open and dispatch forces to handle them when they appear.

Forces in Elit: 8 ACavs, 6 Assyrian Swordsmen, 4 Catapult, 2 Enks, 3 Enslavers, 4 Chariots, 1 Mullah. We have 3 other Enks nearby along with a Catapult in Zyr that needs to change places with an Enk this turn.

We have one Cat, one Chariot, and 5 ACavs heading up to the front from Babylon; the Catapult + 2 ACs is visible in the screenie. I'd like to open the war by wiping out the Viking forces in the screenshot, then moving on Uppsala at the end of my turnset. Does anyone want to advocate a delay?

 

[LKendter]

I like the blue spot for the next city.

 

[Greebley]

I think the blue works best too.

I remember Monks being really nice for their ability to expand borders right away (100 culture). We should be careful with our Mullah so we don't lose them (I suggest def 1 units only and not hills, mountains).

Edit: The border expansion makes them a powerful tool for military - just like combat settling

 

[Jersey Joe]

I agree with Lee and Greebley, the blue spot.

 

[Northern Pike]

Yes, Blue.

Yes, attack.

 

[Northern Pike]

LK, I have family coming to stay, and I won't be able to play before Sunday. So we might want to think about a swap, if you can play in that period.

 

[Elephantium]

1. Don't make any more deals with Nubia.
7. Assemble the troops at Elit (ready in about 7 turns).
8. Use the Great Leader to rush something expensive (later, Royal Garrison)
10. Build any Colonies? Candidates are Elephants and Iron near Samarra, and ... maybe Horses near Absolut? I'm hesitant on building colonies because of how dear workers are, but I do see the need for trade fodder.
12. Mine a BG at Assur and chop two forests to get a Town Center in 2 turns to allow faster growth.

Pre-turn: I defend Uruk, buy Feudalism from Canada, and adjust Ellipi (Mosque), Imperia (MM for growth), and Czar's Gold (Mosque).
I also buy Spices for 20gpt + 17 gold from Canada.
This turns out to be substandard as I need to drop the lux rate to 20% to afford it, and Ninevah needs to hire a specialist to avoid rioting
We're at 8.0.2, +1gpt after all this.

Israel completes Philosopher's Stone; starts Doge Palace.
Americans are building Great Cathedral

T1 (875 AD):

Enslaver kills Viking Chariot near Smolensk, no slave.
Mullah captures Viking Scout near Elit.

Canada declares war on the Dutch!
Israel demands 22 gold. I cave.
Multiple civs start building Doge Palace.

T2 (900 AD):

I lose an Enslaver to a Canadian Chariot near Roskova

T3 (925 AD):
Zzz...


T4 (950 AD):

... WTH? Enslaver raids a pair of Viking Workers (one Worker, one Northeuropean Worker), and I get a *combat animation*, resulting in the deaths of both Workers. I was expecting a pair of slaves! Civinator, can you comment?

T5 (975 AD):

The Vikings have left ANOTHER Northeuropean Worker unguarded near Visby, so I have a go at it. This time we net a Slave after the combat animation.

We're desperately short of Enks, so I switch Ninevah to Pike (and plan on building some Pikes in Ellipi and Akkad soon)

T6 (1000 AD):

I issue "remove or declare!" to the Vikings, and they BACK DOWN.

T7 (1025 AD):

This time I declare war straight up.
Road to Elit: AC kills their AC
Next to Elit: AC kills their AC
Wilderness W of Elit:
Mullah kills their Chariot
Cat kills Pike, promotes
AC dies to Pike
Chariot kills Zerk
AC retreats
ACs kill Spear, Pike, Zerk

2N of Elit:
Catapult dies on Pike
AC kills Pike

We capture a Worker, but it leaves an AC exposed.

After this, I'm saving Catapults for after ACs have reduced Pikes.

IT:

We lose the exposed AC, but we don't take any other attacks.

China is now in Age of Discovery.

T8 (1050 AD):

Cat kills Zerk
Uppsala:
AC dies to 3/4 Pike
AC kills rPike
AC kills rPike
AC dies to 3/5 Pike
AC dies to 1/5 Hero Pike
Chariot retreats from Zerk
Chariot retreats from Zerk
Enslaver kills Hero Pike and seizes the city

IT:

Vikings bombard Uppsala and kill one AC with their 4/5 AC.

T9 (1075 AD):

Assyrian Swords kill a Pike, Spear, and two Zerks for the loss of one AS.
Our Enslaver enslaves a Viking Enslaver
Mullah kills wounded AC.

Our wandering Scout (S of Absolut) runs across a handful of Viking units

IT:

Viking Cat kills Enk
Viking Zerk captures Scout

T10 (1100 AD):

Stray units near Uppsala-
AC retreats from Pike
Cat retreats from Longsword
AS kills Pike, promotes

Spoiler :

 

[LKendter]

ROSTER:

LKendter (up - swapped)
Greebley (computer issues)
Jersey Joe
Elephantium
Northern Pike (on deck)

 

[Northern Pike]

A great start to the campaign.

We can trade for Chivalry now--just as an example, without trying to find the best deal, for elephants and 65 gpt from the French. We should probably do it. I say "probably" because LK might prefer the efficient AC production we've got going now to less efficient knight production, until we can bring our main cities up to 25 spt.

Edit: We're already strong relative to the Vikings, which is an argument for buying Chivalry immediately.

 

[Greebley]

The computer issues are gone now. I was able to load the game.

--------------
Thoughts:
I think the real reason we choose Monarchy over Republic is we naturally play a NOW (non-oscillating war) game. Declaring peace is fairly rare; usually an early attack to grab a city or two that are key locations; almost never against a foe we can beat.

As such I am assuming we will do this with the Vikings. We will want to keep all cities since we cannot replace and this means completely eliminating them even if it takes some resources to go after their final cities.

A reminder that keeping cities means we have to be careful about leaving units in the cities. Flips aren't bad if we are careful. (allowing the enemy to recapture is actually not bad - they don't usually raze their own previous cities and it reduces size and flip chance). It takes a bit more care and a little longer, but also means the cities can have expensive improvements like aqueducts and have more population.

In CCM with no settlers, I am assuming we will be keeping all cities for the early ages. Starving to size 1 only is necessary if elimination is hard. The world map made elimination hard so razing was often the better choice. Here it is the opposite.

 

[Northern Pike]

Agreed on all points. We might let the Vikings survive in one city for twenty turns if it brings us techs, but that's not especially likely.

 

[Civinator]

Can we even generate another Great Leader when we are not at war? I never had an Elite, Enslaver, Padre, or Lawyer generate a Great Leader.

Yes, this is possible.

... WTH? Enslaver raids a pair of Viking Workers (one Worker, one Northeuropean Worker), and I get a *combat animation*, resulting in the deaths of both Workers. I was expecting a pair of slaves! Civinator, can you comment?

Unfortunately I cannot give you much help to this question. Until now there are no rules about raiding workers with enslavers in CCM. As you noted workers in this case show combat animations, so their defense is zero. In one case I have watched a zero-defense worker even killing the attacker! The special situation of attacking workers may be influenced by the king-opton the workers have in CCM and by the fact, that in the general setting of the editor only one unit can be fixed as unit for capturing - and this is the worker (but the different workers in CCM are not the worker-unit in the general setting of the editor).

The attack can trigger the death of the worker and a "rebirth" as a slave with the 1/3 enslavement chance, it can kill the the workers in the stack and it can kill one worker and gain you the other worker with the capturing-option as a foreign worker.

I have been trying to calculate the excess unit cost in a spreadsheet. However, the values I need to use to be able to reproduce the excess unit cost are not those listed in the civilopedia.

Any thoughts about governments in CCM are highly appreciated as this is a field of modding C3C where I received not many help. I will post the current values, but this will need some time. As far as I remember, in CCM 1.8 there is a misscalculation for changing from despotism to one of the other governments, but at present I cannot say if that government was Monarchy or Republic.

 

[Jersey Joe]

Agreed on all points. We might let the Vikings survive in one city for twenty turns if it brings us techs, but that's not especially likely.

Another reason to let that one last city survive, the vikings could have a settler, if they have a settler and no cities the game crashes in between turns.

Edit: Good reason to save before capturing that last city.

 

[Greebley]

I still can't see anyone making peace in that case. Fortunately, the AI isn't able to immediately fill all lands with cities so the odds for this in the early game seem less.

One thing I have worried about but haven't yet seen (so its rare if possible ). The AI removes a last city somewhere else so the game will crash. You can't stop the AI like you can the player.

Agree on the saving first part.

 

[Northern Pike]

One thing I have worried about but haven't yet seen (so its rare if possible ). The AI removes a last city somewhere else so the game will crash. You can't stop the AI like you can the player.

This has been discussed before, I believe in Rat 45. The settler bug only comes into play in connection with the graphical user interface. If a civ we've never met is reduced to a settler somewhere in the darkness, the game doesn't crash because the program doesn't have to show us the problem, loosely speaking. That's probably the main reason why we've never had a game aborted by the bug.

 

[Elephantium]

I would happily give the Vikings a 20-turn reprieve in exchange for Chivalry, except that we can buy Chivalry already (thanks for checking on that, NP). After that, I'd say it depends on the tech situation - if peace with Scandinavia gives us a leg up on tech brokering, I'd say go for it. OTOH, it would have to be a significant edge; our units will be left in an awkward spot when the war ends. We can't just walk them back and forth between another front and their current positions. It'll take another half-dozen turns, maybe a full turnset, to line them up for an attack on ... oh, Indochina looks like the most likely target right now.

 

[LKendter]

1100 AD (0)
IMO nothing is worse than hopelessly behind in tech in Civ. I ship elephants and $63/T to the French for chivalry. We are pretty much broke, and there are no 2 for 1 deals possible. I start a 50 turn run on theology.
We have little cash play room, so I ship Greece furs for $8/T. USA is the only other taker at $7/T.
We lost a warrior. (0-1)
Nubia and Indo-China sign peace.


1125 AD (1)
Chariot barely kills archer. (1-1)
We build an iron colony. We ship that iron to Canada for $37/T.


1150 AD (2)
We capture a Scandinavian scout.
Ur is formed at the 2 wheat spot.
Chariot barely kills spear by Absolut. (2-1)
Sword wipes the archer by Absolut and goes elite. (3-1)
Chariot barely kills AC by Uppsala. (4-1)
By moving the Mullah, we find a missionary hiding by Uppsala.
(IT) We lost the ship that was misclicked into the ocean.
We lost a warrior in Uppsala. (4-2)
We see more Vikings approaching Absolut.


1175 AD (3)
AC kills the knight. (5-2)
Catapult dies to a knight. (5-3)
AC dies to a catapult. (5-4)
Catapult kills that knight. (6-4)
Sword kills zerk by Zyr and goes elite. (7-4)