Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
Unless I want to host all the pics myself, there's only one per post. Do I really need to say any more? I'm sorry you didn't get the reaction you wanted. I offered an explanation and had a very busy Civ3 weekend and now I need to defend that?
The Houston choice didn't work out. Dismantling Alexandria would have been high weed use
I'm glad you didn't move in that direction. The result of your turn was impressive, you didn't just hold on, but made gain! Nicely done. I like your FP idea, so I went with it. Not an ideal choice, but far better than wasting the FP entirely, or waiting until its too late to matter. I don't think it would be wise to move our capital later, though. Looking just at the math of corruption, yeah, a grand idea, but overall I doubt it. By the time we'd have such an area sufficiently secure AND improved well enough to make a difference, it probably wouldn't matter. I also agreed with getting rid of Detroit, so I did so.IT 250AD: We're thin, thin, thin. Still, rather less exposed than I expected. Germany is taking a lot of heat off us, getting them onto our side made all the difference. I look at our captured cities and find trouble. ONE defender left in cities with resisters still in place? I'll be SHOCKED if my turn finishes without a city flip or two, but then again, we don't have troops to spare, so leaving them behind to flip while going to take St. Louis was probably a great idea. (If the attack had failed, we'd be reviling you now
but a gambit won is a gambit won, and Deity is all about managing risks, so good job).I veto the Detroit settler idea, though. LAST thing we need is to plop down a new city and have it start with an American citizen. I shift to workers. I also shift Buffalo, Houston, and St. Louis to workers, to bleed off their population the compassionate way. (Free slave labor sounds good to me about now anyway). Well, actually, Houston has 15 shields in place, and I don't want to waste ten, so I set it to build an Explorer first, then on to workers.
Entertainers in our cities? Arrgh. Oh, and angry rivals. Two birds with one stone: I buy luxuries from Ghandi, Joanie, and Biz for gpt, then fire all entertainers (except one in Memphis, but he too will be jobless when the market is done). I switch the city north of Memphis to Cathedral, and buy a courthouse at the one below silk town. I'm going to hold off on any more tech purchases, and I also have to keep in mind that our GA will dry up on my turn, and I can't buy so much that we go broke. The good news, our income went UP after dropping lux to zero and firing entertainers. Everyone is now Polite with us except America. Oh, and we have a lot of happy people now.
Pi-Rameses swaps to Forbidden Palace and I rearrange tiles to max its shields.
260AD: Abe sends one knight to attack Saint Louie. He dies against our pike. (ONE pike? Wow, thinner than I realized.)
We have a settler there? Must have missed that in the report. I don't like the situation so I leave him parked for now.
Helio finishes pike, and I micro to get to 20 shields and switch to catapult. Our workers head east, to start clearing jungles (and stay away from the combat zone). Well, not all of them, but most of them. A few are hanging around on final duties in what is otherwise fully upgraded land. Our explorer moves from Houston to Helio. I send the new pike from Helio toward St. Louis.
It's a good thing I bought all those luxuries, as our war weariness just doubled. Eep!
270AD: Abe sends one knight toward Helio, stops in the forest on their side of the border. Biz razes that American city north of St. Louis, I didn't catch the name it was gone so fast. The incense up there is now in neutral territory.
I use an elite knight to attack Abe's knight. We win but lose 3 hp, so I have to send in a pike from Helio to cover, then I decide to send the new cata also. Our explorer rushes across the border to pillage that horse. Then... on a whim I decide screw it, we're going in. I moved all the rest of our knights across the border onto the tile with the horse. St. Louis has just two pikes and two cats. If it flips this turn, I may throw my monitor out the window.
280AD: Abe sends a knight against our stack on his horse, but he foolishly does so from the Philly side of the river and our defender wins without a scratch! And... that's all he did. He is out of gas, folks.
Our explorer races past Philly to pillage his incense. Suicide mission, but this is war and maybe with all the crap descending on him, Abe will have other priorities. Our forces converge on Philly and find a regular rifle on duty. Plus the city shrank from size 8 to size 6 so I presume he just drafted twice. GOOD! Just what I wanted. We then pillage all his roads on the Egyptian side of Philly, completely disconnecting his rapid access to our territory. Our wounded knight retreats to Helio, and our pike and cat pull back too.
I send our settler north with a pike.
290AD: A longbow out of Philly attacks and slays one of our elite knights. A knight I moved next to his iron has baited Abe's lone knight to attack... again, across a river, and again we win without a scratch! Then Abe moves a regular and conscript rifle OUT OF Philly
onto the mountain. I could probably take Philly now, but I don't want it. Now here comes Biz, and how. Major task force enters American territory: knights, longbows, a horsie, and a rifle.Our explorer pillages the saltpeter on the mountain. (I remember pillaging that mountain with a warrior on my first turn!
). Abe can't even spare a unit to capture our explorer? Now that's sad.I slay one longbow with a knight, which loses two hps, then pulls back. Our forces retreat from the Philly area, leaving Biz's hordes to have their fun. :flamedevil:
Our settler and pike cross the river, moving onto the target tile of my choice. Workers in the east are moving on the jungles now, and the American cities in our lands are shrinking. Memphis and Alexandria need defense, I have them start pikes.
Our explorer pillages Abe's Iron. Ha! No more knights for him for a while.
300AD: Abe shufles a vet rifle and settler past our explorer on the mountain. He attacks one of our knights with a regular rifle from the mountain, which causes us to retreat. He also moves his conscript rifle down off the mountain to cover the other one, which lost one hp in the attack on us.
Then it was Bismarck's turn. He slays FIVE American rifles with one longbow lost, and two knights retreating. Also destroyed their settler (disbanded the workers). Even across rivers he attacked and won. Amazing stuff.
Then... America and Germany sign a peace treaty!
I found our city of Herionconpolis north of St. Louis. Our explorer pillages one of the silks right there at DC, then retreats into the mountains. With Germany at peace now with America, we can finally end this war!
:jump:
I dial up Abe and... I get a BUSY SIGNAL! He won't talk to us!
Stupid, stupid AI. I know that's in there for a reason, but it needs some work, still. And yes, Abe has ONE knight in range of our brand new city, and yes our MPP is still in effect and can't be cancelled. So... Abe's toast. He's about to piss off Germany in the worst way, and I kinda doubt he's going to survive it. Once mighty America, feared by all the world, now crumbling under his own aggressions. He Chose Unwisely.
Our knights pull out of American territory.
310AD: Abe attacks our new city, fails and his unit retreats. Germany declares war and his massive forces in the area obliterate several American units. Others march back toward Philly.
I decide it's time to make a land grab, as there are a ton of German forces between Abe and us now. I set El Amarna to settler. I move our forces back to St. Louis and Helio, with a knight over at the new city.
320AD: Abe charges a knight halfway across the world to finish off the German horsie who only has 1 hp left. Biz then slaughters that unit and another rifle.
With three pop left, and one of them STILL a resister after all this time, Houston deposes our governor.
Ha! The glorious city of Alexandria retains control over the two tiles between them, allowing our forces at Helio to attack on the same round! I send our war chariot in first to soften up the enemy. No softening took place, but our chariot did retreat. Our first knight got the job done, and I most happily burnt that trash dump to the ground. That blight on our land is now forever gone. Gone gone gone! Alexandria swapped to settler, due to finish next turn. (Read Arathorn's last post after my turn was done. He must have miscalculated, as all the land there immediately fell back under our border control). I wanted another city over there anyway, might as well. Pick up that whale and one other tile out of range of Alexandria, and that close to our capital, it will add income, too.
Sadly, up north, Biz had the same idea as I did, and he has settled Stuttgart (or is that Salzburg? I forget, some S city) on the river east of Herion. Still one open spot all the way to the north, though, so I rush our settler.
330AD: Germany signs alliances with India and England against America. Lincoln is toasty toast now. He's finished. I hope that settling those gaps and stretched our border all the way to the north coast will slow Biz enough to let Abe hang on a while longer. We shall see.
Oh yeah, our golden age is over now. And ACK we're down to about 30 gpt surplus left!
340AD: Now that India and France finally have Steam, I buy it from Biz for 23gpt. We're now down to 80 cash and about 15 gpt income, as I also rushed some temples. St. Louis is down finally to size 1, Detroit has been disbanded, and Buffalo is also size one, plus Houston is just a memory. So our flip worries are way down now, we should be able to hold on to what we have, although St. Louis could use another two units on garrison, and another at El-Amarna maybe (somehow, an American citizen got in there).
WE HAVE COAL! Up at Giza, in the swamp region. Arathorn's silk gambit has really paid off big dividends for us. Not only the silk, which is enormous, but now also coal. Could make all the difference (my solo deity game, which I showed pics of earlier... NO coal anywhere within 1000's of miles of me! I'm up to Steel and haven't built a single rail, as no nations have any surplus online yet. Coal is just huge.)
350AD: Rails underway. I acquired 8 new slave labor on my turn, 2 from Houston before it flipped, 2 at Buffalo, 3 from Detroit, plus one more from Houston when I razed it. That's like four workers of our own, but no maintenance cost.
An incense came available (before I settled the new city) so I trade that and some minor gpt to Ghandi for Nationalism. Then I settled on the north coast, but Joanie was too poor to afford our incense as yet. Keep an eye on that, and use it to trade for more tech or something.
I drafted once each at Helio and Memphis because there were 12 and maxed on food. Thebes is 12 but not maxed, so it would cost us extra there. Same with the other city we have that's large enough, would cost too much with no immediate need on hand.
Overall, we're back into a secure situation. America no longer poses a credible threat. Biz did end our MPP, but we are buying his spices and he remains Gracious. I've never seen a Gracious AI sneak attack me. Biz has Industrialization, too, but we are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, still paying for all those tech deals. Need some time to recover, build rails, factories, etc. Still no cavalry, and Biz will be busy for some time trying to take over America, so we're in good shape, I think. Not perfect, but we weathered the first big storm.
Need to upgrade our pikemen, and we're too broke.
Good luck, Toe.
- Sirian
to Charis for the MPP with Germany. Fighting America alone would have been death. As it was, both Germany and America lost a TON more units than we even had.
is looking good.
Abe rings the hotline - Cleo ("I'm not in the mood") Patra hands me the phone.
One elite knight was lost, no leaders emerged from the dust 
