LotR 2 - Zealous Zulus (Monarch variant)

[Sirian]

Our troops in the inner cities are also doubling as MP units to quell unhappiness. This is no longer of concern in the five cities with cathedrals, but the rest... it's a major issue. Also, the AI's are likely to select our inner cities as targets and try to rush past all our front lines, if we leave them too exposed. I would generally not be in favor of stripping core cities down to one unit, unless there is some immediate priority need on a given front.

- Sirian

 

[cpp1]

Believe me, I really appreciate being in a game with some of the best civ3 players I know about. Arathorn had it right on research, I did switch to Music Threory but on my last turn. The Russians building JSBach's one turn earlier should have been my cue for researching it the turn before, but it slipped my mind.

I should have known Sirian wouldn't have started a colloseum without a reason. I probably should have thought "banks" but instead I was thinking I needed a few more knights.

I think our economy is doing pretty well, with research at 0% we're generating about 170 gpt, but its 1 gpt now because everything is being poured in Music Theory, which takes a total of 4 turns, and that is the fastest you can do it.

When I write my reports the 1040AD date includes things that happen in the 1030-1040 enemy move. I almost never attack any unit with an adjusted defense higher than 1 with an impi unless it's an emergency. Most of those were other units attacking our impis during their move.

I do regret losing more knights than usual. Around Yakutsk the problem was knights would attack a longbow in jungle and be stuck there for a longbow counter attack. And the longbows could use the road there, while for me it was just jungle. Once we took Yakutsk and I had the road advantage, they just melted away.

Thanks for all the comments on my turn, its the only way I'm going to get better. Also it's great playing after you, Sirian, because I get to see how you set things up, but just remember that I'm not a mind reader and certainly don't have your skill.

 

[Sirian]

I reminded myself about six times while writing my report that I needed to talk about banks. I... blew it. Just forgot to do it. That was my fault. I -would- like to see some banks getting built as soon as we safely can, though. Would make a big difference to us to be able to rush Wall Street sooner rather than later, when there are no great wonders to be had.

I'm QUITE glad that my choice not to wait 3 turns on a leader didn't cost us the Observatory, and that the cascade was broken (looks by just a turn or two! Sheesh, that was cuttin it close). So you pulled my bacon out of the frier on that one, and it took all the fighting on the Russian front to get the leader. Maybe if you'd played it safer with the units, we'd have lost a great wonder, so can't really fault you there, either.

It's working out OK. I'm upset with myself for forgetting a key point of my report, that's all.


- Sirian

 

[Toecheese3]

1050AD Preturn – Sirian is right – we really need the banks. Will try to settle at least one city, get JS Bach to join our cause and bolster the defense a bit (since it always seems dilapidated by the time it comes to me) Maybe I’m too cautious…

1050-1060AD – Lost an Impi and a knight – not a good start. Chinese front seems secure. Hoplite decides not to pillage and instead moves north. Plenty of elite knights standing around (heh heh heh)

1060AD – Cherry picked a few easy targets (wounded Hoplite, Iroquois archer, wounded Roman knight…)

Well that was quick…leader quickly moves to Ulundi to make quick work of JS Bach when he stops by.

1060-1070AD – Greeks are moving north. Chinese rider defeats a knight (this is unacceptable).

1070AD – Iroquois galley gets in the way of progress and is sunk. Normally would go around but was at a point on the north shore of Rome where moving around would have put our boat in the danger zone. Hlobane starts work on a bank. Changed orders in Anyang from longbowman to catapult.

1070-1080AD – Greeks continue to move north. Russians drop off a lone longbowman near Hlobane. Z-town and Ulundi finish their respective military troops, Zimbabwe starts on a bank, and Ulundi set to wealth since Music Theory is in one.

1080AD – Knight takes out Iroquois longbow. Two Russian longbows taken out – easy targets. Greek longbow taken out as well; Knights making short work of the defenseless longbows.

1080-1090AD - Cathedral completed in Intombe – start on pikeman (3 turns). Discovery of Music Theory. Gunpowder in 12, Navigation in 13, Economics in 23. Decide on Gunpowder. Two Chinese riders cut short. Greeks turn south – appears they didn’t like the undefended city of Isipezi since there’s now a pike there. We really need to try to prevent what Sirian described in an earlier post. We’re better off letting the enemy trickle in – there’s now about 12 Greek archers in view of Anyang.

1090AD – Cherry picked some archers, lost an elite knight against an unfortified hoplite in the grassland. (phooey).

1090-1100AD – Greek galley sinks our southern caravel. Super…

This will help…

1100AD – Adjusted the luxury scene and science rate accordingly – Gunpowder in 4! Maybe it’s safe to assume someone else contacted our “friends” overseas? Knights take out some longbows – settler is in an area close to settling point but there’s too much company around. 2 Greek longbows defeated.

1100-1110AD – We’ve discovered a new source of iron near Tugela! Way cool –

1110AD – Defeated miscellaneous troops – didn’t lose anyone.

1120AD – Russian troops moving in – troops also near Intombe. Knights defeat a couple of archers, no casualties.

1130AD – Rushed knights in several cities. Defeated Roman knight, two Iroquois swordsmen. My infrastructure aspirations have left our defenses weakened. Gunpowder next turn.

1140AD – Lost a couple of Pikemen in my attempt to hook up Tientsin. We have SALTPETER in FOUR locations, none are hooked up (for now) Workers are immediately dispatched to take care of the problem. Navigation in 4. The road to Tientsin is completed and, there’s saltpeter there! I took it upon myself to upgrade to muskets in the critical locations (we can upgrade others at a later time). Rushed one musket in Yakutsk due to 1 dozen longbows moving in. Hope everyone doesn’t hate me for draining the treasury – honest, it was for a good cause. Also, Impis upgrade to muskets!! Tried to make them the priority over pikes since our pillaging days are about done with Impis.

1150AD – Sent a couple of Greek longbows to the grave and…

Sent him to Bapedi for the time being. Since Ulundi can’t build Magellan, thought I’d leave it up to the next leader to determine what the leader will be used for. Destroyed about 8 Russian longbows - so much for their offensive.

Notes: Didn’t found any cities, didn’t lose any cities. Banks will be coming up shortly in the bigger cities. Great leader standing by in Bapedi. The knight near Zunguin is probably toast (he got the great leader and I thought I had another movement point left – I didn’t) Drained the treasury upgrading impis and pikes to muskets. Also had to rush some knights. Settler hanging out in Bapedi also – waiting for the Greeks to stop coming fast and furious. We have choices on science as well - it appears we're a bit behind some other civs. Really wanted to get gunpowder for better defensive units but maybe we could go the printing press route with an eye on Shakespeare? (8 culture would be nice for Ulundi)

Everything is secure for the next leader. There are two Impis left to move to cover the knight (unfortified) if you want. I think we should let the knight take his chances and upgrade the impis but that’s going to be the next leaders call.

www.civfanatics.net/uploads/lotr2-1150AD.zip

Good luck!

 

[cpp1]

Here's the world map after ToeCheese's last turn.

 

[Zed-F]

You might want to build Magellan anyway to deny a cascade possibility, and because you can.

 

[Arathorn]

Goals:

- Found a city between Bapedi and Anyang
- Build up the treasury again
- Continue connection/jungle whack (Boy howdy, we have a LOT less jungle than my last turn. It's very nice.)
- Some upgrades to muskets (backline impis are more military police and show than actual defense at this point, so I'll leave 'em as they are)
- Continue exploring
- Follow the AI in tech
- Build Magellan's

Anything else?

Arathorn

 

[smegged]

"Anything else?"

Make contact with the other civs

 

[cpp1]

Here's 2 questions that I've been wondering about.

1. Sirian mentioned not wanting to leave our inner cities without units because it encourages the AI to bypass our outer cities. How does the AI know if we have units guarding our inner cities? It should be hidden in the "fog". Does the AI "cheat", i.e. use information not available to players at higher levels so it can play better?

2. Suppose a hoplite is in jungle, which I think has a 25% defence bonus (if not just assume it does for this example). That means its base defence goes up to 1.25 * 3 = 3.75, now does the 3.75 get rounded up to 4 for combat, or does it just get truncated to 3? Last round I waited for the hoplite to get to grassland before attacking but I wanted to check on the reasoning.

Thanks.

 

[TheWatcher]

My understand is the combat is

4 to 3.75 (no rounding)

The rulebook is at home so it can't confirm.

This one is definitely an intersting one to watch

Just hope forums.civfanatics.com doesn't join the blocked list.
www.civfanatics.com got block under the games category

 

[Arathorn]

1. The AI has all map information pretty much the whole game. It has no fog of war and knows where resources are from the beginning of the game -- at least that's been reasonably convincingly demonstrated and never denied by Firaxis. Most AI programs need this kind of "cheat" to deal with human's superior ability to plan. I believe this is the case on all levels, not just higher levels.

Now, occasionally this works to the human's advantage, as a SoD will bypass a semi-defended outlying city to try to get to a completely undefended internal city. This gives a player longer to pick the stack apart and/or scramble a true defense. I try to avoid doing this consciously, as it feels like an exploit to me.

Now, in our case, the units are also serving some military police functions. And, I'm not sure how much pillaging a SoD might do on the way in. And scrambling an internal defense is probably harder than a border one at this point, so I'm not sure it would be to our benefit.


2. Neither. No rounding is done, according to an old post by one of the Firaxians around (either Dan or Soren, I don't remember which). They said that no rounding is done before combat. So, attacking a hoplite in the jungle with a knight gives a 51.61% chance of winning each round of combat.

It's still probably better to wait for the grassland, as they can't pillage the jungle and 57.14% is better than 51.61%. They can't move and pillage the same turn, so it's pretty much always safe. "Wastes" a turn's worth of knigth attacks if you just wait, though.

Arathorn

 

[Sirian]

Roll some cata's into the vicinity and soften em up first! If that's wholly unviable to the situation, I'd probably go ahead and attack anyway, but chances are... I'd have some cata's around to help, or if the hoplite is no immediate threat, roll some on in there and wait for them to arrive. I did exactly that twice on my turn, with penetrating hoplites, and lost no knights thereby.

- Sirian

 

[Arathorn]

Boy, unlike most SGs where it feels like things change so fast from one set of turns to the next, this one feels like the same turns I did 40 turns ago and very similar to 80 turns ago. Weird.

(0) 1150 - Move leader towards the coast. I do try to cover the exposed knight with an impi. It fails in that the knight dies but the impi does kill a longbowmen.

(1) 1160 - Lots of casualties -- mostly "them" -- mostly Chinese. A veteran Greek caravel attacks our one hp caravel on the far side of our continent. It must be the ZSS Charis again, because the Zulu caravel is now a 2 hp elite caravel! Romans on an island over there -- weird! Cumae flips to us again, but my ship isn't quite in position to get troops there in one turn. Dang!

(2) 1170 - MMOW, more killing, mostly Romans this time. Russians are being smart near Yakutsk, leaving one undefended longbowmen right next to the city -- tempting me to attack with a knight. Yeah, I'd kill it but then their SoD adjacent would kill my knight. "No soup for you!" but an excellent ploy. Navigation in 1.

Capture a Roman worker, try to use him as a lure to discourage attacks on Cumae. Trying to keep the city, I leave a couple troops as lures. Could backfire (and does).

Cumae falls, one lure troop dies, worker left alone. Printing Press, the only cheap option left, is started -- going for Shakespeare's for Ulundi.

(3) 1180 - Shantung is (auto-)razed. Weird. It had grown to size 2 at the end of 1160 but then went to size one at the end of 1170 and had another troop, apparently. China's a Republic. Wasn't riflemen or better so shouldn't have been a draft. Hmm.... Real head-scratcher. Anyway, the knight army is WAY hurt, so I move the impi army to protect it and shuffle troops around on that front.

More troops land on our sea front. Catapult and elite impi took out the first... A knight will complete this turn to try to get the other. Magellan's is rushed in Mpondo. ZSS Charis starts crossing the ocean.

(4) 1190 - Russians have finally positioned their mini-SoD so that I can hit it all and leave my troops protected. Send in the knights! (We need 'pults on this front. And jungle cleared/roads!) Horrible luck ensues, whereby 3 vet knights retreat from longbowmen! Sigh. At least they didn't die. Only one longbowmen left. Use a musketman! He wins! This front is safe again for a bit.

Standard elsewhere.

(5) 1200 - Sea action continues, but we handle it fine. Mostly just skirmishes this turn. A bit hairy on the south front, but not bad.

(6) 1210 - Greek bloodbath by hoped site of new city. Finally had most of their longbowmen and hoplites on level ground and I had knights in position (stole a few (too many) from the Russian front). Probably a good dozen casualties on their side for no losses. Leave a fortified musketman at proposed new city site with a longbowmen protected by a hoplite on a mountain across the river as the threat.

Get a GL down on the south front. Sending him to Ngome to hurry a university, once the longbowmen is complete there next turn (changed from knight). Other minor skirmishes.

Well, that longbowmen ate his wheaties. The Greek bow (ATK 4) crossed the river against the fortified musketmen (DEF 8) and slew him without taking a point of damage. Sigh. Guess founding that city will have to wait.

We complete Printing Press. All other techs are still expensive so we must have tech parity! WOOHOO! Science to 0. Physics, Economics, Democracy are the options.

(7) 1220 - I finally kill an annoying hoplite who had been wondering inside our lands looking for a good place to pillage. Got a 'pult and a knight in the area and did the job. He's been bothering me all my turns so far. Good riddance.

Leader does his thing in Ngome. Would've kinda like to do a bank but Ngome doesn't even have a marketplace yet. I order this rectified immediately.

Contact the Aztecs. They want to have nothing to do with trading us anything -- world map, territory map (our WM + 210 gold). They have communications with everybody already. I don't buy communications with England or Egypt because I figure we can find them soon enough and we might want to buy some techs off of them when we do. No techs available this turn. I, of course, declare war.

It's the Roman's turn to be on 'roids this "off-season". They charge up a hill (iron near New Zimb) against a fortified musket and fortified pike and take one hp damage to kill both. Knight attacks New Ulundi and bypasses 'pult and such to kill a musket.

(8) 1230 -- Hmmm...Economics, Physics, and Democracy ALL were completed and shopped last turn. Figures. Economics in 4 turns is our new science goal. Adam Smith would be a nice addition in Ulundi, and we could use the gold.

I off the 'roided Romans. Destroy the rest of their incursion. Kill a bunch more Greeks. They seem to have a nearly infinite supply of longbowmen and hoplites to send. I oblige in killing a lot of 'em off.

(9) 1240 - Settler finally into position. He's WELL protected. City will found next turn but will be disconnected, as the Greeks apparently pillaged on road tile. Not too surprising. MMOW, of course. Roading the empire, killing jungle, the usual.

(10) 1250 - New Bapedi formed! Walls bought for 80 gold as there are lots of Greeks near. We have a lot of troops there, but one can't be too careful. Road towards Anyang beginning to take shape. Many more roads needed.

I've taken to general skimming practices (a size 12 city with extra food will take one turn to build a worker between projects) to try to increase our worker supply. We still have infinite jungle to chop and LOTS of roads to build.

Treasury way up. I didn't buy much during my turns as there was no real pressing need and I was trying to save up for Wall Street eventually. Only about 3 banks built though. Working towards 5 but it's a slow process. Another settler is ready to be place where desired. Hlobane can make 'em pretty efficiently. More cities would be nice....That ivory by Xinjian looks appealing, too.

Right now is a bit of a lull. We are in pretty good position. The Iroquois were awfully queit, so they're either decided this is a psuedo-war or are preparing a major SoD. Kambula has a 4-knight army in it and a bit of force that could be sent south. There's a gap where Shantung used to be that could provide a useful city for us.

World:

Save:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/lotr2-zulu-1250ad.zip

Jester is up.
Sirian is on deck.

Arathorn

 

[cpp1]

Arathorn & TheWatcher: Thanks for your answers, I don't know why I thought combat values had to be integers, but it makes more sense for them not to be.

Way to go Arathorn! Another city, another wonder, 2 great leaders, and building the treasury back up. How long has it been since a player did not get a great leader? Unless the other civs get a great leader, they may not get any more wonders.

I'm thinking maybe we should transport a couple of musketmen to that mountain beside Cumae. At best they'll be able to garrison Cumae if it flips again, at worst the Romans might have to take out fortified muskets on a mountain, not an easy job.

If the Aztecs are on parity with the other civs we haven't met yet, then we seem to be in pretty good shape with the techs. We can build a known tech in 4 turns and that should be fast enough to keep up.

We're making progress, although it does seem slow at times.

 

[Iester]

... but this game comes around FAST!

Or is it just me?

Regardless, I've got it.

Jester

 

[LKendter]

I am amazed how well you guys are holding up.

The regent level I am playing like this is quite nerve racking -
We haven't see a SoD as large as you guys have -
though 10+ bab bowman / swordsman was not fun.

 

[Rneilan]

Uh... newb question... SoD, what does it stand for? (anyway, i've been watching this SG from the beginning, and i must say you guys are doing a wonderful job, i would have joined, but i'm a poor, poor cheiftan/warlord player)

 

[LKendter]

SoD = Stack of Doom -
This is when you see 10+ units show up in the same square

Mini SoD = just 4 to 5 units, but deadly

etc.

 

[Rneilan]

i know those... they suck... <-- that has to be the coolest thing ever... just saying- and btw, if you guys ever start another SG like this, i want in

 

[Arizona_Steve]

You may get your chance. Our Regent version of this (LK21) could... let's say... be going better. I have a feeling that Lee will have another crack at this if we can't get riflemen in time...

Keep watching the forum. Another game may pop up soon.

Sirian, Arathorn et al, I (and I'm sure a few others) would really appreciate some comments on our thread, particularly with respect to getting out of the hole we've dug ourselves there. As Lee said there, maybe large map, continents and 11 other civs was not a good idea...

Having said all this I have enjoyed playing LK21 immensely!