LotR27 Science-Scorning Spacists

[T-hawk]

As mentioned, I'm going to defend Vitcos to the max. Upgrade the rifle and axeman in it to mechs, draft a mech, and cash rush a mech. (The rushed mech will appear before the AI's turn to attack; the timing of turn processing was changed sometime, I think in Warlords, just for the rusty guys around here.) I wanted to rush an Anti-Tank instead, much cheaper and almost as effective against the incoming tanks, but apparently they go obsolete when mechs are available. Also draft in Cuzco and Tiwanaku, and position galleons to get those mechs there next turn.

I turn off espionage. And buy some happy resources from Joao to put everybody in the SS cities back to work. Cheaper than the slider and the cash won't make the difference in him beating us.

I set Tiwanaku to max non-Priest specialists. Its GPP bar is at 700/900 and it can put out a GP to fire our 2-man Golden Age within 7 turns. (I suggested to do this one turnset ago but guess Ozbenno missed it.)

Here's the best way to manage the spaceship from here:
I'm going to launch in 8 turns. Ephesus and Halicarnassus say 9 turns to thrusters but can be MMed with workshops to 8. (Halicarnassus is building a part without even a power plant? )

Forget the 5th thruster, no city can do that in 8 turns. As for the Life Support, it can be done in 8 turns exactly in Athens after cash rushing a coal plant this turn. (Not a nuke plant because it's 500 bucks more and a chance of meltdown. I can deal with coal unhealthiness.)

Most non-SS cities start mechs, mostly so they can be cash rushed if needed.

And I Perform Counterespionage against both Joao and Cathy. That will go a long way towards blocking any steals.

By the way, I just noticed this:



Russia has NO HAPPY RESOURCES. Zero. Anywhere. Cathy is running 20% culture. That explains why she's been lagging in science all game. What a bizarre map, not a single happy resource anywhere in Russian territory besides now-expired whales! If not for that, Cathy would have been far enough along not to be a brokerage partner for us back in the Renaissance, and we may well not be winning this game.

=============================

Between turns... okay I miscalculated badly on Vitcos. The AI suicided its artillery, then won four out of five battles at 63, 65, 65, 97, and 100%.

1911 AD: We lost Vitcos but I'm going to get it back. 9 mechs from upgrades and drafts load into galleons at Cuzco and sail to Huamanga. I'm going after it not so much for its own sake, but to make the AI think it's losing and talk for peace sooner.

Between turns, not much happens. Russia destroys three Towns with Guided Missiles. Brilliant use of hammers. And they are at Tiwanaku, where I'm farming over the towns anyway to get out the Great Person.

UN resolution for Single Currency comes up. I vote no since it will only help our rivals research, but it passes anyway (we're the only no vote.)


1912 AD: I land 7 mechs on the forest next to Vitcos. That will be enough against 4 defenders and it can't rush another because it's in resistance. Keep drafting and upgrading (heh, a quechua upgraded to mech keeps its free Combat I), and also rush a Missile Cruiser in the war zone. Load another 3 mechs onto a galleon at Cuzco.

Joao demands Iron. I pay. Locking in a peace treaty with him is BEAUTIFUL.


1913 AD: We recapture Vitcos, though lost 4 mechs to some bad RNG rolls (and also I landed the wrong mechs, rookies instead of 5 XP units.) It lost its lighthouse so it's going to starve, so I draft it again. Interestingly, the draft anger clock reset on capture.

And the RNG continues to hate us when I lose Tiwanaku's infamous Missile Cruiser attacking at 74%.

1914 AD:



What is the AI doing? It just moved its only mech and two other defenders out of Sexi. I have a loaded boat in Cuzco. It's certainly worth sacrificing a mech amphibiously against that tank to whack out four air units that are really annoying me. Then the RNG smiles and the seaborne mech even wins at 20%.



Whoa. I've heard about that but never seen it before, I hardly ever play with random events on. Carthage just got 4 mechs for free. Well, I delete our mech that razed the city (it's damaged and will just add to WW when it gets killed.) Let the mechs have that reef.

1915 AD: A big Carthage naval stack (three highly promoted battleships and destroyers) appeared by Cuzco. I'll need air power to take them down, so I steal Advanced Flight from Joao. Strangely, there was a lone Carthage transport a couple turns behind the stack, which I whack with a destroyer (that I upgraded from a frigate a few turns ago.)



I get real jumpy for a second when Ollantaytambo here comes up for a build order, and we have no oil or uranium! Did Carthage somehow suddenly kill ALL our resources? Oh, no, this city is just blockaded, everything else is fine.

More annoyingly, there is no visible ship doing the blockade. It's a freaking submarine. I rush an Airship just to see the sub. (Then I check the civilopedia and realize that destroyers can too.)

1916 AD: Now two Carthage carriers have joined the naval stack, both loaded with fighters, so jet fighters of our own will do no good since they'll get intercepted. Now I remember how to win naval exchanges cost-effectively:



Guided Missiles. And they can be built in cities anywhere and instantly rebase to the combat zone. And they can load onto the Missile Cruisers themselves (though that has to be done in a city, can't rebase to one in open sea.)

Also, Joao has completed Ecology. But we are two turns from launching. I redirect espionage to him in case we need to sabotage something. And our last spy in his city got caught but I have more ready.

1917 AD: Tiwanaku popped a Great Engineer and we at long last have our Golden Age.

End of turn, we launch. But:



HOLY UNBELIEVABLE. Joao completed the Life Support in TWO TURNS. How the HOLY HELL did he do that. This also happened ONE TURN before I had a trio of spies ready to sabotage a part.

Now what happens?



He launched with all five thrusters but missing one engine. We launched with both engines and -1 thruster. So our spaceships are equally fast, 12 turns to arrival. Both were launched at the same time, on the 1917-1918 interturn. I don't know why ours says it's one turn later. I don't know if his ship is considered faster because of that, or whether it's a tie that will go to the human player, or if it's a coin flip.

 

[T-hawk]

I want to pass off here. Unless somebody knows for absolute surety that that spaceship race is in our favor, we must eliminate Portugal's capital. Arathorn will need his full faculties and absolute command of the planning phase to pull that off. Nothing is moved on the 1918 AD turn except that I rebased one Guided Missile to Lisbon (they can do that) just to see what's in there.



Lisbon is actually not far from our east coast. And thanks to the Golden Age, we can cash rush bunches of transports over here. Thanks to the Iron demand, we have a locked peace treaty with Joao until 1922 or 1923 AD, but then we have 7 turns to do the deed. We probably want to revolt to Theocracy.

Manhattan Project remains unbuilt. I assigned it in Corinth, which can complete it in 5 turns (go Golden Age!) Then cash rush some nukes and I think we can manage it. If the UN says no nukes, DEFY it. I have some workers pre-forting our Uranium as a backup in case the mine gets bombed out (happened once already on my turnset.)

Godspeed, Arathorn.

 

[Ozbenno]

I also don't know who wins the tie break but suspect its us. Best to try and raze Lisbon just in case (can we tell if he has moved his capital BTW).

Nukes (ICBMs which can be launched from any city) and attacking straight from the boats should see us be able to do this first turn of the war as it looks like we can park 4 squres away. If we can launch as many nukes as can be built and sail in as many troops as can be ferried across in transports, we should be OK.

 

[Rowain deWolf]

He launched with all five thrusters but missing one engine. We launched with both engines and -1 thruster. So our spaceships are equally fast, 12 turns to arrival. Both were launched at the same time, on the 1917-1918 interturn. I don't know why ours says it's one turn later. I don't know if his ship is considered faster because of that, or whether it's a tie that will go to the human player, or if it's a coin flip.

I fear if it says Joao launched 1 year earlier that he will win. It could be that while your tile-completion happens on the interturn your launch is considered happening on the following turn. The interturn is his 1917 (as the AI play after the human).

 

[Arathorn]

Oh boy. I see this. No way I'm going to have a prayer of being ready to play this tonight. Maybe tomorrow night. Maybe Saturday. Maybe both.

Do we really need nukes? With a half-dozen transports, we can attack with 24 troops. A spy can bring the city defense down to 0 really quickly. He only has 10 defenders. 6 suicide artillery and 18 attackers feels almost guaranteed to win to me. And then we won't have to deal with EVERYBODY declaring war on us, which feels dangerous to me, like we could lose our capital, too, since it's also coastal.

I'll admit I've completely forgotten what a Civ4 nuke will do. How much damage does it do? Is it really necessary?

Since we can park close enough to Lisbon to be able to sail in and attack on the turn we declare, he won't have time to respond and guard the capital. I think I'd rather have Corinth build the palace to make things safe.

How close are we to city visibility into Portugal with espionage? (I guess that'll be one of the first things I check.) Knowing what Joao is building would be nice. Shouldn't take much econ to do that. Something to consider since we have such a strong EE going.

I'll also look and see if anybody else is willing to declare on Joao. If we can get him to send troops elsewhere, that'd make our job even easier.

Theocracy is a no-brainer. Can we get into Vassalage, too? ISTR there was a UN resolution that locked us in something else in that Civic. Oh well.

Four prep turns. That's not very many. Do we even have 24 reasonable attacking troops? Marines are honestly pretty good since we'll be attacking from sea and they're cheap to rush. I guess I'll have to see.

I really want the team's thoughts on the necessity of nukes, however.

Arathorn

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

Nukes are fun, but not necessary if our only goal is to raze Lisbon. If we turn all sliders to zero, we can cash rush/draft enough troops (much cheaper than nukes) to take out the one city.

Though, are we certain that razing the capital will delete an already launched ship? That seems unreasonable to me but, then again, so does winning the world by arriving at a worthless trinary star system.

I'm going to run a test tonight by setting up a world builder with two civs who each launch a spaceship on the same turn and see who wins. Then I'll rewind and take out the capital of a civ whose ship is in flight.

BTW, are we seeing that pop-up that says: victory in 12 turns? If not, we're not going to win the space race.

 

[T-hawk]

Lots of Civ 3 thinking going on here. Let's start mythbusting:

- There is never auto declaration of war in response to a nuke in Civ 4. Not by the AIs nor the human. Also, even if there was, we'd be protected by the 10-turn peace treaties we will soon make with Carthage and Russia.

- The Palace is 160 hammers, it doesn't scale up to 1000 as in Civ 3. Anywhere can knock it out in 2-3 turns. No need to commit Corinth to it. I'd suggest Ica.

- Artillery cannot attack from boats. And if we land a stack, the AI will slam everything in railroad range against it. That would be on the order of 50-100 units. We must win directly from the sea without artillery. Nukes are by far the easiest way to do that.

- A nuke deals a large randomized amount of damage to every unit in the city. Two nukes on one city usually kills nine-tenths of the defenders and leaves the rest redlined. The attached save is perfect for playing with some if you like.

- ICBMs are not expensive. 500 hammers is just 2.5 mechs. Tactical nukes are even half that, though need a submarine to deliver.

- We are far from city investigation (that's distinct from city visibility, you need the higher number to see what he's building) but not impossibly so. We have 15k espionage on Joao and his core cities need around 30k. Could be done with the slider, though probably better to run cash for military instead. Hindu Missionaries in key spots may help.

You have more than four prep turns, could declare as late as 1928 AD. Do not declare until after 1924 AD - a UN vote is scheduled for that date and we cannot afford a Stop The War resolution.

We do have about 25 mechs total, though they're mostly in the Cuzco area. Vassalage is an option (the UN has not locked Free Speech, we're still in Nationhood) but I think we still want drafting instead. I believe the Lisbon raze without nukes is possible, but you'll have to play perfectly to get enough units there. There's only 10 defenders now but who knows how many eight turns from now. Nukes will turn it from probably likely to near-guaranteed. I'm all for it.

Yes we are seeing the pop-up that says 12 turns to victory, if you care to look at either of my last two screenshots. But that message doesn't consider impending rival victory conditions. Portugal has not moved his capital (I don't think the AI ever does), you can tell by the star on the city size number in the screenshot.

Attached is a save suitable for nuke practice, if you like. Look for the French city Rheims that is threatening a cultural victory. There is a large invasion fleet next to it and 8 ICBMs in London.

 

[Kylearan]

Oooh, an exciting ending for once! I guess Arathorn will be glad that his last turnset won't be boring end-turn clicks after all.

Looking forward to reading the climax! (okay okay, guess it won't be that close with nukes and all that...)

-Kylearan

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

if anyone is interested, I just ran a world builder test with two civs launching on the same turn with the same spaceship parts. In that case, the human won the race.

I then backed up, let the AI launch first and confirmed that razing his capital aborts his spaceship.

If anyone wants to repeat, here's the test file I used.

 

[T-hawk]

Great test, Rex. I tried it and I'm a bit worried.

One, the countdown clock acted screwy for me. The "inherited turn" is T62. I launched on T63, but the 12 turns to victory didn't start counting down until T73. The "estimated arrival" on the F8 screen also kept changing until then. I don't know if that's an artifact of being in BC years or if something else went wrong.

Two, launching on T62 isn't the same case as our game, I don't think. Joao launches on the 62-63 interturn and the event log says "1520 BC Joao launches". I think the right match to our situation is if the player launches on T63. The event log says "1480 BC danm launches", one turn later than Joao.

So I did that and clicked through the turns. Joao won. Which either means that the situation in our game does in fact have Joao one turn ahead, or else it's a coin flip that went your way but not mine. Either way, I don't think we can rely on winning the spaceship race here.

Anyway, I have a proposal to save Arathorn's sanity. What if I (or maybe a lurker) ran our save through 12 turns to see who wins the race? Worldbuilder ourselves to peace to make it easy, and just don't report back anything other than yes/no. If we do win (and repeatedly so to prove it's not a coin flip), we can save Arathorn the effort of building and invading.

 

[Ozbenno]

And ruin the fun of playing with Nukes? Never.

Well maybe.

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

I'm rather starting to enjoy the uncertainty, actually. But I write from the perspective of someone who gets to read about--rather than has to play--the next ten turns.

Btw, t-hawk, I also had the same weird countdown issue but got it consistently so I learned to ignore it. I assumed it had something to do with me manually manipulating the wb save in notepad.

 

[Rowain deWolf]

Some comments:
-)With T-hawks testing I'm now sure that in your case Joao would win.
-) Nukes only work so well if the defender has neither SDI nor shelters in his city.
-) if you plan to bring the defenses down with a spy you can use normal missiles to redline the defenders. Those missiles are quite cheap so I doubt you will have any problems making enough of them.

 

[T-hawk]

Good point about SDI. It can't be built until after somebody builds the Manhattan Project, but it's certainly possible that Joao could build it between Manhattan and the nuke attack. Arathorn, you may want to minimize that time: build other military first, complete Manhattan - rush nukes - attack - in the span of two turns.

Normal missiles are cheap, though I'm not sure how many we can deliver. We do have about four Missile Cruisers at Cuzco, it might depend on whether we can wrap up war with Carthage and Russia soon enough to redirect them to Lisbon.

BTW, this problem is of course all my fault. If I'd paid more attention, and just sabotaged a part instead of stealing Advanced Flight, we wouldn't be in this mess...

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

BTW, this problem is of course all my fault. If I'd paid more attention, and just sabotaged a part instead of stealing Advanced Flight, we wouldn't be in this mess...

Yeah, but if you hadn't gotten us from Paper to Composites in one set, we wouldn't be sniffing this mess, either.

 

[Arathorn]

I am quite happy with the uncertainty. I just have had a brutal week and haven't had the concentration necessary to play an intense set of turns. I think Joao will win if we don't do anything. I like that. To me, that's a good thing, even with the threat of a loss being my fault (partly). Wouldn't be the first time.

So, nukes quickly after building Manhattan, timed with arrival of forces to raze Lisbon. Two nukes should be enough. Probably ICBMs (what's the range of a regular nuke? I should test that.) with only a couple transports of any kind of troops needed as a follow-up. Probably move the capital as a sidelight, to somewhere non-coastal. Rush stuff in the east, where it can reach quickly. Peace with the two non-entities ASAP.

Sounds very exciting. Thanks for all the advice and sample stuff. I might play around with that tonight, since it doesn't matter how much I screw up a test game in my state of exhaustion.

Arathorn

 

[T-hawk]

ICBMs have unlimited range. (They're actually the "regular" nukes, tac-nukes came later in an expansion.) Tac-nukes have 4 range. They need a boat to deliver, and can only load onto that boat in port, but they can rebase from anywhere to that port and load in the same turn. Tac-nukes also have a 50% chance to evade interception. So a mix of both types might be good just in case Joao pulls an SDI out of his butt in two turns like he did with the SS part.

And there's plenty of blame to go around: another slipup was when Ozbenno didn't take note to push out a Great Person from Tiwanaku on his turnset. With a Golden Age ten turns sooner, we easily launch at least one turn sooner and avoid this yet again.

But this is thrilling alright!

 

[Tatran]

Lurker's comment :
1) Capturing an enemy capital is enough to destroy their spaceship.
2) IIRC, only the arrival date is relevant and when there's a tie, a toss will decide.

Some more info :
This old post was created, because it was possible to have 2 winners in vanilla, maybe in warlords too.
So, this outcome was a nasty surprise.



Thread :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=321102

Good luck with capturing Lisbon.

 

[Arathorn]

All I want to do is to raze Lisbon. That's it. But nooooo!!!! Cathy and Hannibal are running around with nontrivial stacks and they want a piece of our land.

Now, for that, T-hawk had left everything looking sweet. Other than one annoying internal stack of ships (which didn't have transports so was more annoying than dangerous), we were fairly clear...for a while.

My very first item of business was to delay Manhattan Project. I wanted minimal time between its completion and war declaration (to minimize SDI time). Plus, I was seeing for myself how dangerous a coastal capital was. Cuzco had served us well, but it was time to move the glorious palace to Corinth. It took one turn, but our capital was no longer coastal.

I could then safely denude the Cuzco area of troops. Boats, even with Civ4 speeds, take a while to get from A to B. I wanted some missile carriers in the area, if we needed to go the tac nuke route. Nothing could be taken for granted.

Cathy and Hannibal were annoying, but guided missiles were about all we "lost" in dealing with the annoying stack. A couple more fishing nets got ripped up. *Yawn* Finally, Cathy would talk. But would she be reasonable or expensive? I was going to pay either way, honestly.



Cheap.

Hannibal was even cheaper the following turn. I asked to bury the hatchet and he didn't even ask for anything. Peace straight-up. I wonder if I could've gotten some war reparations from him. *shrug* Oh well. It just made me feel better about sending everything east towards Lisbon. Cash-rushing judiciously, saving some for cash-rushing after Manhattan completed.

Oh, and until the UN voting deadline had passed. Probably Emancipation or something, right?

Wrong.



Ruh-roh, Shaggy. You said it, Scooby. Nothing I can do besides vote for us and cross my fingers. Hannibal can't be that popular, can he?

I want to use these troops.



Well, I will use those troops. After the game is over, if necessary.

Is it necessary?



Nah. Hannibal isn't very popular. We didn't have a voting bloc but most people can't stand either of us. That's good to know.

Meanwhile, Joao seems to have noticed our tiny little armada sitting outside his borders. Lisbon is only barely coastal. The AI does something semi-intelligent and blocks sea access with a couple missile carriers.



Still, the diplo shenanigans mean that no UN resolution will stop our war against Joao. And, hey, Manhattan's been complete for two turns. And, oh look, I spent about 10k last turn rushing things. What does that mean?

It means it's time for our people to get really unhappy.

 

[Arathorn]

T-hawk's nice nuclear playground savefile indicated to me that 3 ICBMs were generally enough to completely denude any city of defenders.

SDI was a potential complication, that can be overcome by tac nukes. I didn't have sufficient tac nukes in the area on the declaration turn (about a dozen ready for the following turn, if necessary, however). Tac nukes can be shot down by jet fighters and such, though. No perfect solution, but I hoped two turns wasn't enough for SDI to complete.

Let's get this party started.







Now what does Lisbon look like? Oh, it's Christmas at Ground Zero! No need to hang lights, the whole place is glowing.



Apparently, I had about 19 troops more than I needed.



If I get the energy, I may go back and see if the nukes were necessary or if the 15ish guided missiles and transport-loads of troops would have been enough. I'm curious. I didn't get a chance to try out that scenario, though.

Oh, after Lisbon went bye-bye, I checked out the victory screen.



Yeah, Cathy is leading the AIs in the space race, with 4 thrusters.

Uh-huh. Success is sweet.