LotR6 - Progressive Paranoia

[Arathorn]

OK, who guessed 8 turns? That was what it took -- until 1852 -- before everybody was destroyed.

The first five turns were pretty slow. I used up the available and still had to slog through a couple huge culture borders. Once the second choke was reached, though, the :tank: just became mighty, aided by a few sipahi and artillery, as the borders were small and the cities fell very rapidly.

The Aztecs fell first, in 1850 . I had plenty of troops to off Japan, too, but their last city was on the coast, with mountains on the 3 land entries to it, so that I couldn't reach them in 1850. "blush: Since we only got to Amphibious Assault in 1850, it wouldn't have made a difference in the final time, however.

France and the Japanese died in 1852. Brest survived two tac nukes with 3 defending troops, which matched my number of attacking marines. I was gonna be most upset if I had to wait another turn, just to get rid of Joanie. But the Marines :soldier: (first ones I've ever built!) came through and took the city.

And with the end of WW, the Ottoman people threw the biggest party ever seen! Finally, the wait was over.

I didn't actually hit shift-enter to get the win screen. Once the last AI city fell, I just saved and uploaded. I was beat. I needed the respite from RL that the game provided and had serious OMT syndrome, so I finished it up last night.

Final save (just hit shift-enter to get the win, I think/hope/expect) is at http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/lotr6-1852ad.zip

Thanks to all the players! Very well done. And never again can you look at establishing a beachhead the same way....

If somebody with Civ3 wants to get the win and post scores, screenies, etc. that'd be cool. Else, I'll try to get to it tonight.

Arathorn

P.S. OMT = One More Turn, of course

 

[Skyfish]

Thanks a lot for the great variant Arathorn : I actually was pretty pessimistic right at the beginning but I believe we played a good game where the sign was hardly ever used...or do I have selective memory ?

 

[Gothmog]

Nice game and well played by all. We had a pretty tough start and made the best of it, then ended the party with a nuke fest! It's not that we're paranoid its that everyone was out to get us .

On friday night I had opened the save and played the preturn and a bit of the first turn before I was called to fatherly dutys, I actually tossed a nuke! So I got that out of my system.

Thanks to all for the game, props to Arathorn for the variant.

 

[Skyfish]

So apart from LotR7, Gothmog, have you got any other SG plans ?
Or will you dedicate more time to play the craziest of *all* variants which is trying to beat another human player ?



ps : I still have never tossed a nuke

 

[Gothmog]

I am cutting back to 1 SG at a time so that I can play my PBEM's. They actually take up more time than I thought they would. I am looking forward to 'first contact'.

Also, RL has been taking up some of my time.

 

[Skyfish]

Also, RL has been taking up some of my time.

Don't you hate that about RL ? Sheesh, it does that all the time to me as well man !

 

[T-hawk]

A resounding victory! Anyone remember this picture?

Any recovery on Deity from a dogpile involving EVERY CIV ON THE PLANET is tremendous - never mind the additional restrictions. Thanks again to Arathorn for the game!

 

[JMB]

T-hawk,

Yeah, I remember that picture... Wow, it seems like such a long time ago! As I remember it, that was quite the dogpile... This was quite a long game, and I'd forgotten that the beginning was pretty difficult due to lack of resources and the early dogpile... (in my opinion, this was the more enjoyable part... Once we got Sipahi, the game balance shifted towards us quite quickly. Then, to me, it seemed that we just needed to keep slogging through to the end)

The other "enjoyable" part of the game was establishing our beachhead in Japan/Azteca and trying desperately to hold onto it... I am sure that T-hawk will always remember the turn he had over 100 troops attacking him...

Thanks for the game Arathorn! And to everyone else for playing...

JMB

 

[Arathorn]

Wheee!!! What fun! We did run the whole gamut, from surviving the dogpile, to catching up in tech, to finally stomping everyone in our paths.

Sipahi are truly scary and very powerful. I was using them even in the last turns, finishing off drafted riflemen in the final few Aztec and Japanese cities. We used them against England, Korea, and France as our primary weapon. What other UU can you use to essentially wipe out 3 deity civilizations? Panzers, perhaps....

Revenge for Lotr5 is sweet. The mid-game catch-up went smoothly and we were actually in AW, seemingly, much before the Modern Age hit.

The end-game did feel like a foregone conclusion. I was hoping that the progression would avoid that...and I did feel nervous up until we were close to the Modern Age. But, frankly, even if we'd've been swept off A/J island (which was a near thing), we were going to win. Anybody have ideas on how to change that? And is it flight, railroads, artillery, factories, or some combination that catapults the human so far in the IA?

It was a very long game -- one of the longest in recent memory. Well-played by all and a ton of fun! And who knew we could be in Republic, productively, with max war weariness? For ages! Very interesting.

Oy, though, it got long.

On a lighter note...check out http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60603 if you haven't already.....

Arathorn

 

[T-hawk]

Hmm. Why the human catapults so far ahead in the industrial age is a combination of factors. Prioritizing and prebuilding factories helps, as does leveling off post-hospital cities at appropriate sizes by limiting food. Those together negate (and more) the Deity advantage, at least for military production. The AI gets factories and hospitals built later, and usually inefficiently builds both coal plants and hydro plants in every city instead of just grabbing Hoover. And it builds too many ironclads and destroyers; despite the headaches they gave us here in LotR6, those units aren't going to capture any territory.

Once military production is equal, it's tactical maneuverability (aided by rails, of course.) Never does an AI take over a properly defended player core city in the industrial age, while the player can do that to the AI at will. Why does this happen? The AI has problems on both offense and defense.

The AI often can't keep its offensive SoDs together - flagging half its units as defense and offense is a big problem with that, although it isn't good at just keeping stacks of 20 cavalry together either. And it has zero chance of keeping together a large SoD over naval or airborne invasions. Finally, it tries too hard to pick weak targets; 90% of strategy for the human to attack AI territory is dictated by geographic availability. Going after "weak" targets which change from turn to turn further dilutes its SoD abilities.

As for defense, the AI has a terrible problem with assigning 8 infantry to its inland completely-safe core cities, and leaving the border cities vulnerable with three units. Of course, this isn't a trivial problem; if the AI brought all available defenders to vulnerable points, it would be terribly open to puppet-string problems - especially considering that a human can use combat settlers to instantly flip control of territory and reroute SoDs to a completely unexpected point. The AI does conscript and rush extra units in imperiled cities, but that isn't nearly enough to hold off a determined attack.

And the human wouldn't have the crushing advantage that we do without artillery. In swordsman, knight, MDI, cavalry wars, even the best tactical maneuvering doesn't get the human a kill ratio of better than 2 or 3 to 1. Artillery with their ability to never take losses jack the ratio up to 10 or 20 or more enemy units killed for every unit lost.

No unit should be able to inflict damage without the possibility of any in return. Toning them down just means you have to build more artillery. A sufficiently large stack of catapults can redline any number of mech infantry.

Also, the human can leverage terrain defense bonuses (including things like radar towers) much better than the AI can.

So, how to fix things in the current editor without rewriting the AI. 1) Make the AIs' terrain have more hills so they can't over-irrigate. 2) Get rid of the Hoover Dam so everybody has to build power plants. 3) Lose artillery completely (including bombers and nukes.) 4) Reduce situational defense bonuses. 5) Play on a pangaea or massively increase transport capacity (100 units?) so when the AI does have a SoD it can apply it in an appropriate place. 6) Enforce a variant rule of no settling in enemy territory.

 

[JMB]

For those interested...

Our game took over 273 hours!!! (it might have been 237 hours as I have a tendency to reverse numbers when not paying attention...)

For comparison, Sirian's infantry variant (on a large map) only took 215 hours, the victorious Defiant Nationalists game took only 91 hours, and the CB's Emperor AW game took 94 hours.

JMB

 

[Gothmog]

I agree with T-Hawk's analysis. But I think even ancient age battles can have a higher kill ratio - catapults work pretty well as do cannon. These are especially useful if fighting a primarily defensive battle, letting the AI gas, and then moving on the offensive (a strategy we employed in this game), or taking a couple key locations early - then playing defence. Even one or two catapults in key locations make a big difference. Also even the smaller kill ratios have a bigger effect early due to the smaller number of units. I'm guessing that as a % of the total fighting force these ratios are pretty similar. Finally, a human handles retreats much better. We will prioritize covering wounded units that retreated, but the AI will not. Allowing the human player some easy kills.

Any game that includes me will often have inflated time statistics as I rarely get more than 45 min in a stretch to play. Often I load the game when I get home from work and finish up before bed. Sometimes the game is left running overnight.

 

[Arathorn]

I actually took a few pictures last night. Here they are.

On the histograph, I love how France was essentially eliminated and had virtually no power/score for a LONG stretch, but didn't die until the last turn. Very interesting.

And it was a LONG game. I, too, will occasionally load a game when I get home and not play until later in the evening. I've never let it run overnight, though....

Arathorn

 

[Skyfish]

I must say that I probably can also let a game run for hours and even nights...

Great analysis from T-Hawk and that set of rules should be debated in detail and then made into a variant this team should try soon...
We also have that nagging AWD story to get rid of
Seems any of those might not be possible before September though...

 

[ChrTh]

Wow guys, great game Definitely a classic...