It is very tedious as you will have to check on each civ, try different offers and then try to determine the proper sequence to get the most. Tracking who needs what and who has what and what they will take, not that much fun. Sometimes, just has to be done.
<sigh>, I played another 12 or so turns, got my resources back and built 3 cav so far with more on the way.
I'm feeling very discouraged, though. Everyone started building ToE, and China just finished it. The other MA civs are now out of my reach for effective brokering. The IA civs are probably about midway through the IA.
I have two choices (that I'm willing to consider): Attack Egypt or attack Russia. I have to cross a few tiles of China to get to Egypt, but I could beat on them and probably get some tech. But I think Russia is the right target because I need to expand and get and hold land.
I jumped half an age in 9 turns, but I feel like I've fallen behind almost a half age again in 12 or so more turns. I think if either China or Germany gets dragged into a fight with me, I'm done for or at least stunted beyond salvage. And I have no potential leverage with either.
I think selling the happy buildings may have been a mistake. But not fatal on its own; I just really need a couple of luxuries.
But if Russia has nothing to offer others to attack me, I think I can not only survive a war with them but expand my territory and gain two lux.
I'm in Monarchy now, so I don't have to worry about WW.
Also, I think two other wars are going to be fought in my territory as Egypt and Rome are at war with France, and I'm at the continental hub point where they all have to come through to get to each other.
I'll probably go ahead and attack Russia too soon and try to make enough cavs along the way.
SpoilerTurns :
Next day: Decided I'm going to sell happy buildings and revolt to Monarchy while waiting for my Saltpeter and Horses deals to end.
I'm also going to keep researching, but my primary aim is to support as many units as possible, mainly cavalry and workers.
I guess that means I should sell the libraries, too. Yep, will do.
It's time to start warring and see if I can survive and even catch up in tech and power. Russia is my first target.
Germany is dogpiling France, so hopefully the rest of the world will war with each other and burn lots of units against each other.
I initially sold buildings as described below then decided to reload my save. I'm still going to sell buildings, but I'm going into anarchy first. I'll lose 9gpt due to trades, and during the anarchy my happy buildings will be my "bank". I'll sell them after. Revolt.
IT: France offers MPP and RoP. No thanks, but need to check which tech enables MPP.
690 AD: Scouting with explorers; China has lots of units roaming around their territory; Russia doesn't.
IT: Russia demands territory map and 21g. Here ya go! Not quite ready for war yet. France and Germany sign peace treaty...darn.
700 AD:
We are now a Monarchy.
Sell all Cathedrals, Temples, Colusseums, and Libraries.
Lux to 40%. Ouch. Unsure if selling the happy buildings was the best move, but sticking with it.
Egypt has Theory of Gravity, Mongols have Magnetism. Damn.
710 IT: Rome completes Universal Suffrage
720 AD:
Arabs now have MT, so I have no techs to trade anyone.
730 AD:
Mongols are IA now.
I'm starting to wonder if I could/should pick on Egypt in hopes of getting tech from them. No, it's Russia first.
IT: Germany is building ToE. sigh.
740 AD IT: China is building ToE.
740 AD:
I was feeling optimistic, but it feels like they're running away too quickly.
I currently have 12 Samurai and 24 Longbowmen, the latter I intend to disband to build cavs more quickly.
Mil advisor says I'm strong compared to Egypt and Arabs, even with Mongols, and weak to my immediate neighbors.
But my scouting explorer doesn't see many units in Russia wandering around.
760 AD: Caught yet another automated worker...not sure how I missed him this long.
IT: Russians building ToE.
770 AD:
Science to 0, breaking even.
IT: Indians building ToE.
780 AD:
There are tons of Roman units just hanging out in America.
Arabs have ToG. My Iron deal ends with them in another turn or two, but I wouldn't be able to resell the tech if I got it.
790 AD:
Have my saltpeter back. Cancel Russia deal where I'm getting furs and 10gpt and they get horses.
Set all cities but one to cavalry, the one remaining is making workers.
Military check:
1 Settler
16 Workers
2 Explorers
6 Spearmen
1 Horseman (to be upgraded)
21 Pikemen (7 are regular)
40 Longbowmen (to be disbanded to help build cavalry faster)
12 Samurai (mostly to be upgraded, but also maybe to trigger a GA)
I'm still "weak" compared to Russia but have seen no mounted units in their territory; just riflemen and medieval infantry.
Disband most of the longbows towards cav builds, 6 are left but out of movement points.
IT: China completes ToE.
I guess another option would be to sell salt to England again and trade with the Arabs, but I don't know what good 20 more turns of no cavalry would do me. I'm pretty sure I couldn't jump half an age again; I think I could *at best* get a tech or two into IA and then get left further behind again the next 20 turns.
The tech rate is going so fast I just don't get how it took this long in the game to get here. Maybe the continents meeting was recent, and that accelerated because of worldwide tech trading.
Clarification on the reload I did: I initially sold all the happy buildings *before* revolting, then realized that money would get demanded away from me, and I'd lose 9gpt due to active deals. So I reloaded just before the sales and revolted first, intending to sell to recover a bit if my meager money got demanded away. I still sold everything right after anarchy. And oddly enough did nothing with it and had little or none demanded away. It got frittered away on some research and lots of unit support as I was stockpiling longbows to disband later for cavs. (Highly inefficient, but what else was I going to do with no resources?)
Edit: Obviously the game was winnable as zerksees did it, but I thought I could win it by tech brokering my way to parity and throwing cavalry at people. I completely sold everything else out to focus on those goals. I have serious doubts about my plan now.
Edit 2: Interesting; in my tech tree, contact trading comes with Printing Press and map trading comes with Navigation. I thought PTW rules had those much earlier, in the ancient age. And hey, it's showing England as seafaring...I thought that was a Conquests thing, too, and not a PTW thing. I'm a bit confused about this game's history. There is no Ironclads separate tech, and forest chops take 10 turns. Now I'm curious if this is a custom BIX.
Edit 3: Yeah, it was a custom BIX! I hex dumped the 590 AD save, and it has a custom BIX embedded. From in-game observations it seems to be an odd mix of PTW and C3C.
Edit 4: Came back from bed to open up a save before Universal Suffrage was complete. Yep, China was working on it then. And could offer an MPP. ToE gave them two techs, so they are *at least* 8 techs into the IA after completing ToE. And Germany was ahead of them techwise 20 or so turns ago. Yep, I'm definitely at least half an age behind again. I'll probably go ahead and attack Russia with cavs, but if throwing cavs at folks doesn't work, I'm done.
I'm playing with the Conquests executable, so some of the game mechanics like corruption are expected to be different. But the tech tree and most rules should be recognized as using the PTW default BIX file (if it were originally a default epic PTW game which I currently doubt), although I have very little experience in doing that, and none in, say, 16 or so years.
I *do* recall there were custom PTW BIXs to emulate some of Conquests' new features, and I'm wondering if this was that.
---
It struck me overnight that I had mentioned MPPs a couple of times, and I got even more discouraged as I really don't think I can handle a dogpile. However, I just checked, and Russia has no MPPs with Germany, China, or France. Those are my other two neighbors and a random other civ on my continent with whom I have embassies.
So I can't be sure they don't have *any* MPPs without getting a little more cash for an embassy that I'd rather use for upgrades, but at least they don't have MPPs with at least some of the most powerful civs on the continent.
---
Edit: Curious, I pulled out some ancient save games from backups. In both PTW and vanilla saves opened in Conquests, things look the same as in this game: comms with printing press, maps with navigation, and some other tech tree goofiness is the same. So maybe this wasn't a custom BIX and Conquests does some weird things, or maybe I'm just misremembering that map trades and comms trades used to be early in the AA.
Nope, nope, nope. I'm done. I didn't even finish the turn started last night. Russia, the 6th place scorer, has Infantry defending the furs city. It's not impossible (maybe...at this point I'm 20ish turns behind zerksees' effort and have made choices counterproductive to his efforts), but it's not what I signed up for.
That's quite recent, but they've had RP long enough to either upgrade or build an inf and get him to the farthest city from their capital. There's no way I can throw enough cavalry at them to keep up with their new inf production. And then there's still the rest of the world.
Oh, also, Russia has no need for any resources, so they acquired horses somewhere.
If I were to proceed (I won't), I'd have to consider just taking the fur and ivory cities and selling anything and everything for peace, then trying to take over Egypt. And surely the more powerful civs would be in the Modern Age by then.
I've seen people manage to fight vastly superior forces, but it's way too tedious for me.
I recall that things like Radio being back in its pre 1.22 location and as I mentioned, no AC or Crusaders as those wonders are not in PTW. Corruption, no volcano and much more, Not so much that you cannot still play old PTW saves. I did a number of them in the early days of C3C. The specialist does hurt, if you pick up a "lost" game as the reduced beakers and other things I do not recall clearly.
Yeah, maps and contacts used to be tradable much sooner. Pre-c3c had all diplomatic agreements available after the discovery of writing and maps tradable from map making as well.
When you shouldn't have built it in the first place!
Or if (for some reason) you're about to go broke, and you want to choose which building/unit is sold, rather than letting the game decide for you (and/or if you're playing to a personal rule that you will not go broke).
Or when you've captured an AI-town that has lots of expensive/ maintenance-requiring/ polluting buildings that do nothing but cost you money, e.g. because you're running a non-Communist gov and the town's completely corrupt (e.g. Factory, Coal Plant), and/or because you're running SCI% + LUX% = 100% (i.e. TAX% = 0%) but don't have Smiths (e.g. Banks, StockExes).
I remember the first time I played at Warlord when that happened ... never did at Chieftain, so I was quite surprised. Once I got the hang of it, though, it hasn't gotten that close since.
Yes, no penalty for deficit-spending after draining your Treasury is another of Chieftain's 'perks' that fosters bad habits for playing at higher levels (though it has to be said, losing 1 building or unit per turn isn't much of a penalty either).
Yes, no penalty for deficit-spending after draining your Treasury is another of Chieftain's 'perks' that fosters bad habits for playing at higher levels (though it has to be said, losing 1 building or unit per turn isn't much of a penalty either).
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