Need Some Help Here!

[Fish Man]

OK, here's the deal: I'm on standard emperor/continents map as China. I've researched everything but electronics, refrigeration, and combustion in the modern era. I'm making 416 bpt, 175 gpt, and 100 culture/turn - basically on par with everyone. Well, almost everyone. But we'll get to that later. It's in early-to-mid turn 300's.

I;m on a continent with Spain, Arabia, Greece, and Celts. Greece and Celts are permanently crippled. My main threat is Arabia - I'm at war with them, and while they don't have many units, it's going to take a while to plow through 4 or so of their 100+ defense cities. 25 turns, with about 4 infantry, 4 artillery, 8 machine guns with fire twice per turn, 4 AA guns, and 8 GW bombers. It's gonna be grueling, but it can be done.

Now, here's my main concern. Russia is on another continent, and is already steamrolling towards a science victory. She entered the information era 10 turns ago, and finished Apollo project 10 turns ago. She's on the other side of the world, far out-teching me, and any sea-based invasion would take many turns to launch (considering the only navy I have is 1 ironclad, my largest city has 15 pop/60 production, and I spent all my gold buying/upgrading units). I can't tech steal, either, since it's taking 40+ turns just to get one tech. It's gonna take me at least 50 turns to kill Arabia AND reach her - time I'm afraid I don't have. Furthermore, by the time I reach there my troops would probably be crushed by a vastly superior/larger force.

Now, here's the good news. Attila, Theodora, and Greece, sensing defeat, DOW'ed her just last turn. Somehow, my army is about as big as hers right now - sign that either the tri-invasion is succeeding lol or that she's focusing ALL her production on spaceship parts and will prolly complete it soon eek. I don't want to bet on what's really happening, but I do need your advice. How should I go about killing Russia? What techs should I research next? What victory should I pursue?

 

[rian222]

Seems rough no matter what way you look at it, but the first thing I would do is use Diplomacy to turn the rest of the Civs against Russia. Shouldn't be too hard since they already have quite a few enemies. Start by making friends with Arabia and turning them against Russia. Then bribe the remaining Civs from most powerful to least powerful to DoW Russia. If you continue fighting Arabia, you're almost definitely gonna lose to Russia.

While that is happening, try and launch a suprise attack on their Cap. Hopefully it's a coastal city. You may have to trade away a lot of your luxeries and strategic resources for bribes and gold, and you'll probably get pretty unhappy. Other than that, I can't really think of much else that would help. It's possible that it's already too late.

 

[Fish Man]

Seems rough no matter what way you look at it, but the first thing I would do is use Diplomacy to turn the rest of the Civs against Russia. Shouldn't be too hard since they already have quite a few enemies. Start by making friends with Arabia and turning them against Russia. Then bribe the remaining Civs from most powerful to least powerful to DoW Russia. If you continue fighting Arabia, you're almost definitely gonna lose to Russia.

While that is happening, try and launch a suprise attack on their Cap. Hopefully it's a coastal city. You may have to trade away a lot of your luxeries and strategic resources for bribes and gold, and you'll probably get pretty unhappy. Other than that, I can't really think of much else that would help. It's possible that it's already too late.

I have to get THROUGH Arabia to get to Russia. His cities are juicy in pop and filled with wonders, so taking them will definitely help me in the long run. Besides, he's backstabbed me 3 times already, and he's 2nd-highest in tech besides Russia, so I have to get him out of the way quickly.

 

[imMapex]

The best way to stop an AI from making Spaceship parts is getting other Civs to DoW them, which sounds like what happened. Usually the snowballing AI (Russia in this case) will stop most (if not all) Spaceship production and switch to a Nuke war. Its obviously hard to tell without seeing the game, but just make sure Attila, Theodora and Alex are constantly at war with Cathy and you can be fairly sure that she will start switching to Nukes

 

[Fish Man]

It's over. I lost.

After destroying Arabia, I readied my fleet of 5 battleships, 1 sub, 3 carriers, 4 bombers, and 4 nukes. My land army was composed of 5 infantry, 5 mobile SAMs, 8 machine guns, and 6 rocket artillery. Miraculously I entered 2 eras (atomic and information) in 40 turns, and managed to transport my fleet to the Russian mainland. I launched all my nukes, and they barely did any damage.

Then, I met her navy. It was at least 10 missile cruisers and 10 nuclear submarines. Before they shredded the majority of my embarked force and navy, I managed to land ~half of my troops and capture a city. What I discovered shocked me to the core.

Every tile Russia owned was covered by a military unit. Cathy had over 20 cities, msot with 20+ pop. She had spammed over 10 death robots, 10 marines, and countless mech inf/rocket artillery in those 40 turns - not to mention at least 20 stealth bombers. As if to mock me, Russia didn't even use her 5 nukes and instead pounded me with GDRs until I lost the city and my army was no more. Other civs didn't even get to DOW me, as Russia won a science victory on turn 350. It could've been earlier if she didn't take ~20 turns of her time to destroy Atilla and Theodora, leaving them both with only 2 cities. If the game was on prince we would've been technologically/militarily on par, but as it stands once a runaway on another continent enters the atomic era on emperor or above you've basically lost. I doubt that even Maddjinn would've been able to do anything about the problem even if I went 100 turns back.

 

[spellsteal]

all hail mother russia

 

[Fish Man]

My first emperor game, and there has to be a runaway on a continent I can't reach. Great. Just great.

Anyways, I have just a few closing questions.

1. Which civs are most likely going runaway?

2. What to do if a civ on another continent enters the atomic era while everyone is on industrial? Do I just drop everything and go after them, even if 'm behind tech-wise? (general question, applies to any game).

4. Say I rewind the clock 150-ish turns back. It's turn 200 and I'm in the middle of Renaissance; just fended off Greece's 2nd attack and getting ready to take over Greece. With foreknowledge, you know that:
a. Arabia is going to backstab within 5 turns, so MOVE YOUR TROOPS TO THE OTHER SIDE!
b. Russia is gonna enter Atomic 50-75 turns later.
What would you have done? (this game in particular).

 

[joshua43214]

Certain civs (Cathy, Siam and Monty in particular) will always go science, and Cathy will almost always win.

If Cathy is on a continent and not with a civ that can realistically take her on, she will win unless you get over there and stop her. Attila and Greece are children compared to her mid game onward. Theodora only wins domination by accident in general.

What you saw happen is very typical with her, she makes a huge empire and can tech like mad. She gets in multiple wars and just produces units constantly even though she does not need them. Then she craps out a bunch of rocket parts and wins a space victory.

Siam is the only AI civ I see consistently keep her in check, and late game they are both usually too focused on science and can't be compelled in any way to war with each other.

If I had to make a guess at where you went wrong, I would guess that you waited too long and raised too large an army. I did the same thing for a long time and was not able to step up to immortal/deity play until I learned to fight with a very tiny minimal army. You took the time to raise a great army and gave Cathy time to tech out and build bomb shelters and a carpet of death.

Learn to capture cities with 3 comp bows and a spear, or 3-4 xbows and 2 pikes. Learn to know when you need a 4th comp bow or a 2nd spear. The only reason you need more than 6 units to wage war is so that you can leave wounded behind while you move to the next city. City defenses get a bit better early mid game so you need an extra melee unit or two as fodder when you march up to city.

 

[Fish Man]

Certain civs (Cathy, Siam and Monty in particular) will always go science, and Cathy will almost always win.

If Cathy is on a continent and not with a civ that can realistically take her on, she will win unless you get over there and stop her. Attila and Greece are children compared to her mid game onward. Theodora only wins domination by accident in general.

What you saw happen is very typical with her, she makes a huge empire and can tech like mad. She gets in multiple wars and just produces units constantly even though she does not need them. Then she craps out a bunch of rocket parts and wins a space victory.

Siam is the only AI civ I see consistently keep her in check, and late game they are both usually too focused on science and can't be compelled in any way to war with each other.

If I had to make a guess at where you went wrong, I would guess that you waited too long and raised too large an army. I did the same thing for a long time and was not able to step up to immortal/deity play until I learned to fight with a very tiny minimal army. You took the time to raise a great army and gave Cathy time to tech out and build bomb shelters and a carpet of death.

Learn to capture cities with 3 comp bows and a spear, or 3-4 xbows and 2 pikes. Learn to know when you need a 4th comp bow or a 2nd spear. The only reason you need more than 6 units to wage war is so that you can leave wounded behind while you move to the next city. City defenses get a bit better early mid game so you need an extra melee unit or two as fodder when you march up to city.

Thanks for the advice; now Cathy is #1 on my hit list and this will hopefully improve my later games. I, too, have learned that these civs like to go for science. In one game Cathy finished first SS booster before meeting and dying at the hands of my army of 40+ units (navy included); in the other she had researched all of the tech tree and controlled her own continent so I took no chances and swiftly finished her with 10 GDRs/50 stealth bombers. However, those games were on Prince, where she was almost technologically on par with me and DIDN'T have her whole land covered with units.

However, given the situation at turn 200, what would you have done? I only fielded these many units because I was almost perpetually at war with Greece and Arabia turn 50-250 - and with Arabia's camel archer spam/Greece's usual unit spam, 4 x-bows just wasn't gonna cut it. So if it's not too much trouble, can you play a bit and tell me if it's winnable (you seem like a very experienced player to me ).

 

[joshua43214]

I went ahead and downloaded your save game file.

I would chalk this up to a learning experience.

When playing China, your tech path should be something like lux tech, beeline writing and get libraries/NC up asap (you seem to have done this), then beeline education via civil service for better farms and pikes. If you are tech leader go straight to acoustics, if someone else beat you to renaissance get machinery and drive for scientific theory. Put your spy in an advanced civ who you are not afraid of and start stealing the sailing techs, with luck you can steal all the way to astronomy. On a continents map, you really need to get astronomy as early as possible with out interfering with your drive to scientific theory (I know, its not easy).
Depending on your speed of conquering, you next need to drive for plastics for labs, or flight for bombers. If the game will go long, you need plastics, otherwise flight and finish off with great war bombers (GWB's are very OP IMO).

While all the tech is going on, steal a CS worker, buy another worker, and a settler then forward settle on your first victim to try an provoke a DoW when you are ready. Pop 3-4 bows and a couple of warriors (or the spear that hopefully got upgraded from a goody hut) and capture a city. Bows with be enough when they are les than 12 defense. Upgrade to comp bows and keep going on the 12-14 defense cities. If you have timed everything right, you should get xbows about the time the comps are no good. With china, the chok's hold up pretty well for a long time after this. The problem is that they eventually become useless.

3-4 chok's, 1-2 pikes for fodder, and a knight to capture is really all you need for a long time. You can puppet a nice empire then turtle and science focus, or continue to slog depending on the map. Generally on higher difficulties you turtle til scientific theory or flight.

Ok so criticisms.
2 workers! you need min of 5.
no RA's, you need RA's, lend them the gold if you need to.
You need to sell your embassy or trade embassies. It gives a positive marker and helps prevent DoW's (you need them for RA's too).
T212 and no Astronomy (you needed to scout much much sooner.
T212 and you have not met all civs (you get a tech discount on techs that all the civs you have met know).
Cap is too small. Should be closer to 15 or more.
Liberty on a tradition start. You went liberty (I assume for the "free" worker) then only settled 3 cities. I like 3 city starts myself, but a three city start will usually be three tall cities and that requires tradition for the growth and happiness. I aim for 2 workers in the cap by turn 30, and 3 cities by turn 40. I will try for 4 cities by T50 if it wont get me too badly dog-pilled. With liberty I expand a bit slower to avoid the "too many cities penalty." The penalty goes away, so the sooner you get it with tradition, the sooner it is gone.
Realistically, you should have near full control of your continent at the point in the game you are at.
You drove military techs at the expense of research techs and Cathy trounced you for it
Cathy, Siam, Hiawatha, Washington, Austria (despise her) and any others who go tech and have mid/late game UU's need to be put down hard and fast early. The others like Greece, Germany, Persia, and the Ottomans are pissants and can be rolled up mid/late very easily. Oda is best to put to the torch if taken early, his cities always seriously suck. If you take him later, he will get a few useful buildings up and can be a decent puppet. Remember to raze the city when you take it or it counts against your city count for policies. I will usually totally wipe Germany, I try to pay another civ to war with him and time my last capture for right before they kill his last city. If you don't wipe Germany out altogether, he comes back like a bad cancer. Other than Austria and Sweden, most of the GnK civs can't figure out how to win.

The buildings in your cities seem reasonable enough, you didn't wonder whore and got good stuff. Emperor is an awkward difficulty. The AI will try its best to win, and will do it. I have seen Hiawatha take a tech victory at T258 on emperor before. It will usually take the AI ~350 turns to win, but sometimes they just plow to the end. On the other hand, they are often broke making it hard to sell lux's and get RA's.

 

[Fish Man]

I took your advice to heart, and now I'm playing as Cathy (if you can't beat'm, join'em ). I'm tied as tech leader with Arabia (caught up to him), but his 25-pop cities pumping out 5 units/turn and wonder whoring like no tomorrow is starting to worry me. What I did right this time, though, is rush-explore him with caravels - I know the location of every one of his cities and acknowledges him as a threat.

My question now: is Arabia one of the civs that know how to win? Like Cathy or Hiawatha, etc?

PS is the game as China salvageable from turn 212?

 

[njmfff]

2. What to do if a civ on another continent enters the atomic era while everyone is on industrial? Do I just drop everything and go after them, even if 'm behind tech-wise? (general question, applies to any game).

Start a new game?

 

[joshua43214]

Arabia can and will win, but the AI does not use the civ especially well so he can be taken down usually.

In vanilla Cathy was easily my favorite civ for domination. GnK nerfed her a bit though.
Her late game UU means you can focus on science like you should. Get 6-8 horsemen out early, and use them for early horse rush like you would in vanilla, be careful with them they get useless fast. Upgrading them to knights comes naturally, then the game gets awkward.
You need military science, but it is off the science tech path, and you need science...

My biggest complaint about GnK is GWB's. They are hugely OP, and anti-aircraft guns are a looong way past flight (which is simply dumb). They cost almost no hammers to make, and the AI makes massive amounts of them.

The Cathy nerf means you no longer get 2x oil (no oil in Siberia?!), so you have to chose between tanks and planes when you upgrade the Cossacks. Cossacks are awesome though, I used them in pairs with a range unit. injure the enemy with a range unit, and smash it with the Cossack.

I have not played out a GnK dom victory with Cathy yet. I moved onto other things when I saw how GnK made getting Cossacks, oil, and science awkward. On the other hand, your horsemen will promote all the way to GDR's and still have the Cossack promotion, 8 of those with max promotions are a frightening idea. Very doable on emperor and below.

Hopefully one of the better players will weigh in with deity strat for Cathy. I suspect it is what the AI does, puppet as much as possible early, turtle for as long as possible and then take a space victory.

 

[Fish Man]

Start a new game?

I was about to, but my experience from Prince made me think that I could catch up to them. Well...

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/9/94/Heavy_revenge08.wav?t=20110320071905

 

[joshua43214]

I was hoping some of the better players would weigh in with better advice, but since they have not I will go out on a limb and assume I am not saying anything terribly wrong.

I should mention here that although I do have over 1500 hours logged in civ5, almost all off that is with vanilla. I only recently downloaded GnK, and I have found that slogging through domination victories on immortal has lost its flavor and I have been focused purely on OCC cultural (turning out to be very hard on immortal).

Just for fun, I played out a dom game with Cathy on emperor to see how it goes tech wise. I am uploading the initial save, a save at T213, and the game winning save at T319.

I need to stress that some of my game play would have been total fail on immortal/deity. What makes emperor hard is the AI is always broke, other than that you can pretty much have your way with the other civs in most games. I made two huge mistakes in this game; I settled my fourth city to take advantage of desert folklore/just war - it was a total waste but it did give me a handful of great people late in the game. I naively went for flight before plastics thinking I could buy some oil - I had to backtrack to biology, so public schools went up really late and I sat on a useless tech for a very long time. Also, getting religion on deity with Cathy is very hard, you could do it with this start but at the cost of more important things.

Some comments on my city placement while I am criticizing my game. I went with a 3 city tradition start, and had all three up and running ~T45 and NC up around T75. My first city went on the inlet and I bought Sri Pada before the CS could get it, my second city was aggressively forward settled toward Arabia to get Mt. Kailish, and to provoke a DoW. If I tried these city placements on Immortal/deity, both America and Greece would have been in my backyard so fast it would be scary. On higher difficulty it is critical to settle both to get resources and to lock down territory. This map would have been best with 5-6 cities, though I probably still would have gone 3 city tradition initially to get the NC up, then settle small satellites to lock down territory. Cathy's Krepost is an awesome building and makes locking down territory much easier.

Harun is a pansy under the best of circumstances, and he just whined at me even though I denounced him, and made unreasonable demands. So I waited until he made friends with Pachouti. I DoW'd Arabia, and got the hoped for DoW from the Inca. When playing this type of gambit, it helps to have a very crappy army, I just had a few archers and a warrior - if you have too much military they might not DoW you.

The T213 save is to give you a comparison to your T212 save. I must emphasize again that my game play here should be considered rather sub-standard for a person that plays and wins on Immortal consistently. It does however show the type of direction you should be thinking in. You can see I have a decent amount of the map scouted. I have an invasion force headed to Greece who has taken over his sub-continent and is about to run away. I have defeated Persia, and the Inca are locked down until I can get some Arty in there. My city pops are decently large and I am able to produce in a reasonable time frame. Most importantly I am the tech leader even though I have not had a single RA finish. You should also note that the army I am fielding offensively at the end is smaller than the on you had a T212. I can not over emphasize how important it is to get in there and fight. Do not wait around until you think you are ready, if you can't take a city, withdraw and kill their units as they send them.

Techwise, I was not able to play out the fantasy of getting horsemen out and upgrading them through modern armor. It might work on a different map, on this I just purchased a handful of Cossacks before I got the tech for landships.

Tech order;
AH, pottery, writing, calendar, philosophy, beeline currency for Petra, beeline chivalry, then beeline education, then take acoustics for the spy and to open rationalism. I then went for astronomy while picking up construction on the way. I should note here that on higher difficulty I would need to get construction sooner. Then I head to scientific theory via machinery and economics. At this point I blundered and went for flight. I could have finished much sooner had I gone right for public schools, bio, then flight. After that I just head for stealth.

Policies: full tradition, left side rationalism, order/planned economy, finish rationalism to bulb stealth. Never even bothered to use Oxford.

Build order is nothing special, you seem to do that fine. I put very heavy emphasis on getting science buildings up, I borrow money/beg/sell to buy them when possible. What is more important is growth. You need high enough pop to run specialists and academies, while still being able to work mines. I settled a bunch of GS's, and bulbed a bunch once I was teching to stealth. The other thing that imo is very important is to build as many culture buildings as you can after you reach rationalism. In a science victory, you would typically bulb satellites with Oxford, open order to buy a GE with faith to rush Hubble, then use the rationalism finisher to bulb PP and nano. Ultimately, a domination victory is a science victory. You need to be ahead of the AI techwise or you get stuck slogging it out while they are blissfully launching spaceship parts.

Go ahead and download the initial save and aim for a T280 win. This is not a Godly map, but your should be able to win well before T300 on it.

Edit: sorry, don't know why they didn't upload

 

[Fish Man]

Umm...not sure if spacing out, but I don't see the save attached?

And if it's alright for you, can I...add you on Steam? I would love to hear more advice.

 

[joshua43214]

Here is two vids that are very much worth watching.

Maddjinn's Korea OCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwV6wdIuaE8&list=SPFB680AE4B196AB7C
fast forward to 28:30, I learned more about waging war from this one video than everything up to this combined.

Elcee's China G&K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovaTaYrhMaI
I suspect this will become the GnK must watch video the same way Madjinn's vanilla Rome video was.

 

[Fish Man]

Here is two vids that are very much worth watching.

Maddjinn's Korea OCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwV6wdIuaE8&list=SPFB680AE4B196AB7C
fast forward to 28:30, I learned more about waging war from this one video than everything up to this combined.

Elcee's China G&K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovaTaYrhMaI
I suspect this will become the GnK must watch video the same way Madjinn's vanilla Rome video was.

What DLC did you have when you made the save? 'Cause I don't have it.

 

[Blicero]

It's over. I lost.

You should probably change your username then?

 

[Fish Man]

You should probably change your username then?

Well, I didn't EXACTLY lose; I just stopped playing the save. One of these day's I'm gonna xml in a bunch of and blow that continent up.