New Succession Game

I only played 5 turns because I'm busy for the rest of today and tomorrow.

Pre-turn- There's still quite a bit of fighting left to be done. I change New Maya to a harbor, disband a slave, and cash rush it. We need rails on this continent very badly. I found New Tulum and New Coba up north on our continent. !st Cavalry Army kills a rifle, a pike, a musket, and a longbow in Fustat, and it's ours [4-0]. I slow down production of the palace to 20 turns so that Hoov's can get built, though I doubt this game lasts that long.

IBT- The Persians land some stuff and Egypt comes knocking at our door.

1. I ship a bunch of workers and settlers and a few cavs over. I found New Dziblicichan. I kill 12 units by the front [16-0]. No cities captured, but when a crap load of native workers arrive in the New World, we'll get a railroad going and really start hammering away. We have too many cavs and too few artillery, so I change some core cities' production to artillery. I rush a barracks in New Uaxactun.

IBT- Jesus that was careless of me. A persian cav dies on our infantry [17-0], but another steals some workers and artillery. The Greeks and Persians both land healthy stacks at a crappy island.

2. All that was lost was recaptured easily, but I am still mad at myself. I kill 18 units at the front. The Greeks' landing is too strong, so I get peace and nationalism for scientific method (they wouldn't accept straight up peace). I get dyes from them for replaceable parts. Dang it, I didn't know about the MPP between Greece and Arabia, so we're back at war when I attack an Arab city. Well, our dyes are gone, and they got replaceable parts for free. I kill two units and capture Anjar [37-0]. I build a colony on gems and found New Uxmal to steal furs. The addition of two new luxes allows lux tax to go down to 10%. I found New Mayapan. Persia will now accept peace and will even give us 200g. I take it so that we can focus on Arabia. Egypt will also take peace, and I give them Scientific Method for 133 gpt and 177g. Lux has to go back up to 20% with peace.

IBT- Nothing. Landed Greek units just move over a tile.

3. I found New Cabah, a combat city. Three rifles and a longbow are killed in Kufah, giving us the city [41-0]. Five rifles are killed in Mecca, and one cavalry is lost, getting us the city [46-1]. Lose a fully healed elite cav attacking a redlined rifle in open flatland, but then kill it with another [47-2]. A cav dies on a redlined musket, but then he is finished off along with a pike, and Najran is ours [49-3]. A couple rifles fall in Damascus, which is now ours [51-3]. I capture as many slaves as I can before finishing off the Arabs. A musket and spear fall, and Byblos is ours [53-3]. I reorganize the troops in the New World and start fortifying workers in the old world, as there is no meaningful work left to do.

IBT- Nothing.

4. MT is in! I change everything to tanks and rush an army. More troop organization.

IBT- An infantry on an island drops 6 Greek MDIs and a LB [60-3].

5. The remaining Greek units are dead. [62-3]. We build our first tanks! I waste no time and declare war on Persia. Three infantry are killed, and Samarra is ours [65-3]. I kill 7 Persian bystanders with just elites, and no leader [72-3]. Another two persians are killed by elite cavalry [74-3]. No leader. I plant a combat settler by Pi-Ramesses (now a Persian city).

Notes to next player:
-Those two tanks in that galleon should head to the two city island to deal with those Persian troops.
-MMing and workers were tasks that I stopped doing; if this bothers you, feel free to continue to MM and have workers improve stuff.
-The prebuild speed can be adjusted by moving from foody to shieldy tiles. We probably won't get to Hoov's before the game is over, but what the hey.
-Feel free to change or eliminate research. We don't need a team discussion on this issue; the next player can just do what he wants.

Notes to everybody: Units without attack or defense value cannot stop landings, even from non-amphibious units. It's a change from PTW to C3C. I've never actually seen an AI land on a cannon before, but it's definitely possible.

Here is the front:

nsg1200adfront.jpg
 

Attachments

I'd say take opponents one at a time until we win or they are all gone. Besides, Egypt will soon have Infantry, as they have RP and Rubber. Let us kill Persia first.
 
Notes to everybody: Units without attack or defense value cannot stop landings, even from non-amphibious units. It's a change from PTW to C3C. I've never actually seen an AI land on a cannon before, but it's definitely possible.

That is correct. The AI doesn't apparently know this though so using slaves is just as effective as infantry for that purpose. Whether someone thinks it's cheap to "exploit" this AI flaw is up to them. I don't personally mind it one bit.
 
Got the save, had a look.
Some things could have been managed a little better, but that can be said about any late game save. Lux slider can be at 0% instead of 20%, we're not really defending our islands cleverly and an army is healing in a town with a flip chance; that's the worst things I'm seeing at first glance. But on the whole we seem to have our priorities right.

I have a question, though: can I sign an MA with Egypt against Persia? I'm a little concerned about the RoP Persia has with Egypt, because this means Persia can attack us almost anywhere by going through Egypt's territory.
We're not planning to attack Egypt next anyway, since the money deal we have with them. We will probably attack Rome after Egypt, and after that rep won't matter anymore.
Egypt would need a tech for an MA; Steel or so, I'm not sure of the value of that tech in the game, as I can't see what techs the civs have we're at war with. We would get most of Egypt's gold, almost 1000, and I suppose it wouldn't hurt us if Persia and Egypt started fighting.
 
Got the save, had a look.
Some things could have been managed a little better, but that can be said about any late game save. Lux slider can be at 0% instead of 20%, we're not really defending our islands cleverly and an army is healing in a town with a flip chance; that's the worst things I'm seeing at first glance. But on the whole we seem to have our priorities right.

I have a question, though: can I sign an MA with Egypt against Persia? I'm a little concerned about the RoP Persia has with Egypt, because this means Persia can attack us almost anywhere by going through Egypt's territory.
We're not planning to attack Egypt next anyway, since the money deal we have with them. We will probably attack Rome after Egypt, and after that rep won't matter anymore.
Egypt would need a tech for an MA; Steel or so, I'm not sure of the value of that tech in the game, as I can't see what techs the civs have we're at war with. We would get most of Egypt's gold, almost 1000, and I suppose it wouldn't hurt us if Persia and Egypt started fighting.
Did I accidentally acquire a new luxury? When I tried lowering it, 005 Silks and a few other towns started rioting. The tanks will be a big help next turn for that island. Towns cannot flip the turn after you capture them, no matter how high crpmapstat tells you the flip risk. He's not healing there; he's defending it. He should be moved next turn.

About the MA with Egypt, that's not a bad idea. I was worried about the RoP and accordingly guarded towns close to Egypt's territory, but signing an MA might just be easier. Then we wouldn't have to make peace with Persia (because Egypt could handle them for us after we give them a good beating) and attack Rome when we think we've gotten enough land from Xerxes.
 
Did I accidentally acquire a new luxury? When I tried lowering it, 005 Silks and a few other towns started rioting.
Yes, you're right about Silk; it hasn't got a market like any other core town. But I'll probably adjust the few towns that give problems rather than the lux slider. Saving and reloading with CivAssist will help me prevent actual riots.
Own said:
The tanks will be a big help next turn for that island.
Yes, I did see them coming. It just would have been more clever to simply keep a few boats around for easy shipchaining from the mainland or even the other continent. Most of our boats are sitting idle in one place of the map, they were probably needed there at the first invasion of the new continent, but they can now be used elsewhere. There's also no boat available near the other island where some artillery units are. I'm very tempted to build a few explorers, just to free up those artillery units, but it'll take time to get a boat over.
Own said:
Towns cannot flip the turn after you capture them, no matter how high crpmapstat tells you the flip risk.
Ah, right, I'm not used to seeing any info about a town just taken, so I didn't realize it had just been taken. Probably the save-and-reload made the info come up. Thanks for the clarifications.

I think I'll just do that MA with Egypt if there are no objections, but I will only have time tomorrow to play.
 
Talking about shipchaining - I never ever do that in my solo games. I don't consider it a cheat or anything but it's just something I've never felt comfortable with. I remember trying it out many years ago and it works (obviously) but for some reason I always stick with the normal boat movement points. I've always found the naval warfare very tiresome in Civ3 so I almost never play archipelago maps. The naval aspect of the game can be handled well in pangaea and even continents games so I've never felt too strongly about adopting the chipchaining thing in any of my solo games. It helps, yes, but is not required in any normal demigod games in my opinion.

Edit: I don't feel strongly about the MA treaty one way or the other. If we were going for a "clean" victory, we would not want to break any treaties until they get expired after 20 turns but since this game is not one of those, I'd say go for it if it helps us. 20 turns is a looooooooooooong period in the hands of a pro player after you get rails and especially artillery (as well as have multiple armies) so I don't see us being in peace with them for 20 turns unless we really really really want to.
 
It just would have been more clever to simply keep a few boats around for easy shipchaining from the mainland or even the other continent. Most of our boats are sitting idle in one place of the map, they were probably needed there at the first invasion of the new continent, but they can now be used elsewhere.

I don't know if it has changed in the mean time. But the Persians had a crap load of frigates sailing around, so it was roo risky to keep galleons undefended. Though, that's what the destroyer was made for.
 
I nearly always play Pangaea, so I've never used shipchaining, but on maps with sea crossings it simply speeds things up.
And in my previous set we would have lost a town against Persia without shipchaining, because an already present cav on the island didn't manage to kill an Immortal. Technically you can have objections against shipchaining, but I don't think it disbalances the game; the naval element is not that strong anyway.
Salarakas said:
20 turns is a looooooooooooong period in the hands of a pro player
Yes, I read you only lost 4 cavs on that island without artillery, but I have lost 100% of my fights if I did them without artillery support, so I prefer to wait for artillery until it's really the last couple of towns that need to be mopped up. This will probably mean taking only 1 or 2 towns at a time, and in that case it might take 20 turns to do the Persians and the Romans.
 
Sign the MA, it just makes good sense. As to ship chaining, it is a bit of an exploit, but why reject a tool that can make things faster? It is easy to do, if you name your transports. How much artillery is in the war zone? I would think 8 per town should soften things nicely, and once we get plenty of tanks in the area, towns should fall like dominos, no need for artillery with tanks against rifles.
 
I played, and put the game to bed. I didn't realize we were so close to Domination. 6 turns was enough, and I guess it would have been possible in 5 if I had been a bit more daring. We won clean; no braking reputation.

The turns:
Spoiler :
I look at the save, and make an MA with Egypt against Persia: We give Steel for it and get 932 gold from Egypt. Reason for the MA is that I'm somewhat concerned about the RoP between Egypt and Persia, and I'm afraid Persia will attempt to attack us by going through Egypt's territory.
Do a bit of pre-build rushing (like rush temple, switch to artillery, that kind of thing).

IBT: Greece (where we are at war with) lands 2 hoplites and 2 medieval infantry near Tarsus. They also attack one of our empty transports with a frigate, but they lose.

1210AD:
Bombard and kill the 4 Greek units, also kill 2 Persian rifles on an island.
We bombard and capture Pi Ramseses (Persian), no losses. We claim the spices there.

IBT: On the island a Persian immortal suicides against our infantry, he does take 2 hitpoints off the infantry, though. The Persian rifle pillages the tile he's on.

1220AD:
Trying to deal with the last remaining rifle, a regular:
our tank loses, but yellowlines it, after that 3 of our cavs lose in succession, only number 4 manages to kill the rifle.
Losing a tank and 3 cavs over one roaming rifle on flat land: you'll probably now understand why I'm so fond of artillery! :p I should perhaps have left him, but pillaging units always manage to annoy me! :mad:
Bombard and take 2 Persian towns: Giza and Sidon. Lose a vet cav at Sidon.
Also bombard + kill several stray Persian infantry units with elites.
I'm joining a few native workers back in towns, but then I'm noticing that we're below our unit support limit.

IBT: Egypt gets a leader by beating a Persian infantry. Cleo's got better RNG than we have at the moment.

1230AD:
Take 2 more Persian towns: Heliopolis and Gordium. Gordium costs us a vet cav.
We've got wines as well now.
The Persian towns we're capturing turn out to have little or no flip chance.

IBT: Samaria flips. Yes, that one did have a flip chance, although it was further away from the Persian core.

1240AD:
Retake Samaria, also take Antioch, Pasargadae and Arbela.
Pasargadae costs us a tank and 3 cavs, all vets, against redlined infantry.
Pasargadae has Smith's Trading Company. A bit more coins for us.

IBT: A Persian infantry suicides on one of ours. All Persia's units are infantry.
A Greek galleon attacks one of ours, an empty one, and loses.

1250AD:
We learn Atomic Theory, next Electronics, 100% in 5 turns. We've still got a pre-build for the Hoover dam going on, so Electronics is the logical choice.
We take 3 more Persian towns: Bactra, Tyre and Persepolis.
Persepolis has Magellan's Voyage.
There's only 1 Persian town left now, but only a few of our artillery units can still shoot.
I declare on Rome, since Ravenna seems to be an easier target than the last Persian town.
I'm also noticing we're only 80 tiles away from domination, that was 300 at the start of my set. So I can finish this game in this set, I really didn't realize that before.
Ravenna is defended by muskets, and we're conquering it without losses. Only 30 tiles to the domination limit left now, after founding a few more filler towns. Maybe some bold attacking with bare cavs and wounded armies can get us Domination right now, but I don't know how safe that is; towns might get recaptured, so I rather take a turn longer.

IBT: I've made a mistake: I can't capture the last Persian town because an Egyptian landing gets in the way:
Spoiler :
EgyptBlock.jpg
This is not good, because the old Persian core that I took last turn has a high flip chance, and I thought that was not going to be an issue, because I would simply take the last Persian town.
Okay, I just have to take lots of Roman towns and make sure we go well over the domination limit, than a flip isn't so bad.

Ravenna suffered a counter-attack from 2 Roman cavs in the IBT, but our cav army was up to it.

1255AD:
Bombard and take 5 Roman towns: Veii, Cumae, Pompeii, Antium and Pisae. The first attack on Veii with an elite tank gave us another leader, which was used for a tank army.
49 tiles over the domination limit now. That seems a reasonable margin, but I think it needs to be, because some flip chances are high, like that of Arbela, at 20%.

Press the space bar; this should be it:

IBT: Persepolis flips, Heliopolis flips, but we remain 23 tiles over the limit and claim a Domination Win!
:banana::dance::band::dance::banana:
Ending with a few screenshots:
Spoiler :
Summary.jpg

Spoiler :
Score.jpg

Those pictures look very blurry when I see them in the preview, I don't know why that is. Also in the summary it says I took Persepolis in 1255, but that's nonsense, I took it a turn earlier, otherwise it couldn't even have flipped back!

I don't know what the usual way is to upload a winning save. I'll just include the save of just before and after the last IBT.
 
We won? :eek: :wow::dubious: Don't know whether I should cheer :banana: :goodjob: of cry :( now that my first SG is finished. .

I have to say, when you have that many armies together with railroads, things start to pick up a lot of pace. Without a doubt it was the war for our starting continent with the Dutch that was by far the bigger challenge in this game.

Congratz to us! [party] And thank you guys, I've really watched my own level in this game shoot through the roof compared to where I was. :thumbsup:
 
Hmm... the game doesn't go in my HoF. Did someone mod the game rules or something?
Must be me. I always have the Statue of Zeus tagged as a small wonder in my games.
That did once go horribly wrong in an SG, when everybody built AC's. I once asked in the Creation and Customization forum how this could have happened, because I was led to believe that the game would stick to the rules set at start up. Nobody could clear it up.
This game didn't get affected, though; the Statue was always a great wonder in this game. But maybe it doesn't go in the HoF because of it. I hardly know what the HoF is, because I've never seen anything go in there.
And I use a colour mod as well, and a terrain mod and an interface mod.. I'm not really sure how that affects SG's. There doesn't seem to be a problem in the 2 SG's I'm in at the moment. Or was in; this one's over. :crazyeye:
I have to say, when you have that many armies together with railroads, things start to pick up a lot of pace.
Yeah, I think the AI becomes a bit helpless in that timeframe as well: they start to research all those optional techs, they go crazy on banks and stock exchanges, and they don't seem to build any decent attacking units anymore, just rifles and infantry.
Even when you're a bit behind as human player, it's very easy getting a tech up on them and trade it for lots of money, because the AI builds so much wealth, and when you have armies and artillery as well, something that the AI can't handle, then all of that gives you a huge advantage.
I think we were very slow here though, I find it much more rewarding to already get one up on the AI in the Middle ages, because then the AI is a fairer match. It's certainly possible as well on this level to conquer civs with just archers, knights and some cats/trebs.
 
VERY well-played, team! Congratulations all!

Okay, where to go now. Well, ThinkTank and I have tossed around the idea of shooting for a higher score than some very good players got on COTM08. That game was unique in that it posted very high scores for each type of victory. HERE are highlight of that discussion:

THINKTANK:
I'd prefer a game that no one has any knowledge of, so it would have to be an older game. I would also suggest if we do this we do not read the spoilers, but base our plan on the map and the high scores for that game. We go for number 1, or else for beating the best score for a given VC, that is, we look at the map, decide on a VC, and then try to beat the high score for that VC.

How about COTM 08 from 2005 (here):

Civilization: Sumeria
Difficulty: DemiGod
World size: Standard
Landmass: Continents, 60% Water
Geology: 4 billion years old
Environment: Warm, Wet
Barbarians: Raging
Rivals: 7 Preset
Respawn: OFF
Scientific Great Leaders: OFF
Mobilisation: ON

Top 5 looks like this:

1 Aeson 17070 1762AD Cultural 20k
2 SirPleb 10971 790AD Conquest
3 Dynamic 11125 1170AD Spaceship
4 Bradleyfeanor 9836 880AD Diplomatic
5 A'AbarachAmadan 9930 870AD Domination

It is a suggestion for a tough game at DG.

Another idea that I was tossing around was:
'trespassers will be shot' would possibly be AW in the beginning. Basically, attack and destroy any foreign units entering our lands ASAP, with an immediate declaration. If combined with some other variant, it could be quite challenging.
 
Your COTM08 idea seems interesting, Overseer. I wonder if there might be patch issues? About the trespassers will be shot, why not just make it AW?

I'm still thinking about whether I want to play another SG with school coming up. If I were to, these would be my suggestions:

AWDG- maybe on a small continents or something
Silent Squeeze on Emperor- combining two of the hardest non-AW variants but on a low level.
Plain Deity- let's move on up
 
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