Passing the Torch

No LotR games right now. Too busy. Probably won't be any more until Civ5, actually.

I agree on a bad slingshot being better than no slingshot. Nationalism isn't a terrible slingshot, honestly. If we didn't have the Great Lighthouse (which I believe expires with Astronomy), Astronomy for overseas trade routes wouldn't be bad, either. Not worth expiring GLighthouse over, though.

BTW, with both Sankore and Apostolic Palace, Jewish buildings become very valuable. They're two science and two hammers, in addition to their normal abilities. Makes monasteries very valuable and even temples worth building, most of the time. Also means we shouldn't hesitate to squeeze in extra cities because they'll pay for themselves even faster.

Boys, two things to take note of (especially):
1. Using the Great Merchant to scout. He was in very little danger over there and he helped us meet other civilizations and understand them better. Waiting a half-dozen turns for the cash is a small price to pay for getting the contacts and the extra information. Fantastic use of a great person.

2. Using spies to remove city defenses. If you have a HUGE artillery set with you (enough to bomb down defenses in 1 turn), bombarding is worth it. Otherwise, using spies to revolt the city to get the defenses down is the way to go. It's a ton faster.

Arathorn
 
Thanks DrumStudent. The trade mission is huge and we have another about three or four turns away.

Meeting more civs usually makes the game easier as it allows trading and brokering techs. I can "buy" a tech for another of equal or greater value and then turn around and sell it to two other civs for equal or lesser value. In the end, my 3000 beaker tech sale nets me about 6000 beakers worth of other techs. This is why "We fear you are becoming too advanced" hurts so much (and why you don't want to abuse tech trading).

On the war, I took Walata, Kumbi Saleh, and Gao. Sally took Djenne and is in a better position than us to take Niani, Mansa's final city and the Christian capital.

Also, I only had the espionage slider up for one turn. Otherwise, I've been science all the way.
 
cross post with Arathorn up there a little.

Something else I wanted to highlight better was the selection of units used to attack. CivIV is a game of specialization, something the AI does poorly. Cities can be unit producers, commerce giants, great people farms, draft/whip factories, culture beacons, etc. Likewise, units all have things they do better than others.

It's pretty obvious that a longbow is great at city defense, but it's less often pointed out that a crossbow (with its bonus against melee units) can take out a swordsman better than another swordsman? Both units have 6 strength, but the crossbow will eat the sword alive.

I built pikes near the end of my set because all I saw from Sally was an inexhaustible swarm of horse archers. (And yes, I advocate for an early DOW on Sally.) Put three pikes in a stack for defense and Sally will throw horse archers at it all day without making a dent.

Unless he uses (enough) catapults. Which is why we attack with knights (who deliver flank attack damage to catapults).

It's all one big rock-paper-scissors game, only we know when the opponent will be playing rock and when he'll be using scissors. This specialization allows us to kill many more units than we lose.
 
lurker's comment:
"The shield is down, commence attack on the Death Star's main reactor."
LOL

Nice reporting. Reminds me of Bede in his heyday.

You've got the AP and Sankore. Arathorn is talking about backfilling and war. Anyone have Divine Right? Spiral would fit in nicely if you're going to build lots of religious buildings.
 
Before I start, I would like to say WE KILLED MANSA MUSA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

211

In N.Y. we built pike -> mace. And discovered... DISCO! The world is round. :crazyeye:
Bactrian pike -> x-bow

212

Boston pike -> treb
N.Y. mace -> university


THE BATTLE OF NIANI

Axe lose v longbow
Axe lose v longbow
Knight lose v longbow
Knight lose v longbow
Knight win v longbow
Horse archer lose v longbow
X-bow win v longbow
Pike win v longbow
City taken
4 workers taken



Mansa is dead.
Niani -> j monastery
Great merchant 1900 Sitting Bull capital.

213

Lib. bonus is nationalism
:science: gunpowder
Builds not included
10000000 souls


214

philly treb -> treb
(yawn:lmao:)

215

:science:chemistry after gunpowder
bni (builds not included)
trireme win v barb galley

216

great medic


217

boston longbow -> treb

218

chemistry done


bni
ap vote


219

tim knight -> mace

220

bni
fredrick builds spiral minaret



 

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Very nice turns, justinious. Something very important is missing, however. The save file!

Great report, too, thanks. Very instructive. Too bad we had so many casualties at Niani, but sometimes it can't be helped. If we were racing Saladin, the city is worth more than the 5ish losses we endured.

I think I'm going to work on our Manifest Destiny -- not east/west coverage but north/south across our entire island. I may focus on settlers (and trebs) so that arkenstone can use grenadiers. We'll see, though, I might just pull the trigger and try to do everything at once.

Arathorn
 
the posted file is posted
thanks for the compliment
 
Too bad we had so many casualties at Niani, but sometimes it can't be helped. If we were racing Saladin, the city is worth more than the 5ish losses we endured.

Yes, I had left him no siege that could arrive before Sally's stack. (14 horse archers and 5 cats). I think it was a good decision to sacrifice the troops. It would have been harder to take it from Sally.

I think I'm going to work on our Manifest Destiny -- not east/west coverage but north/south across our entire island. I may focus on settlers (and trebs) so that arkenstone can use grenadiers.

Not only did knucklehead forget to attach the save, he also forgot to post the screenies of his grand Saladin invasion army.



 
well i do have 2 suggestions a) to invade saladin getlots of pikes and xbows b) invade Djenne first.
 
well i do have 2 suggestions a) to invade saladin getlots of pikes and xbows b) invade Djenne first.

I agree with all of that except maybe the crossbows. One or two should be fine to defend against any melee attacks, but I haven't seen any melee from him. I think the first thing we should do is get either troops or spies to take out his two iron sources.

Then we won't have to worry about maces or pikes unless he trades with the east continent idiots. (But I don't see him getting astronomy to do that.)

IMO, build nothing but trebs until military science comes in. Then balance between grenadiers, knights, and trebs. We'll need some better defense in the north, so make sure we also have at least two longbows (or defensive grennies) in each border city. Don't build musketmen, they're awful.

Coastal cities should build at least one frigate for each coast, too.
 
Manifest Destiny, that's what it's all about. The “real” United States used the term to talk about how America deserved to stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific – east to west. Now, we're talking about North to Sorth. That means taking out Saladin and filling in the south. I'm going to try to do both! HAHA! Hopefully we have the troops to do it.

Inherited turn – wow, Saladin has quite the army. Almost double-digit horse archers, which isn't so bad. Nine catapults can be nearly fatal, however. I have to be a bit careful. So I don't declare on the inherited turn. I did change a few cities over to settlers and whipped a few things, too. I want to be ready ASAP.

My plan is to lure Saladin's forces into our land, where I can flank away the catapults with our fast-movers. To that end, I grab the knights from the western attack group (which will be actually attacking, I think/hope) and move them over towards Timbuktu, which will be the counterattack/defense group. I just really REALLY don't want those catapults to attack our forces, because the collateral damage will destroy an entire stack, even if we have grenadiers around.

Still, I only delay a little. In 1555, I make the call...



Our only offensive actions are to sink a workboat and to snag a worker that Saladin had left unprotected. I'm moving quickly because Damascus is still in revolt and we can snag it with less pain if we move quickly. If Saladin moves his monster stack west, well, I have a plan for that, too. :)

Saladin doesn't do quite what I'd hoped, moving his forces east instead of south towards Timbuktu. That's OK, I've prepared a reasonable welcoming committee for wherever he shows up, and he's not going to like it much. Meanwhile, we can march on Damascus.

Couple settlers move south, too, and forges/courthouses are being worked on. More knights in the east.

Bad news, though. Frederick beat us to Taj Mahal. I did everything I could to speed ours up, emphasizing hammers and such. I went from 9 turns expected to 6, but it wasn't fast enough. I couldn't even whip it. Bummer to miss out on the Golden Age from TM. :( We should get a fair bit of cash, though, which I plan to use to make some troops into grenadiers.



You can see Sally's stack there, too. Note the catapult(9) at the bottom. Boys, when you see numbers in parantheses like that, it means their stack more than fills up a page.

After we completed Military Science, I went into Literature. Heroic Epic will be really nice to be able to build. It'll increase our military production a fair bit. After that, I'm not sure.



We also got a great scientist. He probably should build an academy for us somewhere. Atlanta? I'm going to look around and see where our best science-producing city will be long-term. It appears to be Philadelphia, with lots of cottages growing, coastal for trade routes, gems tiles. That should be our Newton's city, too, once we get universities built. I send the scientist there.

Working on the southern part of our Manifest Destiny. I put up a bunch of signs for more city sites. We still have 8 or so unfounded.



First real combat. Saladin let a horse archer/chariot pair get ahead of the rest of his army. Bad move. A pike takes out the horse archer. I leave the chariot, though, as I'd have to expose a pike to a nasty counterattack if I took out the chariot. And the chariot can't really hurt us on its own.

Major attack time. Lose two trebs to do a bunch of collateral damage.
All four knights kill horse archers, doing flanking damage to the catapults and killing a few of them. Then the granadier wins. Maces turn, as I want to cut them way down to size. First one kills a horse archer, next two kill the longbows. Then it's back to attacking horse archers and down under 80%. Hmmmm.....

Flanking damage in action... You also get to see my meager attacking stack. We're greatly outnumbered. Do we have a chance?



I take a break and found Houston and Los Angeles in the south. They'll be good cities in a half-dozen turns. Costs us a bit right now.

And near Damascus, the revolution ends, but somehow it immediately has 60% defense. $#(*)&@. I guess that means I'll need to bombard it down, because I have no spy in the area.

Back at the big stack, I really wish for another couple knights, but I sac another treb to do more collateral damage and send in a mace to kill the final longbow. Pike kills highly wounded swordsman.
Pike kills catapult. Mace kills horse archer. Pike kills catapult. Mace kills horse archer. Mace kills horse archer. VERY LUCKY!

Win 2 and lose one on the interturn. Didn't see where all of Saladin's catapults went. I don't like the way Civ4 doesn't display enemy actions very well, regardless of how I set up the options. Turns out they didn't go anywhere!

Next turn, send in the knights! Errr....send in the one healthy knight! Knight kills horse archer (and 2 catapults by flanking). Two maces take care of the other horse archers. Now it's just catapults left. Knights should do OK there, I think. Knight kills 4 catapults. Knight then kills a chariot and the last catapult. Saladin now has very very little strength left. Once this stack heals, we'll be ready to take Djenne.

A note on promotions. We should have more city raider macemen!! One of the big values of melee units is that they get city raider promotions. Then when we upgrade to grens/rifles, they'll keep those city raider promotions and be really REALLY nice units. I'll be working on getting us a number of city raider 3 units on my turns, if at all possible. We should have also medic at least one medic with each stack. Medics made and helping heal.

Start the bombarding of Damascus. It'll take 3 turns, but Damascus is an important part of our Many-fisted Destiny. We need to from north coast to south coast. And it's progressing. It'll all be blue eventually.

Of course, our spy in Djenne, who'd been hanging out happily for a LONG time, is caught that interturn, so I have to bombard it down too. Slow going against Saladin. I should've probably built a couple more spies. Oh well. We'll be OK.

Damascus:It's bombed down but we only have 3 trebs in place. And it's on a hill, so it's gonna have to wait a couple turns until reinforcements arrive.

Djenne, however, is flat land. And we have a large army in place. First treb dies, but the second survives. Then it's time to send in the real troops. Mace wins at 50ish percent. Mace wins at 84%. Knight wins at 98%. Knight wins at 96%. Knight wins at 96%. Pike (that I had at CR2) loses at 95%. Maces wins at 99%. Knight wins at 99%. Pike wins at 99% and …



And then I have to heal. Only one city, but Saladin's major force is smashed. Bunch more trebs on the way and another grenadier being built in the area. I like Kumbi Saleh for Forbidden Palace. I don't know why I built a library there. Sorry. Bit inattentive.

Still working in the south....



Saladin shouldn't pose too much threat too long, if we stack our forces together and go after him. I hope arkenstone is up to the task. Damascus is going to be a tough nut to crack. Might need to wait for the grenadier to help with busting the gate. I'm pretty certain the 4 trebs won't be enough. A couple knights from the eastern army should probably also head cross country to join the west forces.

I failed in my mission to expand our borders from sea to sea. I did found a number of cities and they will get our borders fully expanded to the south in a few turns. But going north was harder. I smashed Saladin's main army, though, so we should be able to move more quickly soon. The eastern army is now nice and large.

BTW, longbows being built are to help defend new cities (either conquests or from settlers). Trebs/mace/grens are to help take cities. We don't need any more pikes.

Don't worry about Saladin's metal. He doesn't have the ability to build anything better than swordsmen, techwise, so it's not worth sending a spy to eliminate a metal source.

I left signs all over the map for what I had in mind for various units. We must complete our Manifest Destiny!!!!
 

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fantastic job drawing Saladin's strength out and attacking on our terms. Let's just make sure to take out all of his cities before some uppity AI decides to dogpile and make our continent less blue. (Pacal has caravels, but I don't think anyone has astronomy.)

I also agree with putting an academy in Philly. This should also be our Wall St city, if the game lasts that long.

To that, I think it's time to start talking about victory vectors. Here's how I see it. (not in any order)

AP. I've honestly never won this way. We have the AP and, once Sally is gone, we'll control the AP religion 100%. From there, it'd be a matter of churning out missionaries to the other continent and playing diplomacy.

UN. After the war, we'll control ~50% of the population. If we can get another 16% friendly with us, then it's a no brainer.

Culture. We have some good culture cities, but we haven't really organized that effort, sort of throwing wonders where ever they'd be fun to build. Still, we have three religions now, that's enough to but three cathedrals in each of Washington, New York, and (probably) Boston. Set our civics right, turn the slider up, and have all the other cities build defense until we win.

Time. This would be hard because Germany or Maya would launch before then. Also the most boring.

Space. We have everything we need on our continent most likely. Wouldn't have to even bother with the other continent. I'm personally getting bored of space lately and would much rather have one of the military victories in this game.

Domination. We'll have 50% of teh land in our own all-blue continent. That means we'll have to take over half the other. Sitting bull is nearly that big on his own. The population can be covered on our continent mainly, so the hardest part will be keeping teh tiles we win out of cultural pressure. We could start this now or wait until diesel navies and flight to enrich the boy's experience.

Conquest. Two down (almost). Four to go. Start our invasion by getting friendly with Sitting Bull, and storing our doomsday wave 1 army in one of his cities bordering Ottoman. Take out Ottoman, starting with a coastal city, so we'll have a beachhead. Just keep piling the troops on. No need to keep all the cities, though razing cities now causes resistance armies to spring up in other cities. This will be not too hard, but it will be time consuming. This would best be started sooner than later.

Did I miss any?
 
Lurker alert:
On the AP victory, I think there is a mechanism disallowing you to vote in yourelf for AP victory when you have 75% of the religion in question, and also you will have to have every surviving civilisation holding at least one city with the religion in it. So I'm guessing that a lot of missionary work will be involved. You may even have to start gifting some caravels with missionaries in them if you cant get the other civs happy enough with you to open borders.
 
so what i would like to say first is the battles.

battle of damascas
deaths:
longbow his
longbow his
horse archer his
sowrdsman his
spearman his
spearman his
catipult his
horsearcher his
knight owers
treb. owers
treb. owers
treb. owers
treb. owers

battle of mecca
deaths:
horse archer his
longbowman his
longbowman his
horsearcher his
spearman his
spearman his
sowrdman his
treb. owers
treb. owers

open
deaths:
horse archer his
horse archer his
horse archer his
longbowman owers

now on to more stuff
bagdad

Median

Kufah

najran

these are the presant city veiws that he has
 

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Win conditions:

AP -- possible I guess, but that one always feel cheesy to me. I'd really rather not go this route.
UN -- we probably could do this with a little care. It might be the fastest, but I've never been the fondest of diplo wins. Would be my 3rd/4th choice.
Space -- definitely possible and justinious' choice from the past. It would probably the fastest in terms of hours spent playing. I'm personally fine with it.
Conquest/Domination -- either would involve fighting across the water. I know arkenstone wants revenge on Mehmed II. We can certainly do this, though waiting for steel ships might make it significantly easier. I'm always fine with war, too.
Time -- NO. Just ... NO.

One point. Wall Street does NOT belong in Philadelphia. It belongs in Djenne, where the Temple of Solomon is producing a lot of gold and a lot of towns are already running. Djenne needs bank, market, and all cash-helping buildings quickly. That'll be HUGE for our economy.

We should have a discussion of civics at some point. Slavery and representationism and bureaucracy are all getting long in the tooth and may need/want to change. Once we get Economics, too, Free Market would be good. Anarchy or try to grab a Golden Age? I'm not sure waiting for Christo Redentor is worth it.

Arathorn
 
Gentlemen, it is my pleasure present to you our continent, from pole to shining pole.



Just a small recap of how we got there...
 
[unlurk]
That's a nice continent, Rex. Almost reminds me of... well, that's passed.

I can hardly wait for the recap.
[relurk]
 
Well, first off, on my inherited turn, most things check out okay. There is, however, one pesky horse archer just north of Timbuktu, wounded badly. A quick detour for a reinforcing maceman and we've one fewer horse archers to deal with.

Only other action on the IT is to swatch St. Louis from building a treb (0 hammers invested) to a granary. We've got more than enough units pumping out of our mature cities. Let's make the long term investment in these younger cities.

Turn 1: The battle of Baghdad

CR2 treb loses to longbow
CR1 treb loses to longbow
CR1 treb loses to longbow
Combat 2 grenadier kills a longbow
Drill 2 gren kills a longbow (drill 2?)
Combat 1 Drill1 gren kills a horse archer
Combat 1 gren takes the city against its last spearman defender



All it's got in it is a lighthouse. I started building a jewish monastery. Let's get more monasteries in (especially at least one christian and hindu monastery) before scientific method. We own holy cities and I'd like to be able to build missionaries for them.

Somewhere in that mix, we spawned another general, who's sitting in Washington. My vote is an academy, but I'm not certain where. Maybe Seattle?

Also, we birthed Alexander Graham Bell, who is also sitting in Washington.



Turn 2

Astronomy comes in and I head for replaceable parts.




* * *
Intermission...

Apparently, turn two wasn't exciting enough. Justin was taking notes for me and this begins the "doodle" period of my notepad. Normal note taking resumes once the action reheats.
* * *

Turn 3 The battle of Kufah

This actually begins my period of really bad dice luck. Kufah was a city without any siege nearby. But there were only three defenders. I decided to brute force the nut open. Generally speaking, this was a tactic I took a lot this set. War Weariness was starting to hurt and I decided that a sooner-dead Saladin was worth a few extra dead troops.

Either way, I went in with my big guns, hoping to injure the top defender, a CG2 bow.



Ah crap. Sell, I have another combat 3 knight. He died, but at least he hurt the bloody git.
Combat 3 gren kills bow
combat 3 mace kills bow
mace kills spear



Check this out. Dipstick put dressed it up all smart-like for us.



Turn 4 The battle of Nothin'

Just a few happenings. I looked for some trades and only really found this worth doing.



A barb galley in the southeast attacked and killed a coastal trireme. RNGod mad at rex.

Mecca, who'd only just come out of resistance, went into revolt.



I founded Miami.



And I took a look at our civics, now that we had economics. Here are our current choices:



And here's what I DID NOT SWITCH TO...



It's simply my best guess for where we'd like to go. 3 turns of anarchy, though, needs a golden age. I did not check for the next great person's birthday.

Turn 5 The battle of Medina

Medina continued my uncomfortable to watch falling out with the RNG. Here were it's starting defenses.



Two more CG3 bows. I'd say I never want to see another, but I'm certain doing so would only mean I get to see CG3 machine guns in the next war. Anyhow...

CR2 treb loses to bow
CR2 treb loses to bow
combat 4 + shock knight kills a bow
combat 3 knight loses to to a bow...91% odds
combat 3 knight beats spear
combat 2 knight beats bow
combat 3 knight beats xbow
mace beats horse archer



Turn 6

Replaceable Parts -> Steal



Buffalo founded




Turn 7 The battle of Najran

This was when my luck really turned south. All I had left for siege were two cats and dear Sally had, you guessed it, more CG3 bows. Well, at least I didn't have to wait around for my two cats to take his 60% defense down. We had about 800 EPs left to spend on an Arabian going away present. As it turns out...



So let's see what our two cats can do. Admittedly, I knew they'd have really low odds (somewhere around 2% each), but I figured the first would hurt one bow and do collateral damage to the second...and vice versa. Let's see how that worked out.

cat v bow loses without doing any damage.
cat v bow loses without doing any damage.

Two in a row. Well, I've got some heavy hitters ready. Enough bodies will do the trick.

combat 2 knight loses to completely healthy CG 3 bow, but he at least does some damage.

Feeling confident, I send my next combat 2 knight in against the collaterally damaged CG3 bow.



Oh come on.

Send in another. Same battle. Same 50% odds.

combat 2 knight beats bow--and there was much rejoicing.
CR2 mace steps up for scrub time. He's one XP away from CR3 mace (and quick gren promo)



You don't say...THankfully, I missed my monitor when I threw the mouse at my desk. Breathe in. Breathe out.

CR2 mace beats bow
CR2 mace beats horse archer
CR1 mace beats horse archer (the last we'll see)
CR1 mace beats the mace who took away our CR3 gren. snif.



Turn 8-9 The moving of troops


Turn 10

Founded Detroit



Time to look things over. First I adjusted EP, putting it all on Maya. They seem to be pulling away from the rest of the pack.



I then made trades for resources and gold.











ANd finally, spent about 20 minutes getting this perfect shot.

 

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Well, that horrible RNG luck was funny from my perspective, at least. :lol:

What are you thinking of doing with the Great Engineer? I'd suggest you all decide what to do with him and the GG before moving on.

Also, why did you trade away Dyes for Bananas in return? Giving happiness for health is usually sub-optimal (from my understanding), but you should have at least taken the Rice, since that health bonus is doubled with Granaries (cheap for you) rather than Grocers (not so cheap).

Anyway, congrats on taking the whole continent, even at great cost. Ah, right, and it always seems that Miami gets founded in some really cold spot, heh heh.
 
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