playing without oil

[joycem10]

i had my first game in which there was no oil resource anywhere on the map. i chose a wet pangea world, and it turned out that there was no desert and only around 10 tundra squares. it was avery different game than what I usually play.

no oil makes warfare very different in the modern age. as always, good artilliery is key when attacking the AI. I usually used marines as my shock troops and actually made an army of all marines at one point. in addition, it is faster to operate your troops from transports than to slog them thru enemy territory.

pratroopers become a little more useful. although still weak defensively, when the best the AI can attack with is marines they have a somwhat greater survivability. plus which they are the only unit that can provide you with any actual manueverability.

needless to say, warfare was slowed to a crawl and i lost out on a domination victory, but it was a nice change of pace from the usual late game tank blitz.

 

[joycem10]

oh and by the way, the AI did use artilliary offensively against me.

on a couple of occasions the AI moved artilliary units towards my cities with a stack of units. they even fired a couple of times.

the AI still doesnt use it to the extent necessary, or as a human player does, but it is getting better.

 

[sabo]

Yeah no one believed me when I said I was playing a game where the AI used arty offesively, he shot up a stack of my units and then attacked those units.

But you're right, that was the only time it happened and the AI does not use Arty very efficiently.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

You know what I really wish would happen after you discover oil?


I wish the artillery would stop squeaking when it moves.

 

[Chris85]

Originally posted by Gastric ReFlux
You know what I really wish would happen after you discover oil?

I wish the artillery would stop squeaking when it moves.

Same Here

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

@ Gastric Reflux

It is also very interesting to note that the AI will build huge numbers of offensive Infantry if it lacks oil (see the thread on the fact that units can only be either offence or defence, even if both flags are checked in the editor)

 

[Pygzilla]

It seems kinda pointless to research refining when there is no oil on your planet. Not a complaint, just a snide comment.

 

[Nick]

I'm playing a game without oil as well (I noticed when I couldn't build tanks), I've explored the entire world and traded world maps with every other civ. Somehow however the Greeks have managed to build a destroyer, when according to the Civilopedia oil is a prerequisite for one to be built. As I understand the rules oil can disappear but then must reappear elsewhere. In this case either it has disappeared for good or it was never there and the AI built something without the necessary material - something I thought impossible and something which would make the game pointless in many ways.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by Nick
I'm playing a game without oil as well (I noticed when I couldn't build tanks), I've explored the entire world and traded world maps with every other civ. Somehow however the Greeks have managed to build a destroyer, when according to the Civilopedia oil is a prerequisite for one to be built. As I understand the rules oil can disappear but then must reappear elsewhere. In this case either it has disappeared for good or it was never there and the AI built something without the necessary material - something I thought impossible and something which would make the game pointless in many ways.

Check your trade advisor, especially if the Greeks have desert or tundra regions.

Right-click Greece's city squares. It's quite probable that Greece settled right on top an oil square, and you'll only be able to see it through right-click and Terrain Info. On that note, another civ may have settle on top an oil square and is trading the oil to Greece, so you might want to look at right-click other cities of other civs.

 

[Nick]

There was no desert on the map anywhere (there is now due to some global warming). There has never been any tundra, I think. All 4 remaining civs are well into the modern age, have flight (but cannot and have not built any planes), have the techs for tanks but have none. Destroyers would normally be pretty obsolete by now, but there are no more modern vessels (except nuke subs which don't need oil). I've done CTRL, SHIFT and M and examined the map, immediately after obtaining fresh world maps. The oil symbol doesn't appear anywhere on the Trading Screen, it is never on offer in negotiations, even with a 0 beside the amount available.

I'm running 1.29, and I have never modded the game in any way.

 

[Padma]

Last night, I thought I was playing a no-oil game. I've been building massive amounts of artillery, and I've been building offensive infantry! Then I saw Rome take out a Japanese Ironclad with a Destroyer. I immediately got Caesar on the phone. "Julius, old man! I see you've got oil! Any chance of lending some to your old buddy?" (We've been on good terms since we took the Zulus in a squeeze play a couple thousand years ago. ) Of course, his answer was "bugger off", although he said it in much nicer words. After all, he only had one oil.

I used the 'CTRL-SHIFT-M' trick to scan the map, and found there were only two oils available in the game. One in Roman territory, and one in Greece on the other continent. (As soon as Japan gets Refining, Greece is dead meat. ) So I did the only thing I could do. I cancelled our RoP and declared war! After all, Rome only got that city sitting on the oil because they hurried a settler to that spot when we removed the Zulus between us. If I hadn't had my hands tied up with Shaka's hordes, I would have gotten that spot. That city would've been mine. It should've been mine. It WILL be mine!

So now I have the oil city, as well as the city just to its east on the coast, giving me a nice contiguous border. But taking them was tough, even with artillery. And Rome is smaller than I am, so these cities are closer to the Roman capital. I haven't got enough troops in the oil city to prevent a flip, with the strong culture pressure from surrounding cities (but civ-wide I have *almost* twice Rome's culture). So my artillery and some defending infantry are outside the city. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping the RNG gods are kind, at least long enough for me to take the next cities and relieve the pressure. I'm just two turns away from tanks.

I was actually trying for a cultural victory, but I can't let the AI have oil without having some myself!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Padma: how about abandoning the city and rebuilding it? by doing so, you dramatically decrease the old/new culture ratio which play not too small a part in the flip probability? Simplöy move a settler into it, rightclick and abandon, press 'b'

unless you already built lots of stuff there.....

 

[Padma]

Haven't built a thing there yet! I stopped playing for the night the turn after I took the city, and I was already thinking about abandoning it and building my own.

 

[LittleDragon]

I had an interesting battle against the Chinese without oil. They had actually been giving me oil, and I managed to get about 6 tanks out before they attacked me. No-one else was oiled, and the nearest chinese oil was just about the length of the continent away. Their battleships ruled the seas, but they didn't have motorised transport.

Essentially the battle consisted of a disgracefully large amount of artillery bombing cities and enemies to shreds, before the tanks moved in to finish them off. I really babied the tanks so as to not lose them, only using them when there was no chance of losing. I used cavalry to tear up the chinese improvements to keep a buffer zone between them and me, giving me first attack on teir armies.

 

[joycem10]

i know what you mean littledragon. its funny how different the late game warfare is without oil.