Rat 09 - going for conquest

[Xarathas]

Yeah, I turned back, because I figured we could probably declare war within about 3 turns or so but if you want to wait, that's fine too. Although, I don't think we actually need to wait for 3 galleys to attack.. 2 should be more than enough at this point. Just takes us 2 extra turns to shuffle 2 units over.. and if they want to attack our praetorians from their cities while we're moving the units, all the more power to them

They seem to be more and more unwilling to trade as you go up in lvl.. I can still get decent trades going for the most part on Monarch lvl.. but on Emperor, eesh. Prince should be fine.. once we get a few more contacts. If the egyptians won't trade us techs, we'll just have to beat it outta them . Btw, they did get Math on my last turn I think, could trade for it if you want.

 

[Dimy]

I just finished my turns, will start on the report now... don't wanna spoil anything but man...these 15 turns were awesome!

 

[Dimy]

Goals:

- Build more Praetorians
- Try and capture Alexandria within the next 15 turns!
- Build more workers, we have lot’s of land to develop
- Improve our financial situation (long-term goal)

Turn 0 – 50 AD:
Change production in Rome to Praetorian, Library is pre-build and queued up.
Queued up a worker after Granary production has finished in Pisae (Pisae should just have grown to size 3 when the Granary finishes).

Turn 1 – 75 AD:
Nothing special this turn, just work in progress

Turn 2 – 100 AD:
Rome grows to size 8 the same turn we connect the Gold, max happiness/health reached so I switch the city to avoid Growth for now. Neapolis grows to size 3, I change the production to a worker, Barracks have been prebuild and queued up.

Turn 3 – 125 AD:
Praetorian finished in Rome, build another one before we continue with the Library. Next praetorian due in 3 turns.

Turn 4 – 150 AD:
Start shipping over Praetorians with the Galley at hand, the idea is to land them on the neutral ground just south of Alexandria, on the Hills west of the Elephants. As this is not within the cultural borders of Egypt, I can land and group the Praetorians there to prepare for the attack. Our 2nd Galley is finished in Antium but will take a long time to reach Pisae from where we ship our Praetorians. As Antium is only protected by a Warrior at the moment, I change the production to an Archer.

Turn 5 – 175 AD:

That’s right… “There’s land over there!” (Irish readers might recognize this line from the Amstel beer-commercial ) but it’s not neutral anymore… Good news, it’s not Egyptian, so if we can get an Open Borders agreement with the Russians, our strategy to land our Praetorians over there 2 at a time before we declare is not lost. I land the first troops on Egyptian soil to spare Galley movement, the troops will have to walk the last part towards the Russian borders.
Peter greets us… but he doesn’t want to trade for Open Borders just yet, but he does have some techs to trade. I trade him Alphabet for Mathematics and Meditation and Priesthood for Polytheism. Both these trade’s are slightly in his favour, but not too much...and, on a sidenote, he likes us just enough now to open his borders and welcomes our Praetorian invasion force within his lands. But I’m afraid there won’t be a lot of time for our Praetorians to enjoy Russian Caviar and Vodka, they have a war to prepare!
Oh and as you can see on the picture, we’re currently 2nd in score. Peter seems to be the weaker one here.

 

[Dimy]

Turn 6 – 200 AD:
Archer finished in Antium, I promote the archer with City Garrison I and fortify him. I release our Warrior as I have spotted some barb warriors in the east (at the end of my turn this warrior is unfortunately killed in action by the barb warrior). Antium starts on a Library.
Another Praetorian is finished in Rome and I continue with the Library that was prebuild, we now have the 6 Praetorians needed for the assault on Egypt.

Turn 7 – 225 AD:
Courthouse finished in Cumae, which is good as it reduces the city maintenance costs for Cumae. Cumae starts building a Praetorian and I queue up a Library.

“Caesar! They have settlers going for our holy lands!” Indeed, indeed…. It seems like Hatshepsut made some plan to colonise our beloved continent! As we’re not ready to declare war on Egypt yet, I decide to keep a close eye on the Egyptian Galley while continue shipping our Praetorians over to the Egyptian/Russian continent.

Turn 8 – 250 AD:
Two more of our heroic and feared Praetorians land on Egyptian soil. They move south to meet up with their predecessors in the south.

Turn 9 275 AD:
Library is finished in Rome, I order another Praetorian and queue up a Courthouse.

Turn 10 300 AD:

Hmmm, it seems that Hatshepsut is sending her Galley to our Neutral Zone on the West Coast. Cumae just finished building that Praetorian I ordered up a few turns ago and it’s going on an intercept mission. Together with the Archer already in the Neutral Zone they’ll be following the Galley to it’s drop-off point.

Now another nice trick I used to do a lot in Civ III, but never actually tried this in Civ 4 as of yet… I didn’t plan this move, but I just spotted the opportunity and had a go at it!
Do what? Boat Hopping ™!

Et Voila! As time is running out for me I need all the time I have and this little trick saved me 1 precious turn!

 

[Dimy]

Turn 11 – 325 AD:
Hmm now I did actually make a screenshot of how I unloaded the last two Praetorians from Galley 2 right into the Russian city of Yaroslavl’ but I can’t find the image in my screenshot folder…so you have to believe me on my word here!
I could have landed the Praetorians on Egyptian soil like the others did, but then I they would be moved somewhere outside Egyptian borders when we declare war on Egypt, but our Galley could just reach the coast of Yaroslavl’ so I unloaded our Praetorians into the city. Next turn we’re ready to declare on Hatshepsut!
Some more good news from the mainland, a Great Prophet is born in Rome! I move the Great Prophet to our Holy City, but will not use him in my turn. I leave it to you guys what’s in our best interest to do with him…we could build our holy shrine for some extra income… Use him to learn a new tech, or maybe we want him to join a city? I leave it up to Thrar to use him.

Turn 12 – 350 AD:
Hatshepsut calls up inbetween turns, she wants to trade us Calendar in return for CoL. As this is a fair trade (both 500 beakers) I accept the trade. What she doesn’t know yet, is that I declare war on her as soon as our turn starts!
We discover Metal Casting, as we need to work on our economy a bit I opt for Currency as next tech. Maybe we want Construction to build Catapults, but we might get lucky and trade this with Peter (at the moment he doesn’t have the tech yet though).
Worker is finished in Neapolis and now we have Calendar we can build plantations, and just south of Neapolis is some Silk waiting! What a coincidence…. Our worker is going there immediately to hook it up.
I dial up Hatshepsut and tell her that her head would look nice on a pole, she doesn’t take it very well. We’re at WAR! I wake our Praetorians in Russia, time to kick some butt! I move them towards Alexandria. “CHARGE!!!” And hey…how lucky am I huh? I can take the Egyptian city of Alexandria in my 15th and last turn! That boat hopping sure was helpful here!

Turn 13 – 375 AD:
Granary is finished in Ravenna, I start a Courthouse to reduce city maintenance costs. Our science is down to 70% now and we still lose money.

Turn 14 – 400 AD:
Library is finished in Antium and I start on a Courthouse there as well. Our Praetorians, meanwhile, arrived at the gates of Alexandria…ready for battle the next turn!

Turn 15 – 425 AD:
Remember that Egyptian Galley with a Settler and Archer? You thought I forgot all about it huh? Not really…during all the events described above, our archer and praetorian were secretly following Hatshepsut’s poor attempt to colonise on our grounds! Hatshepsut was in for a nice surprise when she landed her colonization party….

Needless to say our Praetorians made dead meat of the Egyptian party… and the settler was captured and gave us a nice free worker! Plenty of work to do for him! I left this Preatorian unpromoted from the moment we finished building it. So promote the unit as you wish when it needs it.

Now... the battle I was preparing for my entire 15 turns! The Battle of Alexandria! Meet and greet our army (and the soon to be dead Egyptian protection forces):

Now…Egypt has two City Garrison I archers here, an unpromoted Spearman, a Worker (yippie, another free worker we can ship to the mainland or use him on our newly established base of operations) and the city has 40% culture defense bonus. As our Praetorians were still unpromoted I decide to give them City Raider I promotions. The odds are far in our favour so I lead the attack and CHARGE!

We won all three battles and didn’t loose a single unit…the city is ours! And what a Glorious day for Rome it is! We also capture the Egyptian worker that was hiding in some corner in the streets of Alexandria, I load him up in the Galley, but until our borders grow, we can’t move the Galley to our mainland! This could be a problem…until the borders grow we cannot bring in reinforcements from the mainland, so I suggest defending the city and sue for peace as soon as Hatshepsut wants to talk with us again. Hopefully she doesn’t have any strong units to throw against us in the meantime. This is a slight setback as I didn’t think of it… But all our Praetorians survived, so we have 6 strong units there.
Peter has Construction but doesn’t want to trade this yet, maybe he will later on… who knows. As we have some gold in our treasure now I set the science slider back to 80%.

In the next post I'll add some pictures with an overview of our continent and economic situation.

 

[Dimy]

We're first now in score, with the capture of Alexandria, we overtook Egypt in score. The Great Prophet is ready for action in our Holy City, I would suggest building the shrine with it, but if there's a better use for him feel free to do so. The Rice east of Rome is ready to be connected the next turn, a worker is already on it, just need the order. Rome is the only city on avoid growth, so you might want to release that as soon as hooked up the Rice and Silk. Some courthouses are due in a few turns as well so that should lower our maintenance costs. As I said in my report, we cannot ship reinforcements to Alexandria as our Galley cannot enter an Ocean Tile that's not within our Cultural border, so hold put! Unfortunately I gave all 6 Praetorians City Raider promotions, had I foreseen this I would have promoted only the units I needed for the attack and left 3 unpromoted. Oh..the Egyptian Galley is still there near our archer, one of our Galleys is heading north to sink it, or if you don't wanna take that risk...don't . Well... I think that's all I have to say. Good luck Thrar! The save is in my first report post.

 

[ThERat]

Great stuff Dimy

Well, I am sure we can keep that foothold on the 2nd continent for now. I'd say we should send one galley to sail to the east for the time being (since we can't ship reinforcements). How many turns of resistance do we face?

It turns out that we could fight earlier than initially expected with our landmass all for ourselves

I'd build the shrine with the Great Prophet.

Roster:
ThERat
Dimy - just played
Greebley - away until 28th Nov
Thrar - up
Xarathas - on deck

 

[Dimy]

Great stuff Dimy

Well, I am sure we can keep that foothold on the 2nd continent for now. I'd say we should send one galley to sail to the east for the time being (since we can't ship reinforcements). How many turns of resistance do we face?

It turns out that we could fight earlier than initially expected with our landmass all for ourselves

I'd build the shrine with the Great Prophet.

There's 7 turns of resistance left, quite a lot but it's a size 8 city, only the lighthouse city improvement survived in Alexandria. We desperately need culture there to allow our Galleys to ship over from our mainland again...
Yeah I didn't expect to be able to fight so soon already! I really wanted to take Alexandria during my turns, I was afraid I missed out on it by 1 or 2 turns halfway, but I made it just in time ;-)

 

[Xarathas]

nice work Dimy!

Though.. one question, regarding our rule set. Weren't we supposed to raze all conquered AI cities? Or did I miss a rule change somewhere in the thread?

 

[ThERat]

I was afraid I missed out on it by 1 or 2 turns halfway, but I made it just in time ;-)

Actually in such a case, it's ok to extend for a turn or 2 to make your round more 'complete' rather than handing off a sort of half finshed job.

By the way, with things heating up now, I rather we go to 10 turns per round. People should really spend time now during their turns for MM and strategic thinking.

Another thing, I would like us to get caravels and sail round the world first for the extra movement point. In this game we will have to travel by sea a lot, so this would really help.

 

[ThERat]

Though.. one question, regarding our rule set. Weren't we supposed to raze all conquered AI cities? Or did I miss a rule change somewhere in the thread?

even I overlooked that. yes, that's right! Now, with this new feature in Civ4, we can't abandon the town. I'd say we might want to amend the rule, if the team is ok.

Razing of cities is compulsory except one foothold on each continent. What do you people think?

 

[Xarathas]

That could work, or if Dimy's around, maybe he has an autosave of the game a turn or two before the capture of Alexandria and we can just replay that?

Either solution works fine for me, though.

 

[Dimy]

even I overlooked that. yes, that's right! Now, with this new feature in Civ4, we can't abandon the town. I'd say we might want to amend the rule, if the team is ok.

Razing of cities is compulsory except one foothold on each continent. What do you people think?

Whoops...indeed...I completely forgot about that! Sorry... I could load the autosave from the beginning of turn 15 and do the last turn again, the positive thing about that would be that we don't need to defend the city and try to destroy some more egyptian cities with out Praetorians... the bad news, since we don't have a settler there, is that we have no way of reaching that continent again till we have Galleons.
I vote for the change to one foothold on each continent ;-). When we started the game we didn't know we'd be all alone huh?

 

[Dimy]

Oh one more thing I forgot to mention... both Egypt and Russia have founded a holy city... so we can destroy two religions if we raze their continent

Yeah I agree with ThERat to go for the extra sea movement point. Could come in handy for sure.

 

[Vol]

lurker's comment: Razing a holy city does not destroy a religion. Only razing every city that has the religion (and any remaining missionaries) can effectively "destroy" a religion.

 

[ThERat]

could load the autosave from the beginning of turn 15 and do the last turn again

No need for that, I generally dislike reloading a posted game to replay. We want to have fun in this game and without this foothold we need to wait a long time for galleons to have fun.

So, let's amend the rules to 1 foothold per continent. We need to get the culture going in Alexandria so we get a faster border expansion.

 

[Thrar]

Got it. I have an exam in a few hours, so I think I won't be able to play until tomorrow.

Not sure about the prophet, a shrine would give some income, but if he offers a nice tech that might be an option too. Specialist is probably the weakest option, although I don't remember exactly what prophets do.

I also didn't think about our rule when I first read the report, but I'm against changing it forever. We have to keep Alexandria now, but I'd like to stick with the original rule. All it means is that we have to bring along settlers if we want to resettle razed locations, same for footholds.
Happened once, would have happened to me too I think, but imo we still should stick to our original rule from now on.

(sidenote: resettle might even have been more effective, since borders could expand faster.)
Good turns anyway, good you paid attention to that galley coming around!

 

[Dimy]

lurker's comment: Razing a holy city does not destroy a religion. Only razing every city that has the religion (and any remaining missionaries) can effectively "destroy" a religion.

That's why I said we can destroy the religions if we raze their continent (meaning all cities including the holy cities ;-) ) Assuming the religion didnt spread outside their continent yet.

 

[Thrar]

(0) send one more healthy praetorian out to protect the injured ones. Turn on governors in Rome, Antium, Cumae and Pisae. Some minor gains, no losses in any city. Turn off "no growth" in Antium, but turn it on in Cumae.
Switch Rome from courthouse to forge (why does our capital need a courthouse??? They are at 1 maintenance!), same in Antium (1 maintenance) and Ravenna (3 maintenance). Neapolis gets switched from barracks to forge, and Cumae will build one in 2 turns, after finishing its library.

(1) Ah right, the prophet! Using it for a tech is not an option - it would be Monotheism. I don't like priest specialists especially much, so I go with the shrine after all.

(2) Lots of cities building forges. Some healing praetorians, and nothing of interest. Switch Antium to a workboat, there is Clam in Rome's culture radius now.

(3) Pisae finishes worker, now on - forge. Antium and Ravenna expand borders. Nothing of interest.

(4) Egyptian swordsmen and war chariots sighted by our scouting galley.

(5) nothing.

(6) silks connected. Cumae can grow one more now.

(7) Alexandria comes out of resistance, and needs only 89 turns to finish a library. However...we are in slavery...and the pop is starving badly anyway. So I whip 3 citizens to hell, for a new shiny (albeit a bit bloody) library!
Before: 7 unhappy citizens out of 7 (huge WW). Now: 3 unhappy out of 4. The city actually gained relative happiness!!

(8) Library built. Now wait for border expansion, it's the only culture building available. Lost 1 pop to starvation, now at 3, one of those unhappy. 4 hammers/turn base to courthouse. Rome finishes forge (goes unhealthy), switch to confucian monastery. There's still a courthouse in queue.

(9) work boat connects clam. No more health problems in Rome. Since it'll grow soon, I queue an aqueduct.

(10) forge finished in Cumae. Next will be monastery. Rice farm finished, about to be hooked up. No more health problems soon. There's something like an army marching towards Alexandria. Actually, standing right next to it! The 3 promotable Praetorians get Combat I, and all stay fortified in Alexandria. One of the unpromoted ones takes out a lonely war chariot occupying the cows, then moves back to safety.
Lots of forges still being built, and in a few turns we should be able to ship over reinforcements. Since at the moment there are not many reinforcements (1 praetorian), we might also consider to make peace for 10 turns.


you will probably notice that there's a worker on the scouting galley, I noticed that only after it had left Alexandria, and didn't want to go back then. The other galley is ready to ship troops, the egyptian one is floating somewhere in our northern waters. Galley combat is pretty unpredictable, so I preferred to just leave it alone.

Have fun!

 

[ThERat]

Thrar, did you patch your Civ4, I get an error about worng version when i try and load it, since I did not patch yet