Rat 41 CCM - AW a first attempt

Sorry to hear that very rough ride.

Elephants and those auto produced chariots have blitz. By the way, razing cities should only be done in the most extreme cases in my mind as cities come by much less frequent.

The problem with Carthage is that they can produce WE much cheaper than us. Due to their extra hp, we also tend to be great defenders btw, I do recommend to build some of them too.

Elephantium is up.
 
Anyone remember at what point we pick up a unit that can bombard, without attacking?
The first units to be able to do that are blips aka zeppelins. Until we get flight, we have to do with what we have.

Generally fast units are very good fighters as quite a few of them retreat to safety.
 
I had a look at the save, beside that non upgraded settler, we do need to wake those workers and slaves and get them to do sth useful. Our land can be improved a lot and sleeping workers are not sth that we should afford to do.
 
Slaves need to be handled differently in CCM, since they don't cooperate efficiently with the faster workers, and they can't be assigned to long tasks in ones and twos Greebley-style ;) because of the need to keep them defended against invisible units. We have three inactive slaves in the south, and they should all be sent to join our stack of five slaves in the north, despite the loss of turns on travel.
 
A couple things.

On razing Seoul. Given the AI units around and about and given the casualties taken at Cheju, I had zero confidence the city could be held.

Yes, missed upgrading the clan. The unit description doesn't say why you should upgrade- namely clans can't settle. That's basic stuff that should be explained.

Forted workers where I was running out of units to cover them from invisible enslavers. I'm not keen on this whole invisible enslaver concept, but maybe you all are.

Prats, for the +1hp on defense, autoproduced, adds flavor to the game but with the legionary not to my liking. I would have preferred the legions stay at 3-3-1 and the praets at 5-3-1. What makes Rome more powerful now that a legion is like a swordsman?

Autoproducing cats is not something I'm thrilled with either. Could have just as easily made them more expensive, rather than take a standard build option away.

Without armies, I don't know how this will play out. Without good artillery bombardment, attrition is going to be problematic.
 
The units like cats/bombarde are just units with extra offense, so like Prats you like to use them, but they do not bombard, so are not as useful as we think of cats and trebs.

It is very easy to forget to upgrade those free upgrades and you will probably see other fall into the trap sooner or later. You just get wound up on other things and forget.

To the big thing is that we cannot trade. That is one of the things that let us do well in the DG game. We were able to get some tech and a lot of gold and several lux. This helped us get into the tech lead and our massive size let us slam lots of the latest units out to roll on them.

That will be a big problemhere as they will make trades and stay at least current and their numbers will make life harsh. If we can get some size to start offsetting those things, we can then have some hope.

All we have going now is use of better tactics. That can only go just so far.

M60 I am not going to try to talk you out of leaving, but you may find some fun here later. My biggest complaint is all the dead tiles in this game.
 
My biggest complaint is all the dead tiles in this game.
What would be nice (and this just came to mind and has not been well thought out):

Having a tech in each Age that would allow for faster Settler production. Until that tech is known, you get 20 turn settlers. Once that tech is known, they come every 10 turns.

Of course, changing Ages would be a bit tricky. I don't know the inner workings of the game or how Mods work to be even to guess at what an Age change might do to this. My first guess is that the new Age rule would apply and tough luck if you were at turn 9 of a 10 turn settler. :sad:

There is a tech that allows for settlers to be built by hand, but I think that is in the Third Age, if not the Fourth.

In the First Age I think Literature would be good for this, since it is a dead-end tech. I'm just posting this online and the game is not open, so I have no clue about a good tech for this change in the other Ages.

This could also affect worker production, too, but that is another discussion.
 
I seem to recall there is another settler structure, so you will increase towns. I am thinking more about lots of mountains and ice and desert that you normally (in CCM) cannot build upon. We do get to cheat that a bit with planting trees on tundra to fill in some gaps.

You always get those massive mountain ranges on these massive maps, the other tiles you can build on in C3C.
 
Sorry to hear that very rough ride.

Elephants and those auto produced chariots have blitz. By the way, razing cities should only be done in the most extreme cases in my mind as cities come by much less frequent.

The problem with Carthage is that they can produce WE much cheaper than us. Due to their extra hp, we also tend to be great defenders btw, I do recommend to build some of them too.

Elephantium is up.

Hey, you got my name right! :thumbsup:

Got it.

Plans:

Move clan back to Florence for upgrading, then go 5NW.

Road mountain SE of iron (@ NP: The movement thing there is due to rivers).

De-fort workers and get them working -- and don't be afraid to waste turns moving them to stack up with others.

Generally fight to hold off the AI -- and hopefully get one of their cities.
 
What makes Rome more powerful now that a legion is like a swordsman?

Largely the Roman forts. In CCM most civs don't have an ordinary structure filling the role of a barracks in C3C, and can't build veteran units in most of their cities. Our typical opponent at this point will have a maximum of three veteran-producing cities, if they've built the palace, Worker Houses, and Siege Workshop in three different places, and I doubt they're that clever.

Edit: Also, the basic swordsman in CCM is 3-1-1, so at 3-2-1 Legionaries retain their traditional extra point of defense.
 
The movement thing there is due to rivers.

Well spotted. :goodjob: The enhanced graphics in CCM succeed aesthetically, but that's completely invisible to me. The distinction between sea and ocean tiles can be tricky, too.

Those plans sound fine. Remember that you can get walls up quickly in Cheju if you think we're going to be absorbing attacks there.
 
I spotted the river via CTRL-SHIFT-M :)

I've only played two turns so far, but we're doing okay. We're stretched kind of thin, so I'm thinking I'll focus on defense near the ruins of Seoul.

Turnlog-so-far:

Spoiler :
Pre-turn (100 AD):

Lose a Bowman against an Indo-chinese Spear. Hey, I thought these guys were supposed to have stealth attack :confused: 0-1
Kill the offending spear with a legion 1-1
Kill the bowman he'd been covering with an Enslaver. No slave. 2-1
Lose eChariot vs. eBerserk 2-2
vChariot kills rBerserk 3-2
vChariot kills redlined eBeserk 4-2

Automove was on...
MM Venice to grow; another pop (and a mine) and it'll make 2-turn Legions instead of 3-turn Legions.

IBT:

Korean horse retreats vs. our spear s-se of the iron pass.
3 War Elephants come out of the fog to the place where the Viking slave used to be!
3 Indo-Chinese Bowmen and a spear coming towards Cheju from the direction of Scandinavia.
4 ships bombard Venice. One succeeds.
Rome: Legions (and Praet and chariot)
Milan (worker)
Genoa: Legions
Our people want Supply Center (ivory)

Turn 1 (125 AD):

eCatapult kills Indo-Chinese bow 5-2
Chariot kills horse 6-2
Catapult kills Indochina War Elephant 7-2
Pillage a mountain road on the Korean side to help keep the AI at bay.

IBT:

3 WE attack Cheju. One dies, one retreats, one kills our Legion 8-3
Rome, Milan, Naples, Venice: Legions
Venice expands her culture borders

Turn 2 (150 AD):

Cheju:
Legion from Lonely Mtn forces a WE to retreat
Legion kills WE 9-3
Chariot kills WE 10-3



I'm going to a party tonight, so I'll play the rest of my turns tomorrow.
 
The stealth attack just lets them choose the opponent from a stack. Useful, if the stack has choices. IOW a stack of three spears all with 3HP is no choice at all.

Yuck the boats have arrived. The good news is they tend to not do much damage, but they are annoying.
 
Looks good so far. :thumbsup:

Archers only have stealth against some defense-one units. So in unusual cases where a warrior is covering an archer, say, it's useful, but when there's a spearman on top of the enemy stack they have to attack that.

Rome will soon reach size twelve, which we don't want to allow until we have a granary there. So please set the city for zero growth until you can work in the granary build.

Naples needs MM to work the plains tile that's just been improved.

We're taking some chances around Florence with single escorts for workers and the settler, so I hope that's just a transitional thing until you get our units arranged as you want.

Obviously our enemies are taking some incredibly circuitous routes to get to the gap in the mountains at Cheju. We know the Siamese are in the north, and I had the impression when the Carthaginians were sending ships that they were there too.

I think we can take it for granted that there's a dead-end peninsula south of our exploring warrior, so I'd send him NW now.

I'm going to a party tonight, so I'll play the rest of my turns tomorrow.

You've got something to do on a Saturday night? :eek: AW players are not supposed to have lives! This is a serious lapse! :nono:

No, have fun. ;)
 
Thank you all very much for your interesting reports and your input to this mod. :)
CCM with the addional "always war" handicap seems to be some kind of a (nearly :)) "mission impossible".


It's important to note that the mountain-iron tile we're holding against the Koreans, although roaded, costs all a unit's movement to enter or leave. I assume this is because there used to be a colony there, and I'd appreciate Civinator's input on whether this is a feature or a bug. :lol:

As Elephantium has answered yet, this is caused by the river near the mountain and and the fact that the tech of crossing rivers without stops is not researched yet. So no bug. :)

Carthage war elephants have blitz?

I will reflect about that. May be, one additional HP is enough for elephants. :)

Yes, missed upgrading the clan. The unit description doesn't say why you should upgrade- namely clans can't settle. That's basic stuff that should be explained.
:)

I will have a look on these entries and how to improve them.

I'm not keen on this whole invisible enslaver concept, but maybe you all are.

You are not alone with such a reaction when playing CCM the first time. There were a lot of discussions about the enslavers when starting the CCM prebetatestings. But let me say: They first hated the enslavers, then they loved them. :) The enslavers add a lot of new strategic thinking to the game, as you must use the movement restrictions in your sourrounding terrain and your units in a new challenging combination that normally Civ3 doesn´t offer.


Prats, for the +1hp on defense, autoproduced, adds flavor to the game but with the legionary not to my liking. I would have preferred the legions stay at 3-3-1 and the praets at 5-3-1. What makes Rome more powerful now that a legion is like a swordsman?

As stated some posts above, the relation in CCM for legionairies and normal swordsmen is preserved. In my eyes what makes Rome powerful in the early stages of the game is: Rome is the only civ that can build up mighty veteran landunits in every city by their unique Roman forts - and this with every government, especially Republic. Other civs don´t have a kind of barracks in
the early game and must wait until feudalism to build castles and - this is only allowed in monarchy.

So the special Roman strength in my eyes is the combination of a massive veteran landarmy and the economic growth of the Republic government. This is not possible for any other civ. The pretorians are only secondary to that.

But with the "Always War Restriction" you impose yourselves to that game, the strength of that intended combination doesn´t work, as you can´t go to Republic government due to the warweariness and can´t trade for techs.


Autoproducing cats is not something I'm thrilled with either. Could have just as easily made them more expensive, rather than take a standard build option away.

As the "arty-units" (catapults, trebuchets, bombardes, cannons and so on) in CCM are the strongest offensive units, the AI would produce them "like hell". In fact you wouldn´t see nearly anything other than this kind of units on the map - and this wouldn´t be good in my eyes. It´s the proper mixture of units for the AI that is targeted in CCM: Normal units as standard units and some
better units in small numbers for the focuses of the gameplay (p.e. archers, spearmen and swordsmen in big numbers and a small number of catapults or later big numbers of WWII infantry and normal tanks and a small number of Tiger tanks or JS III tanks to give some additional punch for the focuses of the game).

Please put me on indefinite skip and I'll continue to see how things progress. No offense to Civinator, but this game at present does nothing for me to the extent that I feel like learning a new set of rules in order to play at a halfway decent level. :(

Of course I´m not offended. Thank you very much for your input. :)


Artillery, apparently. The Civilopedia entry on artillery is confusing and incomplete, but it's clear we won't have traditional pure-bombardment units for a long time.

I will have a look on these entries. There is only one landartillery with real offensive bombardement: radar artillery in the last stage of the game. Landartillery in my eyes is one of the biggest exploits of the human players in Civ 3 as the AI can´t use it properly. The other big exploits for the human players are armies and ICS (Infinite City Sprawl). I took out all these exploits in CCM to have stronger oponents and a more intersting game in later eras.


Yes, NP, I think learning the game by way of AW is not the best idea I've had. ;)

Yes, CCM was not constructed with this kind of gameplay in mind. To play it "always war" in my eyes is very, very tough, especially with Rome/Italy. :)

What would be nice (and this just came to mind and has not been well thought out): Having a tech in each Age that would allow for faster Settler production. Until that tech is known, you get 20 turn settlers. Once that tech is known, they come every 10 turns.

There was a lot of experimenting about the intervalls of settler production and this was the best setting we could find for a compact later game. A "speed-up" in settler autoproduction by a certain tech would need a new building to produce the units in this new interval and to force the AI to produce that building as soon as possible. The AI is not very good in this job. So it´s the best to give the autoproduction of such a crucial unit as the settler (or the clan that upgrades to the different civflavoured settlers) to a building that every civ posseses at the start: The palace.

Even with autoproduced clans by the palace the Egypt AI played havoc and killed them after the production, even if this was not allowed by the settings in the editor. So the Egypt civ needed another building to produce their settlers. The AI doesn´t always construct this building first.

A normal production of settlers would be the comeback of the ICS and this is not intended in CCM and in my eyes is a big strength of this mod. The normal production of settlers in era 3 is only for filling some gaps, but it can not be used for ICS.
 
Thanks for your responses, which add a lot to these games. :goodjob:

Normal units as standard units and some
better units in small numbers for the focuses of the gameplay (p.e. archers, spearmen and swordsmen in big numbers and a small number of catapults or later big numbers of WWII infantry and normal tanks and a small number of Tiger tanks or JS III tanks to give some additional punch for the focuses of the game).

Well said. There are too many otherwise good war and strategy games in which the player can have whole armies of mountain troops or Tiger IIs or whatever you please. Forcing a more realistic unit mix is one of the great strengths of CCM.

When I say that the Civilopedia entry on artillery is confusing, I mean that it says "artillery has no attack or defense value", but then gives the stats "Attack: 9 Defense: 1". ;)
 
Looks good so far. :thumbsup:

Archers only have stealth against some defense-one units. So in unusual cases where a warrior is covering an archer, say, it's useful, but when there's a spearman on top of the enemy stack they have to attack that.

:cry:

Rome will soon reach size twelve, which we don't want to allow until we have a granary there. So please set the city for zero growth until you can work in the granary build.

Roger that. :salute:

Naples needs MM to work the plains tile that's just been improved.

We're taking some chances around Florence with single escorts for workers and the settler, so I hope that's just a transitional thing until you get our units arranged as you want.

Next up on my list of tasks... :mischief:

As for Florence, that's about a third of "we're spread too thin". That should resolve itself within the next two turns, barring massive losses at Cheju.

Obviously our enemies are taking some incredibly circuitous routes to get to the gap in the mountains at Cheju. We know the Siamese are in the north, and I had the impression when the Carthaginians were sending ships that they were there too.

I think we can take it for granted that there's a dead-end peninsula south of our exploring warrior, so I'd send him NW now.

I'd really like to take an army east to the mountain pass SE of Venice. I think I could bottle up our attackers for a while. Sadly, we lack the troops for that ... for now.

Edit: I played another couple of turns, but I'll need to sleep before I play any more.

Spoiler :

MM Naples and Rome as requested.
Switch Naples to Roman Spearman. We need a few more, and this gives us one-turn units until we can get another square improved.

IBT:

Rome: Legions
Naples, Genoa: Spear
Supply caravan from Venice
Maya completes Hanging Gardens

Turn 3 (175 AD):

Old Seoul:
eCat barely kills rWE 11-3
Praet kills spear 12-3
Legion kills spear, promotes 13-3
Legion suicides vs. spear, 13-4
eArcher finishes him off, 14-4
I notice that Cheju lacks a Fort, so I switch to that.

IBT:

Cheju loses a spear to enemy chariot 14-5
Enemy aCav retreats at Cheju.
We learn Monarchy and Religion from GL. Next up, Dark Ages!
People ask for Great Monastery.
Rome, Milan, Florence: Legions
Naples: Spear
Cheju: Fort->Walls

Turn 4 (200 AD):

Seoul ruins:
eLegion kills aCav 15-5
Chariot kills enemy aCav 16-5
Cheju:
Chariot kills enemy chariot and aCav 18-5

IBT:

WE retreats vs. Legion in the mountain pass.
Vikings lose a Zerk and a Warrior at Cheju, then kill the Spear who *just* promoted to Vet :cry: 20-6
Rome: Legion
Naples, Genoa: Spear
Poland completes WorldReligion Christianity

Turn 5 (225 AD):

Cheju:
Chariot kills spear, 21-6
Chariot kills berserk, 22-6
Iron Pass
Enslaver kills redlined WE, no slave. 23-6
 
I've played up to 10 turns. I'll hand off here.

Spoiler :
IBT:

Bowman suicides vs. legion N of Cheju 24-6

Rome: Legions (and Catapult)
Milan: Legion
Venice: Legion
Cheju: Walls -> Supply Center (ivory)
Mayans complete Mausoleum of Mausallos

Turn 6 (250 AD):

Turin founded 5NW of Florence. Making Roman Fort

Old Seoul:
Catapult kills WE 25-6
Lose a Praetorian vs. WE 25-7
Legion kills the WE 26-7
Lose a Chariot vs. enemy chariot 26-8
Enslaver finishes the job 27-8
Two Legions kill off another WE 28-9

IBT:

Rome: Legions
Naples: Spear -> Legion
Genoa: Spear -> Legion

Turn 7 (275 AD):

Catapult kills Carthage Spear 29-9
Cheju:
Lose two Legions killing a Spear :( 30-11

IBT:

Bow kills Legion at Cheju 30-12
Bow dies vs. legion at Cheju, it promotes 31-12
WE suicides vs. legion near Cheju 32-12
WE kills legion near Cheju 32-13
WE kills spear near ruins of Seoul 32-14

Rome: Legion
Milan: Legion
Naples riots from the GA ending :( Hire a taxman.
No other riots.

Turn 8 (300 AD):

Cheju:
Lose Legion vs. WE, it promotes :mad: 32-15
eChariot kills WE 33-15.
Enslaver kills bowman 34-15
No action at Seoul Ruins.

IBT:

Russia greets us in a chainmail coif. We immediately declare.
We learn Dark Ages (from Russians and Koreans)
Rome: Legion (and chariot)
Florence: Legion
Cheju: Supply center -> Legion

Koreans complete Buddhism.

Turn 9 (325 AD):

Lose a Legion before killing a Spear :( 35-16
According to F4, we met Egypt, too, so I declare on them as well.

IBT:

Enemy WE kills an eLegion 35-17
Rome, Genoa: Legions

Turn 10 (350 AD):

Legion kills WE 36-17
Our stack reaches the outskirts of Pyongyang. I think it'll need a few more turns to get reinforcements before we attack, though.


We've advanced to Pyongyang, though I'm doubtful about our ability to take the city without more reinforcements. I made a few tactical mistakes, losing invaluable Praetorians in attacks on fresh War Elephants :wallbash:

Our GA is over, but we do seem to be in a stable position for now.

We met Russia and Egypt.

Is it time to change govts?
 
Ok I got it. Now my questions:

what is the plan for the gov swap?
what do you want to do with any leader?

Gov-
it seems to me we have 3 options. Fascism, Monarch and Theology.

Fas-- workers 150% research 90% MP 4 unit cost 3 free 8 support 4/5
mon- workers 100% research 70% MP 3 unit cost 2 free 4 support 3/3
Theo workers 100% research 100% MP 4 unit cost 2 free 10 support 4/4

All use pay. So it seems Fascism is a problem as 3 per unit will kill us. The 150% worker would be nice. I do not have the penalty, if any for the first 2. Theo has a penalty of the city center that is at least offset by no loss of pop to switch, if I have it right.

The research is of no real import as we are not likely to be able to go above 70 anyway. So that makes Theo look quite good for the 10 free and 4 per town and city. It is also not far away.

I started the first turn and I have captured the Korean capitol and got a leader (not from that action). I am inclind to not sit on it as we are probably going to get more as the fighting increases.
 
I forgot to check in on the next site. I have no idea where we are in the cycle for the next clan anyway. I seem to recall talk of going to the orange from Rome?

Maybe that was before we got Turin down. Two places that need filling is 1) colony 2) fill the razed site. I would want to drop a town on that iron to get our borders moved out and slow movement in that area. I also worry about the colony. I would not want to tie up more units to protect it or interdict traffic.

Better to get a town down and then use units in it to interdict.
 
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