RB1 - Cuban Isolationists

[Schben]

Doing great! Kick those British into the dust! One question though, what does West Point do? XP boost to new units?

 

[Gogf]

Can you bomb down population in Civ4?

No, but they can destroy improvements which can cause the city to starve.

 

[AndrewN]

Nice turns Sirian, almost worth the wait

And you left Sullla something to do as well, is that class or what?

P.S. God did save the Queen, she fled to Nottingham

 

[Sullla]

Great set of turns, Sirian! Just don't expect me to go to that level of detail (and that number of screenshots!) in my next 10 turns.

Wow, a shrine surviving on capture? Never seen that happen before! (Actually, I didn't think that was possible, but it appears I was wrong.) All the better for us, of course!

Of course, the best news of all from the turn was this:

1892AD: Scouting in the north reveals certainty of opportunity to cross to the NE continent.

Excellent... We shall be paying a visit to the Romans and the Indians sooner rather than later!

The Japan/Inca continent is clearly out of reach, at least in terms of the land we can see now. Sirian, any thoughts on how to get to the Greek continent? Perhaps if we went to war with Greece and killed enough of their units, we could get one of those junk cities for peace (?) Idea/suggestions?

PS Great football game, 33-30 win for Maryland in OT! (apologies to any Carolina fans) A trip well worth taking.

 

[vovan]

Lizzie is beating me like a rented mule.

Indeed, old habits die hard.

 

[Sirian]

Great set of turns, Sirian! Just don't expect me to go to that level of detail (and that number of screenshots!) in my next 10 turns.

Slacker.

Wow, a shrine surviving on capture? Never seen that happen before! (Actually, I didn't think that was possible, but it appears I was wrong.) All the better for us, of course!

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

The Japan/Inca continent is clearly out of reach, at least in terms of the land we can see now. Sirian, any thoughts on how to get to the Greek continent?

I'm 95% sure that our culture won't spread far enough. There are more than two units of water between our nearest island and that continent. My understanding is that our reach just won't go there.

Assuming this is true, the -only- recourse is to get someone to give us a city as part of a peace deal. We should try to get to Satellites soon, so we can see the whole globe and figure out where our possibilities may lie.

We only need ONE foothold city. We can airlift in and rebase air units, and spread from there. We've got to reach one of the western continents for Domination to be possible, though. (If we were allowed to Open Borders, we could airlift units to friendly cities, I believe, but we've got both the no Open Borders rule and the no Ships Leaving Our Waters rule, which is just the nasty combo for our ambitions here.)

Still, it's worth a shot.

The biggest danger is Financial Incans completing the ship. At some point, we may have to decide to pursue the ship ourselves to avoid a loss, unless they are slow enough that time will expire and give us the Time win.


We need a bigger navy before we engage any of the three Western civs, though! Much bigger Navy, and Air Force, too. We lacked for MARKETS in a bunch of our core cities in 1900AD. How on earth did that happen? We need to build a lot of Airports, Drydocks, etc.

The one thing we can afford to skip is the UN. We are actually BETTER OFF to do so, since it may be built by someone of lower population. We are so far ahead on pop, we're guaranteed to be a nominee in any case, and better if the opponent is a low-pop UN builder than if we build and face the 2nd populous civ. Of course, if the 2nd populous builds the UN, all this is moot.


Of course, there are also Nuclear Weapons to consider...


- Sirian

 

[Borisio]

Great game guys.
Can't wait for the next 10 by Sullla!
Keep it up.

 

[Mike Lemmer]

Are you thinking of changing gears and going full-tilt towards a Cultural Win? You certainly have enough culture from your religions to fund it, and if you start making some of the uber-temples in your best cities (+50% culture each), build an Eiffel Tower (or broadcasting towers), and crank your Culture allotment to 80%, I'm sure your top 3 cities will start churning out 400+ culture a turn. It's a bit risky, but if any civilization in the world's built for a Culture Win, it's yours.

 

[smegged]

Hey guys, just an FYI, I'm either the luckiest guy in history, or they have changed the rules slightly since the beta. In a current solo game I just captured Tenochitlan which contained not one, but TWO shrines, intact. It may have to do with difficulty level (I was playing Prince btw). Interestingly enough, after capturing it I culture bombed the city, which gave me a whole 10% of the culture necessary to fully integrate the city...

 

[eldar]

I just had this in a game... Islam got founded in a far-off city (no idea why that particular city... it was miles away from my core, a former Barbarian city!!). Got into a war, the city got captured just after I'd built the shrine. After finally getting forces down there, I re-captured, and the shrine was still intact

 

[Sullla]

We could probably get a cultural win if desired, but we've chosen to go in a bit of a different direction...

(0) 1900AD I spend a while just familiarizing myself with the game - where our units are, what are cities are building, etc. I concur with Sirian that we need to build up our forces a little bit more if we're going to prepare an overseas strike force. Specifically, we need a much larger navy (the AI's going to have destroyers now too!), an air force (more than 2 planes just used for scouting!), and a good number of airports. I think we'll want to have about 5-10 on the main continent to be safe. Why airports? Airlifting! Yes, that feature has returned for Civ4, and it's darned useful for island maps like this one.

Well, as for goals for this round, I'll try to finish off England and set up Sirian to declare on Rome sometime on his turn and start us moving forward on the next war.



Our demographics from the turn I inherit. Yeah, we're doing good just about everywhere (except for GDP - what is UP with that stat anyway? We're way ahead in the tech race!) but we're killing the AI even more than before in population and especially production. We've got EIGHT times the production of the average AI civs, which means we probably produce more shields than all of them put together! That's a good sign. Our pop also makes certain that we at least won't lose via UN (all the AI civs voting together against us still wouldn't be enough for a loss).

(1) 1902AD No attacks on the in-between turn. I think Vicky's well and gassed. She comes begging for peace between turns, and I use this to confirm that she does, in fact, only have those last two cities remaining. Vicky would be willing to give us Warwick for peace in order to survive for another 10 turns (clever AI!) but I of course turn her down. No use bargaining for what we can just go out and take ourselves!

I set most of our core cities to building airports if they have nothing else to build. Once we get this round of infrastructure done (hopefully spend 5-6 turns on this), we'll swap back to our "war" civics and start cranking the troops again. Oh, and there's a heck of a lot of Cubans now:



Workers doing "New Deal"-style useless railroad work in the east are sent packing towards the west. We've got a lot of silly AI worker tile improvements to change, and plenty for them to do. York comes out of resistance AND expands its borders on the same turn! It's nice to be running Freedom of Religion in a city with several religions in it (kudos also to Sirian for queuing up the two Artists for early border pop; I leave them activated so we can get the 100-culture pop soon too).

Whoops, spoke too soon. An English caravel has wandered into our territory and needs to be dealt with:



Smashed it down with our frigate easily. Scanned the seas for more enemy ships, but couldn't find any. I think Vicky is just about well and truly done here... An English infantry unit out in the field is cut down with one of our Combat II/Pinch tanks (took about 7 damage, not too bad...) Tanks and cannon are moving into position.

(2) 1904AD Medicine discovered, Artillery is next (then Rocketry). Hastings comes out of resistance (and also gets an instant border expansion - those two Artist specialists make a big difference!) Our planes give us a good view of the Incan Empire:



Obviously there's no way we're ever going to be able to cross THAT way... Interesting to note that the Inca have had quite a few of our Hydra religions spread throughout their territory! We may be pulling in even more money than we realized from Havana. Our first bomber is produced and redirected to London. Probably too late to do much in this war, but we'll bring him plus friends for our next engagement.



Vicky is running out of places to hide here. She's got those three frigates moving around (why, I have no idea) which we can't attack since they're hiding in their own borders. Meanwhile, on land, the Cuban forces close in on Nottingham. Warwick seems to be more heavily defended, oddly; we should have plenty of tanks on hand to take care of both.

 

[Sullla]

(3) 1906AD Whoa! Looks like Vicky's NOT quite ready to throw in the towel, as she moves a galleon from inside Warwick full of units and lands them on Northwest Island:



Caught me totally by surprise, I tell ya. This AI is no pushover! I move the defender from Ravenna into Arretium on our rail network and upgrade a longbow to infantry, just to be sure. We're going to lose our horses, but shouldn't suffer any more damage. Too bad that the galleon is back in English waters and can't be killed.

Aha! But one more thing I CAN do is have our new bomber unit do some aerial bombardment to that invading stack!



Some nice damage there, even against infantry. Air units are the only ones which work in the same way as Civ3 bombardment, so you'd better build some air units to defend your own units at the very least! (The bunker city improvement also greatly cuts down on the damage that air units can do, to prevent them from having Civ3 Conquests-level power.) Since Saint Bob finished an airport this turn (our first!) I could also airlift a unit into Arretium if we really needed to, but I think we'll be OK up there. The English units will die if they attack, and get picked to pieces by our bombers if they do nothing but pillage. Good stuff.

Artillery super-stack knocks the defenses of Nottingham down to zero. This tilts the odds distinctly in our favor:



"Fortune favors the bold", right Sirian? (Though when the odds are so clearly in your favor, I guess it's more practicality than boldness to attack!) City Garrison I infantry doesn't even scratch our tank. BLITZ!



He AGAIN takes no damage, but unfortunately can only attack twice. If this were Civ3, it would be about time for a massive streak of bad luck on the dice rolls, but this being Civ4, of course the idiotic luck factor has largely been removed, and our superior force has no trouble capturing the city:



Seven buildings survive the capture, among the most I've ever seen. Not bad, not bad. I queue up some Artist specialists and a library for when it comes out of resistance. Our unhurt tanks prepare for the final descent on Warwick.

(4) 1908AD Artillery finished, Rocketry selected next (lots of important stuff there). Rio de Oro finished its second settler (for our two new dot map cities in the southern ice), starts Globe Theatre. It's our largest and most unhappiest city, so why not put the wonder here?

As expected, we lose our pasture on the horses on Northwest Island. However, now that I've rebased our fighters to be in range, those units are toast. They get smacked with our one bomber and our two fighters, taking all three units under half health. Then, with the infantry at 9.8/20, the odds tilt drastically in favor of our own attacker:



The English infantry appears to be head over heels in favor of our strategy! Our own City Garrison infantry doesn't even take a scratch taking him our (odds were more than 2:1 in our favor). The knight and cannon are dealt with similarly. Warwick is almost totally surrounded and could probably be taken this turn, but I hold off for one more, just to ensure that I don't lose any units.

 

[Sullla]

(5) 1910AD Asoka demands Flight, which of course I don't give him. Our relations with the other AI civs are less than stellar in this game... We get a Great Engineer in Rio de Oro! I send him back to Havana to wait around with our stored Great Merchant. We may want to use him on a wonder, or save for a golden age (we need one more Great Person for that).

Julius Caesar declares war on Tokugawa! No clue why, but it can only help us out. (The AI civs never declare on each other? Yeah, right. )

Our bombers and fighters smash Warwick, making an already uneven fight even more, umm, uneven!



Ouch! If you are worried about your cities being bombed, make sure to build bunkers and get an air force of your own up into the skies. Without an air force, you're as vulnerable as - well, a real-life army without air cover! The battle is such a slaughter, I don't even need to take any more pictures of it, beyond this:





England has been completely destroyed! It took us 15 turns from when Sirian declared to when I wiped out the last unit, and we weren't even building units for the final 7-8 turns of the war. Total casulties for our side were roughly 5-10 units, complete destruction for the English. In Civ4, it's all about how you use the units. Fight smart, fight well, and you can achieve huge gains at few losses (the only unit I lost on my turn was a crossbow that the English invaders on Northwest Island took out in the initial attack in between turns). We've got a couple tanks approaching 30XP too!

Frozen Fish, the first of our new fishing villages, is established in the south. Time to rebuild England as quickly as possible and turn it into a productive part of our civ. As part of that effort, I begin training some missionaries out of our smaller cities to spread our religions where they aren't already present in (former) England.

(6) 1912AD More movement of units. Planes gathering in the north, land forces healing up and regrouping ourside of Warwick. Preparations already underway for another, much more massive campaign overseas.

(7) 1914AD Eiffel Tower finishes in Havana:



It starts on military. In fact, virtually every city in our empire is now working on military, and I swap our civics to match that: we stay with Police State, but go to Vassalage and Theocracy as well for the XP boosts. These civic choices are undeniably effective, but quite expensive with our large empire.



An Organized civ would be saving MORE THAN 125 gold per turn with our current setup! So much for it being "useless" as we often here in the General Forum... Organized is great for managing large empires (what people don't realize is that civics costs scale with the size of the civ you have). I know that we could use an extra 125 gold/turn here!

The Last Dot founded in the extreme southwest of our continent. I think we've crammed about the maximum possible amount of cities into this landmass. Charis would be proud of what we managed to do with the iceball territories!

(8) 1916AD The rich get richer: San Roberto pops a uranium resources!



So Sirian, are you sure there isn't a flag in the game, "If city == named after Sirian, Then popping resources = 1" or something? We've had such fabulous luck with that city (first copper, then uranium!) it's almost hard to believe. Of course we have other uranium sources, but still good to know.

(9) 1918AD Discover Rocketry, start on Satellites. Havana starts on Apollo Program - we have to make sure that we have it to fall back on in case we aren't able to reach one of the western continents for Domination (or if one of the AIs starts getting too close to a space race victory themselves!) Tons more military units completing, we'll soon be even more untouchable in that regard.

Our luck continues - another source of aluminum pops at Matanzas! Our first carrier rolls off the assembly line and heads north.

(10) 1920AD York and Hastings both expand borders again, hitting the 100 culture level (that was fast!). I reassign their artist specialists to engineer ones. Otherwise, a quiet turn.

 

[Sullla]

OK, now as to trying to explain where all the units are... First of all, our main army is stationed just outside Warwick:



Our tanks are waiting on the tile circled in red. Our artillery and leftover defensive units (infantry, machine guns) are next to them on the tile circled in green. Most of the infantry we used in the English campaign are now guarding captured cities, of course, so there are more under production in the heartland of Cuba. The units here are waiting for Warwick to come out of resistance and expand its borders so that the transports (circled in yellow) can come pick them up. There are 2 more transports also on their way over there, making a slow circle around Northwest Island due to our variant restrictions. Obviously those units are heading north to stir up some trouble. Too bad we HAVE to go through that Roman city, as Rome is our strongest AI ally at the moment...

Obviously we'll want to airlift units as soon as we get a city on the other continent rather than ferry them over by ship, so many of our core cities have airports by now. Unfortunately there's no icon on the map to indicate this (something we should have thought about before release, I guess!) so you'll have to go by which cities have 4 trade routes to tell which cities have them.



Our air force has been stationed in Island Hopper, since I thought that was pretty close to where we would want it to be next. Feel free to redeploy as needed. Also note that there is a settler there too, since there's going to be an obvious need for one sooner rather than later. (Don't say I never build any settlers!)

Our navy is off to a good start, but we'll need more units of course. I've got our strong coastal cities in the north working on more ships, with drydocks in the cities naturally. We need more of an air force too, for that matter, although we are off to a good start there too with almost 10 bombers on hand. All in all, lots of toys to play with! You should be able to get a decent amount of forces into play in the north before the end of the next 10 turns. (Will we have a beachhead city on the next continent by the end of those turns? I've learned not to bet against Sirian on that kind of thing. )



There's a shot of former English territory. Vicky is completely gone... On the technological front, we have a solid lead of at least 5 techs over the next closest AI. Most of them seem to be running Mercentilism, which is undoubtedly hurting their tech efforts. We're in no danger of any of them running away from us technologically. We'll also get to see the world map in 3 turns when we discover Satellites, so maybe that will reveal some other strategy for us too. All told, there will be a few more quiet turns, and then all kinds of craziness should break out. Exciting times are no doubt on the horizon.

 

[ChrTh]

(3) 1906AD Whoa! Looks like Vicky's NOT quite ready to throw in the towel, as she moves a galleon from inside Warwick full of units and lands them on Northwest Island

At which point do we tell Thunderfall that he needs to link to this SG from the main page? Seriously, besides all the strategy S&S are showing us, the AI is giving us some important lessons as well. Sirian/Sullla, I hope one of y'all take this thread when it's over and turn it into a report, removing all the extraneous posts (like this one) and maybe adding some director's commentaries and stuff ...

 

[ChrTh]

Too bad we HAVE to go through that Roman city, as Rome is our strongest AI ally at the moment...

Is Setia connected culturally to the rest of Rome? I know they took out Flips, but didn't the Info Center say that if your culture becomes too burdensome on a neighboring city, the civ might gift it to you in order to get its unhappiness of its back? Is this a possibility here?

 

[Sirian]

Is Setia connected culturally to the rest of Rome? I know they took out Flips, but didn't the Info Center say that if your culture becomes too burdensome on a neighboring city, the civ might gift it to you in order to get its unhappiness of its back? Is this a possibility here?

Culture doesn't reach as far across water. You'll have to see it in action on small islands to understand fully.


BTW, "extraneous posts"?

Those are "audience interaction". We don't want to erase that!

If we didn't want to let others speak, we'd have done it as a closed report in the first place! There are no extraneous posts. Well... mostly not.


Sulla: @ "New Deal Style Railroads" That one is going to stick! NDSRs!


- Sirian

 

[ChrTh]

I've been smacked down!



...

Back to Setia ... could religion be used to create an effect? Could you send a miss-- never mind, no open borders prevents missionaries, right?

 

[Sirian]

At which point do we tell Thunderfall that he needs to link to this SG from the main page? Seriously, besides all the strategy S&S are showing us, the AI is giving us some important lessons as well.

I'm not sure about that. However, the game WILL get bumped off the front page after it's over. Stickying it won't be a viable solution, either, and there will be other popular SGs to read.

I wonder if there should be a "classic SG" forum archive, a forum where completed SGs are moved and stored for later reading? I'm not sure how it would be determined as to which SGs are worthy of being immortalized -- it should not be all of them, or else it's no different that letting them slide off the front page of this forum. Still, if the community can think of a fair and workable way of choosing, it might be something to consider. Those who come along later can be pointed to this forum, where they can read some of the "classics" that helped to shape the Civ4 SG community.

Whatever way is chosen, though, care should be taken not to let things get out of hand. We don't want the "status symbol" to overshadow the games or cause any frictions. That would be the opposite of my intent with the idea!


- Sirian

 

[vmxa]

Well someone will create a lengendary thread and that can get topped, if it is a good collection.

Then games can be added or even remove form the list at any time.