RB4 - Desert Runner

I'll try to play it this evening.

The plan is to attack India right away and keep our back covered in case of a surprize from Louis, while doing whatever it takes to maintain good relations with those who share our religion, right?
 
Sorry, I couldn't play yesterday. I'll do it either tonight or tomorrow evening.
 
In 1080AD the mighty Persian empire is ready to spread world peace from Delhi to London and from Moscow to Athens. We are first in score, production, food, land and population and second in GDP and army size. And half of our army is positioned at the borders of India, ready to start spreading peace and prosperity associated with Persian rule.

1080AD (turn 0) - We sell Guilds to Peter for Phylosophy, to put us closer to liberalism. With our good GNP and considering that nobody else has either Phylosophy or Paper, we have a good shot at winning the race. I am afraid that if we wait until after getting paper next turn, Peter might decide that we are "too advanced", or he might dislike our attack on Ghandi. Without this trade it will be much harder to win Liberalism race during wartime.

Nobody particularly likes Ghandi, so there will be no diplomatic penalties for attacking him. I declare war right away and advance towards Madras. Northern stack goes NW, to have an option to send half the stack to Bangalore if Madras turns out to be lightly defended. Elephant from Arabela moves south to confront Ghandi's archer and axeman. Elephant from Godium goes to investigate Lahoe. It is defended by only Longbowman and spearman, but all our forces are advancing in the north, so Lahoe will have to be attacked by second wave. I also promote all spearmen to make sure they are the ones who defend against enemy elephants.

Ghurz became unhappy after war declaration, so it throws in 2 turn longbowman for MP duty.

1090AD (1) Pasagadae Maceman -> Catapult (2); Susa Spearman -> Catapult(3); Arabela Missionary -> Missionary (3) The catapults will be used to take out Lahoe.

Madras is defended by 2 longbowmen and 1 spearman. So I decide to split the main stack. 2 catapults (that will become Accurate) covered by a maceman and an elephant go to Madras, while the rest of the stack moves towards Bombay. Since the attack stack at Madras will have to spend 1 more turn crossing the river, 2 accurate catapults is more than enough to take the city with its 40% defense.

Missionary goes to Bakra, because new cities need Organized Religion bonus.

1100AD (2) Persepolis Longbowman -> Forge (5); Ghuz Longbowman -> Forge (8)
Somebody founded Islam. Bombay is defended by 3 longbowman (one with City Garrison 2) and a crossbowman. It also has 60% defense bonus.

Elephant near Tarsus kills archer, so only axeman is left to deal with in our rear.

1110AD (3) Pasagadage Catapult -> Maceman (4); Gordium Barracks -> Corthouse (8)
We easily captuture Madras after reducing its defenses to 0. We also start bombardment of Bombay. One of Longbowmen left the city. I wonder where he went.

1120AD (4) Susa Catapult -> Maceman (5); Arabela Missionary -> Missionary (3); Tarsus Longbowmna -> Forge (10)

Bombay's defences were reduced to 0, so we attack. First I send in Barrage I catapult, which withdraws, but causes no collateral damage. City Raider II maceman dies to Garrison II longbowman. War Elephant kills Longbowman. Another Elephant finishes wounded crossbowman and maceman kills off badly wounded longbowman. The city is ours!

All healthy troops near Madras begin moving West (in general direction of Delhi, but turning SW towards Bangalore when we see it a couple turns later).

1130AD (5) The indians are sending out a settler team straight into our assault. lol I am going to let them found the city, so I can attack it with city raiders later. (Getting better bonus than attacking on open ground.)

1140AD (6) Persepolis Forge -> Maceman (2); Pasagadae Maceman -> Forge (5); Arabela Missionary -> Missionary (3); Ghuzz Forge -> Maceman (5)

1150AD (7) Indian Axeman near Ghuzz finally leaves forest cover and our elephant kills him. Indian catapult trained in Lahoe stupidly advanced towards my lands, instead of trying to attack one of my stacks and was destroyed by my elephant. The nose around Lahoe is almost complete, while our elephants converge on Hyderaband (newly established near Bombay) and advanced forces begin bombardment of Bangalore.

1160AD (8) Our population reaches 10 Million. We easily destroy Hyderabad. We finish bombarding Lahoe and suicide second catapult, because that's cheaper than suiciding a maceman. (Garrison longbowman defending in city on a hill isn't nice.) Unfortunately one of our macemen dies anyway. So we can't take the city this turn.

1170AD (9) Persepolis Maceman -> Temple (4) (It's become unhappy due to WW.); Susa Maceman -> Temple (6) to combat WW.
Lahoe finally falls. At the walls of Bangalore (another city on a hill, protected by a Garrison II longbow and regular longbow) I lose a catapule, a maceman and an elephant, but succede in taking the city. Nearby, a brave spearman overcomes bad odds to defeat enemy catapult.

1180AD (10) Arabela Missionary -> Temple (5) (It's at the happiness limit.) Gordium Corthouse -> Temple (7) (Unhappiness); Bacra Library -> Corthouse (40); Madras Library (45) Bacra and Madras should probably be changed. Bombay Granary (5).

Thoughts:

There are some good trade opportunities, but I didn't do any trades, leaving them up to the experts who will come after me.

We have to buy Drama! (Before hitting Enter.) WW is getting very bad and all those temples I am building should be replaced with theatres. Drama can be bought from either Alex or Peter. We can also buy theology from Hatty.

We still have Paper near-monopoly, so use it wisely. (Buy theology first, then Drama.)

About religion, perhaps we should convert to Hinduism after capturing Delhi. Hinduism is very wide-spread and we will have its shrine. We also have Jewish shrine (in Bombay), so you can start spreading Jewdaism if you want even more shrine cash.

Militarily, I am converging forces towards Kolhapus in the north and Delhi in the West. Ghandi is finally talking with us and I can see that he has 6 cities left. Bangalore is surrounded by Indian borders and will starve to death if we don't take Delhi soon.

I've been focusing mainly on military, but our losses were pretty light, so I probably should have built more infrastructure.

PS Sorry for lack of pictures, but I have to go to sleep.
 
This success was mainly due to great preparation in previous turnsets. :goodjob:

Kylearan, no capital yet. I left some fun for you. :)

I'll make the screenshots from backup saves after work tonight. I finished the turnset at 1am, so original screenshots were taken in my sleep.
 
Sorry for the overtime, but here are my turns finally...

I switch most of our cities from temples back to military, as I think we are running out of units because our attack forces have to defend more and
more cities on their way. We have to endure the war weariness a bit longer! Delhi is a capital and probably a lot better defended than the rest of Gandhi's cities, so I call our forces on their way to Kolhapur back, to join in the siege of Delhi. Capturing India's capital city has priority now!

I trade away Civil Service to Hatty for Theology, her world map, and some gold. I hold off trading for drama for a turn, because we will discover education next turn and Alex has two techs we don't have, so let's see what will be possible there.

Now that we have the world map, I'm completely amazed just how large we are!

rb4_1180ad.jpg


We are large, are in the tech lead, wage a successful war...I actually double-checked if we are really playing on Monarch. :goodjob:

1190AD (1): Louis and Victoria make peace. Louis has suffered a lot during that war...I don't think he will ever be a threat to us.
Education comes in, and I start us on Liberalism next.
I change my mind and decide to hold on to Education for the time being, but trade away Paper to Alex for Drama, world map, and some gold.
Our advancing units get a peek at Delhi's defenses: A city garrison II longbow, and city garrison I longbow, a normal one, an axeman, and a catapult. The city is also located on a hill, so I think I did the right move with calling in reinforcements.

1200AD (2): I kill a longbow at Bangalore with a war elephant.

1210AD (3): Pasardagae and Tarsus start building universities. Louis asks us to cancel all deals with Victoria, but I decline - I no longer fear little Louis, even he would threaten to hold his breath until his face gets blue.

1220AD (4): The axe in Delhi is a maceman now, and the catapult suicides itself against our advance stack. Our catapults start to bombard the city, while the rest of our units heal. I also kill a longbow somewhere else in the field.

1230AD (5): Er...where did these guys come from?

rb4_1220ad.jpg


Probably back from scouting or barb-hunting, I guess. Too bad for Gandhi that there's still an axe of us on the stone, and a new mace freshly produced at Arbela. :p Too bad for us that we lose the axe, though. :(

1240AD (6): While we are still busy bombarding Delhi, an archer and a pikeman have joined Delhi's garrison.

1250AD (7): The attack on Delhi finally begins!

rb4_1250ad.jpg


I want to conserve our promoted macemen, and catapults are easier to replace anyway, so I send in three catapults first. All do collateral damage, and one actually retreats!

Now that the longbows are softened up, I can send in our precious city raider III maceman, who kills the city garrison II longbow. After that, I send in our city raider II macemen, and they kill the rest of the garrison and the city is ours!

rb4_1250ad_2.jpg


We capture four(!) workers - and that city is a great prize indeed!

rb4_1250ad_3.jpg


A shrine with +14 gold, the Pyramids, Notre Dame, courthouse and forge still intact...wow. :hammer:

1260AD (8): We are the first to discover Liberalism! I choose nationalism as our free tech, and immediately start Persepolis on the Taj Mahal. I set the city on a starving diet to maximize production, and we will have completed the wonder in 16 turns. Furthermore, I send some workers to forests outsite the city radii to chop some forests, to speed it up even more.

The culture slider gets set to 10% to fight war weariness.

1270AD (9): Peter declares war on Gandhi! That sucker! Now we've broken Gandhi, it seems he wants his share of the cake as well.
Our units in Delhi heal, while others are advancing on Kolhapur.

1280AD (10): A lone catapult starts bombarding Kolhapur, and some units from Delhi start their march on the southwestern Indian cities, soon to be joined by the rest of the Delhi attack crew.


More thoughts coming up in the next post...
 
Here's a shot of our corner of the map...

rb4_1280ad.jpg



I think we should finish Gandhi off, or at least capture all his cities in the southwestern corner to free our back. It would be great to capture his iron resource as well, as I really miss pikemen, but I guess Peter will get to it first.

Now that we have the Pyramids, we should revolt to a new government civic. Question is, which one? Representation, for the happiness boost for our largest cities, or universal suffrage for the hammer bonus? I'm leaning slightly towards universal suffrage, as our largest cities cannot grow much more anyway, but I haven't looked into that more detailed. With all our towns, I think universal suffrage would be slightly better.
When revolting (probably on the inherited turn), take a look which other civis are available to us now.

For our future wars, try to conserve our highly-promoted units! We have some city raider III macemen now, and some shock war elephants (which makes for a great combination with their built-in bonus against mounted units!). Try to soften up any units you attack with cheaper, or less promoted units first! If we can upgrade our city raider macemen to riflemen or infantry later, that would be great!

I had been asked for our world map several times now, but I turned them all down.

We probably need to produce several city garrison II longbows, to relieve our offensive units from guarding the cities we've captured.


Roster:
Kylearan -> just played
jameson -> UP NOW
Snaproll -> on deck
hiob
dopplex
Zeviz

-Kylearan
 
Got it.

I think we should keep in mind that we're relying on military police for happiness control, so I'm not at all sure we can afford to be in universal suffrage.
 
Inherited turn: OK, so we're at 130 gold losing 46 gpt at 50% science :eek:.This could become a problem :D. I go over the cities, but there's no way to squeeze out more gold from MM'ing (in other words, perfect city setup by Kylearan there).

Diplomatically, we're at +14 with Alex - way to go there ! I trade him dyes for clams to get this up still further. I also sell Vicky incense for 6gpt - every little bit of income helps but we should check back later to see if more gpt can be had.

Reviewing the Civics options available to us, I revolt to Representation ( we can't take the hit in happiness from Suffrage, our major cities derive 3-4 happy faces from MP each) and Free Speech ( we're done building units for a bit, and none of the other legal options looked all that appealing to me). I maintain Organized Religion since we have no objections to religion spreading, we're not in the GPP-producing business and we want to maintain the
religious diplo boost.

1290 AD (1) The civics changes reduce our deficit to a more manageable -3 gpt.

Louis cancels open borders and furs for dyes with us ( we have our own now).

Susa completes a catapult, starts another. Bangalore finishes a theatre already, at size 1, its most urgent need is a granary.

Kolhapur isn't attacked yet, defenses there now down to 5%. We desperately need more catapults to quicken the pace of conquest, one pult per stack just doesn't cut it.

1300 AD (2) Even with a 0% defense bonus, Kolhapur's defenses still eat up 2 6 City Raider II Maces before succumbing:



1310 AD (3) Karachi in the Midwest is served notice of our intentions but will have to wait for support fire units to arrive. One stack arrives Calcutta in the Southeast corner:

rb4_6.JPG


(not shown is another City Raider III Mace and an Elephant coming in from the East)
Defenders of Karachi: :help:

1320 AD (4) Bombay finishes theatre, it can also use a granary. We've stopped bleeding cash but cannot afford to raise science yet. Theatres are under construction in various places as they're cheap for us and extra effective now we have native dyes.

1330 AD (5) Sell Louis Furs for 6 gpt ( I did raise science back up after all so we're on a deficit spending spree again, and can use the cash. It's also a payoff really ) Delhi comes out of resistance and is a profitable addition to our empire.

1340 AD (6) Assault on Calcutta starts now its defenses are gone. First three combats with city raider maces dispatch the longbows. There's a Combat 1 Mace left over, which I attack with a suicide spear so our Medic 1 Mace can take it out:



Yeah, that worked just fine :mad:.

In other news, during these turns Hatty has so far completed Versailles, the Spiral Minaret and the Hagia Sophia.

1350 AD (7) Calcutta is taken without further problems, Karachi is more problematic: despite sending one cat in for suicide damage and a mere city raider II first, the mace, the cat and a City Raider III bought in the attack against a city defense II longbow helped by the hill.
No matter, though:



Nevertheless, we're sort of beginning to run on fumes here now.

Printing Press comes in, I go for Banking heading towards Economics and extra trade routes next.

1360 AD (8) Cats roll North, other troops go for a bit of R & R.

1370 AD (9) Peter comes calling for Open Borders, and seeing as no one seems to mind him too much, I agree. Best keep him friendly till we've got enough forces in the area ( he's got Knights running around).

Banking is done, Economics is next.

1380 AD (10) We've got 5 Cats moving in the direction of Burgundian ( the Indian iron city) but we're short of actual assault troops there. Best wait for those to start bombarding lest Peter picks it up first.

I probably should have started the Forbidden Palace somewhere already; Bombay seemed like the spot to build it (which is why it's on a courthouse right now). But Madras might be an equally good location and could start a lot earlier.

I wanted to grab a screenshot of the vastness of our empire but there's no globe view in wrapless maps and even maximum zoom doesn't cover all of it (and would needlessly hurt the poor souls on slower connections).

And here's the save.
 
try this in your Civilization.ini file
AllowFlying = 1

Then restart and in game hit Ctl-F. This will allow you to move the camera anywhere you want. and at any angle. I use it to get great views of my entire empire when it gets big.
 
Cool, thanks :goodjob:. Is there a way to stop the camera moving about like a drunken sailor though, or is that just my relatively crappy video card ?

Anyway, here's the floating cam in action:

rb4_7.JPG
 
:lol: the flying cam is like holding a camera in your hand.
move your hand up = camera looks up.
move your hand left = camera looks left
mouse wheel up = move forward
(you could also use the arrow keys ^ = forward, < = sidestep left, etc)
 
Hi,

good progress! :goodjob: I guess we need a break from war rather sooner than later followed by a round of building infrastructure to get our economy back to shape, but it would be nice if we'd manage to get iron before making peace. But even during peace we shouldn't neglect building military. Alex is known for declaring war out of the blue, +14 relations or not, and if Peter with his knights gets funny ideas, we might be in trouble too. Actually, I have nearly no experience with Peter, does anyone know what kind of personality he has?


Roster:
Kylearan
jameson -> just played
Snaproll -> UP NOW
hiob -> on deck
dopplex
Zeviz

With the upcoming christmas holidays, I guess we drop the 24/48 rule until the beginning of the new year. If people need more time for their turns, that's okay - I'd only ask that the team gets notified about it in that case.

-Kylearan
 
lurker's comment: I have played 2 games with peter both time he was on a different contenent from me. One of those times I had to "gain-votes-by-destruction". Both times, regardless of what I did, he never got above Cautious with me.
 
What Christmas holidays ? I'm working 40 hours next week !:lol:
( or rather, :( ). Good suggestion on the roster though.

As far as I can tell, Peter's not quite as psychotic as the Cathy AI, but that's not saying much. He's annoyed with us and not all that popular with the other AIs, so keeping him from attacking on his terms might be a challenge. Perhaps we should switch back to Vassalage for a bit when we make the move to Free Market and build extra experienced troops just to be safe.
 
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