Oh, boy! Visigoths on deity.
Without even checking the civilopedia or opening the game at all, my initial impressions are:
POSITIVES:
- Barbarian government and units
- Ability to hit either Rome or Byzantium (or both) if needed
- Deity production *should* (in theory) work to the barbarian's benefit, as it seems the Romes should start with lots of high-powered units but have poor replenishment, while the barbarians should start with few units but increase more rapidly.
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NEGAVITES:
- Not the best starting land
- Lots of fronts could develop very quickly and be real (no psuedowars on the "other" Rome to get alliances -- if we declare on them, we FIGHT them)
- Previewed as "perhaps the toughest position to play in the whole C3C expansion"
OK, time to fire up the game and see what I can see...
Load up the conquest. Change name to RBC-Alaric to make things easier for those who play lots of games. Check the game limits -- 150 turns, 35000 victory points, 8 city elimination, 40% land/population for domination, 10X wonder completion, 10X unit elimination, 5X advancement, 100X city conquest, 25 points for VP occupation.
No culture flips. Good to know.
Civilopedia notes
Governments:
Tribal Council allows 2 MPs, has minimal corruption (democracy in "regular" in Civ3), and infinite unit support. Very nice. Hurry is whip only, so cash will be useful for alliances and techs, almost exclusively.
Imperialism is cash rush but has rampant corruption and 1/2/4 unit support. Not a very good government.
Anarchy is typical. That's it. At least we won't have to go through a revolt this game.
Units:
Our base is the Raider -- a 2/1/1 for 10 shields. He upgrades to Maurader, a 4/2/1 costing 20 shields with defensive bombard. Upgrades to Pillager, who's a 6/2/1 for 40 shields. Upgrades to Warlord, a 8/3/1 for 70 shields and triggers a GA. With no unit upkeep costs ever, I'm inclined to get Mauraders quickly and the rest slowly. 20 shields is pretty quick and the Maurader gives the best ADM/shield of all our units. Warlord seems awfully expensive, but we will want a GA.
For defense, we get a typical spearman (2/1/1 for 20 shields).
The Romans use archers (standard), Garrisons (spearman w/ZoC), Legionary (4/4/1 for 50 shields, ZoC, builds roads and forts).
Both sides get horsemen (typical) and heavy cavalry (5/3/2 for 70 shields, ZoC), eventually.
For bombard, there's catapults (standard) and trebuchets (standard). We might like a lot of these, as I'm envisioning a primarily slow-moving assault team, based on our 2/3-cost immortal
.
Migrants are 0/0/2 settlers that only cost one citizen to build and 20 shields. Super-settlers, but we have to be wary of the 8-city elimination rule, which we could run afoul of if we trade too many cities or get into much of a farmer's gambit. Military is the primary order of the day. Oh, the Civilopedia says a merged migrant adds two to the population of the city. If that's true (and it might not be), we should be careful to never merge migrants...that's just broken.
Buildings:
First of all, this is more of a sprint (maybe a 400-yard dash) than the marathon of a typical Civ3 game. Buildings generally have long payback times, so they're slightly less useful in shorter scenarios than in an epic game.
The buildings look like standard ancient and early medieval age fare. Cathedrals are called churches instead. Courthouse is only 50 shields, so we'll want lots of those. A 160-shield hospital is also available. There's no university equivalent, so research won't go too fast.
I think a lot of barracks will be important. Granaries, walls, and maybe marketplaces (though cash is of limited benefit -- depends on how many luxuries we get) and/or temples, with churches and aqueducts maybe necessary after we've grown up.
Resources:
Gold and silver are strategic resources required for Hagia Sophia and St. Peter's Basilica, two wonders. I think they'll act similarly to bonus resources but that we can maybe trade.
Typical 8 luxuries listed.
Cattle, fish, game, wheat are all standard. Olive Oil adds one food and one trade.
Wonders:
Great Lighthouse -- Byzantine's. Sea-stuff that I doubt we'll ever care about. Just like ships, I didn't list them. I doubt we'll need/use them at all.
Hagia Sophia -- Sistine's essentially, plus a bonus content face on the continent. Nice but hardly necessary.
Justinian's Leadership -- Sun Tzu + Heroic Epic. Available with military training (same time as heavy cavalry). 600 shields. Hmm...a WotW or 30 immortals? Little contest there!
Scourge of God -- Heroic Epic + Pentagon + one warlord every 5 turns. 200 shields. Available with Barbarian Leadership. Would be extremely nice. Depends on tech and cascade, though.
St. Peter's Basilica -- Temple of Artemis that doesn't expire. Waste of 400 shields for somebody else.
Military Academy -- just like in epic game. Depends on how our shield situation is mid-game.
Terrain:
Pretty standard except no defensive bonus for rivers. (WARNING: Civilopedia is not always correct on things like this. Expect no bonus when defending but still try to attack not across rivers when possible.)
Tech tree:
Maurading is a priority. Masonry (walls) and then alphabet to get mathematics. Writing to Code of Laws maybe. It appears to me this game can be won with VERY minimal technology investments. Cash isn't a whole lot of good other than for techs (no cash rush) and luxuries, though, so we might try to acquire a bit. Maximizing commerce is NOT essential to this game, however. It's so not essential, I might let workers mine/irrigate and move without roading *gasp* unless it's a transportation link.
Fortification allows free crossing of rivers, so that's one we might want, too, as a low-medium priority.
Other:
Roads allow 3 movement (according to the Civilopedia, anyway).
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OK, onto our specific position.
We know no one, so there's no trade available on turn 0.
Looking around the map, I notice VP locations by a lot of the Roman and Byzantine cities. We'll want to occupy these with at least a unit whenever and as soon as possible. Again, we can have LOTS of units, so don't fear building them out the yang.
Hmm...guess we do need to care at least a little about ships. There's no land bridge by Constantinople, so the Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean by full-fledged water, not just a city on a landbridge. That could easily be important later. The Byzantines only have 6 cities in Europe, with the rest across the water in Asia. I'm guessing there's a land connection in the north and east, like in Rise of Rome, but we'll need to keep a close eye on the potential need for ships (to settle-claim their lands after destruction, if nothing else).
We have a bunch of interesting decisions/dilemmas about the starting locations for our cities. The location of our capital could well determine which way we spread, but it ideally would be the other way around. However, we can't really know which way we'll want to spread until we know which Rome needs thumping by the humans worse. Sigh.
There's a two-turn settler factory to the southeast, but it would need to be very corruption-free to work The center spot by the iron which seems a semi-ideal capital spot is on a bonus grass with no fresh water, so it might be semi-strong initially and fade for a while. There are a number of food bonus resources that I don't want to have to wait for culture expansions or founding future cities to get. At least our migrants move 2 instead of one, so I have a few options.
C denotes the capital city. Yellow dots are bonus resources, some of which are very hard to see zoomed out.
Red gets us the migrant factory in the southeast (but far from the capital), good defensive terrain, lots of bonus food resources, and some obvious backfill locations. Three of the cities would be delayed in founding by one turn.
Blue is my conservative initial thought -- gets us lots of good land, keeps the capital central, isn't overly aggressive in any one direction.
Green is kinda random -- some goofier thoughts on going beyond OCN for cities we can defend easily (recall, our corruption is minimal) and acquire lots of land quickly. Some of these cities would be delayed, especially the north-central one.
Purple is just going with the scenario design, but I'm not the fondest of those sites.
And, well, it's kinda late and I'm very tired, so I'm not going to decide tonight. I'll let the team weigh in with their thoughts. I have a few more things brewing in the back of my head that I'll try to add tomorrow. This is enough for tonight, however.
TEAM -- thoughts on opening moves?
Arathorn
But hey, since just about everyone has it, I sell it anyway. It may even work to our favour if the barbarian tribes help us against Rome
