RBD12 v2.0 - Roman Conquest!

[meldor]

I built Cumae were it was for two reasons. One, the settler was one tile away from the final spot, and two it need time to produce its temple and bring the iron into its borders.

As for not building the workers, that was a decision made based on the first game of rbd12. We were slow in culture locking our islnd and had two other AIs found cities on our island. It didn't take them long from Mapmaking to founding. Both Rome and Veii could pump out settler's without anymore improvements and I decided (on my turn) that that was better than four workers. The workers could wait IMO. I don't disagree with the importance of getting workers early, in this case, I thought expansion better. IF it be weed, so be it.

Also, I think we need one more city at the far eastern edge of our island. We can fit one one the hill. With a harbor for pop and mining all else it would make a nice place to pump out some units. It also would be on fresh water and could grow without need an Aqueduct, and faster than Antium.

I also think we are too concerned over culture flip in Neapolis. This city has never controlled by the Egyptians, and has no culture memory from them. Your concerns would be more valid if the city had been captured form the AI and was infected with their culture. It is our city and has always been ours. I am out of town until Friday, so I can't download the save and check our culture to Egypts, but past experience says that the AI is slower in building culture improvements early in the game. I don't think we need to whip the temple, in fact I would recommend against it, as that will cause more of a chance in the short term for the city to flip. Let me city build the temple normally, ge a worker or two over there to start clearing land and getting roads to the gems. By the time a path is cleared to the gems and the road is laid, the temple will finish and all will be well. If it really concerns the next couple of folks, simple start building the warriors and shipping them over. With a RAX there the units can be upgraded right before they set out of Eygptian cities. In the mean time, they will count as garrison, two for MP, the rest to make you more comfortable against flip. IIRC, distance from the captial is not as important as culture memory when it come to flip. While the rest of you may fell that it was a big risk to put the city over there, I don't, or I wouldn't have done it. IMO, it is perfectly safe.

Also, I chose not to shuttle a warrior over to Neapolis, because at the time the only one that could get there before the warrior built in Neapolis was the warrior in Veii, and with the pop going to 3 to build settlers, it needed the MP way more than Neapolis needed a warrior, more so since Cleo was gracious when I last visited her.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Zed-F]

Architect: If you had actually bought workers from the AI, that would be one thing. But, you never did -- and were unlikely to ever be able to. The AI only puts workers in its capital if they are threatened, for instance if it's at war with another civ, and each civ here is on its own island. War is not too likely. As for barbs being too nearby to found Pompeii, it might have been better to found Cumae instead (rather than Antium) or even veto the settler, build a warrior/spear at Rome to counter the barbs, and restart the settler (or some workers) afterwards. Maybe our ideal of founding Pompeii wasn't realistic... but there had to have been a better answer available than building a city that did essentially nothing for the first 30 turns of its existence, due to lack of irrigation. We certainly didn't need it for the Ivory, as we already had that.

Meldor: I would have argued that 1 settler and 2 workers beats 2 settlers or 4 workers. Yes, expansion is a priority, but there needs to be some balance with workers or else our cities exist only to expand our borders and have no other purpose. In this instance, no other civ we knew of at the time had mapmaking, so it would have been reasonable to hold off on the extra settler -- in the previous RBD12 we did have some advance warning that the AIs could settle in our lands since we knew they had mapmaking some time (about 20 turns IIRC) before they actually landed a settler. We didn't place enough emphasis on expansion in that game; part of the problem was that we locked into building the Pyramids before we found out we were effectively on an archipelago map, otherwise we might have settled out our continent sooner. Since I was the one that suggested Pyramids, I'll take the for that one.

Putting a settler on the last corner of our island is fine, Rome can take care of that after it builds a warrior. It will at least be close enough to the capital not to be overly corrupt, and may give us some gpt income, which is always nice.

As for a temple discouraging a flip in Neapolis, that's only one reason why I think we want to whip it. One whip of 1 pop in Neapolis for a temple will save us 20 turns of building it and the temple happy will offset the whip, so no concerns about unhappy citizens there. It can't grow past 3 without either a harbour (which brings in lux anyway if we also have one on our continent) or some jungle being cleared. The whip unhappy only lasts 20 turns again now, so it will expire before we have a chance to grow Neapolis much anyway. To make matters even better, we can whip to a harbour once we have our 1st 20 shields, and then swap to temple again, meaning that the whip penalty will be completely gone by the time the temple comes online anyway! We have a warrior MP there to keep the peace until that happens and can import a second if need be. I wouldn't be too cavalier about a culture flip in Neapolis -- Egypt gets cheap temples, and those AI civs that get cheap temples usually build them fairly quickly. Our only culture source is our palace! I doubt the Egyptians would have much trouble beating us on that score. Plus, another factor is how many squares in the city's radius are controlled by our culture; since Egypt controls nearly half of them, we're not doing too well in that department either. Unfortunately a temple won't help us out a whole lot there, however, since a lot of those squares are within 1 of an Egyptian city and can't be stolen to be one of our size 2 squares, and since Thebes already has culture from the palace so we won't likely be able to steal anything within 2 squares of that either. I think even if we build the temple in order to get our gems connected we will have to rely on the Egyptians to build a road in part of their territory too, which doesn't help.

The better reason we need to whip Neapolis, regardless of what it builds: Neapolis has no production on its lands and even if it did it is pretty corrupt anyway -- any pop we have there in the city is basically useless. We have 2 choices: we either turn those citizens into workers or we use them to rush improvements. Since there are several things we need in Neapolis for it to be a good forward base (most especially Rax, but a harbour for lux/resource imports into Egypt is also needed) I am thinking Neapolis is one place where whipping will be a good thing to do, at least until we're ready to build an FP or we're out of Dictatorship. Remember also that in order to upgrade stuff in Neapolis we need both a barracks (to be able to upgrade) and a harbour (to import resources needed to upgrade.) A more likely scenario is we upgrade stuff in Veii, ship it over, and ship back the unupgraded stuff in Neapolis for upgrading.

Jaffa, something to consider... maybe a better solution is to skip the temple in Neapolis entirely and focus on Harbour and Rax, and wait to get gems online until after we have conquered Egypt? We should be ready to go a-conquerin in about 10-20 turns or so, which is as fast as we could build a temple anyway even with whipping. In that instance we probably want to whip the harbour in 6 turns (to get the unhappy period out of the way while we're at peace and while we have MP available, and to get us back to high food) and then start on the Rax.

By the same token, it might be a good idea to swap Pisae to a Harbour and whip it as soon as it grows to 2. There is an irrigable plains nearby, so it could grow a bit more without the harbour, but in the final analysis I expect it's going to be too corrupt to really be able to build much on its own without whipping the harbour so it can at least grow to size 6. We need a local harbour for exports anyway...

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Well, hmmm, we seemed to be a little short of infrastructure, so I ordered up some buildings. Courthouses, couple of granaries, a harbor or two. Of course, none of them actually finished on my turn, so who knows if they'll ever get built

I did pop-rush the harbor in Neapolis, then left it on temple again.

I established embassies with every Civ that we didn't already have one, and sold RoPs to anyone who could scrape together a bit of cash. Also traded contact with Chinese to Aztecs and Egypt, since they were likely to meet soon. The east and west halves of the map have not contacted each other yet, and will have to go past us to do so.

Aztecs are the only other Civ with any amount of cash (46g to our 273g). Montezuma thinks he's too big to buy an RoP. I didn't sell him our world map, because I wasn't sure if we'd sold our map to anyone, and if we haven't, it's probably worth a lot more than 46g.

Spotted the boundaries of the last Civ in the SW black hole, but there doesn't appear to be a safe route until Astronomy, unless we build the Great Lighthouse. I left Rome building the Lighthouse, but it could still switch over to temple or harbor.

Bought a worker from Egypt for Code of Laws + 10g. Later, bought Mathematics (+ 14g) from Egypt for a RoP.

Workers are constructing a canal to Pompeii, and have almost connected all our cities to the road network.

550BC

Lee up, Architect on deck.

 

[Zed-F]

Sounds good, and you're right that we had not sold our World Map to anyone yet. So, good call not selling it.

Is there any reason we'd need the Lighthouse? Just to contact the Zulu? That can wait. I'd rather build more troops so we can invade Egypt sooner and get our FP going... to that end I think I'd rather see a barracks than a temple in Neapolis, but I'll leave that up to the next leader(s).

We do need a harbour somewhere on our island so we can export lux & resources to Neapolis -- preferably somewhere that can't grow without one due to lack of arable land.

 

[LKendter]

Pre-turn - I hate road through forest, but with 1 turn left I let it go.
Veto the Lighthouse - One extra move won't be that critical - switch to temple.
Pompeii has 50% corruption, switch to courthouse.

Cumae orders up a granary.

(1) 530 BC - The Galley runs toward supect Zulu territory - first contact.
They are pathetic. I sell them Philosphy for $33 and there wm. I am not sure if the best deal, but...
Sirian must HATE the Zulu. What a pathetic starting spot.

Iroquois start the Lighthouse.

(2) 510 BC - UNREAL - The pathetic 1 city civ of the Zulu build the Pyramids.
Cascade to Lighthouse by Babylon, Greece.

(3) 490 BC - Add to the Lighthouse party - England. Then Salamanca completes in. I am glad I had bagged it.

(4) 470 BC - An Aztec galley is going down the channel toward Rome. The 2 sides may meet.
The galley trying to return home from Zululand sinks.


(5) 450 BC - Rome completes temple - orders Spearman. Time for some military builds.

(6) 430 BC - Veii completes courthouse, skims a worker.

(7) 410 BC -

(8) 390 BC - Corruption is terrible in Neapolis, so simply order a scientist. Drop science to 0%.
Change Rome to Legionary.
Veii orders Barracks.
The Aztecs land by GambitVille.
The Greeks are building Hanging Gardens!
China also has Monarchy

(9) 370 BC - Nervously hit enter.
I was right - The Aztecs declare war.
But our warrior laughs at them - 1 dead Jaguar, another to 1 hp.

(10) 350 BC - Kill the other Jaguar. Begin the city shuffle to start upgrading our warriors.

Summary - Next person gets a completed harbor in Pisae.
Aztecs - 0, Rome - 2.
Production needs to head more toward military.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RDB12-350BC.zip

 

[Zed-F]

Alright, wartime! Not quite as we had planned it, as it's with the Aztecs, but they have better lands on which to build an FP (if we get a leader) anyway.

Time to show them what Roman iron can do... We'll need a few more galleys though.

 

[Architect]

I got it. I will try and play and post my results tonight.

 

[Architect]

350BC (0) - Dreaming of war...I would switch Antium to make galleys but that will cost shields and we can affort to be patient letting the granary complete. My plan is to let Veii complete its barracks and then build catapults and legions. The Aztec capital is surronded by horrible defensive terrain and will probably be well defended. Catapults will help perserve our legions HP by softening up the defenders. Once Granary is complete in Antium, Pisae harbor will be complete too and they will both build galleys. I think regular galleys are ok for a transport but Pisae needs the harbor to grow. I leave Pompeii and revenna as they are because they won't contribute much to this effort anyway. I almost veto the destruction of the forest near Cumae as there are 5 other plains squares that can be improved before we mine this forest but I after counting the shields, the 10 from that forest will help the granary complete 2 turns earlier.

330BC (1) - Continue building the canal to Pompeii. Send Legion to Veii, warrior to Pompeii since we are at war. Cumae remains undefended. Fortify the legion in antium for now. I upgrade our warrior to legionary in Rome. The Chinese are building the Hanging Gardens. The Aztec galley hugs our coastline and does not attempt to reach the greek lands through the "sea" bridge.

310BC (2) - Start a mine near Ravenna. Suffle some legions around.

290BC (3) - Our Barracks complete in Veii, begin construction of Legion. Our Granary completes in Antium, begins construction of Galley.

270BC (4) - Going to bring the veteran warrior home from Neapolis to upgrade him to legion. I'm going to send a couple legions ahead to establish a forward deployment in the mountains on Aztec soil, this will cause the AI to change worker jobs and send some home disrupting his growth.

250BC (5) - Aztec Land near Neapolis. A Jaguar Warrior and an archer. I'm going to take risk and attack the aztecs first to see if I need to shuttle a legion over to defend. If I succeed in my attacks I'm going to try and kill the galley with out Galley. We lose our 3/3 warrior and the Jaguar Warrior Promotes. I defeat the archer with our 4/4 warrior losing 2 hp. I load 2 legions up and try to get them to neapolis to defend.

230BC (6) - our warrior defends against the jaguar and our legions arrive safely to defend neapolis because the stupid Aztec don't attack our fully loaded galley. The legions land the killing blow on the stranded JW and our civilization enters a golden age! I'm still going to attempt to establish that foward deployment with 2 legions.

210BC (7) - Our legions land on the Aztec mountains near Tlacopan.

190BC (8) - Aztec begin building the hanging gardens. Aztec galley stops next to our galley, I move our galley back towards neapolis. Rome produces a new galley. The aztec are already willing to negotiate peace for nothing. I veto the production of a Temple in Neaplois a build a spearman to help defend against the next aztec landing.

170BC (9) - Aztec land two JW and attack our galley. They lose and our galley promotes to veteran without a scratch! Our spearman completes and we start producing a temple again, we will have to hold out from two JW with 1 regular spearman and 1 veteran warrior. We rush the completion the courthouse in Pompeii so this city can add to the war effort.

150BC (10) - Both JW fail to defeat our spearman and are down to 1HP. I attack and win easily. Moving our galleys I sight ANOTHER (this suprised me, and means they already have built at least 3) aztec galley probably fully loaded and heading towards Neapolis. Pompeii begins building catapult because they lack a barracks like Cumae. The Chinese and Egyptians have discoverd construction, I'll leave that to the next leader. The next leader may also want to move our legions onto the shore in case the aztec galley attacks. We are both veteran.

There are 2 legions patrolling the mountains in Aztec territoriy. These can either be used to attempt a quick takeover or just to disrupt the aztecs while the main invasion force arrives. I wouldn't try to take their capital with less than 5 catapults and 5 legions.

I also irrigated the cows near Pompeii so we could mine the gold in the mountains and still grow.

150BC

 

[T-hawk]

From way back on page one:

(4) 1400BC The Zulus have completed the Colossus... Is this really a monarch game? I'm beginning to think that Sirian has edited the rules to up the difficulty. The AI NEVER builds a wonder that early on Monarch, especially not the Colossus.

The AI can get and use Great Leaders for wonders, no?

 

[LKendter]

If so saw the Zulu Homeland, you would know that the Zulu have no way to fight someone and get a leader

 

[Sirian]

Hey what's wrong with a little OCC action for an AI for once? They nailed two wonders!

 

[Sullla]

Well, I knew SOMETHING was up with that Colossus...

I'm not crazy; the AI just does NOT build wonders that early on Monarch. Now forcing them into OCC mode... that was just evil of you Sirian.

Consider this a "got it" post. Will have it up tonight.

 

[Sullla]

(0) 150BC We are in a Golden Age, and from the report I see that all 10 of my turns will be spent under it. I normally use the GA for an infrastructure push, but the Aztecs have sort of forestalled that by starting a war. Therefore, my goal will be to use the GA to eliminate the Aztecs, or cripple them completely. Only two Aztec cities are on hills, none of them have walls that I can see, and they have no iron. For that reason, I am vetoing the catapult idea in favor of more Legions; I personally prefer bombardment units more for defense than offense anyway. I change Pisae and Pompeii to granaries, since this will benefit them the most by speeding up their growth. Cumae will finish its catapult, then switch over to barracks. I also plan to get some more workers out from Rome or Veii after the complete legions; we need a few more.

(1) 130BC The Babylonians DEMAND contact with the Aztecs. Since you can't even reach us Hammarabi, I think I'll decline. They don't declare war, which is nice. The eastern civs all start wonders that come from Construction, so I buy it from the English for 85g (Elizabeth goes to Polite). I hold off on buying Currency and Monarchy since everyone else already has them and no one has republic; when we get it in 9 turns we should be able to get them for free. Movement of troops; two Legions move into position to pillage the Aztecs' only source of horses next turn. Waiting for the reinforcements to arrive in about 3-4 turns to attack.

(2) 110BC Major luck: the Aztecs attack a fully loaded galley with their empty one. We barely win (1hp) but promote to veteran. Rome builds legion and is switched to a galley. Aztecs are prparing to attack gambit city (Neopolis) with two regular jags next turn. I think our spearman will be able to handle them.

( 3) 90BC Aztec attack fails. One jag dies, the other retreats and is killed by our warrior. Major assault from a catapult and 5 legions coming next turn against Aztecs.

(4) 70BC Our glorious catapult shoots!... and misses. I remain not a big fan of catapults for offensive war (now defending against a stronger opponent is another story...) Severe losses against Tlacopan (2 legions die, 2 win at 1hp) but we take the city. It's pretty pissed off too with 3 resistors, so we're not moving anywhere until more reinforcements arrive.

(5) 50BC One of the 1hp legions is attacked by a vet jag and wins! But then it's attacked by a vet horseman and loses Well, no more horsies for you now Monty. The Aztecs have to be running down; we've killed a LOT of their units, and they just don't have many cities. The fact that their capitol is building the Hanging Gardens doesn't hurt either.

(6) 30BC Is Monty hurting? Well, he dialed us up to offer peace, and is willing to give us two techs for it. I naturally decine. The captured worker I sent to divert the AI works, and Tlacopan is safe from attack for this turn. Aztecs are mounting some kind of an attack there, with two archers, a horseman, and spearman outside. Fortunately, I have relieved the city with another full strength legion. Our catapult fires again and misses (against an archer...) Still shipping more units over there. Another thing: yeah, we've got a LOT of money. I'm not spending it because I still expect to make a killing with Republic.

(7) 10BC Here they come! Our worthless catapult misses AGAIN as an archer suicides himself on our legion (no damage). Tlacopan is down to one resistor - the unhappy citizens begin starving themselves a bit. When checking on the tech progression, I see that the Greeks have discovered Republic (drat). I top it off from them for 100g and proceed to broker it to the other civs for both Monarchy and Currency, which I think is a pretty good deal. Since we are getting 50g/turn in our golden age, that's like getting 3 techs in two turns: not bad. We now have 5 legions in Tlacopan again; I will begin moving when I get the next set of reinforcements. Our catapults fire... and we get one hit out of two! I stand by my verdict on their lack of effectiveness on the offensive.

(8) 10AD What the hell? Rome and Veii both go into revolt on me. Neither one grew, I didn't change the lux rate, we didn't lose any foreign lux deals, and war weariness doesn't exist under despotism. They just...went into revolt for no reason. (And it was not from moving MP units out - I'm not ********). What is going on here? I have NEVER seen this before. This is just weird; maybe the game had a bug or something. I went back a turn with the autosave and they were indeed unhappy on the previous turn. But why? Nothing changed on that turn either? I check cities for unhappiness when they grow, a lux deal expires, etc. None of that happened on the last turn. Just spontaneous unhappiness. I'm sorry for not catching this, but I really don't know what happened; a lux deal must have expired without the game informing me. Oh well.

(9) 30AD Oh crap. Take a look at this:

This really sucks ass. We had no fewer than 7 units in that city. Wow... that really, really sucks. I figured that we'd be safe with a huge garrison and so early in the game before culture builds up... I've never had a city revolt this early with a garrison 2x its population. I was just about to start the attack on the Aztec capitol this turn too. Damn, I blew it guys. Completely my fault. Well I'll finish my last two turns, but I definitely ruined this one.

(10) 50AD Another archer impales itself by attacking a legion on a mountain. I pass off in disgrace to the next player.

Notes - Only one: I want you to BURN Tlacopan to the ground. The Aztecs just moved spearmen in to defend the city so it might take more reinforcements though. We will still win the game in a cakewalk, but this will slow us down a bit.

The Game: RBD12 50AD

 

[LKendter]

Sucks is a understatement!

This proves once and for all - you can't have sufficient units to stop a flip.

Only solutions -
raze them all or
1 lone defenders and take them back (my standard play)

Sometimes you learn from a BITE ME situation.

Oh well - - sometimes the bear gets you.

 

[Sirian]

You can keep cities and make it work. If they aren't whipped to death, it can even be more than worth it. Trying to capture and hold a city right next to the enemy capital is always high risk, though. You guys rolled craps this time.

- Sirian

 

[Gotag]

Hi, nice thread and game. (*Bow* to Sirian as a avid reader of his D2 Ember sagas (among others))

Just thought I would interject something you guys might find of interest. I have by no means tested it extensivly but have have found that cities that have no defenders at all don't seem to flip.

I was testing this in an emperor lvl game. I had a largish army of Immortals parked outside a city when it flipped. I reloaded the auto and moved 1 at a time into the city and regardless of the number I moved in there it still flipped. If memory serves I had almost 5X the pop in there at one point.

So for the sake of completeness I emptied the city. Imagine my surprise when that city did not flip but it's nearest neighbour (also a recent capture) did!!

Curious now I emptied that city also and surprise, surprise neither did. No flips at all in fact.

I have not in my mind decided whether or not this can be considered an exploit but so far no ungarrisoned city has ever flipped on me. Of course you don't supress any rebels either but this may be useful too you under certain circumstances (big wonder city you don't wanna raze or your gonna take out the whole civ soon anyway. Of course I could be off my rocker also...

Gotag

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Originally posted by Gotag
I have not in my mind decided whether or not this can be considered an exploit but so far no ungarrisoned city has ever flipped on me. Of course you don't supress any rebels either but this may be useful too you under certain circumstances (big wonder city you don't wanna raze or your gonna take out the whole civ soon anyway. Of course I could be off my rocker also...

Hmmm. In a war situation, there is a certain downside to leaving newly-captured frontline cities undefended...

OTOH, if this also works to stop culture-flipping of your cities in other cases, outside of war (e.g. resource-grabbing colony cities), that would definitely be an exploit.

OTOOH, this is yet more circumstantial evidence that the game's calculation of flip-chance is utterly fubar.

 

[meldor]

Pre-turn - The cat is out of the bag, every one who can pay for contact has it, and we lost out.
Babs got RoP, Contact with the Zulu and 190g for Monotheism
England got 33g, contact with the Zulu for Literature and TM
China got RoP, Contact with the Zulu, and 75g for Dyes
Egypt got RoP, Contact with the Zulu and 20g for Gems
Sold WM to all with any money for 20g to 12g a piece
Fuedalism is ordered up. I hate to be Despot for GA but it is too late to switch now. Veii is switch to settler to take the place of Tlacopan, Aztec start the Great Library, Rome and Cumae finish their Legionaries.

1) 70 AD - Sink a Vet Aztec Galley with our regular Galley. Raze Tlacopan, get one worker and two more elite Legionaries. Horse attacks a new legionary and kilss him.

2) 90 AD - Legionaries rest and more arrive, Veii finishes settler. Aztec horse attacks and kills second Elite Legionary. I can't believe my wonderful luck!

3) 110 AD - Legionaries rest, more arrive.

4) 130 AD - Troops move and Chineese finish the Great Wall, Babs and Greeks casacade to GL.

5) 150 AD - Kill one Horseman and one sword, get one Elite Legionary who is promptly killed by a second sword.

6) 170 AD - Our Golden age ends, Kill second sword, Troops rest.

7) 190 AD - Hispalis founded and started on a RAX. Troops move.

8) 210 AD - Troops move and troops rest, even more shuttling of troops to Aztilan.

9) 230 AD - Whip temple at Meldor's Madness (Neapolis), Troops gather outside of Aztec captial (Tenochtitlan).

10) 250 AD - Assualt begins with the loss of one Legionary, but they manage to take out two spears.

Notes: I will confess to major weed.....when I whipped the temple in Neapolis, I forgot that our lone Scientist resided there and was unfortunately killed in the building of the temple. I forgot to give us minimum science and so lost us one turn of research....Sorry. The next person up should at least correct this before hitting enter.

Save File

 

[Zed-F]

Got it, expect to play tomorrow.

 

[Zed-F]

Did not get a chance to play today. Jaffa, if you want to grab it, post so and I'll be happy to skip -- otherwise I will try to get to it tomorrow.