4000BC: Kyoto founded. Local tribe gives us maps. I choose Bronze for research, running max rate since the silks give us +2 commerce.
3750BC: Warrior trained, sent south. Start on settler.
3600BC: German archer encountered in the mountains.
BOO HISS on scenerio design.
Cramped Archipelago small map with the Germans right next door? Been there, done that. It was called Apolyton 6. I retired from that game after a stack of five vet archers and a vet spear of mine could not defeat two regular German spears defending their capital. The Germans are absolutely positively THE WORST enemy to try to tackle this way, too, because they start with both archers and spearmen as their free units, and will promote like mad at any victories they garner.
Ancient warfare with the enemy right on top of you sounds nice in theory, but in practice it's mostly a luck affair. Sure you can better your odds, but your resources are too few, and the rewards for taking risks too large. The game is just way too fickle about a single unit vs single unit battle. The odds balance out much better with small stacks, but can still be streaky.
It's not just the idea of having the Germans start right next to you. It's not giving you enough room to play peacefully -- and wow, this is a small rock! Fine for a scenerio or SG, but for a competition game? Lousy lousy, smegged. Lousy. Either way, the results are going to turn on luck, and there's no way around that now.
I didn't know that yet in 3600, as I had not yet explored the lands, but I DID know the game conditions and my morale plummetted on the likelihood that we are indeed crammed into a sardine can with Germany.
3500-3000BC: I marched our warrior south, across a really thick patch of mountains (more boo-hiss time and catcalls, that is not playable battlefield either. The AI's will march around our units, and we can't attack them there, so we either have to stop them before they get into the mountains -- doable, but not immediately -- or else let them through to our capital, which is right on the edge of the mountains.)
I finished the settler and sent him north.
We finished Bronze and I started warrior code. Might as well research what the Germans already know, so that we get second-civ research costs and let them research at first, where possible.
Our warrior learned that the Germans have a second city well before we even finished our settler, and we had a wheat and beelined to the settler ASAP. Did they pop a hut for a settler or are their lands THAT good?
3000-2750BC: Founded Osaka and started it on a warrior to explore northward.
Our warrior in the south, returning homeward (unable to explore any further, as this is a thin strip of land we are on, and German borders blocked any further movement) ran across a German settler-warrior pair. I played tag with them a couple of turns, but discovered I could not block them. The land in that area is desolate, but good grief how many German cities are they going to end up with? They already have three!
Well, one way or another, we're either going to get bold and take some chances, or have to sit back with not enough lands and wait and wait and wait and wait. Either way, the outcome would be luck-based: take our shots and succeed, take them and fail, or sit back and avoid risks... and miss the chance to do anything.
I finally decided to attack. Our warrior beat their warrior with one hp left, and I sent the captured workers north into the mountains.
Chalk one up on the Luck Tables for Team B.
2750-2550BC: Osaka warrior sent north. Started a worker.
Finished temple in Kyoto, started barracks.
Moved our warrior into the mountains.
2550-2150BC:
Our Osaka worker started a mine, and Osaka started building barracks. We have two cities and not likely to have time to build any more for at least a little while.
A German archer came out after us. The odds in the mountains were 50/50, and this time we lost. Chalk one Luck Factor to the AI.
Up north, our warrior ran across a barb camp. Ack! Two barbs up there, too. I had to fortify against the first. We won that, then I had to charge the camp. We won that, too, but barely, and neither fight promoted the warrior. Considering that on Monarch we get HUGE bonuses in combat vs barbarians (they are even better on lower difficulties, and even on Emperor it is large -- only Deity makes you fight barbs straight up) I consider these results "iffy". Chalk these up as a wash. At least it wasn't BAD luck.
At Kyoto, we finished our barracks, then a vet spear. I sent the spear south into the mountains.
The German archer healed up, and a second one joined them. They IGNORED OUR SPEAR and beelined right for Kyoto. I barely got our first spear back to the city and trained another spear unit in time.
Two vet spears fortified vs two regular archers. The odds say the luck is way way in our favor. Well... so much for the odds.
First archer takes 3 hps off a spear in a row, then loses 3 in a row (whew) to die. Our spear promotes to elite!
Then the other regular archer killed our other vet spear, losing only 1 hp, and himself promotes to veteran.
Then it was their archer with 3hp vs our elite foritified spear with only two, and the whole game on the line.
We won, but barely.
My tally: 2 Luck Factors to us, 4 to the AI, 2 washouts. If those kind of odds hold up, we can have a chance, but 2 to 1 on luck is Not Good. And just imagine, if I had lost the first fight, that would be 5 to 1 instead of 4 to 2. If we had lost the vet vs elite battle between the wounded units, this game would be over. I feel like I stepped into a game of Rock-Scissors-Paper instead of Civ3, in that whether we succeed or fail is going to come down more to our luck on the dice than the moves we choose to make, and I think that sUx0rz.
I played the first 40. We have one elite spear on defense in our capital, and one regular warrior in the north preventing more barb camps from popping out. We have two cities, two barracks, one temple.
Kyoto is due to grow AND produce a spear next turn, no matter what it claims, so please do not mess with it at all on the inherited turn. After that, do what you please, but we lost a spear and need another in the capital.
I tried to talk to Otto, but he tasted enough blood from our units that he won't accept anything less than Osaka for peace, so screw him. We need to wipe him out, the sooner the better.
There is a choke point on the south end of the mountains that is two tiles wide. If we could get vet spears onto each of those points, we should be able to close off our lands to any further incursions. SHOULD, I say, because it would not be beyond this game for a regular archer to beat a spear fortified in the mountains. I have seen it happen.
I wonder what the other teams are going to do with this mess.
I plunged us into war. What the hey, if it's a luck scenerio, let's see how good our luck can get.
Uh... good luck to the next player. WE ARE AT WAR. Based on order of reply, the Roster would look like this:
Sirian
Sulla <<< UP NOW
lkendter << on deck
Arizona_Steve
lonestar
However, if you guys want to shuffle it around, it doesn't matter to me, just work it out to everyone's agreement first.
Here's a dotmap with my recommendations:
We have so little grass and no fresh water, I don't want to settle on any of it. Plus overlap isn't going to matter here, THIS game will be won or lost long before sanitation. So I chose Osaka's location to preserve grass and keep it closer to Kyoto. White Dot is on the sea but gets the rest of the grass and some hills, will be a strong location. Purple dot is weak weak without irrigation but the best choose for land management (on the desert tile). This config "wastes" two mountains, but better that than wasting grass or hills. Red dot is a pure fishing village, worth getting eventually because its right on top of the capital, but really REALLY sad land. Um... that's five cities, plus whatever we can take from the Germans.
Green X marks where I killed the German settler. Germany has horses and we do not, that's Not Good, so I started us on researching Iron. There is a horse on another island but we aren't likely to get there any time soon.
If we get great leader, use him to rush the Pyramids, because counting the five dots I laid out and whatever Germany has (and possibly more land yet) there is at least enough land out here for two cores on this one landmass. So I'm thinking.
RBD23B 2150BC Save File
- Sirian
.
I certainly hope so! I learned more about Civ3 from reading the Cuban Isolationist game then from any of the 10 or so games I've played myself...
This is bad, bad, bad for us - 4 cities to our 2. Even though this is only monarch difficulty, I'm starting to worry about getting out of this one. 
Arizona_Steve is right - our friend Bis got hit, and got hit HARD. 
