Replay #6 Short Story

[shakabrade]

Those rotated screenshots remind me of Civ3 and teenage years...

 

[i_imperator]

Love this story so far, Romans are my favorite civ in this game, not just because of their UU but because of their history too.
I'm impressed that it took 70 hours to get to 1000Bc, now that is dedication! Most of my games last between 2-4 hours. Keep up the good game and writing! Its very enjoyable to read and very informative to lower level players like myself!

 

[Manco Capac]

Seraiel was known for his sick dedication...at the benefit of everyone. Mwuahahah.

 

[mara5a]

sorry for the little off-topic but what graphics mod do you use? It's exactly like RoM or RI but in vanilla BTS me wants

 

[Manco Capac]

sorry for the little off-topic but what graphics mod do you use? It's exactly like RoM or RI but in vanilla BTS me wants

Blue Marble.

 

[Seraiel]

Hi everybody again

I finally have a day free of work, and I've already finished the next round of CIV (which will get to be Replay #7, if it gets accepted, because it's again a 100 points Elite Quattromaster game, and just to spoil something, I took a video of the game which I'll publish in form a an educational walkthrough, so it's gonna be like the Replays always were, but without you having to read. I hope you're looking forward to it, and I'm open to suggestions and tipps, if you have experience with such things already, know me and have ideas what I should talk about, or, for plain interest, simply send me a PN then. )

Now for this game:

I've left you with the roman empire in the time, where I had conquered both of my neighbours. I was lucky that my 1st Target, Willem, actually build the Mids, so I was able to run Police State, anyhow, the wars themselves weren't lucky at all, because I was short from even overproducing military units, but you know all of that already, as you've seen the graphs, got the pictures and have read my statistical analysis.

Now what's coming now, is, that I'm going to use the huge army I produced, to steamroll the complete map. This is something, you want to see, so here are the pictures of the holy roman crusade for you:

HE City, having 2 settled GG's (so with Vassalage and Theocracy it's producing CR3 Troops) :



2nd Military City, the GT-City (also having 2 settled GGs, love IMP) :



What the other cities are doing (further, even heavier buildup... ) :



... because: The Map is really large!



And the next chosen target is:



Now to make this even more funnier :



320 AD:



And about 20 turns later:



I conquered the holy city of Hinduism:



And as I want to build the Wallstreet and still have a quest to fulfill I whip some Banks and some Colosseums, so I get my next GA!



I even switch to Pacifism to be able to chain even the next, the 3rd GA!

640 AD is another big moment for the Romans:



But to be able to conquer the next Target, I still have to wait, because of the other Civs having Rifles / Cuirrassiers. This brings me to the decision to go for the ultimately most overpowered units in the whole game, Cannons!



Screenshot showing Lizzys empire as the next target (had to walk over the whole map for that, but due to me building so many buildings and not only troops and Lincoln being highly developed, I had no choice) and also showing the use of multiple Stacks commanded by "Revent" -GG-Units.

745 AD Lizzy is dead, but hey, it's already 775 AD and I'm already in war with my next Target!



Which is dead in no time, but now my troops have to go a looooong way again:



But what are Frederick and his German Empire against the Romans owning almost the whole map, having a superbly developed empire and Kremlin fueled Whips?



Yes, he is nothing! Now what's the next Target? Lincoln? No, look on the screen again, Lincoln has already lost the war too, his Military Quotient of Power is 14.2! What the fuq is going on with the romans?



They are swarming the whole map! An endless stream of units, WTH, but seriouly, excuse me, is that Stack of Doom really 150 units large?



The Mali! Their complete empire vanished in an eyeblink ! Is this finally the end? Yes it is!





Checkmate!

The romans have destroyed every other Civilization that was on the map, and I win a conquest Victory shortly before 1000 AD and 500 turns after the round started!

Last Screenshots, showing what happened in short:



In the end, the romans were unstoppable, and while the buildup and conquest in the beginning was slow, it became really fast in the end:



Science (GNP) didn't matter that much. This round was 1st won by well planned expansion at a very high rate, a heavy military buildup, the sheer power of Praets + Catapults in the beginning, Praets + more developed Siege in the follow-up and unbelievable numbers of Cavalries, gotten by Kremlin + Police State Whips + Forges in the end:





----------------------------

Now I don't know what to say. Maybe you'll tell me, what you think of this, last part, of the Writeup, and if you enjoyed it, or whatever, and if you have ideas, suggestions or wishes for this or the following Replay, don't forget to let me know.

Looking forward to your answers .

End of Replay #7. Beginning of ...

Seraiel

 

[Shaandore]

Great writeup, Seraiel, just as usual!
Congrats on the epic game, and extra kudos for the entertaining writeup

I'm very much looking forward to that video you keep mentioning

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Fantastic Short Story Seraiel!

Your last part of the story was somewhat less detailed than we have become used to, but this is a short story after all.

It is really great that you completed Communism and The Kremlin. When did it get built? How many hammers and turns do you estimate it saved your end game? Can you detail your technology path a bit more? No doubt the city pillage wealth helped keep the economy running and maybe supported a higher research slider. Was research more commerce based or specialist based? Did you steal many technologies? What technolgies did you get in peace deals?

Thanks,

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Seraiel]

Great writeup, Seraiel, just as usual!
Congrats on the epic game, and extra kudos for the entertaining writeup

I'm very much looking forward to that video you keep mentioning

Thx for the kudos .

Regarding the video, I think, that it should be very interesting, as I achieved a domination Victory on a wacky large Boreal map, having almost no Commerce (so no tripple gold etc. ) , almost no Food (!) , I achieved Domination after a good of 200 turns, and the game was not even on Marathon Speed!

Guess this should catch some people.

Fantastic Short Story Seraiel!

Your last part of the story was somewhat less detailed than we have become used to, but this is a short story after all.

It is really great that you completed Communism and The Kremlin. When did it get built? How many hammers and turns do you estimate it saved your end game? Can you detail your technology path a bit more? No doubt the city pillage wealth helped keep the economy running and maybe supported a higher research slider. Was research more commerce based or specialist based? Did you steal many technologies? What technolgies did you get in peace deals?

Thanks,

Sun Tzu Wu

Those are very difficult questions, but I understand your wish, and will try to evaluate a little bit on the round and especially those questions in the next post. I think, this should be interesting, as Conquest Victories on Deity are not really the usual game / victory type in these forums.

 

[Murky]

What mapfinder rules do you use for generating this type of start?

 

[Seraiel]

It is really great that you completed Communism and The Kremlin. When did it get built? How many hammers and turns do you estimate it saved your end game?

Ok, 1st of all: The Kremlin got built in 780 AD, so about 40 turns, before the game ended. At that time of the game, I had an Army of 80 Grenadiers, 20 Cuirrassiers, and 50 Cannons. That army would have been able to conquer the Rest of the map without problems, anyhow I still remember, that because of the map being huge, troops did take extremely long to travel from one empire to the next, the reason, why I transfered from Grenadier / Cannon warfare to the way faster mounted units, which saved me about 20-25 turns (so about 5% of the total game length) .

The mounted units however had high loss rates, even though it were Cavalries in the end. Therefor, I come to the conclusion, that I made the right decisions, with deciding for Praets + Siege in the beginning, as otherwise, I would have needed even more production, which would have been impossible.

Remember: The 1 Movement Units + Siege are more effective, than the mounted units, while the mounted units are faster. Proof for this lies in the fact, that I lost almost no Praets / Grenadiers / Whatever but had a loss-rate of almost half of all Cavalries (150+ losses here) .

Therefor, the question how many the Kremlin saved, isn't the really important one, as it came too late. The game was clearly won at that point, would have been winable without the additional Cavalries, so the only effect of it was, that I could conquer the last 2 targets a little bit faster because of being able to mass up troops a little faster, so I'd say, it maybe saved about 5 turns (about 1% of the game lenght) .

Anyhow: Communism was a great factor, as it was almost impossible to pay the maintenance, especially with the non-FIN romans and without running almost no Specialists. In this game, most cities were set to work a mix out of Food and Hammers. Therefor, I always had a great Military, was #1 in production from shortly after the beginning, but never had a great Research. Still: Communism enabled lower maintenance, giving the opportunity to whip more units and work less cottages, it allowed to fasten up the Research so I could invade Lincoln before he got Rifling so 2 things, that really had an impact.

So the decisions were good, the errors I see from a today's perspective lied in other parts of the game, on which I will evaluate in the followup:

Can you detail your technology path a bit more? No doubt the city pillage wealth helped keep the economy running and maybe supported a higher research slider. Was research more commerce based or specialist based? Did you steal many technologies? What technolgies did you get in peace deals?

• I got 0 technologies by peace-deals. I don't know how the mechanic behind this exactly works, but I know that bribes on Marathon are cheaper, because the techs are more expensive. Because the techs being more expensive, while being quite cheap, I guess, that it's almost impossible to get any techs in peace-deals, at least, I was not able to ever achieve this with these settings. (So Huge / Marathon isn't easier in every discipline! )
• City pillage was a part of the economy, but an extremely small one, as I kept the land from the AI as it was, and therefor didn't wanna cut myself into my own flesh by pillaging it. In addition: On Marathon settings, pillaging is not very attractive, as Cottages take longer to grow, and the scaling of the maintenance isn't 100% perfect from Fireaxis, which somehow gets equalled by the fact that one has more trading-partners on Huge Maps, the reason why the Victory Dates are almost the same for small to large maps. In short, it's easier to bulb and research on faster settings and smaller maps, because of techs being relatively cheaper, GPs being more powerful and maintenance being lower. This is made up by the larger trading opportunities on larger maps.
• I also got 0 technologies by tech-theft. As to my (limited) experience, tech-theft is something from the stage where Jails and Intelligence Agencies are available, or, in Specialist-Economies working Spy-Specialists unlocked by Courthouses. This game was won too early, and / or had the wrong economy for the mentioned opportunity.

The Economy worked like this:

In the beginning, I didn't need any Research at all past Oracle, as the oracled tech + the great trading opportunities on huge maps can keep someone in the game forever. Therefor, I specialized 5/8 cities to Farms / Mines, only 2/8 to Cottages and 1 of course was the GP Farm.

This is good, because it gives the empire an instant kick, as Mines work to their full potential from the beginning.

I then conquered Willem, and thankfully, the AI builds and grows lots of Cottages and it's relatively easy to conquer large, well developed cities from it, as AI whips way too little. Those cities I kept, and didn't re-specialize, I only built the HE in one of my Core-Hammer-Cities and re-designed the Food-rich-conquered Capital to be the 2nd Military City (Globe-City) .

Biggest Mistake in this time: Building too many AP-Temples, because thinking the round would take longer and that they would pay back.

Good thing: The conquered cities were perfect to have the necessary theaters to be whipped, that did just get available at the time with Drama.

2nd biggest Mistake: Aiming for Music (instead of Civil Service / Paper -> Education Route) and building the right Buildings, at the wrong time!
Now that one I have to explain: A common error many players make, is, saying: I 1st will build the buildings I need, I then will produce the troops, and even after that, I'll conquer the whole world.
The problems caused by this, are, that the Conquest on the 1st empire will be late, one will need more troops. In the end, the cities are overbuilt, and one doesn't know what to do with all the troops, as the opponents are way to weak, even on Deity.

Remember: Greatest advantage in military warfare ist speed! Expand fast, build Units as early as possible, conquer someone. THEN, develop some cities, but simultaniously enlarge your army, and directly conquer the next empire! Stay away from all rules, like "every Commerce-city must have a Library" (or even a University) , and don't use build-queues! Only decide for the next building you want to build, try to sting directly, attack with all force and as fast as possible. The earlier advantage is the more important one, as that one can and will multiply!

Hope this (Wall of text) was at least a little interesting to read, and if you have questions, feel free to ask.

Sera

P.S.: In my video, you'll see the difference from this, approach, to a more sofisticated technological approach, and will also see, how much better my game has gotten in the meantime and how well the things I said in the last paragraph help.

 

[Seraiel]

What mapfinder rules do you use for generating this type of start?

I play all starts having at least 2 Commerce-Ressources and enough Food to work them. Everything else, like 2 or 4 Golds don't matter at all, because the chain of events in a game decides more than the start itself. Winning the 1st 2 important battles with a little bit of luck, starting near the right opponent, or one's neighbour building the Mids can easily make up for more, than any start could give.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

By "City Pillage Wealth" I meant the wealth one receives after capturing or razing a city. I didn't mean improvement pillaging.

Thanks for the very detailed answers!

Sun Tzu Wu