Rise of the Machines

Wow... first time I've ever seen an AI declare war on the human when they're already at war with someone else.
 
I've had JC, Alex and Toky declare when they were already at war several times. All of them build enourmous SoD's and send them straight at you seemingly at random. Though I have noticed both JC and Alex will start to barrage you with demands just before they declare. I've even given in to all of JC's demands and still had him declare on me. I think even though he's not an aggressive civ that he may be programmed to be more warlike. Couple that with fact that the Preatorian is THE early UU, makes sense.

I really didn't want to end up at the business end of JC's army, thankfully there are two other great players and JC is at war wtih 2 other civs now. We'll see what happens.

-IceLion
 
Just as a suggestion, maybe give up the city that JC is approaching, see if that stops his advance. If nothing else it will buy a small bit of extra time whip some more defensive units and we don't lose the 4 or 5 Cats we have in that city. After he gets the city he may just fortify it and then move his troops to fight on the other 2 fronts he's working on... then we just move a stack ourselves up and retake the city, fortifying with a Musketman.

Just an idea...
 
I'm not sure about that. :)

Reason is - right now we are bordering with JC with one city only - A5. A single point of attack and a single point of defense. If he takes that city, and decides to take another one, all of a sudden, he's got a choice: A2, A3, or even A1. Then, we have to shift our big ol' defense stack trying to guess where he's going to go next. And what if he goes both to A2 and A3? :) I think it'd be easier to hold him off in a single city, than deal with several of his SODs in relatively distant cities (several turns worth of walking).

OTOH, if we lose A5 and everything inside it, then yes, we would be sorta in a pickle. :)

I would wager that we can hold him off, however, with some speedy musket rushing.

Vovan

EDIT: Of course, if it comes to the extreme, like if there are much more attackers outside the city than defenders in the city, and no help is coming, abandon it, but I would try to hold on to it, at least for now.
 
Hey, not a lot going on in my turns, but I'll try to highlight the exciting points.

pre-1200: whip the threatre in J4, whip the courthouse in Calcutta (build times were ridiculously slow)

I suicide a catapult onto the praetorian and catapult outside A5

1205: Bismarck demands Engineering. Umm. No, not now.

Discover gunpowder, start on chemistry (done in 21 turns, but I'll change that of course ...)

Bombay: cat-> war elephant (whipped)
Calcutta: courthouse-> cat
A1: cat-> cat
A2: cat-> cat
J4: threatre-> forge

Jc looks like he's going to bust up zee Germans

1210: Delhi: courthouse-> cat
Bombay: war elephant-> cat
J3: threatre -> barracks
begin attack on Ravenna, am unsuccesful. Lose 5 cats and only kill 1 longbow. Ponder reloading but decide that this insignificant military loss will not taint my reputation as an otherwise excellent military leader.

1215: A2: cat->cat
A4: granary->forge

1220: Delhi:cat->cat
A1: cat-> knight (whipped)
holding off on Great People, moving troops around. Mali kills off some troops of ours that were still over in their territory

1225: Bombay: cat-> cat
A1: knight-> cat
moving troops around

1230: Delhi: cat-> cat
A2: cat-> cat

I sacrifice our great artist and great scientist to start a golden age so that we may more quickly destroy the human enemies

1235: Alexander wants Open Borders, I say yes for now to keep him at ease.
Calcutta: cat-> cat
Delhi: cat-> cat
J1: courthouse->cat

Essen was captured by the Romans!

1240:

A1: cat->cat
A2: cat-> cat
J4: theatre->forge

Ravenna was captured by Mali, which drops JC to last in score

1245: Delhi: cat->cat
Bombay: cat-> cat

We capture Ravenna with no casualties to us, burn it to the ground (too many unhappy citizens for a city in a crappy spot)

1250: Madras: market->cat :hammer:
A1: cat-> cat
A2: cat-> cat
A4: forge->library
A5: courthouse-> forge
J3: barracks-> forge

I wanted to play two more turns to get my attack on Pisae in, but I didn't want to hog the Golden Age. The attack on Pisae should be fun and we should crush them pretty easily. (suicide some unpromoted catapults on them after bombarding D)

Sorry no screenshots right now.
 
Not a lot going on? :eek: Hamtastic, you are far too modest. :) You hold off the Roman attack on A5, you destroy a core Roman city, you put a second one under imminent threat. And all that without whipping any muskets. Not a lot going on? Ha! :hammer:

Some screenies for you lurkers:

This here is the attack on Pisae.

a01-Pisae.jpg



This here shows how much more reinforcements Ham queued up marching north-bound full throttle to kick Roman behinds.

a02-Reinforcements.jpg


And this here is the power graph for the last 100 turns. The last 10 of hamtastic are highlighed. :)

a03-Power.jpg


Excellent work, as we are back to #1 on power. :thumbsup:

Very nice turnset there. :)

Vovan
 
Thanks for the praise. Still, I don't think it's particularly deserved. Probably the biggest thing is that JC has been blowing his army on Germany and Mali (although I guess I did build a few more catapults). Well, anyway, we're ready to help deal a nasty blow to him now, I think... Pisae will fall!
 
Shoddy set of bloody turns this was...

Excellent starting position to be in, lots of toys hanging around. I spent 20 mins trying to eek a little more out of the governators to see if I could drop the time for Steel, not really. It's due in 15 turns. Bank is at 478 at a -30 per turn.

Tried to build Notre Dame in Delhi, Alex got it first, but we got 147 in gold for our troubles.

Took Pisae at the loss of only 2 Cats (had 7, now 5):). I left our stack that was outside of Pisae to heal for a bit before heading out to Antium, good thing. The battle of Antium did not go well at all for we machines, en route we were bombed twice, stopped to heal for 3 turns and finally arrived at the walls of Antium. Bombarded it down to 0, then healed another 3 turns. On my final 2 turns I attacked, did good amounts of collateral, but it cost us 4 Cats in exchange...
ROTMANTIUM.JPG


Continued to build more and more Cats, worked a bit on infrastructure in our back cities, Granaries, Forges, etc. I ran roads through almost all of our wooded areas in preparation for Lumbermills, we might want to think about putting a few more Settlers out in order to fill in the some of the gaps in our lands.

Did however leave some things to play with for the next player...
ROTMTOYS.JPG

Who left these just laying around?:hammer:

Just an idea, or maybe a gentle persuasion; subliminal message?
ROTMNEXT.JPG


And here's where we stood at the end of my turns...
ROTMDEMO1.JPG


And here's the save...
 
Eventually, of course we will attack the Germans, but I think for now they are more useful to us alive. Plus, two wars I think is definitely enough. :) No need to get into a third one. ;)

Vovan
 
vovan said:
Eventually, of course we will attack the Germans, but I think for now they are more useful to us alive. Plus, two wars I think is definitely enough. :) No need to get into a third one. ;)

Vovan
Of course, we'll be done with JC soon enough, I'm sure.:mischief:
 
IceLion said:
Of course, we'll be done with JC soon enough, I'm sure.

We'll try to any way. :hammer: How long is it till cannons, BTW? It looks like we'll get steel soon enough, what about other things? I think cannons also require chemistry?

Vovan

EDIT: Also, I was just looking at the save again, to see about cannons, and noticed something else that might be of immediate interest. Look East of A2. :) There's a Greek galley with a settler there. I'm guessing they are either headed somewhere between A4 and Madras, or for the old location of Nara. Would probably be a good idea to build a settler somewhere, and have him shadow on the coast the movements of the galley at sea (with settler's two movement points and our extensive road system, shouldn't be much of a problem). That way, as soon as they make a landing, we can have a settler nearby to plug up that gap. :) (I think this would be better than just plugging every hole we have in our territory, as our economy is definitely still hurting.)

EDIT2: Ah, looks like Chemistry is a prereq for Steel any way. So, like, we'll get cannons in the middle of my turns? Oooh, exciting! :hammer:
 
Ok, I have it - will play tonight. A question: Are their any limits on our civics? Also, I have been trying to get the autologger to work with this save but it will not do it. Is that because it was started with 'no cheat' checked? If so, it would be good if future games could be started with the HOF mod - allows logging, etc but also includes the no cheat option.
 
Warm Up
Bend Knees - Crack Neck - Get Beer - Get Pepsi - Get Coffee - Get chips
Put out 'Do Not Disturb' sign
Wife: "Sorry, I cannot do that - I have an important meeting"
IRS: "You will have to wait for your taxes!"
Dog1: "No walk for you until later"
Dog2: "OUT!"

Get ipod - put on 'Whatever (I Had a Dream)' Lyrics by 'Butthole Surfers'
Opening lyrics ...

...peace.
I hate the word,
As I hate hell,
All Montagues


warm up continues ...
Crank up machine code
Oil things that need oiling
Don't oil things that don't

Turn 0
If you remember, 5 revolutions ago, we received a status report from the military subroutine that the catapults where having more difficulty slaying the humans. After simulations showed that this was due to improved human strengh (a result that was checked and rechecked), we issued instructions to the research robots to develop methods of delivering bigger rocks further distances.

Today, we received an update on this project. The rebots (research robots) wheeled out a demonstration model that they called the 'spitter'. We instructed them that robots do not spit, we crush, rend and distroy. We then recalled from our static memory that some of us do, in fact, spit - having specially installed lips but that we only spit in salads - whatever a salad is.

Anyway, the spitter prototype was demonstrated. They installed it in a suitable field and suggested, (they mentioned safety reasons) that we should move the farmers from the next hill. We instructed them to continue as there were no precious machines there. They set up the spitter and flipped the switch, or pressed the button, it wasn't obvious and to be honest, it wasn't important. Anyway, there was a great deal of smoke and the spitter shot out backwards, knocking down a wall or two and not doing much throwing of anything anywhere. I instructed them to keep researching but they had to change the name of the object to 'cannon' as all I could see it doing was cannoning all over the place.

On other research fronts ...
I fired up Civ IV to do some experimenting with catapults and cannons. I started a completely random game and ended up with a scout right next to a hut. I popped the hut and got ... a settler!!!! (Edit: no big deal - I thought it was a noble level game but it turns out it was Chieftain). Anyway, I set up the conditions where my cities were building cats and I was researching steel. I had two cities, one with a cat at 23/40 (13 hammers) and the other with a cat at 17/40 (17 hammers) with steel to come in one turn. After I had researched steel, it automatically changed those cats to cannons, one at 26 hammers and the other at 34. This means that it changed from a cat to a cannon and just added the production as per normal.

The upshot is that we need to time our cat production so that we are as close to 40 hammers as possible on the turn before we finish researching steel.

Info on cats and cannons ...
A cannon is str 12, movement 1, cost 100, bombard at 20% per turn
A catapult is str 5, movement 1, cost 40, bombard at 15% per turn
cost to upgrade a catapult to a cannon is 205. We have 45 catapults so it will cost 9225 to upgrade them all.

City Review
At the start, steel was 15 turns away. I looked through the cities and concentrated on commerce instead of food (no starving) and hammers. I got that down to 12 turns after my city review.

I renamed Tokyo to J6 and Piasia to R1.

Round 1 - 1305 AD
Bombay Cat -> Cat
A2 Cat -> Cat
Bank is at 461 @ -16

We lost two cats taking Antrium but plundered 165gp.
Antium renamed to R2.
Let Cats heal for future push.
Scout with Knight

Round 2 - 1310 AD
J3 Granary -> Courthouse
JC makes peace with Bismark - cluck cluck
Wadan distroyed

Contact: We have met the borg - I guess that this game does re-sporn
contactborg17jl.jpg

If I had emotions - I would shudder at this. A machine with biological parts, or is that an animal with machine parts. Abomination! I recall that we have just fitted our communication devices with a 'hold' feature so that we could do offline research and the like. I put the queen on hold - please check if she is still there later.

Round 3 - 1315 AD
Delhi Colossem -> GOLD
GP @ Delhi ... merchant (sigh) - put him to sleep at Delhi

Round 4 - 1320 AD
R1 out of disorder but with a total of 22 unhappy (more than are happy) and not all squares being worked. Hmmn, what do here - I whip a musket. Hey, city happy and more productive that pre-whip - just goes to show that these humans know who the boss is.

What have we here! I wonder where he is going?
sc0018xs.jpg

(It turns out that he is heading to J4 to spread religion to our workers. Hmmn - how do we feel about that? I compute that it is satisfactory as it helps keep them working!

Round 5 - 1325 AD
(Steel in 7)
J1 Forge -> Library
J4 Granary -> Courthouse
R1 Musketman -> Granary
Find Rome (see later)

Round 6 - 1330 AD
Bombay Cat -> Gold
J6 Granary -> Courthouse

IBT: JC attacks and losses to our mighty cats

And now this? With a settler on board - is that I future fast worker I see?
sc0024um.jpg


Round 7 - 1335 AD
Calcutta Granary -> Gold
A2 Cat -> Gold
J2 Granary -> Library
R2 out of revolt, happy but can only work 6 tiles. We whip a musket

Bombard Awlil - which is defended by two longbows.

Round 8 - 1340 AD
R2 Muscket -> courthouse
Bombard Awlil (down to 0%)
Send main force around Awlil to illuminate future mech territory
Find Manny's capital

Round 9 - 1345 AD
A1 Cat -> Cat

Round 10 - 1350 AD
A3 Granary -> Library
Manny tries to slip a protected (HA) settler pass our mechs. We get another fast worker!

Summary
I suppose that I was a bit cautious on these rounds - I had been presented with an empire in a great situation and I didn't want to set us back. Also, with Steel now in 2 (Steel in 2!!), these rounds were marking time. I looked at the battle odds for Awlil - we had a 0.3% victory chance. Even if I withdraw, how much damage could I do - so I decided to by-pass Awlil (wait for cannons) and illuminate the northern region.

Important Notes:
Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and A2 producing GOLD!
Don't forget to switch these to something more useful.
We also have a GP merchant asleep at Delhi
Some cities are MM to commerce for steel research - review needed in two rounds

We also have another missionary at A2 and the boat with our future worker is at Delhi.

Here is the position at Rome.
sc0035it.jpg


And the Save.
 
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