RLC#1. Suryavarman of Khmer.

[Revent]

Played up to 1000ad.

Took a few turns to move units to the borders of Zululand and get them healed up. Declared in 720ad.

I decided to bribe Brennus to join me, not that I expect him to achieve much but if he's fighting with me at least he won't be fighting against me.

My armies were better organised and progress has been slightly faster, captured 4 cities up to 1000ad, Shaka's stacks were pretty feeble though blisters did get to strut their staff against HAs and the occasional elephant. More to the point Shaka got feudalism about 900ad or so and I've lost a big chunk of my front line cats to LBs. Shaka also launched a small amphibious attack which was indeed annoying but my cities stayed intact.

Despite being reduced to 6 cities and losing units faster than me Shaka is refusing to capitulate. Do I want him as a vassal or a historical footnote? I'm up to 19 cities now, 21 when I polish off Brennus. In addition to the Temple of Solomon Brennus also just finished HG which would be welcome for the small health boost so he's definitely a target.

Either way I'm going to have to wait a few turns to reinforce and heal. Maybe I'll go for a ceasefire. I really don't want him free on my borders plotting some tiresome revenge.

Other news is that the other island's AIs have been busy fighting inconclusively between themselves so slowing down their research and general development.

As anticipated declaring on Shaka lost me a lot of trade route income, BK (island city) has suddenly become a regular destination for our cities' merchants. As a result of this research has slowed to a crawl. Finished feudalism and started on paper, still 3 turns from completion. I have a GS due to appear in 4 turns. Standard play would be to use him/her to part bulb education but I'm also wondering about another academy. Lib looks pretty secure and if I'm heading to the end of the tech screen then an academy will contribute a lot more than 1500 beakers by the end of the game.

To reduce cash loss I've been busy building courthouses and theForbidden Palace ended up in Eridu iirc. Its not made a huge difference but every little helps.

Have you considered sending a mini stack to Brennus sometime soon whilst he's at war with Shaka? He only has two cities and his stack is too far away so he'll most likely be barely protected atm.

Also, you should use your HA's to steal lots of Shaka's workers that are in the open. Also, if you pillage his cows, he won't be able to build any more elephants.

 

[ben-jammin]

Maybe you just felt like going for the UU for flavour or whatever, but at monarch you could win this map with nothing more advanced than horse archers. The rexing and teching you're doing before attacking is actually delaying the win.

 

[The Oz-Man]

It's interesting to see how much better your shadow is going than mine. In my game Shaka declared war while I was in the middle of beating down Giggles, and he brought a massive hellstack right to my borders. He beat me to Feudalism, too. Still haven't picked it back up, but I hate being on the map with Shaka.

 

[shadojack]

Spoiler :

In my game Ur was a Barbarian city, which I took. The Celts tried a suprise declaration and Shaka declared war soon after. I anticipated Shaka and built a fort on the second Sugar, filled it with spear and axe with woodsmen and watched Shaka suicide a huge stack on them. Meanwhile I finished Feudalism while picking off two of Brennus's four cities and capping him using Axes, Horses and Catapults. I built a few Elephants just before Libbing MT. Upgraded to Cuirs and went to war against Shaka. Giggles was my good buddy throughout, making one demand which I gleefully gave into as I finished capping Shaka and then wheeled around to completely wipe Gig out.

 

[shadojack]

Maybe you just felt like going for the UU for flavour or whatever, but at monarch you could win this map with nothing more advanced than horse archers. The rexing and teching you're doing before attacking is actually delaying the win.

I could see using HA to get a decisuve and unassailable advantage to win the game. But win with conquest or domination with just HA and nothing more advanced (Construction & Currency, btw, would be more advanced). Please, demonstrate with saves, I would love to see it. I appreciate the effort the OP put into the many posts in this thread, and the thoughtful postings and commentaries that followed. Perhaps we could keep it constructive and not just drop the usual boast of "I could win this map with just Horse Archers" or something like that.

 

[pigswill]

@ben-jammin. I had certainly thought about HA rush. I was put off the idea by Gil whipping CG2 archers in hilltop cities (which he can get very early) followed by Shaka spamming impis (which he can also get very early and Shaka does tend to unit spam). So elepults was nothing to do with flavour (but it was certainly serendipitous) and much more to do with earliest successful rush. As I also posted a while back I'm aiming for space victory. Clearing the continent by 500ad with 7-8 scattered cities and a poorly developed economy wouldn't necessarily speed me towards that goal. On the other hand if you've got the time (or if anyone shadowing has already played a HA rush) it would be interesting to compare overall progress at 1000ad.

@Benginal. you're no doubt right that my war against Gil was relatively slow, I'm probably just not a very good war-monger. I'm interested that you proposed leaving Shaka alone untl the nuclear age. How would you persuade Shaka to leave us alone?

 

[vranasm]

you could probably own couple of AI's with HA's only (classic 3-city rush would work here very good), but I don't think it would be good show for people struggling with Monarch.

Not sure you could finish the map with HA's only. Right now don't remember if it is pangeaish map or not.

 

[pigswill]

Its a fractal map and by the vagaries of the map script three AIs are on a seperate island (easily bridged by galleys but you'd still need the galleys). Have a HA rush that finished off Brennus and Gil would still leave the problem of having a second war against Shaka (unless you're good enough at diplo to get him to friendly fairly early on). If I was going for a military victory then going HA rush followed by a later cuirassier rush would work out fine but I'm going for space.

edit: @ Revent. I'm really not bothered about Brennus. I'll leave him until I've sorted out Shaka. As long as I declare on Brennus before he gets to engineering it'll be fine. I'll keep a look out for stray workers. How do you know that cows are part of Shaka's ivory trade?

 

[pigswill]

Technical question. If I take a ceasefire with Shaka then break it in 3-4 turns does this count as a seperate DoW in terms of diplo penalties ? (Chuck is pleased with me atm but friendly with Shaka).

 

[Kwibuss]

Pigswill, my intention was never to demotivate you! Hell no! I love it that your doing this and it's indeed very informative. Specially for the weaker players.

Since it's very quiet at work I was browing the web when I remembered this site again. Decided to see what was happening on the forum and after reading these kind of threads I got motivated to start Civ IV again.

When I quit Civ IV I could win on Emperor, but was more an Monarch player.
So inspired by you and other I started a Prince game which I won with Domination around 1700AD. In the past I was mostly a builder and I usually used Liberalism to tech a tech that helped me teching
This time after reading those crazy Deity and Immortal threads I beelined to MT and swarmed my opponents. Actually I didn't even use drafting and only whipped out a few units so my economy didn't reall suffer from the war as well, but in hindsight I wish I would've drafted/whipped the hell out of my cities just to learn how to deal with it because I will need it on the higher levels.

What I'm trying to say is that I appreciate people like you very much. That take the time and effort to post their games on this forum and explain why they do it. In the past I once tried to start a thread like this, but quickly noticed how incredibly time consuming it was and time is usually not something I got plenty of

So keep on doing these games. You also post pretty fast so don't let a few posts demoralize you. It's better to check the number of times this thread has been checked

 

[Kwibuss]

On the game:

I'm surprised Brennus hasn't peace vassaled to you. He's so weak and your so powerful, but I don't know if the code allows him too.

In my game Portugal peace vassaled to me long before I fought my first war, while they had 6 cities and I had 11 cities, but twice as powerful and waaay ahead in tech.

I suggest you stomp Shaka. He will vassal to you at some point. I doubt it will take much longer. Once he's done build your economy and beeline MT and I'm sure the last civs will put up much of a fight and will probably Vassal as soon as you've taken 2-3 cities.

 

[Revent]

Its a fractal map and by the vagaries of the map script three AIs are on a seperate island (easily bridged by galleys but you'd still need the galleys). Have a HA rush that finished off Brennus and Gil would still leave the problem of having a second war against Shaka (unless you're good enough at diplo to get him to friendly fairly early on). If I was going for a military victory then going HA rush followed by a later cuirassier rush would work out fine but I'm going for space.

edit: @ Revent. I'm really not bothered about Brennus. I'll leave him until I've sorted out Shaka. As long as I declare on Brennus before he gets to engineering it'll be fine. I'll keep a look out for stray workers. How do you know that cows are part of Shaka's ivory trade?

He has quite a few workers and you have quite a lot of unimproved tiles. With all that jungle, it should be easy to steal around 3ish

The Cows:

Technical question. If I take a ceasefire with Shaka then break it in 3-4 turns does this count as a seperate DoW in terms of diplo penalties ? (Chuck is pleased with me atm but friendly with Shaka).

I believe it counts as another -1. However, don't let that worry you because you can still get another +2 for fair trades and I THINK some more for fav civic.

 

[pigswill]

Is it possible that I've never noticed resouce trades displayed on this screen? Must be a complete idiot .

 

[pigswill]

I guess if I was worried about being a complete idiot I'd never have started this.

As you may recall we finished the last round at 1000ad. I'd captured 4 zulu cities but my army was getting ragged and exhausted and I debated a ceasefire....

So being a peaceful soul by nature I went for a ceasefire and spent a few turns reorganising and healing my battered army. Our good friend Brennus, not sharing our peaceful nature kept on fighting and in 1040 made me an offer.

He was right! The nasty Zulus are indeed plotting against us all!! This means war .

Shaka immediately demonstrated how nasty and spiteful he can be:

The war dragged on, and on, and on. The Zulu's Statue of Zeus filled our loyal populace with great disquiet. But we did not falter. Whole armies perished on both sides. New armies were continually drafted and sent to the front lines. Finally, after being reduced to his last two cities Shaka showed a last vestige of sanity:

Shall we be merciful and accept? I am sore tempted to end this dismal conflict. However a weak vassal is useless. Maybe we should return some of our hard won cities to the nasty psycho, perhaps something like this:

But what of our dear friend Brennus? To my slight surprise he actually captured a Zulu city. To my not-surprised-at-all he immediately took peace the following turn. Brennus is such a cutie, so cunning and perfidious he almost seems human at times. I can't help but find him attractive (as our next victim of course ). He's even built Chichen Izza for us.

The next continent has been relatively quiet. Chairman Mao did have the temerity to demand philosophy, he started off annoyed, he's probably even more annoyed when we rejected his arrogant demand. Our kind of friend Chuck has built a Buddhist Apostolic Palace. Interestingly enough Shaka was elected Resident by Mao and Stalin.

We've got a few units left in Zululand that can be reorganised fairly quickly to take Brennus's city over there. We've also been building up a small stack down south:

There's a bunch of other stuff to think about like research, espionage, diplomacy, city specialisation etc etc but that can wait for another day.

 

[Revent]

Have you already accepted the Cap? If so, I guess you could just keep him around for a diplomatic if you change your mind on space. But otherwise, if you're going for space keeping him around may be a lot more trouble than its worth. I just noticed the trades pretty recently as well

 

[pigswill]

I haven't accepted capitulation as yet. The alternative to capping him would be to finish him off. The reasons I'm thinking about capping Shaka: he'll act as a shield against the other continent, he can research the small stuff we don't want to research ourselves, ending the war now will mean I polish off Brennus that bit earlier. 21-22 cities is a respectable empire even after I return some cities to Shaka.

I'm surprised it took so long for Shaka to capitulate. I'm wondering if it wasn't something to do with me sustaining relatively heavy losses (particularly cats) affecting war success though I don't pretend to know the details.

 

[Revent]

At 2 cities, he will be a very useless vassal I think. Plus, at Monarch, vassals can't really do much research for you I guess so no point there really imo.

 

[ben-jammin]

Not worth the "we yearn to join..." unhappiness in captured cities unless you get real teching in return. I'm not sure that monarch AIs can contribute much.

 

[vranasm]

kill him, but first check next AP resolution it will be almost 100% stop war against Shaka...prepare for it.

 

[pigswill]

Omnius has spoken .

Shaka must die .

On reflection (and a few hours sleep) keeping Shaka around is more hassle than its worth. I'll lose a few more turns in warring and the economy will take a short term hit from the extra cities but 6 extra cities will certainly pay back the initial cost in the medium term.

Brennus is a very lucky boy (for now ).

Spoiler :

vranasm: thanks for the reminder about AP which I hadn't considered at all. At the moment I've ony got 2 buddhist cities so it shouldn't be a big issue considering the huge amounts of WW I have already.