[BTS] Shadow Game Stalin

[cseanny]

Of course not. The idea is to get the game to a strong position whether you want to go for Construction or Engineering or Cuirs/Cannons or whatever. And the mechanics of the game make that, in this particular case, having 5 cities on T50 is better than having 3 cities on T50, even if the latter saves you some forests.

Quite untrue. A 3 city HA rush will snowball the game much earlier. The only time I think you even need Cuirs/Cannons is on Deity. Anything Immortal and below you can simply LoL Knight pwnage and turn off research around CS.

And this goes out to anyone following this thread, take a look at any HoF or non HoF games (space, conquest, Dom) that have the earliest finish date, regardless of level. Virtually every game has very, very, VERY few "initial" settled cities. Even if you have lot's of land you "could" settle it's usually the best choice to stay small and start the War Machine snowball as soon as possible. This coincides with my own HoF and Civ4 experience too.

Theory craft and personal play style are w/out a doubt one of the great attributes of Civilization 4 but having said that, the results found in the saves are the proof in the pudding (until new styles and theorycraft post better results).

 

[Pedro78]

If you read my post entirely, you'll see that I said my goal was to show the OP how to peacefully expand for a "late war" (Construction or later). I have also written that normally I'd have settled Copper first and rolled over the map.

I do agree with what you say, but it does by no means contradict what I've stated about peaceful expansion.

 

[sampsa]

I do like the approach of improving the resources and building workers at size 1.

Building workers @size1 is often sub-optimal, because it takes 22 to grow to size 2, and you can "trade" this 22 to 30 via whip (while slow building exchanges 1 to 1). OK, depends a lot on what is the best available tile, but since we are talking about 2nd/3rd/4th city they are supposed to have a high food tile available. An exception would be for example when the best available tile is plains cow.

 

[SquidInk]

I'm still reading! Thanks feedback and discussion. So I started over and decided to go for a Horse Archer rush on Montezuma. Here are three saves to show progression.

Tech choice as best as I can remember was Agriculture, Bronze Working, Wheel, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Horseback Riding, and Archery. I may have turned off research then, if I remember correctly and then turned it back on briefly to get to writing. Not having Mysticism and monuments was a bit painful to get food so I would probably do things a it different.

I took out all but one of Monty's cities before declaring war on Gilgamesh to deny him copper and thus spearmen. This was helpful and got me more gold, although not enough. I kept his copper city though the placement is horrible if you're not creative. I seriously considered razing and building with my own settler in between copper and pigs (thoughts on this?). After finishing Monty off, I was having trouble capturing Gilgamesh's capitol (poor decisions and bad combat outcomes). When Ragnar asked for my help to beat up Hatty, I said yes, mostly so I could get money from city razing and plundering to pay for my upkeep. However, my economy was so bad that most of my soldiers, and some Workers, got disbanded. I was hoping to get to Alphabet and trade techs for peace with Gilgamesh, but by the time I struggled my way to the tech, I had no army to speak of. Had to make peace with Gilgamesh for nothing. Ragnar finished off the Egyptians. Now all my horse archers, including a supermedic general, got disbanded and I have no offensive units.

Now I am struggling to shore up my economy while Ragnar's in the lead. From what I can tell, his military is far superior to mine.

Here is what I know I messed up:
- playing too fast generally.
- missing the hammer threshold to 2-pop whip HA's several times, generally not micromanaging well enough to hit the right amount of hammers before whipping;
- building useless improvements when I could have used my workers better, including building cottages and roads.

These mistakes made it so I just could not get money fast enough from war to sustain the push.

 

[sampsa]

Yeh, playing a bit slower is an excellent idea. Especially when going for an early war and at the same time trying to manage your cities... It can get chaotic and it will slow down your learning process. Map is a bit hard to manage too, due to scarcity or pre-calendar -resources.

Now that you finally have alphabet, you should build to reach currency fast, then build .

 

[SquidInk]

Just so you don't write a pamphlet, I lose the game a few turns after the latest save I uploaded.

A few turns after the last save point, Ragnar declares war on me with an elegant concave of troops. Not going to play this until the bitter end.

 

[sampsa]

Oh yes, I forgot to suggest gifting alpha to Ragnar for relations. I tried it and it doesn't make him pleased immediately, but it will kick in when another diplo bonus (open borders, resource trades, religion) increases. At pleased you can beg for a -resource, a small amount of if one of you has currency or a cheap tech like archery (or put many beakers into a tech and beg with only some beakers left) to gain a 10 turn peace treaty. That often stops the AI from plotting war towards you also. Not sure if that would have saved you here, but an idea to keep in mind.

 

[Gumbolt]

Spoiler thoughts :

Looking at the 350ad and all I can see is you losing 10-20+ units due to strike. Like I predicted you are struggling with happiness. You have pretty much no resources.

All your units being disbanded means you can't fight off an attack from Ragnar. Who seems to be stomping the nearby AI.

Your capital is way too small for this date. You needed mids or monarchy here.You needed to be working cottages. Rostov should of been working cottages near your capital to help it to become a bureau city. The ones north of Rostov are a waste.

Kish still has no border pop nearly 1200 years on. Same for other cities. Not teching mystism is a mistake here.

350ad for first scientist is too late. Civil Service by 1ad is a target to aim for.

Razing an AI capital is never a great idea. These tend to be some of the best cities to keep.

I think you need to play this much slower and be more focus. You have fought 2 wars here but it has pretty much destroyed your game.

Still no sheep fish city near your capital? It was one of the best spots.

125ad thoughts.

Spoiler 125ad thoughts. :

-18 gold per turn and in strike.

You can trade gems with celts.
You lack fishing too. Don't under estimate sea resources. You have been whipping yarslov and you don't have the fish hooked up. Getting the best food resources up is important.

You built 31HA. Lost 14. You have 4 left. Meaning 14 have either been deleted or lost to strike? Having 4HA left after 2 wars is really bad. You needed those units to fend off Ragnar.

Going to war with 3AI has not done much for your diplomacy here. Pedro strategy on happiness involved trading resources from the AI. Unfortunately the 2 nearby Ai had zero happiness resources.

I think if you intended to go HA you should of done this from the start. Instead you rexxed. You failed to set up a commerce centre for your empire and just kept going to war till you hit a cliff. Key techs like alphabet and currency really help on wars when your empire is 10 cities. Myst and fishing are basic techs which sometiems can't be ignored.

Getting stone for mids would of been a good move. It feels like you have tried to play Pedro's strategy here but not really followed his strategy as intended.

Spoiler 800bc :

800bc and your capital is not running any cottages. Those 2 farms are really not helping you here. Unhappiness from whipping is killing your cities and your capital.

You do have 2 Aztec cities but you need to repair your empire and catch up on the basic techs. Myst/fishing/masonry. Both Aztec cities are quite some way from your borders. You had plenty of land here to expand into.

 

[Gumbolt]

Peaceful to 1ad. Had 4 cities by 2000bc with a settler 2-3 turns off. Not really tried to micro this to death. CS teched. Calendar teched.

Science is triple what yours was at 125ad. I have 14-15 more techs. Probably run slider at 80%.

 

[SquidInk]

Cheers for the save. It looks great but did you build farms at all, or did you cottage the flood plains from the get-go? Did you research math before starting to mass chop? You went without Copper and Horses. Did that rush you to get to Iron Working sooner, or did you decide on the stone/copper city instead?
What was your tech order?

I am thinking of reloading the game and go at it differently. Go straight for writing after bronze working, get a quick library and focus on getting a great scientist to bulb math. From then chop all the forest for axemen or HA's.

Thanks!

 

[Gumbolt]

Skipped IW. Once I had alphabet I traded for it. Self teching IW is nearly always a bad idea. The AI tech this very early on.

Yes most of those chops were pre maths. Took me 2-3 turns to tech maths at 100%. I left maths till I had teched COL. So 8-10 turns ago?

I cottaged the flood plains from get go. 7 turns for a flood plains farm is too long and a bad early use of a worker! 1 extra food for 7 turns? Vs 2-3 extra food from building a farm on corn.

Diplomacy I have not done a great job but my mini stack should fend off most of the AI here. I suspect it would be quicker to head directly to cuirs than fight a war now.

I went Ag, BW, AH, fishing, TW, pottery. I perhaps should not of delayed writing so much.

The Rex to 5 cities was purely to try Pedro's strategy.

If you plan to bulb maths you need a reason to do this. Chopping will not provide you commerce here. Nor will it provide happiness. If you want to rush entire map with HA you need to keep pumping them and taking/razing cities till all the AI are dead. Even on best of games you need alphabet and curency to help you manage the economy. Running wealth can really help avoid strike while you develop cottages. I used my only GS on an academy in the capital. Bulbing maths is very situational. 400 beakers vs 1300+ beakers for another tech? Not great use of a GS unless you have a plan.

Early cottages can be interesting. I think you barely focused on cottages on your start. My capital did not really run specialists.I let it grow to size 10. Whipping certain builds like granaries for growth. I used nearby cities to develop the cottages by the city too. So I had 3 or so cities working on the capital's cottages.

The reason your save failed is you tried to do everything and ultimately failed. If you plan to do an early rush you only need 2-3 cities. With a view to capturing 2-3 great cities once the war is done. At which point you need a recovery period to develop commerce tiles through cottages or other means. I count nearly 11 cottages on my save generating 3-4 commerce each. Add onto that specialists generating 6 science each and I have a strong economy and could easily take a mace or other war to a backwards AI here.

 

[Gumbolt]

Just to finish it off. End 10+ turns were quite frustrating.