SparGamez2: Carthage (Rise of Rome)

[Elephantium]

Or we could just uber-colonize northern Africa...IIRC, the AI tribes are strong enough that taking their cities for domination tiles is a fairly long process. Taking down barbarians, OTOH, should be a breeze.

We still want to ruin Rome, but I think we can dominate faster by fighting a holding action against them and spamming settlers than by killing their Legions and occupying their cities.

Hmm. Maybe I need to play by that strategy in a solo game

 

[Sparthage]

Or we could just uber-colonize northern Africa...IIRC, the AI tribes are strong enough that taking their cities for domination tiles is a fairly long process. Taking down barbarians, OTOH, should be a breeze.

We still want to ruin Rome, but I think we can dominate faster by fighting a holding action against them and spamming settlers than by killing their Legions and occupying their cities.

Hmm. Maybe I need to play by that strategy in a solo game

I always take down Egypt, then set up a huge defense against Persia untill I've taken care of Rome as a threat. Generally, I don't do a land invasion of Italy at all. Rather, I take out Sicily and use it as a naval base from which I land troops in Southern or Eastern Italy and take out Rome from there. I actually tried the African settling approach a year ago on regent as a regent player, and failed miserably because Rome became a runaway civ taking over the Celts, Goths, and Greeks and colonizing massively with their Settler UU. But that was a year ago, so it might be a viable strategy now that I know a decent strategy to win this Conquest.

As to the next Spargamez's civ, lets wait until that comes up. I did vote somewhat for Carthage because it was a Phoenician colony though.

 

[aukrest]

My general strategy for Carthage is to take Sicily and fortify the island from initial roman countermeasures. I start by building defense in Spain and making sure the Celts won't MA with Rome against me. I go for the Ivory outside Leptis Magna as quick as I can for Ivory to upgrade Spears to Numidians. At this point I amass three seperate forces . All this time I will build settlers to grab the dyes of northern Libya, and several other cities in a southwest direction from Carthago.

One attack force in Spain from the cities around Tingis and from Spain itself. One from the rest of Carthage that meets in Carthago to head to the northernmost Sicily city, and the last one in Leptis Magna (or my easternmost city) to go for a battle against Egypt.

Egypt is really easy to kill. a fair amount of War Elephants can lay waste to them. Rome is a lot tougher. I start working the Spanish force north, killing any Romans that have settled in Spain. At this point I usually MA with the Celts and/or Goths against Rome (if only to distract them) and I get the attack force in Sicily (includes Hannibal's army) to head to Calabria and take the city there (Croton, I believe) and I slowly will work north up to Rome.

If you can capture Rome itself and the cities to the south of it, Rome's production power will go down significantly and their army won't be pumped as fast. If you get up to Padua and the large stack of doom isn't laying waste to you, you can call Rome conquered.

That's my strategy and two cents

 

[GamezRule]

Or, we could fight a more limited war, sending an army to pillage Rome's tiles, lowering their production and commerce, then invading.

 

[Sparthage]

The problem with the limited attack is that we'd be more prone to Roman attacks as we slowly attempt to destroy their infrastructure (one tile every 2 turns with a large, single stack).

 

[GamezRule]

Well, it helps in AW games.

 

[Sparthage]

Alright, either way I don't think that the first five turns should make too much of a difference. I'll try to play on Monday. Any objections?

General Plan:
-Build an army
-I'll try to take Sicily

 

[pol1]

We are already in Oligarchy and I don't think, that there is much to get from Monarchy or Republic (well cash rush would be nice, but otoh - game has only 130 turns, and some of them would be wasted for revolution).
Monarchy has cash rush, but slightly higher corruption.

Sparthage - remember to adjust the slider and mm cities, cause at the beginning that is just one big mess.

 

[Sparthage]

Sparthage - remember to adjust the slider and mm cities, cause at the beginning that is just one big mess.

I always do.

 

[pol1]

one more thing:
just curious - can we sign peace with Rome at some time during the game? or are we locked in war?

 

[Bowsling]

Build swordsmen, and fill the army with that. Don't worry if we lose Sicily, the odds are against us. Reinforce Motya with Numidians from Carthage and other North African cities. Use a worker or two to build a road through the horses and colonize the ivory south of Leptis Minor (use an actual worker colony, don't waste a settler on the spot.

 

[Sparthage]

one more thing:
just curious - can we sign peace with Rome at some time during the game? or are we locked in war?

Yep, no peace, EVER. You know the quote: "Rome must be destroyed."

Build swordsmen, and fill the army with that. Don't worry if we lose Sicily, the odds are against us. Reinforce Motya with Numidians from Carthage and other North African cities.

Generally, I DO reinforce Spain and the islands from North Africa since we all know that the AI isn't very bright when it comes to naval invasions.

Use a worker or two to build a road through the horses and colonize the ivory south of Leptis Minor (use an actual worker colony, don't waste a settler on the spot.

Yep, that's what I was planning.

 

[Bowsling]

Holy crap. I just wrote an entire detailed battle log chronicling the Roman conquest of Sicily, only to have it shredded by the forum logging me out while I was writing, and then forcing me to log back in. I apparently mistyped something, and I was taken to the login failed page, where I successfully logged in, to discover my entire post gone . Maybe I'll re-write it tomorrow.

 

[GamezRule]

Well that sucks.

 

[Elephantium]

Bowsling: I type up my notes in Notepad (some use Word), then copy and paste it into the forum. That neatly avoids any problems with getting logged out or other network weirdness.

There's also the Lazarus add-on for Firefox...I'd recommend it to everyone, in fact.

 

[GamezRule]

Google Chrome FTW!!!

 

[Elephantium]

If I could use my addons in Chrome, I'd switch in a heartbeat. I love how snappy it is. Unfortunately, I depend too heavily on things like Firebug, Noscript, Greasemonkey, and Stylish (partly to fix annoyances on google.com, ironically) to make switching browsers a winning proposition.

 

[aukrest]

A word of warning, even after reinforcing Sicily, I find it hard to hold on to Syracuse when the game begins. I will usually hold on to the final western city on the island until some more substantial arrivals make it there to retake Syracuse and the Roman city.

 

[Bowsling]

Bowsling: I type up my notes in Notepad (some use Word), then copy and paste it into the forum. That neatly avoids any problems with getting logged out or other network weirdness.

There's also the Lazarus add-on for Firefox...I'd recommend it to everyone, in fact.

I hadn't taken notes at the time. What I wrote down was just from memory, although I often use notepad.

And I think I will add that add-on, I'm a devout Firefox user. I've just never liked chrome as much (and Adblock Plus is a decisive feature).

 

[Elephantium]

It's amazing. Once in a while, I end up browsing somewhere in another browser (e.g. at a relative's house), and I'm astounded at how crappy websites generally are when you don't have Adblock and NoScript running.