*Spoiler1* Gotm18-Celts - Full World Map

[ButSam]

I actually didn't come across nearly as many barbarians as I thought...with one major exception noted later. This is probably due to the fact that we were surrounded by other civs and an ocean, except the mountains north of us. The game even notified me of an uprising near one of my cities, which was near the Roman empire and the coast (the city was, that is), but I never saw a single barbarian, probably thanks to the Romans (who are a lot more ungrateful than I am, I'm sure! That may help explain some of their weakness.)

The big exception was after I discovered Iron Working and saw my chance at Iron being in those northern mtns. I settled a city w/ a Spearman (Veteran, from Barracks). The barbs began POURING in...literally 5 attacks per turn for about 5 turns...by this time, my Spearman was elite, and I started a second one up there. Sadly, my elite Spearman got mutilated on around the 6th turn of attacks by a nasty horseman that took no damage and killed my spearman from a rank of 5. After being pillaged a few times, the Iriquois decided to take them out for me...YAY!

I also noticed the Squid a few times, but I still have no boats as of the end of this spoiler thread (hey, we're one big land mass...I have better things to build

Sam

 

[Shillen]

I feel pretty happy with the way I was able to expand (usually, that is my weak point), but is it usually wise to build all those cities so close together as Xevious has? It seems like that'd give a boost for a bit, but end up hurting you in the Industrial Age.

It will hurt you a bit in the industrial age after you get hospitals. Your cities won't be as productive so getting wonders and building military units after tanks gets really hard. But by spacing them so close together he's actually maximizing his empire strength in the ancient and middle ages. With a normal city spacing you won't be able to work every tile in your empire until hospitals, while with a tight spacing like Xevious has he can work every single tile and therefore his empire is a lot more powerful early on. The point of this is to take control of the game before the industrial age. Use your ancient and middle age advantage to propel yourself ahead of all the other AI's, or destroy them even. Then it won't matter that your cities are less productive later on in the game. This strategy isn't for everyone. If you prefer to space your cities out more then go for it. I personally like a middle of the road approach with about 12 tiles per city.

 

[jack merchant]

I located a save from 310 AD, before chivalry:

 

[WoundedKnight]

1910 BC -- Capture Carthage, produce a great leader Vercingetorix

1700 BC- Vercingetorix used to rush pyramids in capital city, producing more rapid growth in all cities throughout the game and allowing rapid expansion

1600 BC - Capture roman city of Antium

1200 BC -- 2nd Great leader produced in battle with Romans. This great leader was sent to the southwest where the forbidden palace was rushed (near the dyes on the river by mountains, next to Greece and China). This dramatically improved production in all of the surrounding cities which were completely corrupt.

900 BC - Rome captured. 1 other Roman city had been captured (Pompeii) and 2 had been destroyed.
Rome was reduced to a shell of its former self and remained technologically, economically, and militarily primitive throughout the entire game.

210 AD -- screenshot below. Had 5 luxury resources, 78 workers, 1600 gold, had been in Republic since roughly the BC/AD transition (would have to check on exact date). Contact with all civilizations but had not spent the money on acquiring a full world map.

At this point, we rank first in most of the important indicators, and continue to increase the lead we have held since the conquest of Carthage. Our civilization is producing

135 megatons of manufacturing goods, which is only a tiny shadow of things to come in the not too distant future as we turn from rapid expansion to productivity improvements. With pyramids and a forbidden palace, we will grow very rapidly when we start to slow down our settler and worker production.

Say, look how much of that map is Celtic green. Still not content, Brennus of the Celts turns his eye towards his Greek and Iroquois neighbors to the south, and towards the French to the northwest -- what will the future hold...


BTW, although this image doesn't have the full world map, I have submitted my final savedgame. I'm in the middle ages with one tech here in 210 AD -- I didn't get the whole map until later (no reason to spend the $), but I can't post later maps because I had advanced far beyond the tech cutoff at that point.

WoundedKnight

 

[WoundedKnight]

[see below]

 

[WoundedKnight]

A few strategy highlights:
1. Since Celts are militaristic, gotta take advantage of it. Fight early, get cities & great leaders. I didn't anticipate the first GL so early (1910 BC)and it really helped me out with the pyramids. The 2nd GL was a little longer in coming (1200BC) but helped with the FP. These two buildings were critical to the productivity of my whole civilization. These 2 buildings are critical, nothing else compares to them.

2. Rapid expansion. The Celts are not industrious and so needed a little extra help; I had to build more workers to improve the land rapidly.

3. Switched to Republic as quickly as possible. Civs are religious which will help with government changes.

4. I embarked on an aggressive campaign of resource denial. I eyed concentrated areas of luxury and strategic resources in my neighbors' territories and targeted those for conquest quickly. For example, if someone has three dyes or three gems in their territory, this makes their own people happy but also can be traded to other civs, allowing that civ & other AI civs to devote more trade resources to scientific research and gold generation. If you take them away, you cripple the economy of your neighbor and also other civs, who will have to spend more time building happiness improvements, spend more money on luxuries, and spend more citizen resources to entertain the public. This also gives you resources that you can trade repeatedly for techs or money throughout the entire game. It seemed to work well.

 

[WoundedKnight]

Moonsinger,

Why on earth are you building your FP right next to your capital?

 

[Xevious]

Originally posted by ButSam

I feel pretty happy with the way I was able to expand (usually, that is my weak point), but is it usually wise to build all those cities so close together as Xevious has? It seems like that'd give a boost for a bit, but end up hurting you in the Industrial Age.

Sam [/B]

Actually, I built closer to OCP (optimal city placement, e.g. least city overlap without wasted space) initially. But as I started running out of room I added a few cities in between to increase my science and gold output. I'm planning to stay peaceful this month after dominating last month, but still wanted more cities so I am doing a combination of backfilling and border pushing (planting cities near other civs and building culture to push into their space). I'm building a lot of culture (I'm way ahead of everyone in culture) and I'm hoping to flip some cities to my empire.

 

[WoundedKnight]

I opted to space cities a little further apart initially and then filling in the gaps later with culture for three reasons:

1. Territory is very important to your score in Civ3, even more important than population in most games (in my game, my territory score was 2-3x my pop. score most of the time). Since your score is averaged over all your terms, you want to acquire lots of territory *early* to maximize your score. Turtling in a little corner of the map doesn't do the job. Even if the initial production may be a little lower, I'll always send my settlers to the periphery of the empire to expand territory rather than just filling in gaps. Of course, getting an FP early as I did is very important to this sort of strategy.

2. For infrastructure. I wanted to build roads and improvements as widely as possible. This required developing an expansive territory in the early game. I wanted to take resources and conquer cities from neighbors across a wide area, and so having a wide empire with a good road network allowed me to better target enemy strategic and luxury resources rather than being "hemmed in" with limited strategic options. It also allowed for rapid transport of military, worker, and settler units.

3. To optimize industrial-age production. Even as it was, you can see from some areas on my map that some cities are still likely to crowd some.

The settler is very important to my game. You can see from the map that I had over 40 cities by 210 AD.

 

[cracker]

Just a tip for the players who are posting minimaps. Upsizing the image of the map that you capture from the main map view is not the recommended approach. Instead, capture a screen shot of the military advisor page making sure that your cursor is positioned not to create a cross-hair.

This minimap will be slightly larger and clearer and will not have the white locator square.

 

[Hurricane]

I founded Entremont on the starting position, after I had moved my worker north and discovered no bonus tiles. It turns out there are few bonus tiles in the vicinity, as well as resources are scarce. It is clear that the Keltish civilization needs to expand in order to survive.

I started by building 3 warriors and then started prebuilding a granary, wishing to get a contact with Pottery.

3250 bc Contact NeoCarthage. Trades Ceremonial and Warrior Code for Alphabet. Changes research for Writing.
3150 bc. Contact Iroquois. Trades Alphabet and 58 g for Pottery and Mysticism. Trades Mysticism and Pottery for Masonry and 10 g w. NeoCarthage.
3100 bc. Buys 2 egWorkers from Iroquois for Masonry and 16 g.
3050 bc. Contact Rome. Rome has nothing to offer.
2950 bc. Contact Greece. Trades Masonry for Bronze Working.
2750 bc. Granary completed.
2550 bc. Settler.
2510 bc. Alesia founded.
2310 bc. Settler.
2270 bc. Lugdunum funded.
Goody hut, 25 g.
2150 bc. Contact France. Trade Mysticism and
10 g for The Wheel. No horses in sight.
2030 bc. Spots Volcano up north. Their 2 defense means I won't attack.
1990 bc. Atzecs and Egypt at par in tech with me and Iroq according to historian.
1950 bc. Settler (Entremont). Barracks (Alesia).
1910 bc. Camalodonum founded.
1830 bc. Trades Ceremonial, The Wheel and 60 g for Iron working w. Greece. Sells IW to Iroq for 109 g.
1750 bc. Contact Aztecs. Is at par with tech. Iroq discovers Writing.
1700 bc. Big trading turn. Trades IW and the Wheel for Writing w. neoCarthage. Trades Writing for Comm w.Egypt and Horseback Riding. Trades comm with Japs & Chinese and 2 g for Iron Working w. Egypt. Sells comm w. Carthage for 42g w. Atzecs. Establish embassy w. all civs. All AI cities are at size 2 building settlers (except Salamanca, size 1). Sell ROP w. Rome for 10 g, Iroq for 19g.
1675 bc. Richborough founded. Sell ROP w. Greece for 9 g. Sell Comm w. Romans for 20 g to the Chinese.
1575 bc. Verulamium founded.
1500 bc (around). Gergovia founded.
1425 bc. Goody hut: 2 barbs. Warrior survives.
1300 bc. LLeorycantores founded. Goody hut: philosophy. Buy eqWorker for Philosophy from neoCarthage.
1250 bc. Spot FOG (0,2,1).
1200 bc. Renew ROP w. Iroq, get 26 g.
1175 bc. Contact English. They have nothing. Renew ROP w. Greece for 11 g.
1150 bc. ROP w. French for 16g.
1125 bc. Trade Horseback, IW & Philosophy for Map Making, World Map & 27 g w. the English.

Here is the world map in 1125 bc:

1075 bc. Trade Map Making, World Map&Contact w. English for Polytheism w. the French. Trade Polytheism, World Map, Contact w English & 35 g for Mathematics & Code of Laws w. neoCarthage.
1025 bc. ROP w. English for 13 g.
1000 bc. 12 cities. 327 gold. 183 points.

arpund 50 bc Pyramids comleted. edit: it was in fact 350 bc!
around 100 bc Monarchy.

I had been waiting for Monarchy before starting my golden age. I now turn towards the weak Romans.

150 bc Roman war begins. Upgrade 20 warriors to European Swordsman. Golden age starts. Rome has no Iron.

In 10 bc I start to explore the barb peninsula. The Romans have one city there, which due to barb attacks have no defenders.

10 ad Romans almost destroyed, one small city inside Iroquois lands left. My only Galley destroyed by Squid. They habe 3 attack now! By the time I enter the middle ages I have around 500 points, second place after China.

Around 10 ad. FP built in Richborough, just south of Entremont.

I did not encounter any barb camps, so the fear for the restless barbs was ungrounded.

Here is the map in 10 ad, when the Roman empire is almost destroyed.

 

[el_kalkylus]

Good tip about the minimap. I will do this in the future.

Now I am nterested to hear how many military units everyone built before attacking a neighbour, and when you attacked. I had about 2 spearmen, 6 archers and 8 horsemen when I attacked the Romans. This was enough to take 3 cities without many losses. I attacked around 600 bc I think. In republic, I could finally make some money and prepared for another war. I built 22 horsemen for the next war, waiting for upgrade (except the elite units). I thought this was little, because I usually hear about people making 50-100 units and dominate with ease.

 

[Shillen]

Damn you lucked out building pyramids in 50BC. The AI built them in 690BC in my game. That's 32 turns earlier. I would have gotten them if they took that long in my game. This would have made my game a lot easier because I wouldn't have had to alter my military strategy to capture the pyramids early, which weren't built very close to me at all. I think someone else said they built the Great Library in the AD's too, Greece finished that in 350BC in my game. Not sure why but the AI's were wonder machines in my game.

I still don't understand how you guys got so many leaders that early. I'm never that lucky. I was at war from 50BC onward. I had like 20 elite victories during this spoiler thread and no leaders.

To go along with Cracker's tip on using the military advisor screen for minimaps...don't blow them up either. They look really bad when you resize them and make them larger. They're a lot clearer in their original size.

 

[Shillen]

Originally posted by el_kalkylus
Now I am nterested to hear how many military units everyone built before attacking a neighbour, and when you attacked. I had about 2 spearmen, 6 archers and 8 horsemen when I attacked the Romans. This was enough to take 3 cities without many losses. I attacked around 600 bc I think. In republic, I could finally make some money and prepared for another war. I built 22 horsemen for the next war, waiting for upgrade (except the elite units). I thought this was little, because I usually hear about people making 50-100 units and dominate with ease.

I had 16 gallic swords, 18 spearmen, and 4 warriors that I just needed to get to a barracks city to upgrade (had plenty of cash). I would have attacked with less but I didn't want to start my GA in despotism so I waited. I'm really regretting building those spearmen. I should have just used warriors for mp. I did at first but I switched to spearmen later on.

 

[Moonsinger]

I built the Pyramids the hard way, one brick at a time. Founded Alesia in 2230 BC, finished its temple by1870 BC, then immediately started the works on the Pyramids and didn't get it done until 610BC. Since I started this game with the intention to milk all the way to 2050AD, I wasn't focus much on culture. I figure, by having control of the Pyramids early, it would help boot up my population growth.

Since the Roman didn't have no iron, I sent about a dozen horseman to start a war with them in 550BC. Horsemans against the Roman Archers and Spearmans, I can't believe how easy it turned out. However, since I have no barracks at the frontline, it took about 4 turns to heal before my horsemans can attack again. My first Great Leader came in 270BC and it took him a long time to travel to Alesia; he rushed the Great Library there in 230BC. After that, I set my research rate to zero and started collecting benefits from the Great Library.

When I finally liberated Rome, I was surprise that it was defended by just one spearman and an archer. Now, that seemed a little weird; AI has always been defending their capital with at least 4 defensive units. After that, I figured I could go all the all to wipe out the remaining Romans with my horsemans. At the peace table, Ceasar drove a hard bargain, but he agreed to hand over all his remaining cities (3 size-1 towns) if I spared his palace (also a size-1 town). About 30 turns later, I had to terminate Ceasar to prevent culture flip.

After the Roman war, I was toying a little bit the Chief Hiwatha of the Iroquois. I was expecting a wave of mounted warriors from him but didn't seen any. After my horsemans all healed up from the Roman war, they headed South to escort Chief Hiwatha to an early retirement. Oh, also while I was busy with the Iroquois war, Alexander of the Greeks declared war on me, but luckly my swordmans sucessfully defended against his sneak attack on my Western front and that also triggered Golden Age in 150 AD (my Keltoi was in Republic). Basically, my horsemans fought bravely in the Southern front against the Iroquois and my swordmans to defend my Western front against the evil Alexander of Greece. And the rest is beyond the scope of this thread.

PS: Through out entire long bloody war with the Iroquois I didn't get any great leader.

 

[WoundedKnight]

>Now I am interested to hear how many military units everyone >built before attacking a neighbour, and when you attacked

I like to go for spaceship victories, I'm not a fan of complete conquest or domination, but I still like the early attack and DO believe in rapid territory expansion. *Especially* here where you have the benefits of being a militaristic civ, it's be crazy not to.

I'm going off the top of my head on a game I finished several days ago and already turned in (so there may be some minor timeline clarifications if I were to go back and look at my game), but I conquered Carthage in 1910 BC. I had attacked them about four or five turns earlier. I had (I think) five archers, with three in vicinity of Carthage and one next to the Carthaginian city just east of the capital, and one on the road from my capital.

The early attack was crucial to my game for several reasons:
1) it gave me an early city early on,
2) it gave me a great leader in 1910 BC which I used to rush the pyramids,
3) it opened up a vast new territory to the west by obliterating the Carthaginians.

I think that waiting until you have a vast army to attack someone is a mistake. The big problem with waiting is the time delay -- all the time you lose with fewer cities and less territory you could have had adding to your score. With time, your units get outdated and enemy defenses get better (I wanted to build archers and attack quickly before the opponent could build walls or higher-end defensive units) and then it's expensive to upgrade them. I also wanted to attack before enemy towns grew to size 6 or above and received the defense bonuses associated with city size. When my first warriors were dispatched to take out Carthage, I sent workers to build roads to the Roman city of Antium to facilitate quick troop transport to the enemy on this opposite (Southeast) border as soon as Carthage was knocked out.

I frequently attack with only a marginal military edge to take a couple of cities quickly. I did that with the Romans right after the Carthaginians and it paid off big again with another great leader used to rush the FP, more luxuries, and more territory. When I the war became less productive, I made peace with the Romans (? have to check the exact date, I know Rome fell to my armies in 900 BC) after conquering most of their territory.

Another factor to consider is that Despotism is the *ideal* time to attack. I go for a fast Republic (when possible) and, I can't really talk about later on, but I do generally beeline straight for democracy in the middle ages. Both of these governments have major disadvantages in wars, and I still fight numerous conflicts in them, but on a controlled scale. In despotism, you can fight for long periods with no unrest from the war. You'll see in my timeline that I had a prolonged Dark Ages war with the Romans, taking Antium in 1600 BC, destroying a couple other cities, and not taking Rome until 900 BC.

I made peace shortly after that, winning the city of Pompeii in the peace from the devastated remnants of the Roman civilization. I had initially planned to wipe out the Romans entirely at this point, but I couldn't pass up their willingness to part with Pompeii without a fight when (they only had 2 other cities or so), and I had spotted barbarians to the North and felt a need to redirect my archers to the north to take out the Pictish threat.

Part of the reason why the conflict was protracted was because I had only a limited number of archers and had shipped them from conquered Carthage directly to Rome as soon as the Carthaginian civilization fell. As you can see from the timeline, the sooner you hit the enemy, the easier it is to take them over. Had I been able to attack the Romans at the same time as Carthage, I probably could have destroyed their whole civilization very early on. The fact that the Roman conflict took many centuries longer than the Carthaginian conflict in spite of my larger archer army for the Roman conflict is due, like I said, to the fact that the longer you wait, the more the enemy builds up its defenses.

Gallic warriors are so expensive. Archers were my main, and only, offense unit in the dark ages because you don't have to acquire expensive techs to build them, you can crank them out right off the bat, and they are very cheap. I don't like protracted wars that are expensive to the economy in the early game because of my rapid expansionistic strategy. I like to crank out a few units, take as many strategic objectives as I can, and then make peace with a humbled enemy when the war starts to get expensive and territory gains slow.


>I still don't understand how you guys got so many leaders that
>early. I'm never that lucky. I was at war from 50BC onward.

I guess I was lucky to get the pyramids in 1700 BC from a leader. I had hoped for a GL at some point, but didn't expect one so soon. I didn't want to spend the resources on building the pyramids, and doubted I would beat the AI in building it anyway. I was fortunate to get two great leaders in the early conflicts (1910 BC - Carthage & 1200 BC - Rome), but then got no more until the late game (can't say more at this time).

One thing I would tell you is that if you want a GL for something like the Pyramids, you need to go to war very early. Going to war for the first time in 50 BC after the AI has already built the pyramids is not going to be a productive strategy for you, as the pyramids tower above any of the middle-age wonders in increasing your civilization's productivity.

A GL is virtually required to build a FP in the most efficient (i.e. completely corrupt) area, and is very helpful for pyramids in the early game when you want to use your capital to build settlers and military units.

I'll have to admit, it took me a long time to develop my FP city. I rushed the FP but it was in a completely forested and mountainous area, and so it probably took me ten turns to build a road to it, and then longer to cut down forests and build irrigation. I should have thought ahead more. I can see now that I should have built a road to the city as soon as it was founded and sent more workers to clear trees so that the city would have been ready to grow as soon as I got the GL to rush the FP. As it was, getting a 2nd GL in 1200 BC was unanticipated. I can't kick myself too much because the future FP city had just been founded a few turns before and I thought I would have more time to develop the roads and land before getting a great leader.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by WoundedKnight
Moonsinger,

Why on earth are you building your FP right next to your capital?

I originally wanted to milk this game to 2050AD, but I'm kind of having a second thought on that at the moment. Since Alesia is doing quite well in culture, by adding the FP, that would help boot its culture a bit. Anyway, if I get more great leader will try for the 20K; otherwise, I'm going for a full milk. Since you guys are too good with fast conquest, I won't stand much of a chance against you guys.

 

[WoundedKnight]

>Since Alesia is doing quite well in culture, by adding the FP, that >would help boot its culture a bit. Anyway, if I get more great >leader will try for the 20K; otherwise, I'm going for a full milk.

It's only, I think, a measly 2 culture points per turn -- less than a either a temple or library! The big problem is going to be later in the game, when corruption is rampant in all but your core cities around the capital and adjacent FP. This will severely hamper your civilization's productivity in terms of shields, trade, income, and science down to about 60% of what it could be with a strategically-placed FP. It will also hurt your final score quite a bit because lower productivity means less ability to build growth and happiness improvements in outlying cities (and thus fewer happy citizens). If you want culture, it's better to try to jump ahead in tech and build a university, cathedral, or another wonder in your culture city. But not the FP.

Unless you can pull off a very early culture win, it's a big gamble for not much payoff. The only salvage for your civilization's long-term productivity would be to build your palace in a strategic outlying city with a great leader (preferably as soon as you can). The FP will keep most of the cities around your original capital productive since it is so close.

 

[Moonsinger]

Well, the idea is that I will build my FP near my Palace, then later move my Palace somewhere else with a great leader. Here is my minmaps up until 400AD. At 400AD, I'm still searching for Engineering and I was equal in tech with everyone else (other than the free tech for the science civ), no one else have discovered any Middle Age tech at that time. I guess the tech race is very slow in my game. As you see, the Ceasar was still alive in 400AD (I can't believe I let him live that long); a few year after that, I terminated Ceasar.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by WoundedKnight
It's only, I think, a measly 2 culture points per turn -- less than a either a temple or library! The big problem is going to be later in the game, when corruption is rampant in all but your core cities around the capital and adjacent FP. This will severely hamper your civilization's productivity in terms of shields, trade, income, and science down to about 60% of what it could be with a strategically-placed FP. It will also hurt your final score quite a bit because lower productivity means less ability to build growth and happiness improvements in outlying cities (and thus fewer happy citizens). If you want culture, it's better to try to jump ahead in tech and build a university, cathedral, or another wonder in your culture city. But not the FP.

Yes, the FP would contribute only 2 culture point (just only 1 point more than the Palace). My plan is that I will build the FP in Texcoco (5 square West of Tenochlitlan (capital city of the Aztecs). Since I couldn't do that at the moment, I will have to move my palace with a great leader to Texcoco later (hopefully by 1000 AD). Since I'm not razing any city (other than the auto-raze), it would be a blast if I can move my palace right into the heart of the AI territory.