*Spoiler4* SPECIAL - Must have submitted Gotm19

[cracker]

This special spoiler discussion is a special topic technical discussion about features of the Gotm19-Ottomans game.

This is not a thread for posting general reports about game progress and other aspects of the Gotm19 game that are not listed as the focus of this discussion.

This is also NOT a thread to use to express what you don't like or do not like about the game setup for Gotm19 unless you can base those comments on the RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS of features about the game that are the intended focus of this discussion.

The Special Topic of this discussion is for use to discuss the game progress of ROME (the Red Civ) in Gotm19-Ottomans. You must have played and submitted the game to have a clear foundation and perspective for this discussion.

There will be many different observations and experiences here because the playing style and approach of almost every player is different:

If you can, post sized down screen shots of Rome from the earliest point in the game where you have full map visibility of their territory??

What do these maps of Rome (mostly uneffected by contamination from your evil Ottoman and Human self) tell you about the early game choices that the AI brain will make when un perterbed by external forces?

Where were the key city placements?

How many cities did Rome have when you met them and how did this number compare to the other three most powerful civilizations in you game at that time??

If you attacked had conflicts with Rome either at home or on the Roman or far off continent, document when these conflicts occured and how the Romans performed militarily??

When you first met Rome how did you obtain as much information about Rome as possible and what were your impressions of Rome? How did these impressions effect you emotionally? How did these impressions effect your game strategy?

Based on your experiences in Gotm17 and Gotm18, what would you have expected Rome to look like if they were totally isolated and alone on an island continent while other cives where in free contact with neighbors on continental landmasses??

What type of military did you use against the Roman landmass and what did this expose about the status of unit upgrades and build priorities for the Roman military??

If you captured or investigated Roman Cities or if you have saves available where you can go back and aritificially investigate Roman cities, how does the status of their infrastructure and population compare to comparable Cities in the Ottoman empire at a similar time in the game?

With these sorts of technical investigative answers, what sort of role did Rome play in Gotm19-Ottomans game and how did this role effect the overall progress and final results of the game. If you think that Rome slowed you down on sped you up try to say how and by how much??

If you feel that Rome had a negative impact on your game, can you now look back at the game and identify any standard features of the game that were available to you and that might have changed your assessment of Rome in adance of the negative impacts?? Did you have any other choices that you might have made in the game based on the information you could see from the in-game advisors and other tools that were available to you??

 

[Txurce]

I met Rome near the end of the QSC period, and was surprised by their large number of cities - significantly more than Carthage or the Keltoi. Soon after, I was surprised by their large cultural lead, given tha this is usually a Roman weakness. I had expected a more spread-out expansion pattern, much less culture, and an inability to stay current in tech, but Rome never lost their solid culture, or their ability to research. I was happy to see this, as it gave me someone else with whom to trade techs. While I had no first-hand knowledge of their infrastructure, I do know that it was hemorrhaging gold, because they probably paid more gpt for tech than any civ I have ever encountered. Consequently, Rome greatly contributed to the speed of my spaceship launch.

Rome sensed my military weakness late in the ancient era, and continually declared war on me, even though each war consisted of a galley or two unloading units to be slaughtered on my home turf. Rome stopped only after I upgraded my swords to Azap infantry (which says something about the currecny of their military), but remained unhappy with me for the rest of the game, and declared war one more time at the start of the industrial era. In this last engagement, they shipped over a few cavalry and riflemen. Their fleets also clogged the seas between our two lands, but again, this was no factor, as I had no ships. I never took them seriously, as the AI is pretty bad at overseas invasion, and never attacked their island, as my plan was to solidify our continent, then go for space.

 

[Hurricane]

About Rome's city placement: it seems they prioritised building on the coast, to get a maximum number of harbor cities. However, there was lots of room inland, and a human player with a wide city spread would easily have built double the number of cities (not to mention ICS-builders).

Anyway, the Romans were pretty quick researchers, and had lots of money. Like in Txurce's game, they repeatedly sneak attacked me, but I suspect the reason were that they couldn't afford to pay me the huge gpt payments, not that they thought they had a chance against me.

 

[Yndy]

I believe that were the specs of Rome:

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Rome got 4 free settlers at the start, couldn't build wonders, and couldn't build any settlers from the time they got mapmaking until they entered the middle ages. Their build priorities were also changed (navy was prioritized)

What did I notice and how did this affect my game(play)?
Since I’m playing by intuition I did not observed during the game that something was artificially modded in the Rome game. But I must say that I was always surprised by the Romans.
First they built harbors like crazy. I did not have any and they had 5 in circa 500BC. As a consequence I built a harbor to trade for Ivory and thus had access to 6 luxuries from circa 10AD (could had been faster).

Then I noticed their culture (atypical for a militaristic civ). They had 50% of the world culture around 10AD. This had no impact on me, just a sign that they had a lot of shields to burn, and probably were pretty powerful in military.

I misinterpreted their refusal to build on the island to the east, and the southern peninsula, previously settled by Chartage. I thought that they reached optimal city number. That was good ‘cause it took some time until I settled that peninsula. Actually, they never build any cities apart from their original core of 9.

Rome declared war to Chartage and razed 4 cities on the peninsula mentioned above. They also left a contingent of about 6 legions and horses, which they later disbanded? I was warring Chartage in the same time but was indifferent on the tundra cities razed by the Romans, so no influence there.

Roman navy was pretty large in hindsight but that did not occur to me during the game. They lost a couple of galleys to squids but they cleaned them from the seas (never met one myself). During my first and second war with Rome there were some limited naval battles where I lost about 4 galleys during sea battles but also 3 more when the Romans unexpectedly took my bridgehead city on their island. One galley had three Azacs and I only attacked because the Roman galley was redlined-I lost. BTW, in the final turns of the game I lost a muslim caravel packed with Siphai to FOG.

The Roman wars. I knew Rome had a powerful military as told by my advisor. I could not attack the weak Chinese or any other civs on the second continent as I lacked astronomy, and lighthouse (the lighthouse would have been an excellent wonder in this game. I estimate it would have saved me 20 to 30 turns to domination, had I owned it). I intended to get the siphai and rule the world with them and overpassed chivalry to build more cheap horsemen. They were so cheap that I ended up with 50 of them as well as about 10 Azacs and that started to hinder my research (in Republic). So I figured that 40 horses and 10 Azacs would be enough to break Roman ranks and get a town or two before siphai. I sent a settler and built a bridgehead on the NW jungle in Roman lands. I declared war and advanced cautiously towards the closest Roman city. Immediately about 7 Legions counter-attacked and I retreated to a hill and charged unfortified units in the open ground. But they kept coming. I wasted about 10 Roman units in two turns with minor losses but I was now surrounded by 10 other and I had about 10 horses healing in the back with reinforcements pouring in at a slow rate of 4 units per turn. Now my losses increased and had lost most of my Azacs so I retreated further on a hill near my beachhead. They pushed in and I had killed some 5 more Roman units with probably the same number of losses on my side (but only due to horses retreating into the city). SO I retreated into the city and sent my three muskets towards the city (I was a slow thinker and should have done that from the start, yet I was late and got there in the 25th hour). All my units retreated into the city and counter-attacked the advancing enemy. My first two Muskets were close but 1 turn before they arrived the Romans killed 6 fully healed horses. My muskets landed and I thought I would have the time to heal my 10-15 redlined horses. The muskets held two turns and scored the last kills of that war. My counterattacks redlined the enemy and I thought those units would go back and heal. But as my muskets fell they attacked my redlined horses with everything they had (including redlined spears!!!). While my third musket fortified, the Romans sent everything in and killed like 10 units with no losses, took the town, auto razed it and took my only 3 galleys that had just unloaded. I had lost the war (WW was also over 50% and Romans would not sign peace). The Romans never landed on my turf but I could easily defend there. They signed peace after a couple more turns and I hag to pay them some 15 gpt for the damage. But the disappearance of the WW only exceeded that cost.

It was a massive setback of at least 10 turns in my domination strategy, and was the most important aspect of my game.
By the time I discovered siphai I had like 40 horses (what if I also had the 30-40 that I had lost in the first war). I landed in the same spot, tricked the Romans into declaring and spent three turns chopping them off. It was a massacre where I destroyed like 30 units loosing only two. The last offensive action of the Romans was reconquering Rome the turn after I got it but then I finished them easily.

The Roman units were a mix of legions (40%), Med Inf (30%), Archers, Horses and Spears (10% each). The sheer number of units was twice the amount in my worst nighmares, about 3 times more than the Romans would have in a similar game. The good part is that I prevailed but had I knew some conditions I would have acted differently. Overall I slightly dislike the changes to the Romans given the fact that they influence the game too much. (room for luck with Romans resulting in high scores).

 

[CdB]

I met Rome aroud 1000 BC and took the opportunity of some free land in the NW of their island to settle there in order to have later a port of entry for invasion.
However Rome was stronger than me and took the ooportunity to declare war so I lost my city easily. I did not even wanted to defend it since it would have been a lost battle with galleys to bring reinforcements and Rome being so strong at sea.

I was surprised of Rome addictions to produce boats and after my first attempt to sub-due the island never tried again. Apart from patrolling the seas and bombarding when at war. I did not see much of real war with the romans.

 

[cracker]

Excellent comments Yndy!!!

Have you previously engaged in a horseman style war against Legionaries and Medieval Infantry where you had positive results??

 

[Ronald]

Roman galleys were sailing around our continent after I took out the Celts and prepared for war with Carthago. The military adviser told me, that they have a strong army compared to us. So I made them my ally in the war against Carthago.

I was wandering, why the Romans never settled the large island to their east and why they did not settle on my continent in the south. There was plenty of room.
I also was surprised, that they were only researching the lower half of the tech tree in middle ages. They almost kept pace with me and I was straight going for military tradition. Normally the AI would go for the whole tree. During the game although it did not occur to me that this is influenced by external settings. I thought that is just coincidence.

Romans were quite helpful against Carthago and they declared war against me just the turn after I had upgraded all my horsemen into Sipahi. That was really great timing for me.

The military adviser told me, that they had a strong military compared to mine (I had about 35 Sipahi and 10 musketmen adn a few other units).
When I landed at the Roman continent, they kept sending armies consisting of legionries and med. infantry in stacks of about ten.

After destroying 4 of them with amost no losses (Sipahi rock!) the military adviser said for the first time they have an average army, and three turns later their army was weak. After loosing several cities, they all of a sudden started to settle on the island so I was wandering if they had a restriction on the numbers of cities.
In hindsight, I was lucky to wait for Sipahies before fighting rome. Knights would have been quite difficult.

The replay at the end showed, that Rome had some free settlers available )probably to make up beeing alone on an island.
Personally, I would have liked more, that their isalnd would have been a bit larger and it would have been settled with 3 civ's as well instead of artificially strenghten (and then weaken) the Romans

 

[rabies]

Notes on Rome from My game.
I opted for conquest fairly early in the game (I had never played emperor, and when I saw the chance to win this way, I grabbed it), and Rome was the 3rd victim of my ruthless ways.

Rome made contact with ME in 875 BC. I had never built boats nor saw his units at the point, so presumably, they bought contact to me through Carthage/Celts. From the get go he was annoyed with me..and simply huge. I was dumbfounded at how large (both in power and culture) he was at during this point of the game...and from here on out, he became the 1 civ I feared, his military was always larger than mine, he was always ahead in tech and he was constantly either demanding stuff from me or declaring war for the hell of it while I was trying to dominate my starting continent. To me, he represented what I thought a Emperor level AI would be like in the game...after being surprised at how easy the Celts and Carthage were.

In my game - as far as I know, Rome never went to war with anybody but myself.

Only once during the early wars I had with Celts/Carthage did he mange to land troops (2 legion) on my shores..both were dispatched..but not before he triggered his GA. Most of the time, his galleys would be sunk by the squid swimming around my coast.

In 10 AD Rome had 10 cities on his continent. By comparison, India (#2 in score at the time) had 15, I had 18 (#3) and the other civs (except Celts) had anywhere between 10-14 each. All but two or three were on the coast. Surprisingly, he did not control his continent. Both India and Celts had a coast city on his continent. I believe the Indian city culture flipped to him at some point, but the Celt city stayed there until I took it in 710 AD - giving me foothold onto his continent. This surprised me greatly, as he clearly had the resources/time to have his entire continent to himself. Watching the replay, it looks like he just didn't bother..he was too busy building culture/military and Navy.

In 830, I declared war on the Romans. At this point, the world was towards the end of the middle ages. Military Tradition was known by all..and I had about 30 Siphahi and 10 elite Knights in his foothold city. I razed his city of Hispalis on turn 1 of the war and killed about a 20 units total, including Cavalry, MDI, Pikes and Musket men. After this brutal round, I checked my military advisor and found he was STILL stronger than me in military..uh oh. Turn two, I change my mind and decide to go on defense...and expect a huge counter attack. I move all my units back into the foot hold city...losing maybe a half dozen on the retreat to a few of his Cavalry/Knights/MDI.

...and the counterattack I was (not) expecting came. I expected tons of Cavalry..he had plenty of time with Mil Tradition to create a ton. Instead, what I got was MDI and other out-dated units. Over the next 4 turns or so, he sent wave after wave of MDI, Longbowmen, Pikemen and Legions..with the occasional Knight/Horseman. Overall, I think I destroyed about 40-50 MDI, nearly half as many Pikemen, a dozen legion and a handful of the rest. Once the waves stopped...my Military advisor finally told me I was strong compared to them...and off the Siphai went to raze all his cities in about 10 turns. The cities were heavily defended, but contained maybe 1 or 2 musketmen..the rest being pikes or even spear..which the Siphahi did not even break a sweat over. I am thankful now, after reading Yndy's post, that I elected to retreat right away and let him try to take my musket defended walled city (which he did not even dent with his MDI) rather than press the attack ...where my Sipahi would have suffered major losses...just due to the sheer number of units he had.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the other spoiler threads..he had nearly a dozen or more navy units (galleass) bombing my coasts and my foothold cities. I never bothered to attack him, opting to slip my loaded caravals past them instead. There seemed to be no reason or logic behind his bombing..other than annoy me...he never bothred trying to land troops on my continent.

Rome was clearly my biggest obstacle in the game. It was all dowhill from there. He posed more of a problem for me than the 4 civs on the other continet combined (yes..I went to war with all 4 of them once Rome was gone)...even when they had Nationalism/Riflemen.

I never did capture and hold a Roman city..opting to raze them all, so I never saw what he constructed. At his downfall, he was still the culture leader in the game...yet...he never once produced a single wonder. I don't think I was notified that he even bothered to start on one. In hindsight, I find this very odd as well. All of the other civs, even the ones I was actively at war with, would start/finish wonders. Rome never bothered.

 

[Yndy]

Originally posted by cracker
Excellent comments Yndy!!!

Have you previously engaged in a horseman style war against Legionaries and Medieval Infantry where you had positive results??

Thanks, I thought that was a rather lengthy description of my first war but it was really tensed.

I had used Horsemen as attackers in deity games against Rome, when they had Legions and Pikes (v 1.29 back then). If you have the number on your side it is doable. On a rule of thumb average, attacking a legion or pike on open ground with 3 or 4 horses will have you lose 1, damage/retreat one or two and win with the last one. I did not expect to encounter more than 20 Roman offensive units to counter my attack, and I expected to take at least one city using the element of surprise.

 

[cracker]

Yndy,

Did you use even one "investigate city" option to get a perspective of what you might face?

Also, how did you gain contact with Rome?? Did you have access to the view of their capital via the "establish embassy" information?

The AI also tends to build defensive units in pure ratio to the number of towns. Using your view of the Roman Territory compared to your Ottoman territory (or Carthage) could you use the power histograph to predict the offense/defense ratio of their forces.

My curve matching in these calculations indicates that the AI values a swordsman at a power of five relative to the valuing a spearman at power 3. Does anyone else have observations in this area?

Also, for all players, "When Rome attacked you, where were these attacks located and why do you think those locations were chosen?

 

[Hergrom]

My experiences were very similar to those posted above. I didn't meet Rome until after the QSC period. When we did meet, Rome was the leader of the world. He had nearly double the internal score that I had, and was superior militarily, scientifically and culturally.

In the late BC's, I started a proxy war with the Celts against Cartahge. I wanted to set both civs back alittle bit while I finsihed expanding. I enlisted Rome in the war as well, simply to prevent Carthage from doing the same. A few turns later, Rome landed some legions near my core. I asked them to leave and they declared war. I gave them their GA, but destroyd the troops. That was the last time Rome declared war on me.

After I controlled my entire continent, I need more room to expand, and I erroneously chose the Roman lands. This was shortly after I had gotten Siphai, somwhere in the 1000 AD range. I landed like 6 riflemen and maybe 12 Siphai. I should have paid more attention, because I nearly got obliterated. I took over a poorly defended, former Spanish city. Then I proceeded to get assaulted by wave after wave of Medieval Infantry, Longbows and riflemen. If I did not have all of those riflemen, I would have ben easily eliminated form the island. I estimate that I killed over 70 Roman units. It was unreal.

My goal for this game was 100k culture, and my only real adversary was the Romans. Since they were so high in culture early in the game, it was nearly essential that I eliminate them. This took me WAY longer than it should have under normal conditions.

The signs of the Roman power were many: Early leaders in science and culture. Obvioulsy large military, including a very large navy. I havn't seen a navy like that since before the vanilla civ3 patches. Watching the replay alone was a real eye opener. Never quite seen anything like it before.

In summation: The juiced up Romans did cause me some delay in my game, but probably not a whole lot. My strategy was not really changed, because I would have eliminated them even if they were the weakest civ on the planet. Do I want this to be prevalent in future games? Doesn't matter to me - everyone is in the same boat.

P.S. - I don't think the Romans built any wonders in my game either. strange behaviour indeed for the AI.

Hergrom

 

[ltccone]

I also noticed how powerful Rome was in the early game. Their galleys kept sailing up and down the coast fighting fog and squids.

I also wondered why they didn't completely settle their island. Spain founded two cities on the NW jungle of their island, and the Romans later captured them. Carthage settled the small island to the East.

Rome became a non-factor from the late middle ages on because of constant warfare with Carthage and/or Spain. When I invaded Rome it was in the industrial era. We both had tanks, but I had many more! I captured instead of razing their cities. I also found no wonders.

 

[cracker]

Just to help the process along here.

The Romans did have their governor preferences to build wonders turned OFF. This choice was developed during play testing the game because the AI players place an extreme high priority on building wonders even if those wonders have no strategic applicability to the map situation where they are located.

Unfortunately there is no slider or semi-random game adjustment that lets the AIs give variable priority to building wonders versus implementing some other game expanding strategy.

You might have even seen that the weak and whimpy Celts would even build wonders instead of doing things that might have lead to their survival in the games.

 

[Shillen]

Hmm people don't realize how significant having a monopoly on a luxury is. The civ with a monopoly on a luxury will always be a strong research civ in any game. It was the same case with GOTM18 and the Aztecs. They had a monopoly on silks. This is one of the reasons they built the Pyramids in most people's game. But as long as you didnt' conquer them early they were very powerful researchers because selling luxuries at monopoly price does amazing things for your income, and yes the AI's will pay the monopoly price even if it's not good for them.

As for Rome's military might I didn't really notice. They sneak attacked me in around 200BC or so when I had Entremont undefended. But in the next 10 turns they only dropped off 2 more units in my territory and then I made peace with them. They didn't bombard my coast or anything really. Although a couple of their galleys got sunk by squids so maybe they would have dropped more units off if not for that. Late in the game they did have a lot of ships that were going around busting the fog. Also about 10 turns before I launched my ship they signed into the war on the other continent with an MA. Fortunately they all made peace on the last turn so I was able to sign MPP's without upsetting anyone.

When I first made contact with Rome I was quite surprised. Carthage actually made contact first and sold my contact to them though. But what surprised me is they learned Construction before anyone else. I figured maybe they had beelined to Construction and traded for all the other ancient age techs from Carthage before I contacted them. But I doubt that's the case now. They probably did all their research themselves. Also their culture was just astounding. Even with their large number of cities I hardly expected them to be so far ahead in culture.

Here's my histograph for culture:

You can see where my culture hits rock bottom and then starts shooting up, that's when I learned literature in the Middle Ages. This also answers the question other people had about building temples or not. I didn't build any temples before I got literature. But since libraries give 3 culture and universities 4 I was able to make a strong comeback culturally.

edit: Oh another point this brings about. Even though Rome wasn't building any wonders they still had this incredibly large cultural advantage. I always see people who are going for 100k culture victories talking about wonders, which ones they missed and they actually think that missing a wonder sets them back so much. Wonders mean almost nothing to a 100k culture win. You can spend 400 shields on the Great Library and get 6 culture per turn or you can spend 140 shields on a library + university and get 7 culture per turn. Wonders are just a little bonus culture in your cities that already have all other culture improvements. But missing wonders isn't that big a deal if you're going for 100k victory.

 

[Zwingli]

Rome was the most powerful civ in my game, and turned out to be very helpful in Middle Ages tech aquisition. In fact, they were so far stronger than the other civs that I gave up on the others for tech research and traded techs exclusively with Rome (and later Egypt). Therefore Rome became the primary tech broker to the rest of the world, and became very wealthy. They never declared war on me, perhaps because I kept 1 token soldier in each rear city (usually a warrior) to avoid having a tempting target. I also always had gpt and luxury deals with them, and maintained a Rite of Passage.


While checking a small Roman city to see how many luxuries they were getting, I stumbled upon the alteration to Roman settlers.

At first I though that cracker gave Rome half price (1 population rather than 2) settlers which would explain their rapid expansion to the OCN limit without drastically shrinking their cities. Judging from Bamspeedys remarks I gather that they were instead prevented from building settlers during a certain time period, and given bonus starting settlers. This goes a long way to explaining Rome's peculiar strength in GOTM 19 since normally civs will produce hoards of settlers until all available land is taken, regardless of how valuable the resulting cities will be. The drain on population often results in size 1-2 AI capitals until late in the Ancient Era, and core cities with low production and commerce potential. Without the need to make more settlers, Rome instead built up troops and infrastructure resulting in high early culture and scientific output.

The limit on wonder building also could have been quite helpful for Roman development. Usually a civ will waste early production in the capital on a wonder which will provide little or no benifit to long term strength. Under the right conditions, the Pyramids or Colossus can be benificial, but most of the AI civs will end up cascading to a useless wonder (Great Wall/Oracle) or one which they mishandle (Great Library/Great Lighthouse) or end up with nothing at all. This tendancy toward early wonders also makes them vulnearable to an early rush since production is diverted from defence.

Having access to 2 extra native luxuries in addition to their monopoly on ivory also helped to strengthen Rome. Most randomly generated islands will have only one luxury although it is often the exclusive source of that one luxury. Without the extra luxuries Rome would have run entertainers in all their cities, wasting growth and production. Later on, all that extra ivory probably let Rome trade for all of the other luxuries to avoid entertainers and make a sizable profit on the side.

 

[Smirk]

Originally posted by cracker
My curve matching in these calculations indicates that the AI values a swordsman at a power of five relative to the valuing a spearman at power 3. Does anyone else have observations in this area?
[/B]

When I originally built my embassy before say 600BC they had 4 legions in their capital. I did this to bring them in on my Celt and Carthage wars.

I tried to settle twice on the Roman island, the first time a stack of at least 10-15 units, (~1-2 archers and 1-2 spearman) took my single swordsman.
My second landing consisted of about 20 Sipahi in total (3/4 of them landing on the east coast and the rest with a settler on the west) and the unit makeup was quite a bit more mixed, a few cavalry, macers, muskets and riflemen (macers seemed to be the most populated). One small difference I also noticed was that they were attacking me with units that are generally defense, this is pretty rare IMO for the AI to do, and they were attacking successfully which is even more rare.
Both attempts were defeated within two turns. They had a *lot* of units. Had they been part of a regular landmass they may have actually been a real opponent.

I got contact shortly after the QSC period and they had a comparable number of cities, however they were double my score and in fact more than all the rest of us combined. At the end of my game Rome was in IA by itself, and they only settled the little island to their east in all that time. And they only settled it after cities there were destroyed.

 

[Ambiorix]

just my 0.02 € here, with some observations :
- Ottomans had a monopoly on dyes
- there was only one source of gems; in the Celtic jungle
- Rome had a monopoly on Ivory
- Egypt had wine, China had furs, but those were not monopolies
- Spain didn't have any luxuries

I never tried to sell the gems...must have been worth quite a bit. Hmmm... (doing some experiments) ... they ARE being valued higher than other luxuries.

When Roman troops landed on my continent, they did so near Mohàcs, where the dyes were. They could just as easily have landed near the silks, so apparantly they make a distinction based on availability - uhm, right ?

 

[acivguy]

In my game Rome also was powerful, but they never contacted anyone besides me. The first city I put on their island(by the ivory able to get 2 ivory in radius) caused a prompt war, and they killed my spearman and razed the city. Upon making peace I made another city in the same spot, landed several pikes, rushed a barracks,walls, library, a few spearmen, and a harbor. I built a fortress on the northern ivory and put several defensive units.

In my next war against rome, the killed a few of their units on my fortress, then they completely ignored this city. They occasionally would drop a unit from a galley into the city radius, but that is all.

I landed about 40 sipahi, and promptly took a northwest city. They sent several stacks of 5-10 units lots of maces/legions with a few longbows mixed in. I think in total they had just a few knights. If they had sent all their units in one large stack they probably could have beaten me. Needless to say, at the end of the Rome war most of the sipahi were elite. They seemed to have around 5-6 defenders in each of their core cities. A few of these were muskets (they culturally flipped a mainland saltpeter city immediately before the war).

What I noticed immediately in this war was that any sipahi I left in Roman territory was killed, without exception.

 

[LKendter]

I also had the Romans that never settled the large island to their east. This actually worked to my advantage as I kicked Carthage off my continent and those island cities let me keep them alive to gain multiple techs via pointy stick research.

There shear number of Legions and Medieval slowed down my domination push at least five turns of killing unit stacks before I could advance on their cities. If this had been cavalry and knights I might have ground to a halt and forces to declare peace that would have delayed my domination 20+ turns.

The sheer size of their navy again slowed me down several turns, as I didn't want to chance sending the transports to my future target of Carthage island cities until after the Rome navy was dead.

I can't offer any comments on when Rome attacked me, as they never did. We stayed at peace the whole game until such time I used my captured Carthage city as a base of war vs. them.

I think I can sum up Rome with one phrase - P.I.T.A.

The big question with Rome is what in the world were worker1 units? Instead of capturing workers as expected, they where killed as if they were scouts. I also razed a couple of Roman large towns and Did NOT get any workers . That was what told me that something was atypical with Rome.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by LKendter
... I also razed a couple of Roman large towns and Did NOT get any workers. That was what told me that something was atypical with Rome.

Lee,

You may be misinterpreting the signals that the game is sending you. The fact the tou got no slave from the large cities that you razed has nothing to do with the "worker1" staging.

When you raze a city that you have captured from a civ, there is a calculation that takes place to determine all the civilians that would be resistors and/or unhappy due to draft/rushing. I know that all the resistors are destroyed when you raze a city and this is plrobably appropriate because if they became slaves they wouldn't follow your orders anyway.

The factor that control the resistors and lost slaves equatiosn will use the ratio of cultural power plus and RNG draw. In this game, Rom was a diliberate cultural threat and every ingame signal that you had available to you would clearly let you know this risk. No reall surprises there.

The "worker1" staging effect was just used counterbalance the extra worker and settlers that Rome began with so that they would be a balanced standoff challenge but without letting them run away with the game unfairly.