*Spoiler4* SPECIAL - Must have submitted Gotm19

[Phillip_martin]

They certainly made me sit up and look! After taking out the Celts with swords just after my QSC I got to Knights and decided to take out Rome before Carthage as their culture and tech was powering along. I had settled two cities in the NE jugle and and landed 15 knights and 10 swords to declare war with (Yes no decent intelligence gained prior to this event). Two things struck me as out of the ordinary.

1. The shear number of units I faced. A real mix of ancient and medieval units that by weigh of number overwelmed my attack, which withdrew into my towns to defend. I can now see what an AI gets up to with no wonders or settler building being done. When I realised that I was not going to be able to keep my towns I then was surprised by the second point.
2. I asked for and got peace! Iwas not expecting this as I was on the back foot and had not taken any of Romes cities. It was only a couple of turns into the war. Normally an AI in this situation would not even accept your envoy.

After that I went for domination by bypassinf Rome and using them as a trading partner. Their massive cultural and tech lead did not bother me as my domination came shortly after entering the first mellinium.

Originally posted by denyd
If Rome had ever landed 30-40 units (legionaries early or cavalry late), I would have been toast!!

This was also another interesting point. As I was progressing in my domination of the second continent with my suped up cav my home continent was mainl undefended. According to my advisor Rome always had the larger army even up to the point of my domination victory. They could have made my life hell but were easily bought for luxuries.

 

[jeffelammar]

Originally posted by denyd
If Rome had ever landed 30-40 units (legionaries early or cavalry late), I would have been toast!!

This is part of what I was trying to get at earlier. (Or at least what I was thinking)

The fundamental issue was that Rome was left with a huge army that could have been used (by a human) to overrun any other tribe. Instead they expanded and stagnated.

In my game, in the hands of a human Rome would have rolled me under. In the "hands" of the AI, I didn't even have to appease them. The most painful part of war with Rome way the loss of shoreline improvements. But most of Rome's navy was near my most corrupt cities on the starting isle. (I had my palace in Sogut and my FP in Carthage, so the middle was quite corrupt)

I may be mistaken, but the biggest effect of Rome's "special" settings was to equip Rome with a huge army that it didn't know how to use. This is always a problem for the AI, but by pushing the issue, the settings put Rome into an even more laughable state.

I am not saying that the settings were a bad thing. I am just trying to understand all the implications.

 

[Borealis]

At 1000 BC, Rome is the power on the block, but doesn't know any other civilizations yet.

In 880 BC, I meet Spain and Rome on the same turn, obtain a mpa, and react with the following mental notes:

1) Make sure I keep at least 1 good defender in every coastal city. The Romans are infamous in my games for randomly landing groups of legions, which is sometimes and sometimes .

2) With all that culture, and that development, I suspected that Rome was rigged from the beginning. Caesar doesn't usually build culture, and with no bonuses Rome would have to be both severely isolated and pop a free settler or two early on to get that high. Rome was easly over 2x the culture of anyone, including India, early on. I quickly managed to catch up to just over half with cheap libraries from Literature, but was wary of taking Rome on early in the game- too much flip risk.

3) Workers needed. Seeing Rome so powerful already prompted me to build my 'worker pump' faster than I usually do, in order to catch up in cash and tech.

4) Tech trading bonanza, as Cracker intended- once I realized that Rome didn't know, or was likely to know, the AI on the large continent, I set about brokering for most of the Middle Ages.

In 550 BC, most AI civs, and the Ottomans, are in either Monarchy or Republic. Rome goes for Monarchy, and starts a relative slide in the power rankings from then on.

270 AD:

By now, the Celts have settled on Rome's island, had their cities taken, and lost one of their main cities. Rome has declared war on me as well as the Celts, and is about to lose the city they just conquered to knights. Also, a minor skirmish between Rome and Carthage has occurred, setting off Golden Ages for both civilizations. Rome is attempting to fight NuMercs with Legions, and failing miserably. Carthage has the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens, and a well-developed core. Rome turns to the Celts instead... and I go hunting.

At this stage, I'm waiting for legions to arrive and create trouble for my coastal cities. The most I ever see are 6 landing to take the Celtic city... unusual in most of my games, where Rome is traditionally very annoying in landing random legions to annoy cities. Rome should be picking on me, as the 8 knights I have are the only non-spear or warrior units I have, but instead Caesar's running into the Carthagnian NuMerc shield wall. Building up Rome's navy didn't help it that much- Rome spent a lot of time killing fog, and didn't launch many naval expeditions.

570 AD:

I've taken all the Celtic cities, and Rome has obtained one small, tundra-choked Carthagnian city for their troubles. Isolating Rome allowed it to be used for a brokering opportunity, but it also put the 'maritime invasion' jinx on it that tends to confuse the AI.

980 AD:

I'm about to take my first Spanish city. Why Spain and not Rome?
Rome is technically stronger, but the powergraph doesn't show that Rome is far behind in tech, and will not get rifles for some time. Also, Rome has high culture, making flip risks possible. The victory type dictated attacking the larger continent at some point, and I chose to attack sooner rather than later. Rome continued squabbling with other civs, but remains stagnant from this point on.

The endgame:

Edit: The endgame shots are supposed to show the inability of Rome in the late Middle Ages/early Industrial Age to sufficiently counterattack in a short time, despite their ability to sit and build a nice army on their own for quite some time. My Sipahi didn't roll through Rome as fast as the other civs due to my desire to silence rebels and rush libraries, giving Caesar time to get his units out. He sent some longbows, and a few Cavalry, but otherwise the response to my invasion was decidedly lacking.

 

[planetfall]

Originally posted by zagnut
Cracker asked at the beginning of the thread how we handled the special attributes he gave Rome. I think that you can see that a lot of people left Rome alone. Col seems to have summed it up when he says that in order to get a domination victory you would have to conquer the main continent. Therefore, it made sense to bypass Rome. In doing so I think a lot of the special attributes cracker built into Rome went undiscovered by many players.

Agreed. First priority was home continent. This took forever as I am still learning the game. By the time to decide between 4 civ continent or one civ Rome, India and fast rising China were higher threats than Rome. Not that Rome was a pushover, but since they were strong militarily and India was average and both were equal in techs, it made more sense to first take care of India, and then while over there China and then come back to Rome.

Also since Rome was so strong during most of the game, I was the civ trading and in peace with Rome.

It was amazing how little gold it took to restart a war with Rome on one side or other. Every AI civ hated Rome.

-- PF

 

[ltcoljt]

My decision to bypass Rome was based on luxuries. Rome was willing to trade ivory. If I had taken them out I would have still had to depend on getting wines and furs from someone on the main continent. So, I took out Spain to secure those first. I guess my thinking was based on my objective, to go for a phased expansion in milk as you go mode towards the domination limit and eventual space race.

If I had be less focus on this particular goal, I might have attacked Rome earlier and stubbed my toe a little.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I bypassed Rome, but mostly by coincidence. My first thought about overall strategy was just to conquer the big continent, and bypass Rome. Then, when I got my first Sipahi, I didn't have Astronomy yet (I didn't control the timing because I got Military Tradition from the Great Library), and I was already at war with Rome, so it seemed obvious to attack them with some Sipahi and trigger my golden age. But immediately after I landed, Rome got Spain to ally against me! And then I noticed that Rome was willing to make peace with me cheaply, and ally against Spain! So I switched targets back to Spain.

After I had control of most of the large continent, I went back to attacking Rome, and I was surprised at this point by the large number of Medieval Infantry (especially) and Legionnaires. But still it wasn't a problem for my Sipahi, by then.

I did notice that many of the Roman workers would die when I overran them, instead of being capturable. I found this mildly irritating, but the game was about over by them so it wasn't really significant. I never razed any Roman cities, so I don't know if I would have seen odd results from that.

The galleass was interesting but not too hard to adapt to. One caveat: I noticed the Romans leaving their vessels in "unsafe waters", which normally the AI will never do: I think this is because they expected to be able to move 3 spaces in the computation of whether they could reach safety, and then were left in unsafe waters when they ran out of movement points. This wasn't a big issue in my game, but I can see how it could be. (One of the things that I don't like about the GOTMs is that the oceans are so skinny.)

I strongly agree with Greebley (post #40): the tweaking of Rome is a good thing. Who wants to fight exactly the same opponents every time? Keep mixing it up! I'd like to see even more variety of opposing civilizations and AI settings in future games. In addition to adding variety, it also helps balance the advantages of the people who've played dozens of full games and know exactly what to expect from every one of the standard opponents.
I'm fully supportive of things like civilizations that get extra advantages at start but handicaps later on, or civilizations that get a slightly less favorable start but advantages that kick in later.
(As long as they don't totally ignore basic game rules---which the Romans didn't.)

 

[civ_steve]

I know we've started GOTM20, but I've only just now gotten time to read through this thread, and wanted to add a few comments.

Firstly, I too like the idea of tweaking an AI civ to change the mix abit. I feel it's very easy to get into a 'play civ by the numbers' mode, and any chance to change the equations around and wake the players up is a good idea. From the discussion it sounds like Rome needed the help, also.

When I first came across Rome (just after the QSC period), I had as many cities as Caeser and a pretty sizeable army, so I wasn't real concerned about Rome. My focus was to control my initial continent, Celts first and then Carthage. By the time I was ready to invade Rome (mid to late 700's AD), my F3 advisor said I was strong against every army, so again I wasn't too concerned.

My first war with Rome was shortly before I'd eliminated the Celts. I'd taken Richborough at the South end of the large interior Lake, so a lot of my forces were there. We'd entered the Middle Ages, and a 8 high stack of Barb horsemen popped up near Entremont. I needed to rush some of my forces to defend Entremont, and this stupid Roman worker was sitting on my only road. Even though I was in the middle of a 20 turn deal with Rome, I declared war and attacked (all Roman workers died in my game, but I was able to capture other civ's workers). A few turns later the Romans landed 3 units near Entremont, were beaten back and peace was declared. A few turns after that, they landed a few more troops, and was was redeclared. Of course I killed this stack. I watched a flotilla of Galleys go North, and eventually drop off 5 units to attack my Forbidden Palace (Aydin, near the Game space.) My defenses handled them, and peace was redeclared. My reputation was soiled, but you can still deal if you've got the cash.

Rome's Galleass's are a nice touch, but had little effect on the game. I was focused on my continent initially, and I had Ironclads before I invaded Rome. The Galleass might have more impact on an archipelago style map. Rome's large navy did take planning for eventually, but was not to difficult to manage. I was at war with Rome for a long time before I invaded their continent. Rome's navy spent most of that time bombarding my SouthEasternmost city, a hopelessly corrupt city in the tundra.

While Rome had a large cultural lead and point lead, my many cities, most with Libraries, quickly chiseled into that lead.

When I did eventually invade Rome, I found out that Ceasar had Riflemen. This slowed me down, as I decided to wait until Replaceable Parts to continue the offensive (we were still at war, though.) So I sat in my one founded city, on the Rome continent, and soaked up a bunch of Cavalry and MedInf attacks. He might have been more successful if the attack was focused, which it wasn't; rarely were all 7 cannon used against the attacking units. The first city I razed (Virconium, I think) gave me 4 workers, but they might have been captured units hiding in the city.

I didn't use the Investigate City function; I was very confident that my style of invasion would whittle down Rome's attack capability at little risk to my invading forces. I'll usually only use the Investigate City key to check on civ's progress on a Wonder.

That's it. The game was fun! I'd like to see more tweaks in the coming months.