The Ancient Mediterranean Mod (TAM) - Large Map ver 2.5j

[Bezhukov]

I doubt we'll have to worry about it soon, but I would agree to avoid phony wars. On the other hand, we did not get "nothing" out of the Hun refusal. We got Mysticism at (local) monopoly and were able to recoup our investment with significant gpt thrown in.

The Huns were just as likely to provoke a war with the Macedonians by marching through their lands without and RoP as to manage to find us.

 

[akots]

I have taken a close look at the save and it might be OK. We have a few choices atm IMO. We can trade Monarchy for some ridiculoius gpt, return about 50% of this back and revolt immediately facing probably 4-5 turn anarchy. It might be we will be able to trade for copper as well. Then, upgrade a warrior or two and trigger Golden Age in a phony war ourselves. By putting the guy in a boat and sailing to Minoans, for example. Not sure the war will be completely phony, but still less likely to see any units from Crete. We then should also go to Math and then to Lit with prebuilding for Great Library. It migth be we don't make it though since it is Deity level after all. However, in Monarchy and GA, this might work. On the drawback of this plan, price for Monarchy is too steep for my liking of it.

We also can build up a few warriors, try to culturally get our own copper and then upgrade starting a not-so-phony war against Roma. However, IMHO, we need about 50 peltasts at least to make a good progress. This will gain us some more land and resources. But this mean basically we will not get TGL.

Third plan might be just test our sailor's luck and try to make it to Lidia, Egypt, and may be even Sea Peoples as well as to Kolchis in the Black Sea. This takes huge time though. Meanwhile, we just sit and follow the second plan. After we get more contacts, cash flow from brokering might improve at least slightly. But AIs would also get contacts over time. We also need to grow the cities and another IMHO, we should start buyingworkers from the AI. They are at 250g and over a piece, so it is not cheap but might be well worth it. We can certainly sacrifice one in the soon-to-be copper city. And seems that settling phase is essentially over and we might think of letting the cities grow to make military.

I will try to play tonight, so please post your suggestions.

Also, on the technical side, we might have problems with uploading the save in the near future since it grows and grows in size and in no time will be over 1 Mb. I can put it out in the Yahoo briefcase if it gets critical. But for the present, CFC upload server seems to work OK.

 

[grs]

Well, zipping it will definetely help, I would say.

 

[kryszcztov]

Technical side : The save I got was attached if I'm not mistaken, whereas I had to upload the one I gave you, since it was heavier than 500 KB, even when zipped. The upload feature, however, can take files up to 3 MB if I'm not mistaken. So we have a real margin. Note it's the 1st time I've used upload and attachement at CFC for more than a year, so I'm not used to it.

Ingame issues : I think it's not good to pay tons of gold for Monarchy to a civ that already has tons of gold. I prefer to continue building warriors, and get a way to have copper without using a dirty trick (like breaking a deal...). Can any slave be sacrificed in any city for some culture ? If so, I'm for buying one and using it in the soon-to-get-copper city, if we're sure that no Roman city has culture yet around it. And if we're sure that the copper will be ours after adjustment of borders. I still don't know how borders adjust in Civ3 after all that time.

 

[Bezhukov]

Pls do not buy workers, we need that cash to upgrade warriors or buy Monarchy, as you pointed out. We will be able to trade outdated techs for workers soon. We should be meeting Minoans, Phoenicians, Israelis, Egyptians, and hopefully the big inland civs within the next ten turns. Not long after that we should get contact with the Sea People, Carthage, and the Berbers. That's a lot of civs that should be somewhat backward, and thus willing to trade workers for tech. Having contact with the tech leaders also decreases tech costs. Pls wait until we make contact to buy Monarchy.

As to the Peltasts - don't forget that they are move 2 - I don't believe Rome has any fast units. We may lose our western city, but conquering the main Roman lands will make it worth it. Tech should slow down in our part of the world when we get to the untradable techs. The GL may need to be conquered. Should we successfully take Rome, we will have the firepower to do so, let's just hope it' s close by...

 

[Bezhukov]

Contested tiles go to the city with more culture, even one more. In cities without culture, I believe the tie goes to the civ with more culture.

>And seems that settling phase is essentially over and we might think of letting the cities >grow to make military.

This sounds like a good idea, considering that our four main cities all have fresh water and can grow to 8, and that mountains are the only tiles that make more than 2 shields improved (they make 4).

Let's not shy away from the Slave Markets - we can make up the culture later.

 

[Winterfell]

Well I say we should go for the second plan and not build the GL. It's a small chance for us to get it, a gambling actually. If we lose it, we have lost many turns of production. We shuold go to war with rome.

 

[akots]

I have not played yet, sorry for delay. Actually, it is surprizing for me that we have so little cash on Deity at this stage of the game. In vanilla or C3C, the higher the difficulty, the more cash you get. If this were a similar size map with similar number of civs on C3C, we could have got probably 10-times more cash on Deity than on Emperor difficulties. In this mod however, either we don't have enough contacts or there is something else. Because by turn 120 on Monarch (my first game with this mod), I had about 8000 gold. With many contacts (probably 17 or 19, don't remember exactly). Well, here we should have had more gold which does not happen even considering we lost 1000g in war reparations. I was expecting something in the region of 12-15K. Seems that AI can build units fast but also fast is reaching of the growth limitation due to food limitation. This just leaves them building more and more units and all their gold is eaten by the unit support costs. On one hand, this is good because they would choke themselves with units and slow down the research. On the other hand, we need this gold and we need Monarchy rather soon to be able to spend it. Since iirc, when AIs will revolt to Monarchy, and if they do (well, most will revolt), the cash they have on hand will greatly diminish.

This is very peculiar and unusual.

 

[Bezhukov]

When I inherited the game, we were down 4 techs and near broke, which is very unusual considering my test games. I got us to tech parity with 1200 gold making 60 per turn by the end of my turns (also costing us 500 in an evetual peace concession), but I use CivAssist to keep track of opportunities. The gold was there are these turns. Not sure what is happening on the others.

 

[akots]

Well, I have loaded the save yesterday and checked for current trading opportunities and there are none which are satisfactory enough except for Monarchy which I have mentioned. This leaves the TGL build as one of the top priorities IMHO. I wish we have a prebuild for it but I just don't see it happening since there are no contacts with tech leaders. And even in this case Lit is not tradeable. By the time we self-research it (which might take full 60 turns even on maximum or may be around 25-35 turns), the AIs would be already close to the next age and TGL will be certainly built.

The situation is grave and I'm very close to abandoning the game and starting a new one as a civ which can get some more contacts earlier. With second-hand tech brokering, what happens is that we accelerate local tech pace and don't profit enough from it to make this beneficial for us. By trading at somewhat inferior prices, we have basically "brought up" all AIs around us to a fair level and the trading opportunities are starting to deplete because of this. An alternative strategy might be dividing the AIs into groups which certainly have no contact with each other (for example, Iberia- Britons versus Scythia-Hunns) and attempting to arrange trades independently for each group by denying them the critical techs for a certain pathway so that they have to acquire a first or second level tech in this pathway. Since AI trades only once per turn with another AI, this basically means, they would acquire by trade or research only level 2 tech during a single turn. We then can offer them level 3 tech and get maximum profit out of it. But we still need more contacts for this to work.

 

[akots]

Preturn check: Switch Telamun to growth, after a few worker builds due are finished, most towns will switch to warriors. We can trade copper from Rome for wool+250g at any time. No reasonable trades are possible. Does not look good. Anyhow, let’s see how it goes.

[1] Volci builds settler starts on Slave market. Goths have build Pyramids. That is a rather peculiar. I thought they were supposed to be in Egypt. Mithridates completes Oracle.

[2] Huns have 2 workers for sale. They want 550g for them. Settler from Volci goes to tin lake and settler near Tarquinii goes west.

[3] We meet Phoenician merchant ships. No trades possible. Whip cult site in Vetulona.

[4] Trade Alphabet to Iberia for worker+12g. Our boats sail to Crete and we meet Minoans. No trades here as well. Caere grows to size 6 and we appoint a tax collector there. Trade Poly to Germanic tribes for worker+108g+2gpt. Gravisca goes to Slave market.

[5] Roman warrior/velite/settler combo enters our territory. Access to roads will be locked by warriors but they still will advance.

[6] Troy, Macedonia, and Huns have Math and both Troy and Macedonia are up to 3K treasury. There is nothing we can do to get these moneys from them. Populonia built on tin lake. Goes to archer. Math is actually surprisingly cheap, only 1490 gold. But there is no way we can trade it for something worthy since Monarchy is way more expensive than Math. Caesar comes and asks to trade him wool and 3gpt for wines. We’ll think about it.

[7] A peculiar screenshot of barbarian island with Ravagers.

[8] Trojans are building TGL. Here is our chance. IIRC, Troy is on the coast and we can get it with amphibious UU. We finally make contact with Lydia. And they are down Alpha and a few other techs on us. But have no gold! Kriosos and has no gold? This is weird. We have 24 warriors and are paying 15gpt unit support.

[9] Macedonians start building Olympic games. Volaterrae built in a weird location but it might survive there. We cross the seas and encounter Egyptian city of Elephantine. The mighty Pharaon is up Math and Monarchy and has 1800g. Next turn can drop archer who is supposed to march all the way to Persia.

[10] Archer unloaded, no reasonable trades are possible. Here is our core with a bunch of wondering Roman units. By no means should we block their way, let them go where they are going, it is not our business. If we do, they can attack. Might be good idea to make a path open for them to make sure they don’t jam our road traffic.

Here is the infamous wondrous Egypt:

And the city of Priam and Hector:

And the zipped heavy SAVEhttp://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/TAM_SG1-2500BC.zip

Stapel is UP and Winterfel is getting ready.

IMHO, we can capture TGL with some luck and get a few techs. Just need a bunch of boats since each boat can carry only a single attacker. And it is a long way to sail there.

 

[Bezhukov]

One thing I'll do is check back with a civ when a gpt deal runs out to keep their gpt tied up. Might be too late for that here. Do galleys (require math) only carry one unit? Do we get an extra move from our seafaring trait? Why is Caere not growing? We can peel off a worker when it gets to six, and still make one turn warriors as it grows, correct?

 

[akots]

Our curragh moves 2 coastal tiles and one sea. Galleys will be 2/3, don't know about transport capacity, iirc also a single unit. IMO, we don't need more workers of our own. At least not in Despotism and not in city size over 4. They are too slow to be a reasonable builds and takes a bit too long to build that population back. What is really lacking is population and might be that joining a worker from Caere to Vetulonia to whip a temple faster is OK. But we can rather easily trade for copper instead. IMO, the buildup phase has begun and each and every warrior counts. Romans, believe me or not, have lots of troops. Sitting in the cities and wondering around. We would have to knock them all off in a single turn if we want to survive the war and gain some cities and land.

And all we have is around 25 warriors most of which are veteran though. We need regulars for military police as well. The goal might be however, get to Monarchy before Golden Age and this is critical indeed since Monarchy is a very expensive tech. I'm not sure we can get it without screwing up our financial wellfare. At least, the demands have stopped and we are basically earning money with our military considering lost 1000g. The gpt which the AIs are having is not worth the hassle of trading and we would be giving away expensive techs at bargain prices or 3-4 gpt and 100g cash if any. Slaves though are worth it but they are not very abundant for sale. The trades have to be handled with great caution in this mod since techs are really very expensive for AI even on Deity.

We just need more time to build more warriors and get more contacts. It is not reasonable to start war without at least 50 units. There is also flux near Telamun which if hooked up in about +15 turns will get us a second luxury and this would allow the cities to grow to size 7.

 

[Bezhukov]

"Romans, believe me or not, have lots of troops. Sitting in the cities and wondering around. We would have to knock them all off in a single turn if we want to survive the war and gain some cities and land."

I very much believe it. owever, they are all slow, correct? Once we get the cultural expansion in the copper city, we could allow the Roman units to approach us, then slaughter them in the open. This would make the cities easier to breach.

Given the number of civs out the, 100 +3/4 gpt could add up. This is gold that is evidently just going to Troy anyway.

 

[akots]

It might be not the case. Looks like everything below a certain gold and gpt does not work for AI trades. I have not noticed this 100g going anywhere during my turns, only slightly increasing by the said 3-4 gpt. That is apparently difference between max science and troop maintenance which is not enough to buy the AI a tech. If we can apture Troy, we get a bunch of gold in addition to the Library.

Certainly, we would want as many Roman troops within our borders as reasonably possible. I would even try to bait them a little bit when we are ready. Still, very heavy losses may be anticipated on our side. We might also storm a few border cities on this very first turn. It might be, we will not be able to upgrade all the warriors though and getting the copper by border expansion will take a long time considering that border expansion takes 10 turns. Our culutre is a little bit smaller than Roman (by 25% or so) which does not help as well. I'm not sure but it might be worth to try to buy copper in exchange for our wool once there is road to Macedon. Each upgrade costs 90 gold and it is expensive and we don't have enough cash.

We can certainly try a semi-exploitative approach of trading Monarchy from Rome for gpt (we dont' have enough gpt atm) and then ask them to leave. I'm almost positive they will declare in this case. We can even try to trade copper from them. But let's leave this possibility as a last resort.

 

[Bezhukov]

If we peel a worker from Caere (costing the equivalent of two warriors) and join to the copper city to rush temple, how long then? How about sacrificing the worker for culture?

I would want the border expansion before we attack, so the pertinent roads are ours and not Rome's.

Is there any possibility that this game was somehow started under the least aggressive AI setting. It's bizarre that the AI is not fighting amongst themselves, with all those unit costs.

 

[Bezhukov]

I checked the save. Some notes:

Galleys carry two units, but it doesn't matter whether we have the GL or not, if we don't take the Roman lands, we ain't going anywhere in this game. Our UU can enter mountains, as well as being Amphibious (is there anything it can't do?)

We can't sac our own workers, but we can sac a slave in the copper city, giving a whopping 40 culture. This gets us not only copper, but also wines and marble. The alternative is waiting 4 turns to whip a temple, then 10 for expansion. Culture does not accrue to cities in anarchy, so we'd have to wait another x turns to get monarchy. So around 20 altogether. War (in Monarchy, for GA) is doable much sooner than that.

Phoenicia has Monarchy, and lacks both wool and tin (our UU doesn't need it). There is significant gold floating around out there; we can even sell Thing Law now for upwards of 400 gold total, and more contacts are coming soon. (Why was our archer dropped off way over near Elephantine? - long way to Persia from there). The Black Sea mission should be more fruitful. There are significant additional funds available for Monarchy, as well as opportunities to trade it for Math.

We are seafaring, so settling the easter Adriatic could also help our cash flow.

 

[akots]

Certainly completely agree that we need the Roman lands. We then can sac the slave anytime in Vetulonia whenever we are ready for upgrade and war. It might be we need the temple there anyhow but not so sure about it. The archer which has been dropped off was supposed to visit Israel and try to sneak to Numidians and Arabs and may be Babylon and Medes while curragh which dropped him was supposed to sail west for randevous with Sea Peoples, Hannibal, and Imazhigen then continuing all the way to Picts. The Black Sea boat should be able to contact Hittites and Kolchis and archer from there can go either to Massagetae or Persia/Medes/Babylon following the edge of the map.

Regarding trades, I'm not sure. So far, the trades were not conducted like they should. This is not a micromanagement game, this is trading game. Getting a few golden coins is just not worth it while we can earn big cash on properly arranged trading. 400g is a sound moneys but they are not going to run away from us. Not until these guys who can give them will revolt to Monarchy. Full price for Thing Law if traded from us to a single AI is in the range of 700-900g. And we should not trade it to 5 AIs for tiny 400g IMO.

I'm not sure if Stapel is around. Let's wait for some more time and may be somebody can swap with him, may be grs?

 

[Bezhukov]

It's strange, if I make the 50+2gpt trade, then they regenerate about that much money in 3-5 turns, when I can trade another old tech. Eventually we run out of techs to sell, but meanwhile, we have enough gold to buy Monarchy, revolt, upgrade 30 units, and take out Rome (It's the equivalent of Kinghts on spears and longbows - our Peltasts even have def bombard, tho if we fight properly, we won't be defending much).

The waiting around to accumulate gold is the only thing increasing the danger Rome can pose. I agree on waiting a few more turns for contact, but we need to pull the trigger soon. I'd sac the worker before revolting, so we can get the wines during anarchy. Dropping the archer about 10-15 tiles east of where he is would have speeded things up considerably. No sweat - contacting sea and carthage also very important.

 

[akots]

Stapel is apparently on vacation. Good swap might be with grs if possible, otherwise, if grs does not have time, may be just Winterfell can take it and we skip Stapel.