OldDays
Chief Empire Architect
- Joined
- May 9, 2007
- Messages
- 43
The Immortal Challenge 3: The Gathering Storm
- Thread starter aelf
- Start date
yes, i want longer report. at this moment i think this IC is clearly a win no matter what kind of victories. once the whole continent is on your hand, build peacefully. but don't forget build a mobile army and railroad your continent quickly in case u get attacked by one of insane AIs.
aelf
Ashen One
But are you willing to wait for it?
I stopped reading WoT at book nine or ten. What happened to the Black Tower in the end? It's way cooler than the stupid White Tower.
Greeneyedzombie
King
the tower is still standing. read for it in the last book yet to be written. But the writer is sick. and the question is if he will live long enough to write it.
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
unfinished business you had to play to take care of *giggle*. sure i'll wait!
i've been out of town and didn't get to read about rounds 6 or 7 until just now. i downloaded the 1424 AD save to look at the diplomacy situation after round 6 before i kept going in the thread, and laughed at the tangled web over there. apparently peter declared on isabella twice, and monty declared on her once, but never at the same time since they don't have any MMS. brennus felt left out i guess, so he declared on monty at some point too. all before we ever met them i guess. and now a new bonus war
.
i've been out of town and didn't get to read about rounds 6 or 7 until just now. i downloaded the 1424 AD save to look at the diplomacy situation after round 6 before i kept going in the thread, and laughed at the tangled web over there. apparently peter declared on isabella twice, and monty declared on her once, but never at the same time since they don't have any MMS. brennus felt left out i guess, so he declared on monty at some point too. all before we ever met them i guess. and now a new bonus war
. 100% true.
aelf
Ashen One
Round 8: 1661AD - 1786AD
Okay, picking up from where we left the game, we started on the Steam Power gambit, hoping to be able to use it to our advantage to trade for some techs and get Monty to sign peace with Brennus.
And the war with Germany continued, with Essen being next on the list to fall:
And the city housed the Angkor Wat
That would prove to be quite a great boon by allowing us to assign priests as the free specialist in our cities instead of engineers for the extra wealth.
And the fall of Essen marked the merging two fronts, resulting in the highest concentration of our units in a single city so far:
That, comrades, is the pinnacle of our military might. A force on whose flags were carried the will of the English people, a force that had broken the power of the mighty Germans, a force comparable to the nationalist armies of France during the wars of its Revolution. I could go on
And then Brennus decided (again?) that he had to ask for our help:
I would very much like to have the ability to red that out in the diplomacy screen, the reason being "Our hands are full at the moment". We can't ask an AI who is already at war for help against another guy, so why should it be able to do so?
Soon, Berlin itself fell to our forces:
Here's another big prize city. It boasted The Hanging Gardens, The Great Wall, a still effective Great Library, an Academy and a Military Academy. The first in that list certainly gave us some immediate help by alleviating the serious health problems caused by the loss of all our seafood a little.
However, that would not be enough to prevent some of our cities from starving too much (eg. Nottingham). And considering that growth in our cities tended to be slow due to having a lot of cottages, I decided to negotiate an end to the war. We've met all the objectives stated at the beginning of the war anyway. We also needed a relief from the heavy WW and time for our economy to recover.
So I went to Bismark and checked out his offer:
Nothing unexpected. He wasn't willing to offer any other tech whatsoever, so I took Monotheism out of that deal and accepted it. At least it had a tidy sum and a gpt attached to help our research.
Unfortunately, when we got to Steam Power, all of them already had it so it was useless trade-wise. So much for our grand plan. So what's next? The AI doesn't usually prioritise Assembly Line enough, as we could see from the last game, so we might just be able to get there first and make use of that. We did have to wade through Economics and Corporation first, though, since we couldn't get them from anyone. Hopefully we wouldn't be too late.
As if to give us another blow in the stomach, Monty came and asked for our help against the Celts on the next turn:
Ugh. I didn't need to know just how badly our plan failed. Monty is probably close to Cautious after my refusal.
Anyway, Berlin came out of revolt, and after whipping a library there for some immediate cultural infrastructure (and to put the starving citizens to good use), we made a civic switch to help our economy (note that changing 2 civics only caused 3 turns of anarchy instead of 4):
Suddenly most of our cities had a long way to go before hitting their happiness caps, since that got rid of the Emancipation unhappiness and came shortly after WW disappeared. Having Biology now or soon would be nice, but being one of the first to get Assembly Line might really pay off.
Then our ever genial friend came again:
Fortunately, he had forgotten by then that we had refused to do so in the past. Since Brennus might be a valuable trading partner in the future, I decided not to piss the Celt off. Also, I read somewhere that not acceding to requests to cut ties actually tends to have a net benefit on your diplomacy.
Time flew (well, not really since tedious city screen management had to be done). Soon, we were close to getting Assembly Line. That also meant it was time to consider finishing our business with Germany soon, so I sent a unit or two to scout Bismark's defenses:
He sure had a lot of cannon there. The surrounding cities didn't have such an impressive collection of units, but it would do us well to garrison Berlin properly even if we expected our attacking stack to bear the brunt of the cannon fire. Bismark had more than enough units to throw at his former capital. And, frankly, since we had been busy building infrastructure and not more units, I didn't think our stack could survive if Bismark threw all his cannons at it in one go and sent other units to clean up. Moreover, we had to fight the war before Bismark gets Artillery, so we only had time to add a few more units to the stack.
So what could we do? I guess it was time to apply rule #1 of how to fight collateral damage: Split up your stack. We had 4 veteran Drill Redcoats that would suffer significantly less collateral damage, so we would need to count on them to protect each group. The smaller you split your stack, the higher the chance you will get an entire group obliterated (along with its veteran CR units - ouch) but the smaller the chance of losing an even bigger group and possibly more units. A balance had to be found that would be most beneficial. Since we had 4 veteran Drill Redcoats, I decided that it would be how many groups we would field. Hopefully, at most one group would be destroyed so the other 3 would have a fair chance of cracking Munich's defenses.
Then this happened:
Oops. That was meant to show that we got a Great Merchant as our next GP. Well, you can see him at the bottom of the city screen anyway. Since we've been accumulating GM points from the Colossus, that was the easiest GP to ensure that we get, and I ran a merchant in Nottingham to that effect. It worked. A trade mission can do wonders to boost our research, something that we seem to need badly in light of the failure of the Assembly Line gambit as well.
Yes, we were one of the first to get Assembly Line, beating even Peter (Brennus was the one who got it before us). Unfortunately, we couldn't get anything out of it. Peter refused to give us anything worthwhile:
Monotheism and a meagre amount of gold wouldn't justify the trade and would only be helping him. He was probably quite close to getting it himself, but we really wouldn't be getting anything useful out of this deal. Monty, meanwhile, had decided to go WFYABTA on us, and the option to declare war on Peter was red because his hands were full. So, there you go, another brilliant idea down the drain... Would we ever be able to catch up with Peter? Biology first might have been a better option. But, then again, this way we delayed researching Scientific Method and could therefore enjoy the free beakers from the Great Library (amplified by the Academy and Berlin's research buildings). Oh, well. Give and take, I guess.
Anyway, that's all I have time for now, folks. I will post the rest of the update later.
[to be continued in the next page...]
Okay, picking up from where we left the game, we started on the Steam Power gambit, hoping to be able to use it to our advantage to trade for some techs and get Monty to sign peace with Brennus.
And the war with Germany continued, with Essen being next on the list to fall:
And the city housed the Angkor Wat
That would prove to be quite a great boon by allowing us to assign priests as the free specialist in our cities instead of engineers for the extra wealth.And the fall of Essen marked the merging two fronts, resulting in the highest concentration of our units in a single city so far:
That, comrades, is the pinnacle of our military might. A force on whose flags were carried the will of the English people, a force that had broken the power of the mighty Germans, a force comparable to the nationalist armies of France during the wars of its Revolution. I could go on
And then Brennus decided (again?) that he had to ask for our help:
I would very much like to have the ability to red that out in the diplomacy screen, the reason being "Our hands are full at the moment". We can't ask an AI who is already at war for help against another guy, so why should it be able to do so?
Soon, Berlin itself fell to our forces:
Here's another big prize city. It boasted The Hanging Gardens, The Great Wall, a still effective Great Library, an Academy and a Military Academy. The first in that list certainly gave us some immediate help by alleviating the serious health problems caused by the loss of all our seafood a little.
However, that would not be enough to prevent some of our cities from starving too much (eg. Nottingham). And considering that growth in our cities tended to be slow due to having a lot of cottages, I decided to negotiate an end to the war. We've met all the objectives stated at the beginning of the war anyway. We also needed a relief from the heavy WW and time for our economy to recover.
So I went to Bismark and checked out his offer:
Nothing unexpected. He wasn't willing to offer any other tech whatsoever, so I took Monotheism out of that deal and accepted it. At least it had a tidy sum and a gpt attached to help our research.
Unfortunately, when we got to Steam Power, all of them already had it so it was useless trade-wise. So much for our grand plan. So what's next? The AI doesn't usually prioritise Assembly Line enough, as we could see from the last game, so we might just be able to get there first and make use of that. We did have to wade through Economics and Corporation first, though, since we couldn't get them from anyone. Hopefully we wouldn't be too late.
As if to give us another blow in the stomach, Monty came and asked for our help against the Celts on the next turn:
Ugh. I didn't need to know just how badly our plan failed. Monty is probably close to Cautious after my refusal.
Anyway, Berlin came out of revolt, and after whipping a library there for some immediate cultural infrastructure (and to put the starving citizens to good use), we made a civic switch to help our economy (note that changing 2 civics only caused 3 turns of anarchy instead of 4):
Suddenly most of our cities had a long way to go before hitting their happiness caps, since that got rid of the Emancipation unhappiness and came shortly after WW disappeared. Having Biology now or soon would be nice, but being one of the first to get Assembly Line might really pay off.
Then our ever genial friend came again:
Fortunately, he had forgotten by then that we had refused to do so in the past. Since Brennus might be a valuable trading partner in the future, I decided not to piss the Celt off. Also, I read somewhere that not acceding to requests to cut ties actually tends to have a net benefit on your diplomacy.
Time flew (well, not really since tedious city screen management had to be done). Soon, we were close to getting Assembly Line. That also meant it was time to consider finishing our business with Germany soon, so I sent a unit or two to scout Bismark's defenses:
He sure had a lot of cannon there. The surrounding cities didn't have such an impressive collection of units, but it would do us well to garrison Berlin properly even if we expected our attacking stack to bear the brunt of the cannon fire. Bismark had more than enough units to throw at his former capital. And, frankly, since we had been busy building infrastructure and not more units, I didn't think our stack could survive if Bismark threw all his cannons at it in one go and sent other units to clean up. Moreover, we had to fight the war before Bismark gets Artillery, so we only had time to add a few more units to the stack.So what could we do? I guess it was time to apply rule #1 of how to fight collateral damage: Split up your stack. We had 4 veteran Drill Redcoats that would suffer significantly less collateral damage, so we would need to count on them to protect each group. The smaller you split your stack, the higher the chance you will get an entire group obliterated (along with its veteran CR units - ouch) but the smaller the chance of losing an even bigger group and possibly more units. A balance had to be found that would be most beneficial. Since we had 4 veteran Drill Redcoats, I decided that it would be how many groups we would field. Hopefully, at most one group would be destroyed so the other 3 would have a fair chance of cracking Munich's defenses.
Then this happened:
Oops. That was meant to show that we got a Great Merchant as our next GP. Well, you can see him at the bottom of the city screen anyway. Since we've been accumulating GM points from the Colossus, that was the easiest GP to ensure that we get, and I ran a merchant in Nottingham to that effect. It worked. A trade mission can do wonders to boost our research, something that we seem to need badly in light of the failure of the Assembly Line gambit as well.
Yes, we were one of the first to get Assembly Line, beating even Peter (Brennus was the one who got it before us). Unfortunately, we couldn't get anything out of it. Peter refused to give us anything worthwhile:
Monotheism and a meagre amount of gold wouldn't justify the trade and would only be helping him. He was probably quite close to getting it himself, but we really wouldn't be getting anything useful out of this deal. Monty, meanwhile, had decided to go WFYABTA on us, and the option to declare war on Peter was red because his hands were full. So, there you go, another brilliant idea down the drain... Would we ever be able to catch up with Peter? Biology first might have been a better option. But, then again, this way we delayed researching Scientific Method and could therefore enjoy the free beakers from the Great Library (amplified by the Academy and Berlin's research buildings). Oh, well. Give and take, I guess.
Anyway, that's all I have time for now, folks. I will post the rest of the update later.
[to be continued in the next page...]
facistal
Civer
Tense situation aelf. Personally I think you would have a better chance of surviving the cannon attack if you only split the group into two. Two drill IV redcoats is hard to crack but if you split into four, you are gonna have offensive (CR3?!?) units defending pretty quick. Anyway, a judgement call.... I hope all works out
flamingzaroc121
Emperor
you might need to try thr internet gamble again but hopefully u will have won by then
aelf
Ashen One
Damn. RL interfered again. Just hang in there, guys. I'll post the rest as soon as possible.
OldDays
Chief Empire Architect
- Joined
- May 9, 2007
- Messages
- 43
Sometimes RL can be very annoying! ...well, on the other hand it truly has the most awesome graphics!!!
Red Viking
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2007
- Messages
- 29
Hi aelf, I've been following this game since the beginning and I think you have gone a great job with those pesky Romans and how you brought down the power of the Germans. Im new here but I've been playing ![[civ4]](/images/smilies/civ4.gif "Civ4 [civ4]")
since it came out. Im looking forward to seeing how you handle all that German cannon! Im sure you'll take care of 'em!
since it came out. Im looking forward to seeing how you handle all that German cannon! Im sure you'll take care of 'em! i also have faith on him! a good player has to master the tactic of war, diplomacy and tech trading in order to successfully advance to immortal level. i generally play well on emperor but crash immediately even to barbarians on immortal level.
Bad luck aelf with the diplomatic situation
, the relations between you and Monty and also you and Brennus has been badly affected by them repeatedly and alternately asking you to join the war and break the trade relations. They are permanent negative modifiers. That might have serious consequences in future since you wanted to use them against Peter and now they'll be very reluctant to help you. I would like to see the savegame to be sure, but I feel (with 20/20 hindsight 
) you should have joined Brennus against Monty and declared a phoney war. I know only I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, by giving diplomatic advice to the grand master of diplomacy aelf.
, the relations between you and Monty and also you and Brennus has been badly affected by them repeatedly and alternately asking you to join the war and break the trade relations. They are permanent negative modifiers. That might have serious consequences in future since you wanted to use them against Peter and now they'll be very reluctant to help you. I would like to see the savegame to be sure, but I feel (with 20/20 hindsight ) you should have joined Brennus against Monty and declared a phoney war. I know only I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, by giving diplomatic advice to the grand master of diplomacy aelf.sylvanllewelyn
Perma-newb
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 2,072
The AI has a very annoying tendency of immediately declaring a ceasefire after you decide to help them. I believe the internet gambit is in order, as well as some spy action to take out strategic resources. It's a space race I'm afraid. Germany... hmm, take him out if you can, but if not, don't bother. You're actually very pressed for time, as the AI if unhindered will launch before 1900AD on immortal.
aelf
Ashen One
Well, I'm back, so it's time to say the T-word...
carl corey
Deity
Eh, we're used to it by now. At least I am. 
Welcome back and hope to see a good update tomorrow. (there, I said it for you! 
)
Welcome back and hope to see a good update tomorrow. (there, I said it for you! )Similar threads
