[C3C] The Nine Conquests

Sure. The first two Conquests are now finished, including the writeup. Seven more to go...

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I am not yet sure, whether the format - one post for one Conquest - is really ok. I already split up Rise of Rome into two posts, and fear that the later and longer scenarios will need still more space (and more pictures).
I noticed that @choxorn 's story ran into a similar problem: if all nine stories (and all those pictures) are on the first page, the load time may be too much?! (Although choxorn's attempt at the Conquests was 12 years ago and the Internet got much better in most parts of the world since then?!)

I will probably end up editing and rearranging this story quite a bit...
 
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I too have run into the problem of "never completed all 9 on the same machine," as seen in the Victory Status Screens I posted a few times during my story- for that matter, since I took like 8 years to finish part 7, I managed to start it on one machine, continue it on a second when that one got old and slow, then finish it on a third when the second one started crashing a bunch at random. :lol: I guess I might have to actually play all 9 of them on one machine at some point, whenever I get around to it.

Given the differing levels of detail the two of us put into our after-action reports, I'm guessing you'll probably finish this before I get around to finishing mine. Definitely have to get around to doing parts 8 and 9 one of these days...
 
Besides the C3C epic game, I made a German translation of the Conquests and a massive graphical improvement by using the specific Civ 3 units and graphics for leaders, buildings and so on and by correcting the partly historical nonsense in the Firaxis texts. The settings of the Conquests were not changed (with the one exception, that in the WW 2 in the Pacific Conquest B-29 bombers are not allowed to start from aircraft carriers) and all can be run with the English Civ 3 Complete.

I especially like the new look of the Sengoku Conquest with the buildings of ShiroKobbure. Even for civers who are not understanding the German language, it can be interesting to have a look at the pictures of the used units, leaderheads and buildings of those graphically improved conquests. You can find them here and in the following posts.
 
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I don't have a whole lot of experience with these scenarios. Most of them I haven't touched.

What I can say though comes as that in the Age of Discovery scenario it's possible to catch up in technology as a Native American civ to the Europeans if the level is low enough and one uses disconnect-reconnect of roads for luxuries/resources and technology (and getting gpt from the AIs by selling them gold for their gpt, and then "purchasing" that gold back with a luxury or resource in the deal with gpt going to the AIs, which then get canceled by pillaging/disconnect of the trade route to one's capital). But, when I played it recently, I played at Regent level, and caught up to the Europeans in technology as The Maya, but I don't know how tech cost scales for that scenario.

I also looked at the replay, and saw all this stuff about the Europeans finding "treasure" and returning it to their capitals. I don't know what that was about, or if it influenced victory points or score.

Nice series Lanzelot! I look forward to reading it!
 
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:clap: Well done, and more importantly in this forum, well written!

I thought at the start, well, that is brave, choosing Diety for all nine. And I see the Macedonians already reminded you of that! There was some real tension in that story, for a while I was wondering if you were going to have to throw in the towel and try again. But you managed to find a way by pulling out all the stops! Clever idea using the army to cover for a city-razing tour.

I agree with you on the first Conquest too, Wonders aren't the most powerful way to go. The points for capturing cities probably should have been toned down fairly heavily in that one. But then it wasn't designed for players with 19 years of experience.

Looking forward to reading the next installments!
 
Some of the Wonders are valuable enough to be worth building regardless of the VP's you get for them (re-reading my attempt, it looks like I built the SoZ, which functions like Sun Tzu's in this scenario, the ToA, and the Hanging Gardens), but what wins you the game is definitely conquering your neighbors.
 
Read through both of the first two conquests. I had some real flashbacks from the struggles in Asia Minor, my attempt saw basically the same thing happen in reverse as Macedon fighting endless streams of Persian units, and periodically getting distracted when Rome or Scythia would get pulled in against me. Macedon definitely has a harder time than Persia in this scenario because it just has so much less empty space to expand into, so it has a harder time getting a high score, and it's way closer to Rome- Persia can end up fighting Rome due to MA's and barely notice, Macedon will really hurt if it fights Rome for any significant length of time. But regardless of which one you pick, the Deity will crush you if you make any mistakes.

I'd say based on your experiences and the one time a long time ago I played as Persia (on a much lower difficulty level), that early on you really wanna put a ton of focus on kicking Macedon out of Asia Minor, because if you can take away those productive cities and focus all their units onto the chokepoint at Byzantium, it gets way easier to hold them off- you probably won't be able to actually push at them and take Byzantium for a while, but you can stabilize there and go build up your core and conquer Egypt in the meantime.
 
What I can say though comes as that in the Mesoamerica scenario it's possible to catch up in technology as a Native American civ to the Europeans if the level is low enough and one uses disconnect-reconnect of roads for luxuries/resources and technology
You probably mean "Age of Discovery"? "Mesoamerica" is pre-columbian, there aren't any Europeans... But yes, I remember once playing as a meso-american tribe and also catching up to the European tech level, mainly by trying for n-fers: paying a big sum for a new European tech and then trading it around to the other Europeans for more techs.

These treasure units you mention, are indeed very powerful, and not only the Europeans can use them. (More on that when I get to that Conquest.) Bringing them home to your capital adds a large amount to your bank account and also increases your VP score by a large amount. (Can't exactly remember the details, but I think it was 1000VP, something really worth it, more than building wonders...) They are auto-produced by certain buildings, like tobacco plantation, gold and silver mines, which in turn require to have these resources within your city's radius.

But then it wasn't designed for players with 19 years of experience.
Well, not even the developers of the game had 19 years experience back then... ;)
 
Read through both of the first two conquests. I had some real flashbacks from the struggles in Asia Minor, my attempt saw basically the same thing happen in reverse as Macedon fighting endless streams of Persian units, and periodically getting distracted when Rome or Scythia would get pulled in against me. Macedon definitely has a harder time than Persia in this scenario because it just has so much less empty space to expand into, so it has a harder time getting a high score, and it's way closer to Rome- Persia can end up fighting Rome due to MA's and barely notice, Macedon will really hurt if it fights Rome for any significant length of time. But regardless of which one you pick, the Deity will crush you if you make any mistakes.

I'd say based on your experiences and the one time a long time ago I played as Persia (on a much lower difficulty level), that early on you really wanna put a ton of focus on kicking Macedon out of Asia Minor, because if you can take away those productive cities and focus all their units onto the chokepoint at Byzantium, it gets way easier to hold them off- you probably won't be able to actually push at them and take Byzantium for a while, but you can stabilize there and go build up your core and conquer Egypt in the meantime.

A big "yes" to both. I definitely don't want to play the Macedonians on Deity. Having a nice cosy part of the world all to myself as Persia was already "bad enough"... Imagine having two close borders with two power-houses, Rome and Persia, plus the growing threat from the north, Scythia, who on Deity can quickly become quite strong.
And I should have had the idea with razing the Macedon base in Asia Minor and blocking the choke-point much earlier... :sad: Would have made the game a lot easier.
 
These treasure units you mention, are indeed very powerful, and not only the Europeans can use them. (More on that when I get to that Conquest.) Bringing them home to your capital adds a large amount to your bank account and also increases your VP score by a large amount. (Can't exactly remember the details, but I think it was 1000VP, something really worth it, more than building wonders...) They are auto-produced by certain buildings, like tobacco plantation, gold and silver mines, which in turn require to have these resources within your city's radius.

1,000 VP and 200 gold. They're pretty great.
 
1,000 VP and 200 gold. They're pretty great.

I recall enjoying placing as many settlements as possible around each resource, then rush building them and shipping them back. A Panama style city is invaluable for quickly getting the west coast.
 
Gosh this thread is really tempting me to try the same, I don't think I've ever played the last few..

I'll do it at an easier setting though!
 
Can it be, that this scenario has a bit tweaked promotion probabilities? Almost every regular win promoted to veteran (= almost 100%), and almost every other veteran win promoted to elite (= almost 50%).

I don't believe so, and checking the editor that doesn't even seem to be an option that can be changed, as far as I can tell.
 
You can check the VSS and it will tell you about how many cities that you've lost and I think how many the civ that's lost the most cities has also lost.

Mine went kinda similar to yours- I took too long to bother attacking the Romans because the civ I chose (the Vandals) is kinda far away from both of them and has other barb tribes to go through first. I did manage to kill Western Rome and come really close to killing Eastern Rome (IIRC, they'd lost 7 cities when they hit 35k VP and I played a bit after to see how long it would take them to lose the 8th, I think it was around 5 turns)

From this I've come to the conclusion that the scenario's easier as one of the civs that actually borders one or both halves of the empire- you have less space to build up with and I think everyone aside from the Huns starts with a lot fewer military units, but once you've got a bit of a military built up you can just go right to hitting the Romans.
 
Playing at Emperor, I found the best way to win this was basically to MA all the Barbarian tribes surrounding the 'other' half of Rome to attack that half, and then MA with whoever was left to go after 'my' half.

Although I've never won as the Celts, in every game I've played as them, it's been relatively easy to get Western Rome destroyed by signing MAs with the Franks, Saxons and Visigoths (or the Ostrogoths? One of the -goths, anyway!). I'd take out the Roman towns in Britain, and they'd take down enough of them on the mainland, that when I was ready to start moving units over there myself, I'd only need to grab another 1-2 towns to finish them off. My main failure (as always!) was that I would tend to build up and cross the Channel too cautiously/ too late. Also, because of the Celts' starting position, it often takes a long time to contact the eastern Barbarian-Civs, so I usually also forgot to get anyone to fight extended campaigns against Eastern Rome, so they would usually win on VPs.

The main problem with this Scenario is that the Civ3-AI tries to play as if it was a normal epic-game: the large amount of colonisable space tempts them into racing to fill up the map with Cxx(x)xC'd towns, which, combined with the large swathes of Hills and Forests (and their perennial disinclination to build enough Workers!), means that they aren't able to grow/defend a lot of those towns effectively, leaving them very vulnerable to the city-elimination mechanic, which they don't "understand".

Arguably, all you have to do to beat half of them is to station stacks of 2-3 (fast) units around your borders to watch out for passing AI Settler-pairs, follow them until they found a town, and then (declare war and) capture it...
I don't know, whether flipped towns count towards the 8 town elimination?
AFAIK, losing towns to flips doesn't count towards the elimination-limit, only losing them to conquest does
 
AFAIK, losing towns to flips doesn't count towards the elimination-limit, only losing them to conquest does

I'm sure that's testable by doing something like, set up a scenario in the editor where you can immediately capture a city with an enormous amount of culture surrounded by other cites with similar levels of culture, wait for it to flip, and see if that affects your elimination number.
 
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