The Roman Empire (lots of screenshots, not modem friendly)

[Robbert]

Hello,

This is te story about the latest game I have started. But first let me tell you about the settings.

I play on a large terra map on noble, I obviously play as Julius Ceasar of the Romans.

Settings:

Map: Terra
Size: Large
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Low
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal*

I have customly adjusted the game speed, all the building, training, worker improvements are set to normal speed. But the research rate is set to marathon mode! And the number of turn is also equal to marathon mode!

What this allows me to do is to build units and don't need to worry to upgrade them every 20 turns becouse a new technology has been discovered. Each game era (ancient/classical/medieval is about as long as a normal game's entire game length).

How I intend to play the game! I want the Roman Empire to become one of the most powerfull nations, I will try to accomplish this by war, diplomacy and trading. I will however not engage in war of total destruction, or to annihilate civilizations altogether, unless they ask for it .

I will form alliances, and will help out my allies in every possible way I can.

Thats the intro, lets get this game started.

 

[Robbert]

In the year 4000 BC the nomadic people of Rome were ready to settle down and start a great civilization.


Click here for full size image!

The Roman people found this a good spot to settle, and so they made the first city and named it Rome.


Click here for full size image!

Holy mother of God! We are surrounded by vicious elephants! Better research hunting and show them who's on the top of the food chain. And its a good idea to start training a warrior to defend our new city. We also discovered a small tribal village near our borders, time to show them who's boss! We send our best (and only) warrior to clubber some civilization into them.

After a little while our warrior arrives, and after some "diplomatic talks" the villagers gave us a new technoly called the wheel. Very interesting technology I might add, for example it will allow us to build roads.


Click here for full size image!

While our warrior is still exploring the surroundings of Rome, the Roman borders expand, and reveil a second tribal village. Our warrior excels in convincing the locals to "give" us stuff, so we send him on his way.


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While our warrior is on his way rome has completed the training of the warrior, and now starts building a barracks to give our troops more training, but when the city reaches size 3 we will begin to train a worker to improve the land.

Meanwhile our other warrior has reached the tribal village, lets see what they got.


Click here for full size image!

Aha, great. Experience. Might come in handy against that lion we just spotted over there in the hills.

We promote him twice to woodman I and woodsman II. After being promoted our warrior unit runs into the nearby woods where the lions follow them. Minutes later the lion is on the list of endangerd animals. We let our warriors heal before sending them out again.

In the meantime Rome has grown to size 3 and we switch production from barracks to worker. We have completed research on hunting, so when our worker is trained he can immidiatly start building a hunting camp near the elephants, and connect them with a road to our city. We now start researching agriculture so we can harvest the corn to the north of our city.

Then out of the west comes another warrior, from a different civilization! They call themselves the Cinese.



We agree to peace for the time being, better start expanding soon or we might be speaking chinese in the future.

Our warrior is fully healed, and we decide to sent him in the direction where the chinese warriors came from, to see how much breathing space we have.

We now have finished training a worker, and send him to build a camp near the elephants, and then connect it to our capitol with a road. Our city is now again building the barracks, but when the city grows to size 4 we will train a settler to settle the red encirceled spot. This will prevent the chinese from coming through there, becouse our culture will block them.

Our warrior has reached the borders of china, and can get a glimpse into there territory.


Click here for full size image!

As you can see it will be necaserry for the Roman Empire to take the spot mentioned earlier to block the chinese, and maybe take the gems close to their border, but that seems unlikely.

In the meantime our worker completed the camp and pave a road to Rome, citizens enjoy there ivory and elephant meat. Becouse it takes 8 more turns to research agriculture we have time to make another camp and connect it to rome, after that we will farm the corn.

Rome has reached size 4 and work has begun on a settler, after the settler is complete we will train a warrior to escort it. North from the chinese we ran into another civilization, the greeks. We have peace now, but they may be trouble in the future.

We completed research on farming and now we started on archery to defend our cities, after that we will research bronze working and iron working to make formidable armies to defend our borders.

We have discovered 3 more civilizations. The germans, the japanese and the egyptians. But we have not yet located there cities. Our warrior will explore more to find them.

And we completed a settler and a warrior and made our second city "Antium" we have succeeded in blocking the other civilizations to trespass on "our" lands.


Click here for full size image!

Our worker also comleted the farm and now our citizens are enjoying corn and elephant for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He will now take the other elephants, as they will prove to be a valuable trade recource.

We made another cith east of cumae to take some gems, it is however close to the chinese. And we also discovered that we are indeed on a peninsula.


Click here for full size image!

We researched bronze working and now switched to mysticism instead of iron working becouse ironworking would take 40 turns and we can produce no buildings other than barracks, so we are pumping out archers like crazy.

Our scout found another sweet spot to block a rival. We will have to settle in crappy lands, but the hills and the pigs will make it a "soso" city. The reason to settle here is, is to block the egyptians, and have a panama canal for our ships. Hope we are not to late to send a settler there.

 

[Robbert]

We were just in time to settle there, the egyptians made a new city close by and so did the chinese.



We will now halt our expansion for a while becouse we are running a deficit. We have begun to research polytheism and after that judaism to get a religion, so we can cash in, hopefully.

Well that didn't work, hinduism and judaism were founded before we even got close, running now at 60% research, not good. But we made a road to panama canal and now have bronze to work with.

We also met 3 new civilizations montezuma, ghandi and washington. Montezuma is at war with ghandi now, and tried to extort me from my ivory. He didn't get it. Montezuma is a dangerous madman, but luckily hes not close to us, the chinese shield us from him.

We now hope someone will spread a reliogon to us, so we can make some good friends out there. We are looking at the egyptians with their hinduism, there close by and our panama canal borders them.

 

[Robbert]

Oh good lord, things are getting ugly the chinese have declared war on us, luckily we have around 3 archers in every city close to them, and we can make axeman, time to burn some cities and get some much needed cash (hopefully).



Oh no disaster strikes, they have cut the road to panama canal cutting our copper suply, now we have to research sailing so we can sail our ships full of copper to our other coastal city. Hope we are in time.

Disaster strikes again! The chinese have chariots, alot of them! Good news is that they can't take our cities with our archers and walls. 3 chariots have already died charing the walls, giving our archers much needed experience. Panama canal is now training axemen becouse they are the only city capable of doing so. At the moment we have 1 axeman who's job is to kill the marauding chinese, hope he succeeds.



A little battle is won! Near panama canal there were 2 chinese warrior devisions, they proved no match to our archers, which now gained more experience.

The chinese have realized, that they cant take the cities and are on a pillage spree, they even reached rome and are taking out the camps! But rome has completed the pyramids now. Will this turn the tide? And our axeman is now pillaging the chinese country side, the war is a stalemate for now, the cities are to strong to be taken.



The chinese are still marauding in our interiors, but our generals have come up with a brilliant plan! We block there entrance to Rome near Cumae, and our archers are promoted to hill defence for even better results!



Then we will ware down the marouders, it will be costly but necasery. Panama canal has switched from axeman to spearman to counter the chinese chariots.

The plan works, no new chariots are coming through and the 2 chariots left are wounded, and they can't return to china becouse there cut off muhahaha. Let the sloughter begin.

The sloughter went well, our spearman just saw action and wiped out 2 chariots and one archer before kicking the bucket. After that china bargained for peace, we took it, time to start rebuilding the country.

Also hinduism has spread in Panama canal. Now we can start building temples! And we have 3 powerfull allies now.



The rebuilding is going steadily, we finished researching sailing, so now all our cities have copper! After that animal husbandry was researched giving us cow and pigs. And gave us a supply of horses near Rome.

Also our ivory have we been trading with our friends, for all sorts of goods. This will create a powerfull bond between us all.

Our finacial problems are still severe. But we were building the parthenon in one of our cities but was completed in a distant land, which gave us 300 gold, now we can get research to 70% for some time. We musn't fall back. Also the chinese have adopted confuciansme, this will alienate them even more from our friends.

But the chinese are a foulish people, as they have again declare war on us. We will see how this second chinese war goes. For now we have spearman to counter there chariots. Upgraded spearman none the less!

Our spearman creamed those chariots of them but our city cumae was to be burned anyway oh what a shame, we have no way of taking the chinese city's without going into a deep deficit. We need a peace treaty from these morons, there hopelessy behind in technology, they have no chance in the long run!



But with the destruction of this city and the completion of the great lighthouse in one of our city's we are in the green at 70% research. And our spearman are destroying the chinese. Soon they will beg for peace.

We signed peace with china, and after that researched writing. Now we are building up temples and library's to catch up in research, but then the madman montezuma declared war and showed up with 4 archers near panama canal. As it shows panama canal is a vital city to more than one civilization. But they will fale! Becouse panama canal has 2 archers with level 3 city defender in it, a wall around it, and it is build on a hill, they will fale miserably. I hope....

 

[Robbert]

There is one problem however, we can't send reinforcements to them becouse we can't move through chinese territory. So panama canal is on its own. Lets hope they can withstand the onslought...

They did without a problem, the archers destroyed the mines near panama canal though. The aztecs also launched a small time invasion across the chinese border, but were wiped out by our experienced troops there. But now the aztecs are back at panama canal, in force this time!



9 archer battalions! Lets hope our city defences can hold against them!

And of course they did! 9 archer battalions destroyed without a single loss! Outstanding. Our troops stationed there are amongst the most experienced in the army.



There are 2 more archer battalions coming but they should be no problem.

After the 2 archers were destroyed 3 more showed up but were destroyed as well. After that montezuma begged for peace, leaving panama canal with 2 level 5 archers and a level 3 spearman. Thanks for the experience montezuma and don't let the door hit you on the way out, bye now.

Now the war with the aztecs was over, we were at peace. The chinese however were still a problem and a thread, we were not at war with them for now. But it would only be a matter of time. The chinese don't have copper or iron but they do have horses which they torment us with. Their only supply of horses, as far as our intelligence could gather was near the city of Nanjing.



Also this city would link Panama canal up with the rest of our cities over land instead of sea. The bonus for us would be an extra supply of horses, and they none, plus some wheat for our cities. Only drawback is that its a hard to defend location, and that they have walls around it, and we don't know how large their garrison is, we better plan well.

We built up our army to take the city, to make the chinese pay for all the things they done to us, they will suffer! We will take their city from them by force! We created an assault force for this purpose and a defence line to hold of the chinese hordes, that will no doubt plunder our lands in response.



We trust panama canal will be able to defend itself, it hold of more than 12 aztec archer batallions.

Let the attack begin!

We declare war and pour our attack force over the border, we find the city only lightly defended, only 4 units, 2 archers and 2 chariots, no match for my 5 horse archers, 3 chariots and 1 axeman. Time to take revenge for all those years of suffering, to take revenge for the burning of our city!

Just as we were to declare war on china, china declared war on the egyptians, so we waited some time to see what happend, this could really benefit us. Becouse the war would weaken china. And when egypt asked for our help we would gladly accept.

We signed open borders with egypt so they could quickly reach china, but greece also declared war on egypt, so we decided to relieve the presure on them by invading china

Charge!



We succeeded 3 of our chariots broke through, no we will have to defend from the chinese counter-attack. And move our defence line further east.

We hold the city and have silenced the resistance, the chinese army is broken and routed, the plan worked perfectly, our horsemen our now pillaging chinese towns and taking all the gold, just what they deserve. This succes has inspired us to take another city, we pillaged almost the entire chinese landscape. We can, no we MUST take another city to teach them a lesson! And burn a few others for good measure and looted gold .

Shanghai will be learning Roman in a short while, our new unit the catapult will bring them to their knees. In the meantime our horsemen are pillaging the chinese country side for gold, and to weaken them.

We bombarded Shanghai, and captured it, now we had reached our goals and could get peace, the chinese were happy to accecpt, they are so weakend now. I an attempt to get friends they addopted hundism. But since they declared war on me 2 times and once on egypt their out of luck. And not to mention that their armed forces are wiped out, and there economy completely destroyed, they are no threat anymore we hope.



Now we will built up our cities and explore some more of the world, these wars have kept us isolated.

This is the map of the Roman Empire after our conquests.



Thats it for today, my custom made marathon/normal game, is helluva long!

 

[Robbert]

A little notes from me, as you know i custom made the game speed. I like long games but i didn't like the long build times as well, I research and then my units are obsolete before I can use them. Thats why I used the marathon research rate, and the normal game building and training rate.

However this couses problems I discovered! When your research is slow, and when your in the begining of the game (ancient era), you research so slow, you can't build buildings at all, so you have to build either settlers, workers or military units, and they cost money! I countered this with building military units and disbanding them right after completion. I had to do this otherwise I would have had an absurbt deficit.

But I am enjoying the game very much. This is the first time I had major wars in the ancient era. I'm loving it!

PS: excuse my bad english, not my mother tongue. I'll try to edit the errors out if you point them out.

 

[IamSid]

Good job very interesting!

 

[IronMan2055]

nice story

 

[MaximXVI]

Very nice. Excellent work getting your revnge.

 

[Robbert]

The Roman Empire is now focusing on building up the captured city's and is going to research a way for us to cross the ocean's to see what else is there, this will however take a long time. In the meantime they are also exploring the rest of the world, starting with egypt.

But the captured city af shanghai is a tough, place. A revolt just occured becouse the people want to join there motherland, we will have to make them Roman!

As we are exploring we discover that panama canal does NOT link to oceans together! To the left it has the ocean, and to the right is an inland sea. However panama canal still ocupies a very strategic position.



Egypt is still at war with greece, but has the upper hand, india also joint the war against the greeks to get some lost territory back. Its there own fault, they started that war and now they are paying. (They joined china in their war against egypt a few posts back).

We have researched optics which will allow us to build a boat to cross the oceans, however we can only transport explorers at this time, we have to wait alittle for we can build ships big enough to carry large groups of settlers.



We send our boat and our brave explorer on there way to find new land.



While our ship was under way the egyptians asked us for help in their war against the greeks, the greeks were no threat anymore, but the prospect of looting was to good to pass up, and they can't even reach us. They would have to go through either chinese or egyptian territory first. So we send 5 horse archers to loot their farms and villages.

Our explorer has made it to a strange and new land, it seems uninhabitated. I wonder what riches this new land holds.



The pillaging in greek territory goes well, gives us plenty of gold, and greek defenders don't dare to come out of their cities.

Meanwhile in the new world our explorer discovered its not uninhabitated! He reports that there are barbarians there, alot of them! And they have started building cities. Big ones none the less.



The Egyptians captured the greek city of sparta, and made peace after that, we have pillaged most of the greek lands, so it is time to make peace and return our horse archers home.

We also retreat them back to our lands becouse the chinese are talking off war again, trying to extort us, it won't be long before we are at war again. We must make a plan to end the chinese agression for once and for all.

Our generals have come with a daring plan.



We will march to the 3 big cities and capture them, we will burn the northern city becouse it is of no use. They will only be left with Bejing, their capital. This will knock them out cold. Now we begin training the assault forces, war elephant and catapults with axeman to take the cities. And horse archers to burn the countryside around bejing and defend against chinese counter attack.

This plan will only get into action if the chinese delare war on us. If they do, and we win then we will now have borders with the aztecs. But only on a small area. Easy to defend.

We have researched astronomy which will allow us to build galleons and ship settlers to the new world, and so we did. We founded a new city in the new world next to a source of iron.

It is pourly defended at the moment but we are shipping some troops there, not many, becouse we will need them at home.



As for the near future, will the chinese attack again? If they do we are ready for them!

 

[ticktockclok]

Whoa, nice game you have going here! I'm a noble player too. Are you using that one Praetorian strategy in the strategy and tips forum? I used it too, but got bored with it and started trying to win on noble with other civs.

Pretty cool, but how did Washington get so far ahead?

 

[Robbert]

Some more notes from me. As you know i custom made the game marathon research rate and normal build times, in the ancient era this led to me not being able to construct new buildings and a huge deficit, but when i reached the medieval period thins are better. I can contstruct more buildings and i run at 80% science with only slight losses.

I keep my treasury healthy with plundering . And with trading technoly for gold. The americans however have a HUGE lead on everyone else. And they are ahead in tech, its redicilous. They haven't been in any wars. But as how this is going they are going to be a superpower. I will have to do something about it. But they are friendly with almost everyone. And the hold the holy city for hinduism. And everybody has adopted hinduism. So they must have butt loads of gold coming in.

How to take care of this.

 

[Robbert]

Whoa, nice game you have going here! I'm a noble player too. Are you using that one Praetorian strategy in the strategy and tips forum? I used it too, but got bored with it and started trying to win on noble with other civs.

Pretty cool, but how did Washington get so far ahead?

I don't have iron very bad for me. But i just colonized the new world near a source of iron. Becouse no-one wanted to trade iron with me, not even egypt and america.

As for washington? I don't know how he did it, but man! He's top dog!

 

[MaximXVI]

Is Panama Canal really that important? It seems like the AI has only one city on the coast.

 

[ToV]

Great story, Robert. The Chinese will get what they deserve!

But I think your allterations are not ballanced enough. You have gunpowder in 360 AD! I would loveto play a game speed like this, but not if this is the result.

 

[Robbert]

Is Panama Canal really that important? It seems like the AI has only one city on the coast.

To me it is, it is my only route north into friendly territory, the egyptians. The chinese won't have open borders with me, and i don't want open border with them, so panama canal is the only route by land, which leads out of my isolation. Thats also why i want the 3 chinese city's for a second route.

And becouse of this it is also one of 2 routes for the AI to take, And i blocked that route completely with panama canal. If that city falls it is a major setback plus it is build on copper.

Great story, Robert. The Chinese will get what they deserve!

But I think your allterations are not ballanced enough. You have gunpowder in 360 AD! I would loveto play a game speed like this, but not if this is the result.

I think you are right with that, I hadn't noticed the year before, but now that you mention it. Might need some tweeking, I will post the alterations i made in a short while. Maybe i can find the error.

 

[MEGA_NOOB]

this story is awsome!

please continue

 

[Gemini1706]

Very nice story. Descriptive pictures and good story-telling, plus an exciting game
I will read it evey night

One question: Is America in the same land as you? or in different land?

Can you post a picture of the whole world so we can understand better where is eveyone and where is this new land?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Robbert]

Here are the settings i have changed in the file CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml



<Type>GAMESPEED_NORMAL</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_GAMESPEED_NORMAL</Description>
<Help>TXT_KEY_GAMESPEED_NORMAL_HELP</Help>
<iGrowthPercent>100<iGrowthPercent>
<iTrainPercent>100</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>100</iConstructPercent>
<iCreatePercent>100</iCreatePercent>
<iResearchPercent>300</iResearchPercent>
<iBuildPercent>100</iBuildPercent>
<iImprovementPercent>100</iImprovementPercent>
<iGreatPeoplePercent>100</iGreatPeoplePercent>
<iCulturePercent>100</iCulturePercent>
<iAnarchyPercent>100</iAnarchyPercent>
<iBarbPercent>100</iBarbPercent>
<iFeatureProductionPercent>100</iFeatureProductionPercent>
<iUnitDiscoverPercent>100</iUnitDiscoverPercent>
<iUnitHurryPercent>100</iUnitHurryPercent>
<iUnitTradePercent>100</iUnitTradePercent>
<iUnitGreatWorkPercent>100</iUnitGreatWorkPercent>
<iGoldenAgePercent>100</iGoldenAgePercent>
<iHurryPercent>100</iHurryPercent>
<iHurryConscriptAngerPercent>100</iHurryConscriptAngerPercent>
<iInflationPercent>30</iInflationPercent>
<iInflationOffset>-120</iInflationOffset>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>40</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>75</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>25</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>20</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>25</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>10</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>50</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>5</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>2</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>1</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>130</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
</GameTurnInfos>



Ihave changed the research rate to 300 (as you can see in red), and the game turns (also in red) are changed to this:



<GameTurnInfos>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>20</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>100</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>10</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>200</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>5</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>200</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>2</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>350</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>1</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>350</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
</GameTurnInfos>

 

[Robbert]

Very nice story. Descriptive pictures and good story-telling, plus an exciting game
I will read it evey night

One question: Is America in the same land as you? or in different land?

Can you post a picture of the whole world so we can understand better where is eveyone and where is this new land?

Thanks a lot.

Ok I made a screenshot from globe view, excuse my paint skills



Click here for a larger version, its much better.

As you see egypt is north of me, america is north of egypt, but i haven't explored there territory yet. To the east is china. And to the east of them is Greece, and the aztects.

To the south of the aztects are the japanese and the germans, minor powers. And i haven't discoverd india yet.

All these powers are on the same continent, the old world. The new world is in the picture to my west. And i have one city there. Don't know if other nations are also on the new world, if anyone is there it would probably be america.