The Romans keep kicking my @ss!

[Sultan Bhargash]

Tried it one last time.

I am glad some people can beat the Romans.

I cant.

(No I wasnt using hoplites for offense).

This time I built the Library (sadly too late realizing it only works for Civs you are in contact with).

I built the Colossus.

I built about six cities, all with barracks, all with two spearmen.

The Romans declared war once, we kicked them out, kept expanding.

They took my surprise the second time, somehow snuck an archer over a mountain into my territory, and were ready with HUNDREDS of horses and archers.

As the Romans collapsed my underbelly (Triple Cow, Double Ivory Towns), 800,000 barbarians sacked either end of my empire (hill of gold back to Athens). I had saved up money, built up defense, etc. etc.

To all of you who win, consider posting your games AT THE TIME YOU ARE KICKING THE ROMAN ASS so I can understand how it is done. I mean, I feel like I cant beat those guys no matter what I do.

 

[Aeson]

Try this save game, it's from a few turns before I ended the Roman existance...

 

[Aeson]

Sorry, hit the wrong button

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

THANKS AESON! I cant wait to check it out.

GOTM is a worthwhile teacher of the game after all...

 

[Aeson]

No problem. I'll just make a few suggestions about the course of action you should follow from this save game. First, wait maybe 2 or 3 turns before attacking, mass your troops. Try to have a hoplite or two along with each horseman stack. The hoplites can't move as fast, but the horsemen can attack and then move back to the hoplite defender if you do it right, or once the hoplite gets next to a city the horsemen can just attack from safety. I had just finished off 3 Roman cities the turn before and made peace, as my forces were somewhat out of position. I don't remember if I could get a right of passage or not, but if you can don't worry about breaking it, none of the others will ever know I made sure that on the first turn of combat I severed Caesar's final road to horses, and then it was easy. The horsemen are the only ones you have to worry about, as nothing else can touch you. I razed all the remaining cities besides rome, to keep with my city pattern. Probably a mistake on my part. Pop rush another set of horsemen once the small cities get to size 2 again. The larger cities can produce horsemen in only a few extra turns, so don't need any pop rushing. After the last few despotic whip games I've played, I wanted something more aestetic. You should see how the final product turned out, it got a little messy around the coasts, but overall its a nice pattern of cities that kinda makes me think of the borg

 

[Smirk]

Here is another one its 510AD.

I just took their first real city, and I went on to then move my palace there, it was Veii. IIRC I then took Lugdunum(?) and Rome next turn, these are directly adjacent, north and west.

Only things to consider are that you have to keep the hops that are defending the iron and horses, both needed for knights. I've got 3 towns where I am rushing knights, all by the flood plains. You have to do the step process, rush a longbowman, change back to knights, wait for pop increase, then finish rushing the knight. In an emergency some other cities can be rushed, but because of the long lasting effects I only rush in specific cities that will be abandoned and rebuilt later on.

I tried to find a good save for you to mess around, and this is the best I have. The next one I have is at 780AD, and there is only one city of the romans left, Lutetia.

Couple other things, I got a leader soon after (or already) in this save, and I moved my palace to Veii. Check the old palace and see if its making anything important if you get that same leader, or if its just fortified or something in that save. I didn't check it.

You shouldn't have any problems beating the romans with this game, Knights beat spearmen and horsemen. Also I denied iron to rome forever so not a single legion.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Thanks Aeson and Smirk.

It is very rewarding to see how "the pros" have handled the Romans, and to have a chance to use that kind of firepower on the leader who has had me so burnt up in the past several retries.

I wonder, if I can ask you both, are these games fairly typical of your strategy? Did having a suboptimal starting position or militaristic neighbor influence you or would normally go spearman/settler as fast as possible? Do you play this way on easier levels? (I have only pursued full Civ 3 games at Regent level and below, where I find that it is not always necessary to even build defenders for some cities).

Let me know how your games wrap up, if you care to share that info before the big roundup (feel free to PM me).

 

[Aeson]

Most of the games I play privately are on Deity level, which usually means I have to switch from expansion to military very early. It's nice to have a more relaxed type of game where the military can wait for the most part, and the greeks are definitely the best peaceful civ, with Babs not far behind. The starting location was a bit uncentered, but always play to the strengths of the terrain. For much of the BC's I was able to forgo garrison units in all but my border cities, because of luxuries (Ivory and later Spices), and because there is very little threat of sea invasions until much later in the game (never from barbs, they need to change that). So being able to expand only to the SW gave the advantage of only having to defend to the SW. This allowed me to explore better with fewer military, and have relatively strong forces at the front as well. With raging barbarians, I just kept 1 hoplite stationed up on the gold hill in the jungle, as barbarian encampments need more than 1 unseen space to develop in, and that was the only area that my cities culture didnt reveal, until I later built a city there. Otherwise I would have had to defend Sparta and Athens much more (though Sparta had 2 units for happiness reasons as it built the lighthouse).

I do try to use similar city spacing when not going for early military conquests. I find that during the expansion period of the game, it's a good compromise between territory aquisition and time spent in transit by settlers. It also builds diagonal culture walls, so each new city is linked culturally to the last, with a minimum of overlap. That means I can connect cities by roads and not have to worry about the AI using those roads. Also the AI won't build cities if it only has 1 tile spacing from any of your cities. That means they won't build in the culture gaps left by this city spacing pattern, even early on when cultural borders haven't expanded. That protected my Ivory colony that I built, even though the pattern had caused me to miss them. In the GOTM there was enough open terrain available to make it work just about perfectly. In most games though I have to adjust individual cities placement in many cases, though the ability to shift each new line of cities up or down, and still keep the same basic overlap helps.

From a build order standpoint, it's very dependant on Civ, terrain, and desired victory condition. If I have bronzeworking from the start, I try to keep spearmen escorting most of my settlers. There are times when a settler is headed towards a protected area, and doesn't need an escort though. When I don't have bronzeworking I try to just make due with warriors, but usually make only a few more than I would spearmen. Its important to take terrain into account as well. Athens was able to build a settler in the exact same time it took to grow to 3, without any improvements to the terrain. Where I built sparta, it was able to produce 2 hoplites and then a settler. The next couple of cities needed terrain improvements before they could get in any kind of settler/hoplite rotation, so they started out building a few workers each. I had 2 teams of 3 workers each that were set to just building roads out to new city sites. Almost all of my cities were connected by roads before they were even founded, helping the settlers get there quicker, and giving the luxury support from the start.

As far as my GOTM turned out, I posted a somewhat detailed summary of it over on the spoiler thread.

 

[Smirk]

HA! You bet it did, I count like 3 strikes in this game.

The first is the greeks, ewww, they are the hyper defense tribe. Then there was the awful start, only thing of value to me was the flood plains. And third of course was the very agressive (at least in my game) romans. I took a look at aeson's game and the romans build the pyramids! I wish my romans were so useful, they ignored the pyramids and build non-stop horsemen, heh.

I'm more of a conquest player so I wouldn't normally play the greeks or any race that has a defensive UU (like the greeks/ french), or a balanced UU (like the romans and many others).

Ignoring the greeks there is really only 1 thing I care about initially a good food production square, preferrable flood plains because, one its 3 irrigated and 5 with wheat in despotism, and two where there be flood plains there be rivers. I settle almost always near fresh water, I don't do any crazy pattern stuff like Aeson described and did in his gotm. Rivers also give me two big benefits, no need for aquaduct, and you get +1 commerce on all adjacent river squares.

So all in all this start wasn't that bad, you got some flood plains (meager) and a bit more south there were quite a few cattle which certainly help. But once they finsih up this gotm get my endgame and check out Veii. Compared to Veii and Rome your starting cities are crap. I had over 100 production in Veii, and thats just with hydroplant. None of the later stage improvements.

 

[JoeM]

I managed to get the Iron early and building the road back to my capital was a bit of an epic, but stuff the Romans! I let them beat themselves to death on the shields of my hoplites every time they threatened me, a seriously unfeasible amount of losses before they would give up. I even had massive barbarian uprisings at the SAME time, where my hoplite would take 17 or 18 units down with it. But on no occasion did I try to assualt a Roman city until all my cities were producing veteran swordsmen.

Somewhere around 400/500 AD I waltzed into three Roman cities, they tried to scare me with a large number of archers approaching my Iron city, but I'd already taken three before they were a threat and agreed to a pecae treaty.

It was pretty easy considering all the battering I'd been taking until then.

Now I'll wait, get some more troops, and the Heroic Epic and bust them up again...

 

[Aeson]

Yah Smirk, the Romans were very nice to build the Pyramids. In all honesty though, I wish it had been built on the main continent, as it would have really helped my final score there. Most of the starting continent ended up waiting at size 12 for quite a while before I made it to Hospitals anyways. I did try to get the Romans to build the Great Library, I think Literature was my 3rd advance (non-hut) to that end. I was just going to give it to them, but they researched it at the same time I guess.

That is one of the things I really make a point of in my games now. I don't build graneries very often, and try to "help" my neighbors to get wonders for me to take later. Usually if I give Pottery or Literature to a neighbor, they immediately start building the corresponding wonder. If I can do that early enough, it gives them a good shot at at least one of them. Then I make sure that the city I'm attacking isn't building a wonder. They won't switch, even in wartime it seems, so I wait until they've finished, or lost the race, before I take the city. Pottery was my second advance, only took 6 turns to get, after the 32 for writing. I bet they would have gotten the Great Library if I had just gone straight for Literature, oh well. With how great a starting location the Romans had, it's suprising that they didn't build a wonder for you as well.

 

[el_kalkylus]

Hi. I have also had problem with the romans, so I played the game again. At one time I got to around 270 BC and quickly took the iron and the horse. After this I should have done fine, but I didn't. Some years later when I had some swordsmen and horsemen, I attacked. But the swordsmen weren't as effective as I thought, so I lost a city in the middle, which caused me to lose my iron and horses (Hard to take the city back). So I played the game again.

Now I am 530 BC. And the romans have really expanded quickly. And now they even took the iron!! (they have ironworking )

I know I gotta do something, and that quick, but I don't have any troops or anything. Is it over for me again? Look at the picture below and see for yourselves.

 

[el_kalkylus]

Bah! The damn romans can kill my city defender (hopolite) with a veteran warrior, they can stand unfortified on plains and still manage to defend against 3 of my horsemen.

This just isn't fun.

 

[Aeson]

Its hard to tell from just the picture, but I don't think you're in all that bad a position to tell the truth. You still have horses hooked up to your empire, did you build many barracks yet? It's important to use veteran horsemen, as regulars retreat too quickly. I would switch to horsemen in any city that has a barracks already, and pop rush them in any city that is over size 2 (Athens looks big enough that you might just want to let it grow and produce horsemen regularly). Cities without barracks should build them as quickly as possible, and then produce horsemen.

They have a spearman in the Iron city, but it doesn't look like they have a road connection to their main cities right? That means you don't have to worry about the Iron too much for right now, but taking back the city when you get spare horsemen would be a good idea. If you want to continue expanding (looks that way from all the settlers being built), then after 1 or two waves of pop rushing horsemen you should have a large enough army to take a few roman cities, and get Caesar to talk peace. It would be a long shot, but maybe your elite warrior can take the Iron city's regular spearman. It's just a Warrior, might as well give it a shot.

As far as Swordsmen are concerned, they aren't very effective unless you also send catapults along to weaken the defense. Otherwise you will still have high casualty rates when taking out spearmen in walled or size 7+ cities. Horsemen, on the other hand, only need minimal support (send a few hoplites into Roman territory, so the horsemen can have some "safe" tiles to end their turn in). Cut off Caesar's access to horses as soon as possible. Best way is to just take a hoplite and park it on the resource (pillage the road).

 

[el_kalkylus]

Hey, thanks Aeson. That were some good tips. I am right now in a huge war against the romans. We take cities back and forth. I have about 10 horsemen, but they took my "horse-city". I wonder if I had played the game a little differently, I would have had more uppertunities for war earlier on.

For example, I used my first worker to build roads to every spot I would build a city, until I came to the iron. Maybe I should have used my settlers to occupy the horse-tile earler instead of building a city in between (a crappy city on gold-tile, just north of "horse-city"). And maybe I should have whipped my people more . I may have been too kind to them.

Btw, you are not familiar with Starlifter are you? You seem like him. (Long posts, helping others, feeding the AI's to kill them later.)

 

[i.Psychosis]

I tip my hat to all those who managed to beat the Romans. I started rather badly. Never got the horses. Never got the iron. I even tried being nice and giving the Romans the iron working, they still declared war 2 rounds later. I could replay, but alas, I was beaten. I will look forward to GOTM #3. I have attached one of my final days. It doesn't look too bad, I know. But there were many behind them. Trust me.

 

[Cruise]

Aeson, about the Romans, you letting them build the Great Library; the AI won't start constructing it untill they have encountered 2 civs.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

It is good to hear that I aint the only one getting hammered by the Romans. They took a walled city with two veteran defenders with just a warrior and a horsemen, no casualties for them. Their archers can defend against my veteran horsemen sometimes. And the barbarians on this level, dont even get me started. I had an elite warrior on full health die to a barbarian camper with 2 health. Sheesh.

I would also like to see a preference setting that has the horsemen stay all the way, injured or not. I bet if they didnt go down to one health where they will be killed next turn by a one health warrior or archer, they could hang around and get some kills.

 

[Smirk]

And conversely I would like an option to have them retreat always when they reach 1 hp. My view is that they have that ability why not always use it. If I wanted 2/1 attackers without an option to retreat I would use the less costly archers. However there is no cheaper non-retreating unit replacement for tanks and armor.

I would never lose modern armor to impi's and jaguar warriors if I had that option.

 

[Grey Fox]

Hello everyone!

Well I had some problems beating the Romans too, but you have to be persistent and never ever let them have the Iron.

As soon as you can build a road to the small Sea inte the middle, where the horse is, and go there with a settler, the next city should be built by the Iron on the hills by the ocean to the west.

And build hoplites near the romans and horsemen in your more distant cities, it's also a good idea to use hoplites as the horsemens shields.

Well, well... that was not my question. My question was, if anyone invaded the biggest island?

My strategy was to defeat the romans and the build a great amount of cavalrys to invade the aztecs, but it was a failure so I loaded som turns back and started building up my cities, building culture stuff and so on (I actually almost won by culture, even if my only wonder was the Seti program, ended up with 96000p)

So I decided to invade them when I got Tanks instead. Which woukd ultimatly lead me to a Histographical victory... and that was almost my goal anyway...

Anyway, do you think you have to Invade the big Island to get high scores?

At the end of my game there was only me and China left, but I won by score, 3331p to be exact.

Here's a screenshot from my game 110 AD:

And here is one from 2049 AD:

I'm including the two savegames (110 AD, and 2049 AD)

Please tell Matrix that the savegames is here, because I don't know if he have got my email, I've had some problems with my email program lately...


The Information:
Nickname: Grey Fox
Name: Fredrik Henriksson
Date of Finish: 2050AD
Way of ending: Victory / Histographic
Final Score: 3331