What should I do next?

[MrRandomGuy]

Difficulty: Regent
Map: Pangea - I think it's 60% water
Nation: Iroquois
Barbarian: Raging
Victory Conditions Available: Conquest or whoever has the highest score in 2050.

I was actually building up forces to attack the Greeks when the Dutch were stupid enough to send in a lone Cavalry from a caravel to declare war on me while we had a trade deal of luxury resources going on (so their reputation is pretty much shot.)

A bit of background and history. I chose the civilization at random to change things up and picked this one because of the wheat tile next to river start. Despite the Barbarian setting being raging I never had trouble with them in my homeland and managed to get a huge tech lead from popping huts. Of course the huge tech lead catches up to you sooner or later and now in the Industrial Age everyone seems to be about equal in the tech race. I'm not concerned about that however as if the AI starts to out research me I can always lower my science rate to 0 and buy techs.

Anyway, my first target was Scandonavia who had no iron but had horses - until my borders peacefully expanded to include the horses. It was very, very easy to conquer them.

My next target was the Arabs, who several times made demands for peace. One of which was 2 gold. My exploring warriors noticed that at one point the Greeks were fighting the Arabs so I figured the Arabs wouldn't enlist the Greeks to help them out. I built embassies in every civilization with the plan to have every civilization gang up on whoever the Arabs enlisted to go to war with me. Before I started the war with the Arabs I noted that they had only one iron resource, no horses, and two saltpeter. I'm sure if the Arabs had access to horses their UU would have been more of a pain, but I only had to deal with a couple of them.

While I was at war with the Arabs, the Celts were stupid enough to land a single knight from a galley into my territory and declare war. I got the entire world (except the Arabs since I was at war, but someone else got the Arabs into the war against the Celts) to dogpile the Celts.

Now I've got the entire world dogpiling the Dutch. Which brings me to my options.

1. I can wait 17 more turns, sue the Dutch for peace, attack and destroy Greece, then finish off the Arabs (if the Dutch haven't done so already,) then declare on the Dutch

2. I can go through Greek territory (since I have a ROP already in place from way back when I was exploring) as well as Arab territory with a ROP (which they'll sign since I haven't broken any deals yet) and attack the dutch from there.

3. I can wait and see if the Dutch will be destroyed similar to the Celts then go after the Greeks.

Or I can do any other suggestions that I get.

I haven't built a navy because this is a full pangea map - albeit a strange map and I had planned on taking everyone out by land.

I also haven't built my FP yet because I'm not 100% sure where the best place would be AND I haven't received a leader from an elite unit yet. Usually when I build the FP it's in a highly corrupted city and I use a leader to rush it because I don't want to wait 200 turns.

This game is winnable. I'm honestly surprised I'm ranked #1. I think I'll be able to conquer everyone or at the very least have the highest score by 2050. I'm just debating about my next move. This is the first time I've played a Regent game and done well. When I woke up today and loaded the game up I was surprised the game setting wasn't on Warlord.

My success is probably due to luck with the rivals I've eliminated so far not having vital resources. I estimate the Greeks will be just as easy to conquer, but the Dutch will be a lot harder to kill off. They benefited the most from the war with the Celts and I don't think they lack any resources.

Note: I haven't fully automated workers. The slaves are cleaning up pollution from volcanoes. To make it easier I ordered workers to railroad from certain areas to others and ordered a few workers to automate around the nearest city. This is pretty good for me because by the Middle Ages I usually get tired of directing workers and automate all of them.

 

[Metrin]

I'll take a look on it.

 

[Theov]

Whoah! Looks cool. You're at the crossroads of your game and this is where you can make a difference.
You are in Monarchy and have land to develop. You also have a 28-over-the-cap military and are at war with the Dutch. I say 1+1+1=3 and invade the Dutch, take their land, develop your own in the meantime.

1: Since you have no War Weariness: attack the Dutch asap. Use your Warriors as military police where needed. Don't need to upgrade them.
2: In this turn: set science to Replacable Parts (double speed workers) and trade all you have with the AI . Don't bother buying Communism.
For example after this turn I got 44gpt from Persia, 40gpt from Carthage and 4gpt from Arabia. Yes, they have scientific method too, but if you rail Cattaraugus, it should outproduce every AI city to get ToE.
3: don't build wealth, you need workers. Let those cities make workers. Don't ever worry about having too many. There's no such thing. (you can add them to your - dutch - cities back later on if you'd want to)
4: Yamama has a slave doing nothing.
5: rail rail rail rail rail rail rail and develop everything in sight.

Bonus Tips:
A: Trondheim is 12 in size (no growth possible without a hospital) yet has 8 surplus food... that surplus food is going nowhere and could be making a shield. So either make the irrigation into mines or research sanitation and make a Hospital. I'd do the first.
B: Grand River has 7 units. Mecca has 2. One of those 7 units could be making someone in Mecca content. This really adds up in the long run because you need less on the luxury slider.
C: I'd give rails priority over pollution

From there on:
With double workers, outwork the AI, take a huge leap in production and income, make ToE with your most productive city (Cattaraugus), build the Forbidden Palace at Copenhagen.

First attachment is the same year, with my adjustments.
I didn't re-place the Military Police as described in Bonus Tips B
The second save is right at the start of the next turn.
View attachment PK1, 1475 AD.SAV
View attachment PK2, 1480 AD.SAV

 

[MrRandomGuy]

I like your changes and ideas. I was thinking of building the FP somewhere in conquered territory as a method to reduce corruption. I've tried this before and it has worked well with military leaders on different maps. I haven't ever tried the palace jump before but with the FP close to the capitol this should work just fine. I'm guessing the best place to palace jump would be in Dutch territory, possibly Amsterdam.

Monarchy is my preferred form of government for several reasons. No war weariness ever and paying citizens to finish works instead of sacrificing them. Sacrificing the population seems to me to not be the best way of doing things as you need the population for projects later on and it makes citizens unhappy.

In terms of the luxury slider, I make it higher for score purposes. The more happier citizens you have the higher your score is going to be. And since your score is an average of scores each turn the more you have the more you're going to get. If this game gets to the modern age once I don't need to do any further research I'll slide science down to 0 and place the luxury slider as high as it will go without having negative GPT. However I do agree with your choice of placing the luxury slider to 0 and the science slider up. Looking at all the other cities after shows only a few cities that have unhappy citizens, all of which were won by conquest or through suing for peace. If there were much more citizens that were unhappy I'd probably use the slider.

I didn't notice this earlier and I'm glad I posted here instead of wasted the time to do this: Arabia is at a critical choke point. While I could still pass through the choke point by land, I can't do so with any cannons or trebs due to the jungle that has no road. Sending workers to clear or road that jungle wouldn't be the wisest decision at this moment. I also can't just kill the Arabs off because that would kill my reputation, and I need the rep for the moment.

I'm thinking of sending the Galleons with troops to attack Breda The hill terrain will give me a bonus to defense if they decided to be stupid enough to attack my invasion force. Once I've conquered their homeland I'll go after the cities they captured from the Celts if Persia or Carthage hasn't already.

I agree that pollution is not a high priority now. That's why I've sent the slaves to clean them up. Once they're done they'll continue building rails with the rest of the workers.

How did you get the cities to display the civilization that owns them in parenthesis?

 

[MrRandomGuy]

The Dutch decided to have another "invasion force" enter my lands.

Spoiler :

The AI is really, really stupid when it comes to attacking by sea.

This is how you attack by sea...

Spoiler :

The territory circled in the 2nd map is showing that the Persians have conquered cities that the Dutch did a short time ago.

edit: purple is me, green is Greek, pink is Arabs, orange is Dutch, brown is Carthage, and the other color is Persia.

 

[Theov]

The Dutch decided to have another "invasion force" enter my lands.

Spoiler :

The AI is really, really stupid when it comes to attacking by sea.

This is how you attack by sea...

Spoiler :

The territory circled in the 2nd map is showing that the Persians have conquered cities that the Dutch did a short time ago.

edit: purple is me, green is Greek, pink is Arabs, orange is Dutch, brown is Carthage, and the other color is Persia.

pictures don't show?

 

[Theov]

I like your changes and ideas. I was thinking of building the FP somewhere in conquered territory as a method to reduce corruption. I've tried this before and it has worked well with military leaders on different maps. I haven't ever tried the palace jump before but with the FP close to the capitol this should work just fine. I'm guessing the best place to palace jump would be in Dutch territory, possibly Amsterdam.

I'd just leave the Palace where it is and build the FP in a Dutch city if the Scandinavian cities don't suffer from corruption much.

Monarchy is my preferred form of government for several reasons. No war weariness ever and paying citizens to finish works instead of sacrificing them. Sacrificing the population seems to me to not be the best way of doing things as you need the population for projects later on and it makes citizens unhappy.

true, I mostly use the republic, because I keep my wars as short as possible. In this game, Monarchy works just fine. You still need an emphasis on developing (irrigate/mine + road) all tiles. As you need all the income.

In terms of the luxury slider, I make it higher for score purposes.

I don't care about the score, really. All I care about is winning.

I didn't notice this earlier and I'm glad I posted here instead of wasted the time to do this: Arabia is at a critical choke point. While I could still pass through the choke point by land, I can't do so with any cannons or trebs due to the jungle that has no road. Sending workers to clear or road that jungle wouldn't be the wisest decision at this moment. I also can't just kill the Arabs off because that would kill my reputation, and I need the rep for the moment.

I'm thinking of sending the Galleons with troops to attack Breda The hill terrain will give me a bonus to defense if they decided to be stupid enough to attack my invasion force. Once I've conquered their homeland I'll go after the cities they captured from the Celts if Persia or Carthage hasn't already.

I'd leave the Arabs alone and go by sea to the Netherlands. It's a short swim. Leiden was looking very seductive to me also.

How did you get the cities to display the civilization that owns them in parenthesis?

color blind help at the preferences

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Hm, the pictures show up for me just fine. Guess I just gotta leave the attachments in this post.

The first picture is their "invasion force." The second is my invasion force, showing them how it's really supposed to be done.

Well, I already built the FP. Remember you changed the city that was producing TOE to the FP? That's ok, I can save the game before the palace jump just in case things get screwy.

Persia has captured just about all of the non core Dutch cities. Now that I've entered their homeland the Dutch have a very limited time, especially when I research flight, build airports in my core, and rush build an airport in a former Dutch city.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Woooh! I got the conquest victory!

Thanks for your help Theov. I gotta say though, it's a PAIN to micromanage so much. But, it's more of a pain to have to rely on cities producing wealth. After your influence I didn't have any city build wealth for the rest of the game.

After attacking and capturing Breda I slowly went for all of the Dutch cities next to it one by one with artillery and cannons. It was pretty slow, but there were very low losses. I also pillaged the roads around the cities (outside the borders of course) I captured to make it harder for the Dutch to retaliate, as well as force them to only be able to attack effectively from one side.

For some strange reason, I never saw any Dutch knights or cavalry. I can only assume that they sent all of them against Persia and Carthage, but still to encounter no cavalry at all just seemed really odd to me. I hadn't built the intelligence agency yet so there was no way for me of knowing that they had cavalry when I was attacking them.

As I had planned to do earlier, I researched flight and built airports in all cities in my core then rush built one in a former Dutch city. From there it was easy to finish them off. The Persians absorbed all of the cities that the Dutch had taken from the Celts and I also learned motorized transportation.

Yet I had a problem. I didn't notice it when I started building airports but it became really apparent when I learned motorized transportation. I had no oil. After quick searching I found 2 people who did, Persia and Carthage. Carthage didn't even know refining yet, so they had no idea they had access to oil. Thankfully Persia did AND they had extra. I gladly bought oil from them.

From then on the Dutch never had a chance. Bombers soon replaced my cannons. I love how there's lethal bombardment in the full version of civ. It made things A LOT easier for me (lol, I'm sure one day it will make things a lot harder for me too when an AI decides to bomb me)

Once the Dutch had 3 cities left I attempted for the 4th or 5th time (not in the same turn of course) to plant a spy in Persia. It failed, they got mad, declared war, and cut off my supply of oil. By this time thankfully Carthage had discovered oil (and if they hadn't I would have gladly gifted them techs to buy their oil.) Similar to all the other wars I had, I enlisted everyone to go to war against the Persians with me. Carthage and Greece actually sent units along with me to capture Persian cities. It was really, really easy to use bombers to break their cities then march on in. The Persians never did have a chance.

With the Persians gone, it was time to ruin my rep by breaking my ROP with Carthage since after they were gone only 2 civs would be left. At this point I had modern armor and was able to produce plenty of them every single turn. Carthage was destroyed in two turns. From there it was extremely easy to kill off the Arabs and the Greeks.

History remembers me as Hiawatha the Great. A score a little over 2k. Not the best score I've gotten, but still I'm happy

Edit:

I never did do the palace jump. My core cities were doing just fine and I was making enough gpt with micromanagement that moving the palace seemed unnecessary.

 

[Lanzelot]

As I had planned to do earlier, I researched flight and built airports in all cities in my core then rush built one in a former Dutch city. From there it was easy to finish them off.

Tip for your next game: airports are expensive and not really needed in most cities. And they drain your economy for nearly no benefit at all. (2-3 should be sufficient to build some veteran planes. That's all.)

Instead you can simply take 2-3 dozen of your left-over workers from the times when you built your railroad system (or rush a few new ones in corrupt outer towns, if you don't have many workers left). The workers can then plant a few "airfields" on tiles all over your core. (This will for some reason destroy the underlying irrigation or mine on that tile, but you can move some more workers back on that tile and re-build the irrigation/mine without destroying the airfield...)
Probably you have captured a Dutch worker at some point of your invasion, so you can build an airfield next to a former Dutch city as well. And already you are able to transport huge numbers of units from your core to the former Dutch territory...!

This would probably have saved you a couple thousand shields and a lot of gold per turn that you have to pay as upkeep for the airports....

 

[Theov]

Woooh! I got the conquest victory!

Thanks for your help Theov. I gotta say though, it's a PAIN to micromanage so much. But, it's more of a pain to have to rely on cities producing wealth. After your influence I didn't have any city build wealth for the rest of the game.

After attacking and capturing Breda I slowly went for all of the Dutch cities next to it one by one with artillery and cannons. It was pretty slow, but there were very low losses. I also pillaged the roads around the cities (outside the borders of course) I captured to make it harder for the Dutch to retaliate, as well as force them to only be able to attack effectively from one side.

For some strange reason, I never saw any Dutch knights or cavalry. I can only assume that they sent all of them against Persia and Carthage, but still to encounter no cavalry at all just seemed really odd to me. I hadn't built the intelligence agency yet so there was no way for me of knowing that they had cavalry when I was attacking them.

As I had planned to do earlier, I researched flight and built airports in all cities in my core then rush built one in a former Dutch city. From there it was easy to finish them off. The Persians absorbed all of the cities that the Dutch had taken from the Celts and I also learned motorized transportation.

Yet I had a problem. I didn't notice it when I started building airports but it became really apparent when I learned motorized transportation. I had no oil. After quick searching I found 2 people who did, Persia and Carthage. Carthage didn't even know refining yet, so they had no idea they had access to oil. Thankfully Persia did AND they had extra. I gladly bought oil from them.

From then on the Dutch never had a chance. Bombers soon replaced my cannons. I love how there's lethal bombardment in the full version of civ. It made things A LOT easier for me (lol, I'm sure one day it will make things a lot harder for me too when an AI decides to bomb me)

Once the Dutch had 3 cities left I attempted for the 4th or 5th time (not in the same turn of course) to plant a spy in Persia. It failed, they got mad, declared war, and cut off my supply of oil. By this time thankfully Carthage had discovered oil (and if they hadn't I would have gladly gifted them techs to buy their oil.) Similar to all the other wars I had, I enlisted everyone to go to war against the Persians with me. Carthage and Greece actually sent units along with me to capture Persian cities. It was really, really easy to use bombers to break their cities then march on in. The Persians never did have a chance.

With the Persians gone, it was time to ruin my rep by breaking my ROP with Carthage since after they were gone only 2 civs would be left. At this point I had modern armor and was able to produce plenty of them every single turn. Carthage was destroyed in two turns. From there it was extremely easy to kill off the Arabs and the Greeks.

History remembers me as Hiawatha the Great. A score a little over 2k. Not the best score I've gotten, but still I'm happy

Edit:

I never did do the palace jump. My core cities were doing just fine and I was making enough gpt with micromanagement that moving the palace seemed unnecessary.

post the savegame please

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Didn't rename the save, but this is the save I did right before I sent units to the last Greek city.

Edit:

Thanks for the tip Lan! While I didn't have to worry about maintenance costs for airports since I rushed Smiths Co with a scientific great leader those shields could have been put to better use.

I had actually forgotten about airfields since I'm new to Conquests. I'll be sure to remember next time!

 

[Theov]

Didn't rename the save, but this is the save I did right before I sent units to the last Greek city.

Edit:

Thanks for the tip Lan! While I didn't have to worry about maintenance costs for airports since I rushed Smiths Co with a scientific great leader those shields could have been put to better use.

I had actually forgotten about airfields since I'm new to Conquests. I'll be sure to remember next time!

eh no, because Smith's is one of the better wonders
But the airport thing is a good thing to keep in mind.

 

[Team9]

Interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

Couple of tips... If you intend to conquer by force, always focus on a set objective (for me always to cripple the AI ability to replace lost key units like Modern Armor or Nukes... by taking out the aluminum or uranium source... even after a war, leave an army on the site and the AI won't touch it. Then you can take your time and systematically destroy them.

You got it right by trying to fight one opponent at a time, don't repeat Hitler's mistake by opening a second front.

Use, when you can, galleons and transport to leapfrog down shorelines with offensive units; cavalry, tanks, modern armor. The AI will always rush its offensive units to the front so attack with a small force to attract the attention, then go round the side with air bombardment and marines - it works a charm. (The AI rarely uses marines so don't bother with over protecting your shores. Once you have a rail network you can set up a small reaction force to counter any landings.)

Always take out the radar sets first.

I prefer communism for gov when doing it the military way - use the espionage skill to know where and when your AI is, don't steal their plans, just investigate target and key cities.

I only use airports when I have several continents to manage; it helps to be able to move key units fast, so the main continent has a LOT of airports and the outlying islands one or two...

Nuclear War - the AI will bombard cities with resources within the 9-square zone so move your key cities if you have to, abandon and resettle... and never keep your main forces in a city, build a fortress on a railhead, at least six squares from the shore (tac nukes) and two from a city (ICBMs) then the AI can blast away while you conduct your campaign mostly unaffected by the expenditure of all its hardware.

Small continents 70% water, build and maintain a large naval force and kill the AI galleons and transports, (ability to project) and set about building and resupplying the invasion force early.