Where did I lose this game?

[jdstacey]

I'm Augustus of Rome and this is emperor fractal/standard/normal. I've won plenty of games at emperor, and I thought I was doing well in this game. But it looks like I'm toast.

I knocked out Hatty, my only neighbor early. I was able to trade with Hannibal for a long time, and I never traded (techs) with Pericles. I was able to adopt the majority religion and spread it. TGL is mine, and I had about a dozen early coastal cities. That helped win the lib race, but it was the only wonder I built. I tried and failed a few others.

I don't think I overdid it with buildings, either. The diplo situation has been good since the start. Stalin & Pericles have been enemies forever, but Stalin's too weak to really do much.

I don't know if there's something obvious I'm missing or if this was just bad luck with Pericles getting such a huge empire easily.

Spoiler :

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[Ghpstage]

Well your probably going to kick yourself about this...
You have 53 towns and your running Hereditary Rule and Bureacracy.
I'd say that is a likely a factor with some significance.

Its not over yet mind. With Pericles at war you still have a very good chance of getting to space first.

 

[jdstacey]

Thx for the reply, ghp. But I have another question. If I switch out of HR, I have massive unhappiness issues. So I never did. That happens to me fairly often - I get so dependent on units for happiness that I can't switch out.

Point taken on FS though.

Pericles is going to wipe the floor with Stalin. P has tons of infantry, S has grenadiers.

 

[GGracchus]

You could nuke pericles TMIT style and go dom, or kill pericles and go for space.

 

[coanda]

If you wanted to go real TMiT style, you could feed Stalin gifted nukes and other units for defense and let Pericles just get bogged down in a long drawn-out war when Stalin doesn't fold as he ought to. He did that in some madscientist RPC, and astonishingly enough it actually worked as intended.

 

[jwez11007]

I vote for gifting nukes while going to space...nothing better then letting the AI do all the dirty work for you.

As to the HR unhappiness issues, I ran into that after discovering the benefits of HR a couple years ago. Sol'n: or infrastructure+resource trades

 

[barbertje]

Thx for the reply, ghp. But I have another question. If I switch out of HR, I have massive unhappiness issues. So I never did. That happens to me fairly often - I get so dependent on units for happiness that I can't switch out.

Point taken on FS though.

Pericles is going to wipe the floor with Stalin. P has tons of infantry, S has grenadiers.

- You should have built forums in most places, +3 happy with the resources you have now.
- you're paying quite a lot for those happiness garrisons, about 100 gold/turn, including inflation

- you can get a gold resource for 18 gold from Frederick. +2 happy everywhere it
matters, and much cheaper than HR garrisons

- There are a number of cities that are working coast tiles. Paying for garrisons or happiness/health infrastructure to work more coast tiles isn't worth it. Assign specialists or work productions tiles and let them starve. Your national epic city shouldn't work any tile with less than 3 food on it, unless you really need some production.

 

[jdstacey]

How do you gift nukes? I thought the gifted unit had to be in the recipient's territory.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm not sure what the problem is. you have oil, Pericles does not.

If he's a threat, research industrialization, build a bunch of tanks and go kill him. End of threat.

You have twice as many cities as he does.

I will admit I haven't looked at it all that closely, but it looks to me like you are in a pretty good position.

 

[jdstacey]

First, thanks for all the advice.

If I go after Pericles, his army is HUGE. I don't think I could take and hold his cities with tanks. So are you suggesting to raze what I take? Or just build enough to hold them (which would be a whole lot).

 

[Mylene]

Not sure where some guys see him at "double the cities" or with 50, i see 19 and Peri at 15..
and Peri does have Oil, do i have the wrong save?

 

[coanda]

How do you gift nukes? I thought the gifted unit had to be in the recipient's territory.

Tactical nukes can be moved.

 

[MarigoldRan]

First, thanks for all the advice.

If I go after Pericles, his army is HUGE. I don't think I could take and hold his cities with tanks. So are you suggesting to raze what I take? Or just build enough to hold them (which would be a whole lot).

You hit Pericles from 3 directions with a massive blitzkrieg. I've done this oftentimes. Due to AI programming, his HUGE army can only be at one place at one time.

Also, if you have open borders, wait until his HUGE army is deep in enemy territory before invasion. By the time it gets back, you would have conquered half his empire already, and you can IMMEDIATELY make peace, thereby completely negating his huge army.

The idea is that if you capture a couple of the AI's cities, you can always make a profitable peace regardless of the actual military situation. You can literally lose your whole fricking army, but as long as you took out 6 or 7 of their cities, the AI will peace you.

 

[shyuhe]

You don't need to gift nukes or anything. I played forward a bit and here are my results. There's a stack growing on the east coast to stop Fred's culture and after that, it's just mop up. Pericles is getting mauled by Stalin's outdated cavalry Probably need to stop that war before Pericles capitulates...

 

[Killroyan]

Judging by the screenshot only I would say you are actually in a nice position. Good land, not far behind on Pericles and you could easily go space if you ask me. If you get radio and build the wonders you should be fine if you ask me.

 

[theskibum]

Dude, get into Free Speech and US quick. That is a hell of a lot of commerce awaiting you from your 53 towns. Keep Stalin and Pericles at war as best as possible. If Stalin is backward, give him techs to go back to war with Pericles. The will slog the bejeesus out of each other and leave you alone to charge after space.

Deal with the unhappiness by either starving the cities down or build forums where needed. Between all the you will gain from the shift to US and the you will gain from shifting to FS, your production and tech will skyrocket (use those raw hammers to build wealth or science if you need).

 

[jdstacey]

Thanks for all the replies - I learned quite a bit. Bummer is I've thrown in many games that I thought were lost over the years.

Without bribing Hannibal in on Pericles, Stalin caps in one turn - so that really was an important bit that I was missing (as well as US/FS).

 

[Ghpstage]

I always find to be a bit of a challenge with cottage empires, in these games I will typically keep then number of farms low to prevent running over the cap, because specialists won't be very productive outside a GP farm anyway.
You need to keep an eye on potential resource deals every so often, here gold can be got now and by looking at the chokepoint betwen Stalin and Pericles, and seeing that no-one is trading for Pericles Dyes, I reckon Dyes will be up for grabs soon (connect your spare sheep and fur!).
Shyuhe showed a very useful way to get around the issue for your GP farm, that is to build the Globe Theatre there.

Thanks for all the replies - I learned quite a bit. Bummer is I've thrown in many games that I thought were lost over the years.

Without bribing Hannibal in on Pericles, Stalin caps in one turn - so that really was an important bit that I was missing (as well as US/FS).

AIs are bad at focusing on victories, especially ones like space, which is the only one Pericles is really threatening. Its not uncommon to be behind and make a sprint to the finish by using decent planning (beelining techs, Internet or whatever).
Another AI you may want to keep an eye on is Freddy, he's making a run on culture, he isn't close yet, but you don't want to forget and have it catch you off guard.

In future you may consider using an Airship to keep an eye on important events, such as the Pericles-Stalin war here.
The bribe plan is good if your rolling back a turn, and being willing to bribe wars to bog down competitors is a very useful thing to learn.

 

[theskibum]

To see the power of a "behind in tech beeline to computers to build the internet" strategy for space, see my thread on the front page of the Civ4 Gen Discussion forum!