WOTM 02: Final Spoiler
- Thread starter Gyathaar
- Start date
Gnejs said:
You must have had some interesting stats in the diplomacy -x "You razed one of our cities" bit
they haven't been published yet...presumably, since it is a new competition with new code and everything it will likely take a little bit longer than the GOTMs have been. by that token, I'd assume that WOTM1 will be published within the next month lol
However, if I were you, I wouldn't believe me...might want to wait for official word from Gyathaar or Alan
However, if I were you, I wouldn't believe me...might want to wait for official word from Gyathaar or Alan
Sir Og
Chieftain
A very interesting map 
I did a lot of mistakes and did not micromanage enough so I ended up with a lame:
Game status: Domination Victory for Korea
Game date: 1852 AD
Base score: 5461
Final score: 36003
I went for Japan first (made them vassals by mistake), then for China, then India followed by some build up and a war on two fronts vs Russia and Persia.
Acheived domination shortly after the fall of conquest of Russia and Persia. I never captured a Mongol city. I lost Seul at one point to a Persian "surprise" landing and also lost a lot of population because of severe war weariness.
I did a lot of mistakes and did not micromanage enough so I ended up with a lame:Game status: Domination Victory for Korea
Game date: 1852 AD
Base score: 5461
Final score: 36003
I went for Japan first (made them vassals by mistake), then for China, then India followed by some build up and a war on two fronts vs Russia and Persia.
Acheived domination shortly after the fall of conquest of Russia and Persia. I never captured a Mongol city. I lost Seul at one point to a Persian "surprise" landing and also lost a lot of population because of severe war weariness.
My first win on Prince! Although I did plump for the Adventurer class. Good job too, otherwise I'd have got mauled by those barbs. Final score just shy of 10000 (although that'll get adjusted for the adventurer start) and a spaceship victory in 1942. Generally happy with my style of play, especailly my teching. Really just let myself down on production so will have to work on that for next game. I also had two crahes and had to reload autosaves; hope that's not going to be a problem.
I was too late to submit my game but there were several elements I think worth sharing.
My builds:
Interactive components:
Design comments:
Before I forget:
KUDOS to GNEJS for the self-imposed one-city challenge. That is simply beyond amazing and I applaud your hubris. I nominate you for special recognition by the moderators
My builds:
- Settled NW and W on river. One of my rules is that I try to never settle my capital on a coast and after the practice games I determined it was too hard to protect the fur from barbs who slipped by the perimeter. I moved my settler NW and after I found the 2nd wine that allowed me to keep the corn and all 4 fur, I moved once again and left the cow for an end game naval city.
- No Great Wall. Farmed 10xp Archers on barbs and upgraded warriors with Cover to place on forested/jungled hills for fogbusting. Scouts in non-military fogbusting roles.
- Founded 4 religions in P'Yong (by Gems/Pigs/Banana/Marble)
- Oracle->Theology
- Used my 1st Prophet for Philosophy en route to Liberalism
- Tokugawa adopted Christianity, so I switched and spread Christianity to Qin
- Used my 2nd Prophet for Church of Nativity for income and spying
- Built Parthenon/National Epic, Great Library, University of Sankore, and Oxford in Seoul.
- NOTE: no iron or copper, yet
- Founded 3rd City as my Merchant city on far coast by banana, river, lake, & silks(?), and cottaged everything up with Colossus (built the hard way), Versailles, and Wall Street.
- Mostly used Scientists to make academies in Seoul and 3rd City and super specialists in Seoul. Artists were saved for military expansion and to prevent barbarians wherever I razed.
- Converted P'yong to Engineer city with Forge/West Point/Pentagon (missed one I think) where it was about 50%/50% with Prophets.
Interactive components:
- After building a religious block with Toku & Qin, I adopted Organized Religion/Slavery to spread missionaries and fuel my expansion with faster building
- Catherine declared war right about the time I finished Civil Service through brute force so she was my first victim. Encouraged Qin to fight her, but kept Toku out of the war so he wouldn't consolidate holdings.
- I discovered Genghis while marching through Russia and dispatched a missionary from my SOD to make him Christian. He was backwards so I encouraged him to join the Crusade and Russia was exiled to sharing a barbarian island as a capitulated nation for the rest of the game (was funny watching barb Grens/Rifles patrolling her longbowman-guarded cities).
- Qin had bailed on the fight midway and Asoka & Cyrus had the wrong religions, so I encouraged Qin to engage Asoka. I then got Toku to fight Asoka.
- Qin asked me for help as I had completed a couple of tanks (and already sent them to that border), so I agreed and our Crusade was on in the East!
- After beating back Indian Cavs with tanks, Qin bailed again (curse him!) and Toku settled only to have Asoka capitulate to Cyrus and Cyrus declared on me. More the merrier!. Not sharing a border, I didn't mind at all.
- Finished United Nations in P'yong. Toku was challenger (this is why I kept him around) and nobody liked him much. Won Diplomatic on 1st ballot in 1798.
Design comments:
- I'm thrilled to death that I played the practice games with Rampaging Barbs - they complete dominate the early game if you haven't learned to take their measure and are willing sacrifice chump blockers to bring down bigger attackers. While Great Wall was a natural for a lot of players, having protective archers and their upgrades was more than enough.
- I hated the layout, which in turn made it a challenge, which in turn made the game a lot of fun. Curse you designers and Thanks!
- One of the drawbacks to my foreign policy was that I never got coal until I took Delhi in the last 5 turns or so. No railroads (everyone else seemed to have them, so I relied upon airlifting and open borders on their rails). I only settled 2 towns in the early game, maybe 2 in the middle game (for the polar iron and to have a naval presence) and maybe 2 in the late game for more naval/airpower. It was odd having a + relationship with Toku all game and my civics almost never budged from Police State (Genghis), Bureaucracy (Qin), Slavery/Emancipation, Mercantilism (Toku), Organized Religion/Theocracy after I forged my alliance. I'm not certain that I've ever played a game where I have not employed Universal Suffrage, Caste System, Pacifism, or Free Religion!
Before I forget:
KUDOS to GNEJS for the self-imposed one-city challenge. That is simply beyond amazing and I applaud your hubris. I nominate you for special recognition by the moderators
Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,474
First of all, thanks for taking the time to read my late write-up (I did submit my game on time, however). This write-up will be my first 4OTM write-up, so I hope that you enjoy it!
Thank you kindly Gyathaar for all of your hard work, thank you Ainwood for helping him to get started and for the rest of your hard work, thank you to all of the admins that dedicate their time into making this site a wonderful experience, and mostly thank you to the fellow players that have taken the time to share their experiences!
Now, to the task at hand...
Final Score: 21211
Rivals Eliminated: China and Persia
Vassaled Rivals: India (to me) and Japan (to Russia)
Best Trading Partner: Mongolia
Victory Condition: Domination
I settled in place. The starting location seemed good enough to me. I figured that by settling there, I had a few decent food resources, I had a happiness resource (the beavers) to use before the invention of a Calendar, and I could build a navy, if required.
My initial Warrior went South West, to check out the Silver location. Upon seeing that we must be at the South end of this area of land, he then proceeded North West. He eventually met up with Japan.
Due to Japan's cultural expansion, I was not able to explore past their capital. I did not realise that the continent continued for quite a ways. For several millennia, I thought that there wasn't much land past the Japanese capital.
Research path = Hunting -> Archery -> Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Masonry -> Polytheism -> Monotheism -> The Wheel -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Writing -> Mathematics -> Construction
Notice that I skipped both Bronze Working and The Alphabet for quite some time.
My first citizen worked one of the Beavers, right from the get-go. With the extra hammer from the Plains Hills, I wanted to capitalize on the hammer boost by maximizing hammers. I got my first Warrior in 5 turns (and we were playing at Epic speed)! I wasn't worried about the fact that I would not be gaining any food, as immediately after building that Warrior, I started the production of a Worker.
In this way, I would also be using the Beaver for the extra early commerce during the production of both the Warrior and the Worker, in order to help pump out my initial research.
My second Warrior headed North West and later a bit North East, getting trapped in a mountain range. He eventually made his way North and hit the end of a peninsula, near some Rice and desert. I'd met the Chinese along the way, but I couldn't find them! It was as if they didn't exist, or had just started with a free unit on my continent.
After the worker was complete, I was then able to immediately start bulding Archers, as I'd already researched Archery.
I wanted Archers because of our Civ's synergy with Archery units and Gunpowder units. I recall reading somewhere that Archers seem to be missing of one of their first strikes in the Warlords expansion--does anyone know if that point is true? If it is true, do you know if it has been fixed in the first Warlords patch?
Anyway, my Worker was busy on a useful task--making a Beaver Camp. After building the Camp, he had just enough time to get to the Corn and start irrigating it. I might have had one turn of idleness, but otherwise, the timing worked out really well.
A couple of turns after I started researching Agriculture, Hinduism was founded by what would later be revealed to be India.
Upon my completion of research on Agriculture, Buddhism was founded. Unfortunately, it wasn't the corn farmers that were Buddhist, as Buddhism was founded by Persia.
By me not researching these religions, the AI had set itself up with neighbours that wouldn't get along very well. I wasn't able to capitalize much on this fact, as Mongolia ended up becoming the worst enemy of both of them, instead of them vehemently hating each other. On the other hand, India never raised a finger to help Persia during the two times that I declared war on Cyrus, so perhaps this fact helped out. Plus, I wasn't able to generate any Great Prophets (you'll understand why if you keep reading), while each of these two civs were able to build their respective shrines, making them attractive, politically-isolated targets later on in the game. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
As soon as Animal Husbandry was ready, I began work on the Sheep. I might have worked on a Camp while waiting for that tech. After working on the Sheep, I kept working on setting up Camps. That is, whenever the Barbarians that later treated my land as their stomping grounds would allow my worker to build the Camps.
Upon the discovery of Monotheism, I founded a religion in the capital of Seoul.
I thought that I'd had a great start so far.
Once I discovered the Japanese capital, I camped outside of its borders, keeping an eye on the Cow. It took a while for Tokugawa to either a) build a Worker or b) research Animal Husbandry. Finally, shortly after I started research on Masonry, Tokugawa finally sent his Worker to work on the Cow. A couple of turns later, in 2560 BC, I declared war and captured his Worker. I lost the Worker and my Warrior to his Archer on his turn. Oh well, that's why it's a gambit--sometimes you get burned.
I knew that retribution would be swift, and Japan would not settle for Peace, so I was forced to pump out more Archers.
My initial plan had been to get a religion, adopt that religion, and switch to the Organized Religion civic. Well, part of that plan came to fruition--I got my religion and I switched to it. Both my capital and my first-founded city shared the religion.
However, I found myself building too many units, without time to properly focus on Wonder-building, so I never did switch to Organized Religion. In retrospect, I probably could have switched anyway, as I made some half-hearted attempts at Wonder-building. I did not switch, though, as I was concerned about the economic burden of a High Upkeep civic combined with the upkeep of building a lot of military. In addition, while I was busy building military units, the civic wouldn't even help me.
Of course, this lack of Organized Religion didn't stop me from trying to build Wonders. Neither did the fact that I never did get Marble hooked up in time for any of the Wonders that require it. Of course, the fact that I kept missing out on these partially-completed Wonders to the AI was the end result.
I ended up making 7 Archers in Seoul, followed by a Settler. I then made a Barracks and another 4 Archers, followed by a second Settler. I completed the second settler in 850 BC. So as you can imagine, my capital was a little too late in starting on the early wonders to be able to compete with the AI, most notably China, with their frustratingly sweet starting location on top of a Stone resource.
So what did I do with all of those Archers? Surely, I destroyed Japan. Or maybe I took over some Barbarian cities. Maybe I made a gambit and rushed China, hoping to capture their capital early? Well, unfortunately, none of those scenarios panned out.
My battles started out fine. I took on several animals, never losing to any of them. After losing my Warrior to Japan, though, I lost all sense of reason.
Upon spotting a Persian Scout moving westward, I knew that China and Persia must be off to the East somewhere near the North side of the continent. Rather playing it smart, I decided to be reckless. In 2350 BC, when I moved my initial Archer towards the East onto the same tile as the Persian Scout, I accepted the choice of declaring war. Sure, I won the fight, but things went downhill from there.
In 2260 BC, I defeated my first Barbarian Warrior, and more followed swiftly. We were playing, after all, with Raging Barbarians.
At home, my Archers that I hadn't sent out to scout were being harried. Battles almost every turn with Barb Warriors kept them on their toes.
Then I decided to throw away all sense. I spotted a Chinese settler, escorted by a Warrior, which appeared to be heading towards the hill to the South and a bit West of what I would later discover to be their capital. I figured that I would stop them early by killing their first settler, getting a free worker out of the deal. Unfortunately, by the time that I could get next to them, they were already on a hill but had not yet settled. My Archer was also wounded from a previous battle.
What happened?
Archer loses to: Chinese Warrior (0.32/2)
That battle really hurt. Plus, I was right, and the settler ended up sitting down on the hill, making for a city that would be too tough to take without metal or Hwachas. Further, it was named Guangzhou, not Shanghai, so it was already their third city and I hadn't even made a Settler yet! Sigh.
I had a couple more battles with Barbarian Warriors and then things started to get quiet. Unfortunately, I believe that I was in the eye of the hurricane, and the hurricane was getting stronger and wider by the year.
I guess the Barb Warriors were getting smarter. They started stacking, and I wasn't expecting them to do so. I lost two Archers this way--attacking a Barb Warrior when it left the forest to visit grassland or plains, only to discover that it was really two Barb Warriors in a stack. Retribution was quick.
So let's see. I've built 1 Warrior and 7 Archers. I lost my initial Warrior and 3 Archers, leaving me with 1 Warrior out near China, 1 Archer out near China, and 3 to defend the homeland. Yes, I was in trouble.
So of course, I built a settler!
Ummm, that move sucked. The settler had to sit around in my capital for many turns, as the Barbs had placed a city very close to the Wines and Pig near which I wanted to settle. The Barb city's location wasn't great, as it was too far to the West of the Wines. Plus, I didn't have the military to challenge that city.
After the Settler was built, I built another Archer and lost another Archer. So I still only had 3 Archers defending the homeland. They were brave but were definitely overworked and underpaid.
Yikes, the combat log is scary. I then lost another Archer on the turn that I began research on Meditation (1450 BC), only to be replaced a turn later by a fresh Archer.
I couldn't keep my promoted Archers alive long enough, nor did I have enough to properly stack them in groups like the Barbarians were doing.
Of course, I felt that China was pulling away, so I tried to pillage their lands. I think that I pillaged a mine on a hill, but that's about it. As I moved onto flatter terrain, perhaps a Cow, two Archers swarmed me. One died but the other killed my Archer. It didn't hurt China enough, but it ended up hurting me badly. How's that for effective pillaging, eh?
Fortunately, my 3 remaining Archers started winning battles, so I pushed out a Barracks. If it was going to be a game of war, not Wonders, so be it--I was not going down without a good fight!
My Warrior up by China was sort of wandering in the direction of what I would later discover to be India and Persia, but he got trapped by a mountain range. It appears that a Chinese Archer found him and polished him off.
From that point onwards, my game was almost purely defensive, where I would take territory very slowly, as it took more than a millennia before I could field a large enough army to go out and cause trouble for the AI (or for the Barbs, for that matter).
I think that Raging Barbs in Civ 3 were easier to deal with. You would get the odd Barb appearing in random places, but you would at least know that the Barbarian Villages would be the spawning points for most of them. In Civ 4, they can appear anywhere, en masse. Oh well, that's all part of the fun!
After building the Barracks, I started on--yes, you guessed it--more Archers. I'd started on Priesthood at this point, still being hopeful for an Oracle build. It turned out to be wishful thinking on my part.
In 1240 BC, P'yongyang was finally founded. I think that I went with the Silver + Wheat + Deer location that I'd scouted at the very beginning of the game. I'd wanted the Pigs and River-Wines for my second city, but with a Barb city two squares away from where I wanted to settle, I'd either have to give up on the Pigs (which I wasn't willing to do) or settle elsewhere.
It seems that I finally stopped losing battles to Barbarian Warriors, probably due to the sheer amount of Archers that Seoul kept pumping out.
I felt safe enough to start the Oracle in P'yongyang, even though I was lacking both Organized Religion and Marble.
From this point onwards, it appears that I was finally consistently winning against the Barbs, slowly upgrading my Archers.
However, in 960 BC and 940 BC, respectively, China and Japan each took out one of my Archers.
In 805 BC, I finally got my third city of Wonson founded on one of the Wines with the Pigs in my extended borders. It had been thanks to Japan's raising of the nearby Barb city, plus the fact that I was able to take out part of his attacking force (one of his Warriors) that allowed me to settle. Wonson immediately began production on a Library, later producing my first Great Person--a Great Scientist.
I kept working on Archers in Seoul and finally produced another Settler in 610 BC. P'yongyang (my second city) was still struggling to work on the Oracle.
565 BC: Archer loses to: Barbarian Archer (1.74/3) Uh oh. I'm glad that we're playing on Prince level. I would have lost a long time ago if I'd been facing early Archers or Axemen from the Barbs.
A this point, I was getting desperate. The Barbs had a city to the North of the Wines, near the Gems and other good resources. Japan had taken some of the good spots to the West, and I wasn't prepared to settle next to one of their cities and be forced to over-extend my defense, as I was still at war with them.
So I founded by 4th city of Pusan near the Cow and Banana, thinking that I could eventually culturally capture the Barb city three squares to the East. I could then decide to either keep it or to disband it and place another city a bit further to the East. Or so the plan went.
By this time, China had started snatching up Wonders, so I figured that I'd be daring and start on The Temple of Artemis in Pusan. Hahaha!!! What was I thinking?
I soon spotted Barb Axemen. Mostly, they went for Pusan, which suited me well, as I really couldn't seem to get the tiles worked there. My Archers' City Garrison promotions would finally pay off. I eventually got the Cow and later the Copper hooked up, but they kept getting pillaged by the Barbs or the AI.
The wars with Japan went okay. They stuck to Archers, while I had Hwachas.
In 185 AD, I finally took their city of Tokyo. Yaaa, I was making progress!
However, it wasn't long before China came from the North. With metal. LOTS of metal. Wave after wave after wave of metal. Swords, spears, and axes. They even brought chariots. It was a mess. I had Archers and by this time a couple of Hwachas. It went back and forth--my Hwachas couldn't take the Chinese units as they marched South over the Jungle Hills, so I had to hide in Pusan. I won several fights as China tried to pillage my Cows and later Bronze, but I also lost several units this way, too, since there could be as many as 3 stacks of Chinese units in a row, the first one dying but then being vindicated by the next group, while finally the third group would reduce the number of wounded units that had run back to Pusan to hide. These fights were the most hectic part of the game.
It didn't help that the Barbs kept coming.
I also had a war on the Japanese front going, which was progressing much better. In 485 AD, I captured Hsung-Nu from them, which promptly began building a Barracks. Finally, I had learned some sense.
Persia came, too, but at least they focused on throwing their units at the Barb city to the East of Pusan. They wanted expansion room, you see, and they ended up razing the Barb City and taking the location by the two gems to the East, as well as another city location a bit to the North.
In the war with China, the losses on both sides were staggering, but finally I got a reprieve. I guessed that China decided it was stupid to keep slugging it out and I finally made progress up to their city, only to have two of my highly promoted Archers, fortified on Forested Hills, taken down by two of their Swordsmen. Bring Hwachas WITH your Archers next time, I told myself.
China responded to my lost Archer-gambit and came at me hard. In 470 AD, China took over Pusan. NO WAY! I wouldn't let them keep it--the Confucian Holy City. My city. Give. It. Back!
In 485 AD, Charlemagne (a Great General) was born in Seoul. Sweet! He ended up providing the units built in Seoul with some of his knowledge (+2 experience). I later added two more Great Generals to Seoul, so that new units would start with 3 (from the Barracks) +2 (from the Vassalage civic, which I would switch to later) + 2 + 2 + 2 = 11 experience, enough for 3 Promotions! But for now, I was just happy to get 5 experience and thus two promotions for my units!
A turn later, in 500 AD, I founded Christianity in Tokyo, firming my grasp on the city. At some point, I had switched back to not having a State Religion, in order to get culture from all 3 of my Religions (Judaism, Confucianism, and Christianity). Russia would later found Taoism, spreading it like a weed, while India later took Islam.
As a side note, this game was the first one I played where so many AI missionaries were sent out to rival civs, including to my own. Persia had all of its cities, almost all of the Indian cities, and almost all of the Chinese cities practicing Buddhism.
In 560 AD, I regained Pusan from the Chinese.
I guess I forgot to mention: I got beaten to the Oracle with about half of it complete. Marble and a faster-growing city could have helped, but I didn't have those. No worries--at least I got a bit of cash out of the deal. The Temple of Artemis never made it off of the ground, what with Pusan being captured while it was about a quarter complete. Building a couple of Archers instead of the failed Wonder might have kept the city under my control, but I was playing as if I wasn't at war and as if the Barbs didn't exist, so it served me right to miss out on the Wonder.
In 590 AD, a Barb Axeman took Tokyo from me. Fortunately, they kept the city, instead of razing it.
In 635 AD, both Japan and I had had enough, and I took Alphabet from them for a tentative Peace. I also traded for Bronze Working and Sailing with someone on that turn, thanks to the addition of Alphabet.
I had also just researched Monarchy, so I began on Feudalism.
I could then focus back on Tokyo and I retook it from the Barbs in 665 AD. My Hwachas were also free to go and support the Chinese front, an action which kept me in the game.
It would be a race between Feudalism for the AI and my Hwachas pushing on China.
725 AD is when Persia dropped two Immortals next to Seoul. I took one out with a Hwacha, staying in my city to heal for a turn with my Archer. The Immortal pillaged my Sheep and then my Corn before the Hwacha could finish him off:
Hwacha defeats (0.20/5): Persian Immortal
The war continued well against Chinese units, but they'd taken on a new vigour and were throwing lots of metal at me, keeping my Hwachas constantly wounded. Although I was winning, in 890 AD I decided it was time to start building one of those cheap Walls in Pusan.
In 965 AD, I began work on Metal Casting (Hwachas wouldn't cut it against Longbowman, which were starting to appear). I met India that turn and picked up Literature and Calendar on the next turn.
I kept up the assault, but shortly after 1000 AD, China's infinite metal took its toll:
Hwacha loses to: Chinese Swordsman (4.62/6)
Hwacha loses to: Chinese Swordsman (1.02/6)
I'm still killing his metal units at a ratio of about 5 deaths to 1 death, but each loss on my side is painful, especially as it means that more of my other units won't get to heal between combats.
In 1055 AD, I finally started to make some Axemen.
I had built a couple of Settlers and slowly began filling space either in my tundra on the South Coast or West towards Japan.
Finally, I have wonderful news! In 1142 AD, a Great Scientist was born in Wonsan, completing the Academy in my Wines city. Better that it is placed there, where I could afford to take time out from unit production to build Monastaries, instead of in Seoul, which would just tempt me to throw away my Great-General-improved unit production in favour of scientific pursuits. Okay, so the news isn't THAT wonderful, what with my first non-Great-General Great Person being built so late, but I took what I could get at that point!
In 1238 AD, Persia dropped more units by Seoul. Fortunately, I was prepared for Immortals landing, so when a Horse Archer showed up, I was equally ready:
Spearman defeats (1.44/4): Persian Horse Archer
Hwacha defeats (3.50/5): Persian Axeman
I know that China dropped off some units over time, too, but I can't distinguish those fights from the endless battles with China listed in my autolog.
In 1244 AD, I finally captured the city of Assyrian from China, which was just North of my Bronze city of Pusan. Finally, the tide had turned. However, my production was pretty solely focused on military.
Thank you kindly Gyathaar for all of your hard work, thank you Ainwood for helping him to get started and for the rest of your hard work, thank you to all of the admins that dedicate their time into making this site a wonderful experience, and mostly thank you to the fellow players that have taken the time to share their experiences!
Now, to the task at hand...
Final Score: 21211
Rivals Eliminated: China and Persia
Vassaled Rivals: India (to me) and Japan (to Russia)
Best Trading Partner: Mongolia
Victory Condition: Domination
I settled in place. The starting location seemed good enough to me. I figured that by settling there, I had a few decent food resources, I had a happiness resource (the beavers) to use before the invention of a Calendar, and I could build a navy, if required.
My initial Warrior went South West, to check out the Silver location. Upon seeing that we must be at the South end of this area of land, he then proceeded North West. He eventually met up with Japan.
Due to Japan's cultural expansion, I was not able to explore past their capital. I did not realise that the continent continued for quite a ways. For several millennia, I thought that there wasn't much land past the Japanese capital.
Research path = Hunting -> Archery -> Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Masonry -> Polytheism -> Monotheism -> The Wheel -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Writing -> Mathematics -> Construction
Notice that I skipped both Bronze Working and The Alphabet for quite some time.
My first citizen worked one of the Beavers, right from the get-go. With the extra hammer from the Plains Hills, I wanted to capitalize on the hammer boost by maximizing hammers. I got my first Warrior in 5 turns (and we were playing at Epic speed)! I wasn't worried about the fact that I would not be gaining any food, as immediately after building that Warrior, I started the production of a Worker.
In this way, I would also be using the Beaver for the extra early commerce during the production of both the Warrior and the Worker, in order to help pump out my initial research.
My second Warrior headed North West and later a bit North East, getting trapped in a mountain range. He eventually made his way North and hit the end of a peninsula, near some Rice and desert. I'd met the Chinese along the way, but I couldn't find them! It was as if they didn't exist, or had just started with a free unit on my continent.
After the worker was complete, I was then able to immediately start bulding Archers, as I'd already researched Archery.
I wanted Archers because of our Civ's synergy with Archery units and Gunpowder units. I recall reading somewhere that Archers seem to be missing of one of their first strikes in the Warlords expansion--does anyone know if that point is true? If it is true, do you know if it has been fixed in the first Warlords patch?
Anyway, my Worker was busy on a useful task--making a Beaver Camp. After building the Camp, he had just enough time to get to the Corn and start irrigating it. I might have had one turn of idleness, but otherwise, the timing worked out really well.
A couple of turns after I started researching Agriculture, Hinduism was founded by what would later be revealed to be India.
Upon my completion of research on Agriculture, Buddhism was founded. Unfortunately, it wasn't the corn farmers that were Buddhist, as Buddhism was founded by Persia.
By me not researching these religions, the AI had set itself up with neighbours that wouldn't get along very well. I wasn't able to capitalize much on this fact, as Mongolia ended up becoming the worst enemy of both of them, instead of them vehemently hating each other. On the other hand, India never raised a finger to help Persia during the two times that I declared war on Cyrus, so perhaps this fact helped out. Plus, I wasn't able to generate any Great Prophets (you'll understand why if you keep reading), while each of these two civs were able to build their respective shrines, making them attractive, politically-isolated targets later on in the game. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
As soon as Animal Husbandry was ready, I began work on the Sheep. I might have worked on a Camp while waiting for that tech. After working on the Sheep, I kept working on setting up Camps. That is, whenever the Barbarians that later treated my land as their stomping grounds would allow my worker to build the Camps.
Upon the discovery of Monotheism, I founded a religion in the capital of Seoul.
I thought that I'd had a great start so far.
Once I discovered the Japanese capital, I camped outside of its borders, keeping an eye on the Cow. It took a while for Tokugawa to either a) build a Worker or b) research Animal Husbandry. Finally, shortly after I started research on Masonry, Tokugawa finally sent his Worker to work on the Cow. A couple of turns later, in 2560 BC, I declared war and captured his Worker. I lost the Worker and my Warrior to his Archer on his turn. Oh well, that's why it's a gambit--sometimes you get burned.
I knew that retribution would be swift, and Japan would not settle for Peace, so I was forced to pump out more Archers.
My initial plan had been to get a religion, adopt that religion, and switch to the Organized Religion civic. Well, part of that plan came to fruition--I got my religion and I switched to it. Both my capital and my first-founded city shared the religion.
However, I found myself building too many units, without time to properly focus on Wonder-building, so I never did switch to Organized Religion. In retrospect, I probably could have switched anyway, as I made some half-hearted attempts at Wonder-building. I did not switch, though, as I was concerned about the economic burden of a High Upkeep civic combined with the upkeep of building a lot of military. In addition, while I was busy building military units, the civic wouldn't even help me.
Of course, this lack of Organized Religion didn't stop me from trying to build Wonders. Neither did the fact that I never did get Marble hooked up in time for any of the Wonders that require it. Of course, the fact that I kept missing out on these partially-completed Wonders to the AI was the end result.
I ended up making 7 Archers in Seoul, followed by a Settler. I then made a Barracks and another 4 Archers, followed by a second Settler. I completed the second settler in 850 BC. So as you can imagine, my capital was a little too late in starting on the early wonders to be able to compete with the AI, most notably China, with their frustratingly sweet starting location on top of a Stone resource.
So what did I do with all of those Archers? Surely, I destroyed Japan. Or maybe I took over some Barbarian cities. Maybe I made a gambit and rushed China, hoping to capture their capital early? Well, unfortunately, none of those scenarios panned out.
My battles started out fine. I took on several animals, never losing to any of them. After losing my Warrior to Japan, though, I lost all sense of reason.
Upon spotting a Persian Scout moving westward, I knew that China and Persia must be off to the East somewhere near the North side of the continent. Rather playing it smart, I decided to be reckless. In 2350 BC, when I moved my initial Archer towards the East onto the same tile as the Persian Scout, I accepted the choice of declaring war. Sure, I won the fight, but things went downhill from there.
In 2260 BC, I defeated my first Barbarian Warrior, and more followed swiftly. We were playing, after all, with Raging Barbarians.
At home, my Archers that I hadn't sent out to scout were being harried. Battles almost every turn with Barb Warriors kept them on their toes.
Then I decided to throw away all sense. I spotted a Chinese settler, escorted by a Warrior, which appeared to be heading towards the hill to the South and a bit West of what I would later discover to be their capital. I figured that I would stop them early by killing their first settler, getting a free worker out of the deal. Unfortunately, by the time that I could get next to them, they were already on a hill but had not yet settled. My Archer was also wounded from a previous battle.
What happened?
Archer loses to: Chinese Warrior (0.32/2)
That battle really hurt. Plus, I was right, and the settler ended up sitting down on the hill, making for a city that would be too tough to take without metal or Hwachas. Further, it was named Guangzhou, not Shanghai, so it was already their third city and I hadn't even made a Settler yet! Sigh.
I had a couple more battles with Barbarian Warriors and then things started to get quiet. Unfortunately, I believe that I was in the eye of the hurricane, and the hurricane was getting stronger and wider by the year.
I guess the Barb Warriors were getting smarter. They started stacking, and I wasn't expecting them to do so. I lost two Archers this way--attacking a Barb Warrior when it left the forest to visit grassland or plains, only to discover that it was really two Barb Warriors in a stack. Retribution was quick.
So let's see. I've built 1 Warrior and 7 Archers. I lost my initial Warrior and 3 Archers, leaving me with 1 Warrior out near China, 1 Archer out near China, and 3 to defend the homeland. Yes, I was in trouble.
So of course, I built a settler!
Ummm, that move sucked. The settler had to sit around in my capital for many turns, as the Barbs had placed a city very close to the Wines and Pig near which I wanted to settle. The Barb city's location wasn't great, as it was too far to the West of the Wines. Plus, I didn't have the military to challenge that city.
After the Settler was built, I built another Archer and lost another Archer. So I still only had 3 Archers defending the homeland. They were brave but were definitely overworked and underpaid.
Yikes, the combat log is scary. I then lost another Archer on the turn that I began research on Meditation (1450 BC), only to be replaced a turn later by a fresh Archer.
I couldn't keep my promoted Archers alive long enough, nor did I have enough to properly stack them in groups like the Barbarians were doing.
Of course, I felt that China was pulling away, so I tried to pillage their lands. I think that I pillaged a mine on a hill, but that's about it. As I moved onto flatter terrain, perhaps a Cow, two Archers swarmed me. One died but the other killed my Archer. It didn't hurt China enough, but it ended up hurting me badly. How's that for effective pillaging, eh?
Fortunately, my 3 remaining Archers started winning battles, so I pushed out a Barracks. If it was going to be a game of war, not Wonders, so be it--I was not going down without a good fight!
My Warrior up by China was sort of wandering in the direction of what I would later discover to be India and Persia, but he got trapped by a mountain range. It appears that a Chinese Archer found him and polished him off.
From that point onwards, my game was almost purely defensive, where I would take territory very slowly, as it took more than a millennia before I could field a large enough army to go out and cause trouble for the AI (or for the Barbs, for that matter).
I think that Raging Barbs in Civ 3 were easier to deal with. You would get the odd Barb appearing in random places, but you would at least know that the Barbarian Villages would be the spawning points for most of them. In Civ 4, they can appear anywhere, en masse. Oh well, that's all part of the fun!
After building the Barracks, I started on--yes, you guessed it--more Archers. I'd started on Priesthood at this point, still being hopeful for an Oracle build. It turned out to be wishful thinking on my part.
In 1240 BC, P'yongyang was finally founded. I think that I went with the Silver + Wheat + Deer location that I'd scouted at the very beginning of the game. I'd wanted the Pigs and River-Wines for my second city, but with a Barb city two squares away from where I wanted to settle, I'd either have to give up on the Pigs (which I wasn't willing to do) or settle elsewhere.
It seems that I finally stopped losing battles to Barbarian Warriors, probably due to the sheer amount of Archers that Seoul kept pumping out.
I felt safe enough to start the Oracle in P'yongyang, even though I was lacking both Organized Religion and Marble.
From this point onwards, it appears that I was finally consistently winning against the Barbs, slowly upgrading my Archers.
However, in 960 BC and 940 BC, respectively, China and Japan each took out one of my Archers.
In 805 BC, I finally got my third city of Wonson founded on one of the Wines with the Pigs in my extended borders. It had been thanks to Japan's raising of the nearby Barb city, plus the fact that I was able to take out part of his attacking force (one of his Warriors) that allowed me to settle. Wonson immediately began production on a Library, later producing my first Great Person--a Great Scientist.
I kept working on Archers in Seoul and finally produced another Settler in 610 BC. P'yongyang (my second city) was still struggling to work on the Oracle.
565 BC: Archer loses to: Barbarian Archer (1.74/3) Uh oh. I'm glad that we're playing on Prince level. I would have lost a long time ago if I'd been facing early Archers or Axemen from the Barbs.
A this point, I was getting desperate. The Barbs had a city to the North of the Wines, near the Gems and other good resources. Japan had taken some of the good spots to the West, and I wasn't prepared to settle next to one of their cities and be forced to over-extend my defense, as I was still at war with them.
So I founded by 4th city of Pusan near the Cow and Banana, thinking that I could eventually culturally capture the Barb city three squares to the East. I could then decide to either keep it or to disband it and place another city a bit further to the East. Or so the plan went.
By this time, China had started snatching up Wonders, so I figured that I'd be daring and start on The Temple of Artemis in Pusan. Hahaha!!! What was I thinking?
I soon spotted Barb Axemen. Mostly, they went for Pusan, which suited me well, as I really couldn't seem to get the tiles worked there. My Archers' City Garrison promotions would finally pay off. I eventually got the Cow and later the Copper hooked up, but they kept getting pillaged by the Barbs or the AI.
The wars with Japan went okay. They stuck to Archers, while I had Hwachas.
In 185 AD, I finally took their city of Tokyo. Yaaa, I was making progress!
However, it wasn't long before China came from the North. With metal. LOTS of metal. Wave after wave after wave of metal. Swords, spears, and axes. They even brought chariots. It was a mess. I had Archers and by this time a couple of Hwachas. It went back and forth--my Hwachas couldn't take the Chinese units as they marched South over the Jungle Hills, so I had to hide in Pusan. I won several fights as China tried to pillage my Cows and later Bronze, but I also lost several units this way, too, since there could be as many as 3 stacks of Chinese units in a row, the first one dying but then being vindicated by the next group, while finally the third group would reduce the number of wounded units that had run back to Pusan to hide. These fights were the most hectic part of the game.
It didn't help that the Barbs kept coming.
I also had a war on the Japanese front going, which was progressing much better. In 485 AD, I captured Hsung-Nu from them, which promptly began building a Barracks. Finally, I had learned some sense.
Persia came, too, but at least they focused on throwing their units at the Barb city to the East of Pusan. They wanted expansion room, you see, and they ended up razing the Barb City and taking the location by the two gems to the East, as well as another city location a bit to the North.
In the war with China, the losses on both sides were staggering, but finally I got a reprieve. I guessed that China decided it was stupid to keep slugging it out and I finally made progress up to their city, only to have two of my highly promoted Archers, fortified on Forested Hills, taken down by two of their Swordsmen. Bring Hwachas WITH your Archers next time, I told myself.
China responded to my lost Archer-gambit and came at me hard. In 470 AD, China took over Pusan. NO WAY! I wouldn't let them keep it--the Confucian Holy City. My city. Give. It. Back!
In 485 AD, Charlemagne (a Great General) was born in Seoul. Sweet! He ended up providing the units built in Seoul with some of his knowledge (+2 experience). I later added two more Great Generals to Seoul, so that new units would start with 3 (from the Barracks) +2 (from the Vassalage civic, which I would switch to later) + 2 + 2 + 2 = 11 experience, enough for 3 Promotions! But for now, I was just happy to get 5 experience and thus two promotions for my units!
A turn later, in 500 AD, I founded Christianity in Tokyo, firming my grasp on the city. At some point, I had switched back to not having a State Religion, in order to get culture from all 3 of my Religions (Judaism, Confucianism, and Christianity). Russia would later found Taoism, spreading it like a weed, while India later took Islam.
As a side note, this game was the first one I played where so many AI missionaries were sent out to rival civs, including to my own. Persia had all of its cities, almost all of the Indian cities, and almost all of the Chinese cities practicing Buddhism.
In 560 AD, I regained Pusan from the Chinese.
I guess I forgot to mention: I got beaten to the Oracle with about half of it complete. Marble and a faster-growing city could have helped, but I didn't have those. No worries--at least I got a bit of cash out of the deal. The Temple of Artemis never made it off of the ground, what with Pusan being captured while it was about a quarter complete. Building a couple of Archers instead of the failed Wonder might have kept the city under my control, but I was playing as if I wasn't at war and as if the Barbs didn't exist, so it served me right to miss out on the Wonder.
In 590 AD, a Barb Axeman took Tokyo from me. Fortunately, they kept the city, instead of razing it.
In 635 AD, both Japan and I had had enough, and I took Alphabet from them for a tentative Peace. I also traded for Bronze Working and Sailing with someone on that turn, thanks to the addition of Alphabet.
I had also just researched Monarchy, so I began on Feudalism.
I could then focus back on Tokyo and I retook it from the Barbs in 665 AD. My Hwachas were also free to go and support the Chinese front, an action which kept me in the game.
It would be a race between Feudalism for the AI and my Hwachas pushing on China.
725 AD is when Persia dropped two Immortals next to Seoul. I took one out with a Hwacha, staying in my city to heal for a turn with my Archer. The Immortal pillaged my Sheep and then my Corn before the Hwacha could finish him off:
Hwacha defeats (0.20/5): Persian Immortal
The war continued well against Chinese units, but they'd taken on a new vigour and were throwing lots of metal at me, keeping my Hwachas constantly wounded. Although I was winning, in 890 AD I decided it was time to start building one of those cheap Walls in Pusan.
In 965 AD, I began work on Metal Casting (Hwachas wouldn't cut it against Longbowman, which were starting to appear). I met India that turn and picked up Literature and Calendar on the next turn.
I kept up the assault, but shortly after 1000 AD, China's infinite metal took its toll:
Hwacha loses to: Chinese Swordsman (4.62/6)
Hwacha loses to: Chinese Swordsman (1.02/6)
I'm still killing his metal units at a ratio of about 5 deaths to 1 death, but each loss on my side is painful, especially as it means that more of my other units won't get to heal between combats.
In 1055 AD, I finally started to make some Axemen.
I had built a couple of Settlers and slowly began filling space either in my tundra on the South Coast or West towards Japan.
Finally, I have wonderful news! In 1142 AD, a Great Scientist was born in Wonsan, completing the Academy in my Wines city. Better that it is placed there, where I could afford to take time out from unit production to build Monastaries, instead of in Seoul, which would just tempt me to throw away my Great-General-improved unit production in favour of scientific pursuits. Okay, so the news isn't THAT wonderful, what with my first non-Great-General Great Person being built so late, but I took what I could get at that point!
In 1238 AD, Persia dropped more units by Seoul. Fortunately, I was prepared for Immortals landing, so when a Horse Archer showed up, I was equally ready:
Spearman defeats (1.44/4): Persian Horse Archer
Hwacha defeats (3.50/5): Persian Axeman
I know that China dropped off some units over time, too, but I can't distinguish those fights from the endless battles with China listed in my autolog.
In 1244 AD, I finally captured the city of Assyrian from China, which was just North of my Bronze city of Pusan. Finally, the tide had turned. However, my production was pretty solely focused on military.
Dhoomstriker
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About this time, I hooked up both my Elephants and my Iron. The Elephants were from a previously-Japanese-occupied Barbarian city. I actually had two Iron cities, one in the icy tiles and one closer to Japan. Religion only spread to one of those cities, the one closer to Japan, so that's the only Iron that was in my borders and that I was able to hook up for a long time. Fortunately, one is enough.
So I began the production of War Elephants, Axemen, Spearsmen, and Swordsmen, along with a steady stream of Hwachas. Soon, I would have a more diversified army and would be better equipped to combat the unit combos that China was fond of throwing at me.
Shortly thereafter, China finally obtained Horseback Riding. I think that everyone else except for me, even the beleaguered Japanese, had researched it prior to this time. I couldn't tell for certain, but I believed that China's only Horses came from the next city to the North of Assyrian, Assyrian being the city that I had just captured.
So the next goal was to besiege that city (Hangzhou) and pillage the Horses.
About this time, Persia, seeing the newly conquered Assyrian, took advantage of the city being in revolt and used the roads to walk right up to the city with a Horse Archer.
That unit was exactly the kind that I did not want to see, as I really only had a couple of Archers and several wounded Hwachas in the city. Seeing that I'd probably start losing units that I could not afford to lose, I felt that it was time to consider peace. I had been busting down the defenses of the Persian city with two Gems and Pigs to the East of Pusan, but he had a Longbowman, an Axeman, and a Maceman there vs my 3 Hwachas and 1 Archer. I couldn't take that city any time soon, and I could use those units to help solidify my push on China, so I gave Cyrus Peace.
I pushed on China. I didn't like where they'd put Hangzhou, the Horse city, so I raised it, quickly re-building a city with the same name (Hangzhou) one square away. I was afraid that Persia would try to settle the spot first, so I waited until my Settler was almost there before finally taking down the city.
In the early 1500's, I began building Courthouses, whenever I felt that I could spare some time from the constant stream of military unit production.
After this point in the game, it would be rather tedious to talk about individual battles.
Let's just say that I pushed on China with a mix of units, slowly battering down each city's defenses, then pummeling the city.
The toughest part to crack was when I went for Guangzhou and Beijing at the same time, exposing my units across a long cultural front. China had large cultural borders and my unit quantities weren't very high (I think I had 1 War Elephant on the war front, for example), so the fighting was fierce. There was a pretty good counter attack that came out of Beijing which forced some of my units to retreat and heal, while I took down Guangzhou. Fresh units soon arrived, putting down any hopes of holding me off.
In 1595 AD, Japan threw me a curve ball and declared war. At least they saved me the war declaration's reputation hit with the AI that liked him, such as Tokuwaga's Taoist block of Catharine and Genghis.
I was still fighting China at this time, and China was using Longbowmen and Pikemen. The war was bloody, but I had numbers on my side, as well as ownership of many of the Chinese cities, so I kept pushing forward.
Meanwhile, War Elephants and Hwachas went up against Japanese Horse Archers, trading kill for kill while I built up enough forces to deal with Japan.
At first, I was simply trading unit kills with Japan. Slowly, though, I built up an offensive force and was able to take out one of their poorly-placed "land grab" cities in 1658 AD.
I was also using my own Longbowman in this war.
On the Chinese front, I lost several Hwachas per city, but I kept up the pace, capturing one of their remaining significant cities, Shanghai, in 1664 AD.
I captured Stonehenge, The Great Wall, and The Pyramids. It seems that the Stone had been wisely used. I had already chosen Hereditary Rule and was doing fine with that civic, due to a massive military presence throughout my empire, so I didn't feel the need to switch Government civics.
Stonehenge was already obsolete and I did not get any culture from these Wonders, but you know what? Thanks to a couple of Wonders having been built in Shanghai which was built to the South East of the Chinese capital of Beijing, I was able to generate two Great Engineers from there. One was used later for Versailles, while the other was used for Wallstreet.
A massive combination of my Swords, Longbows, Hwachas, and War Elephants pushed against the last major Chinese resistance of Swords, Longbows, Catapults, and Chariots. I lost several units, but I captured Nanjing in that final epic battle in 1685 AD, finally finishing off the Chinese.
I finished off China, but was quite behind in techs. I focused on building Courthouses and military units, throwing in the odd Marketplace where I felt it would help enough. A Forbidden Palace in Shanghai helped me get back in the tech research mode, although I was simply researching technologies that everyone else already knew.
At last, I was able to focus the war machine solely on Japan.
I captured Kyoto, the Japanese capital, in 1709 AD at the cost of several War Elephants and Hwachas.
I chose to leave one of the Japanese "land grab" cities that was settled close to one of my cities and I tried to pump out cultural buildings in the nearby city. I never did end up taking that city over culturally, but most of its squares ended up being unusable by Japan, so the purpose was served.
I started making missionaries, to send to this cultural output city as well as to other captured Japanese and Chinese cities, to keep the cultural pressure on and to keep my newly captured cities from flipping to any of Japan, Persia, or India. I didn't have a State Religion declared, so I was able to get cultural points from each of these religions. Essentially, I used Missionaries produced from my production cities to act as poor-man's temples in other cities.
In 1734 AD I finally learned Civil Service and began production of Macemen.
From here on in, my research would be directed towards Chemistry, so that I could hopefully use City Raider Macemen upgraded to Grenadiers, in order to deal with the AI gunpowder units that were starting to show up.
Japan was fortunately still defending with Longbowmen. However, it didn't take Russia and India too long to get gunpowder units and both had Riflemen around this time.
Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the city of Osaka. The trouble was more technical related than tactical related, however. While taking over Osaka and another Japanese city on the same turn, my game crashed while trying to attack one of their cities. My units had done exceptionally well in their battles.
I had a saved game of the previous turn and when I played again the next day, I tried to recall all of my actions precisely. I even remembered when to "wait" some of my units that I would move later, so that they would all move in the same order as before. However, I forgot to unfortify the two groups of units beside Osaka and the other city in order to attack the cities before I ended my turn. I had changed history.
A few turns later, I realised my error, but by then I'd already played several more turns, so there was no going back. Then, while taking Osaka, my game crashed AGAIN. I couldn't believe it. It felt like the city was cursed.
Again, I tried to maintain my exact unit order movement, but with so many units on the go, I messed it up. My losses were heavier upon reloading from the previous turn's save, but I felt that there wasn't much I could do but to continue playing. If any player wishes, they may reply and say that my submission should be rejected. If anyone chooses to do so, I will ask that my results be removed from the listing, if it's not too inconvenient to do so.
After Osaka was captured, Japan became a vassal of Russia. Now I really suspected an internal game mechanism related to the capture of that city, but what could I do but play on?
It then became a race for me to pump units, gather strength in big enough forces, and then take each Japanese city one by one, with the ever ominous threat of Russian Riflemen looming on the horizon.
Fortunately, I took up a defensive position between the Russian and Japanese border, with Longbowmen, Hwachas, and Elephants on a Plains Hill. Their border was at the natural chokepoint, mostly West and slightly North of where Kyoto stood.
I kept taking Japanese cities, losing 2-4 Hwachas and the odd attacker to each city, but otherwise I was steadily taking them over.
Japan was down to two cities when the Russian Riflemen came, along with a Knight and a Crossbowman, blasting their way into my troops. Fortunately, I had backup, with an overwhelming number of units, so after losing only 2 Longbowmen, I was able to clean up the Russian assault.
Leaving Japan with one city, the one which I was putting under cultural pressure, I signed a Peace treaty with Russia. No techs, but also no impossible war with Russia.
The beauty of the arrangement was that I did not take a reputation hit with Russia, so although I had a negative reputation with Catherine's vassal, I had a good +9 or so relationship with her. Tokugawa's move of becoming a vassal had essentially prevented him from declaring war on me again, or at least if he did, it would only be if he threw off the reigns of Catherine and did it alone.
At this time, I was pitifully behind in technologies. Tokugawa was technologically behind as well, but thanks to contributions from Catherine, he went on to build a couple of Riflemen, a Grenadier, and later switched to Emancipation.
Toku hated me and most of the others were either asking for ridiculous amounts of cash for technologies or weren't interested in trading at all.
So I pulled a Civ3 tactic of researching on their coat tails. As I said, I made a beeline for Chemistry, in order to get Grenadiers. With my capital of Seoul pumping out City Radier III Macemen, I just had to get enough cash to be able to fund research and simultaneous keep upgrading my units.
Then, I pulled another Civ3 tactic of researching techs that the most technologically-behind opponent lacked. This AI happened to be Mongolia. Mongolia seemed to completely ignore the religious techs with a passion. That opened me up to researching techs like Philosophy, Divine Right, and other techs that he was unlikely to research.
The trades I received were unfair, but at least I could pick up technologies like Optics, Music, and later Drama.
When I ran out of the religious-like techs to research, I simply picked ones that everyone else (including Japan) except for Mongolia knew. If I waited 3 or 4 turns to trade, Mongolia would either research or trade for the tech, so it was hard to "collect" two techs to trade for one good one. I ended up taking a lot of bad deals, but deals they were, saving me time. I figured that even if I gave away military techs to Genghis, he'd be too far away from me to have to worry about, so I let him have them. This Mansa-Musa-style of trading on my part helped me to catch up enough to keep from being left in the dust.
India had 5-6 Riflemen in each of their cities, while Persia only had the odd Rifleman and still was mostly using Macemen, Longbowmen, and other random non-gunpowder units for defense.
With Russia also likely entrenched with Riflemen, I could either give up on war-mongering and likely lose to a Space Race victory, or I could push on to Persia. Persia it was!
My goal was to build up a large enough force of Macemen and Trebuchets to complement my army of Hwachas, Longbowmen, and War Elephants, have a huge force (of anywhere from 6-16 units in a stack) gathered near as many Persian cities as I could get to (thanks for the Open Borders, India!!!), and then to simultaneously strike as many Persian cities as possible, before they could respond and start upgrading to Riflemen.
In 1810 AD, I declared war on Persia. The plan went well, but my losses were heavy. Close to 40 fights led to the capture of 4 Persian cities two turns later. My saving grace was that the first 4 cities fell with only 1 battle against a Rifleman. The next 6 or so cities that made up their core cities ended up having mostly units upgraded to Riflemen and Grenadiers, so they were tough to crack.
I was slowly upgrading as many units to Grenadiers as I could, but I could only pull in about 130 Gold Per Turn at a 100% Commerce rate, so it wasn't very easy. I couldn't have afforded to wait longer to attack than I did, though, as then I would have been facing 10 or so cities with Riflemen, instead of 6 cities with them!
At this point, however, I faced another threat. Cultural pressure from both India in the North and Persia in the South kept two of my recently-captured Persian cities at the North of Persia's core from being very useful.
Most of their populations starved. I had never switched to Slavery. 3 turns of anarchy to wait for it now was too high of a price to pay. Further, both cities kept revolting, causing any units stationed there to go to half life and causing several more turns of non-cultural-producing anarchy.
I wasn't able to build cultural buildings, maybe one at most in each city, but my saving grace was that I kept sending missionaries from all of my religions. Several religion-spreading attempts failed, while other missionaries were waylaid by Persian Cavalry that were also taking advantage of India's Open Borders, but I eventually sent enough missionaries to keep the cities from flipping. I had also started sending most of my units from these cities southward, soon to be backed up from my units that had captured some of the other Persian cities, such as the Gems and Pig city to the East of Pusan, located closer to my capital than to theirs.
It was only a matter of time and many sacrifices later that I finally took all of the Persian cities. One funny moment occurred when Persia decided to hide all of its Trebuchets on boats--they had Galleons at the time, being the only Civ with Astronomy. Rather than help out in the fights, the Trebuchets lived and died on the boats, if for no other reason that a Civ is wiped out when it loses all of its cities, no matter how many units it has remaining. Persia even had a Longbowman and a Settler on a Galley close to Russia, but they decided they'd rather die at sea than settle on land and have me capture their city.
After this point, I almost solidly kept up the unit pump. I started to make the odd Musketman, remembering that I'd get 2 free promotions this way, even if they took a long time to build. These units would simply start to replace my Longbowman as the fodder that would defend my other units and would sit in my newly captured cities (instead of say, Horse Archers or War Elephants guarding my new cities).
I built and built and built some more units, until I had built up stacks of 12 or so units for each of the 7 Indian cities. Only then, in 1847 AD, did I dare to declare war, as stacks of 6-7 Riflemen and SAM Infantry were pretty scary for my outdated military.
On the way to their cities, I lost some Grenadiers to Cavalry, but my War Elephants provided quick retribution.
I realised that I didn't have enough Hwachas and Trebuchets remaining, so some Grenadiers had to attack Riflemen that weren't softened up. It came pretty close as one stack lost most of its units, giving the defenders a lot of experience. I pulled through with some patience, choosing to keep my remaining units alive and fortified instead of suiciding the whole stack. This approach worked well, as half of the defenders had died in the initial assault, while two of my stacks from nearby captured cities were able to come and provide some relief. With the combined forces of those stacks, the last Indian city on the continent fell in 1853 AD.
India had one city remaining on what appeared to be a Barbarian-city-infested island. They never seemed to get more than a 1 city foothold, however, but they weren't about to lose that city either. I held out several turns, hoping for some techs or money, but I ended up just taking them on as a Vassal without any other perks, in order to get me that much closer to the Domination land area limit.
From here, it was mostly a matter of logistics and overwhelming amounts of units. I sent everything that I had to the South end of Russia. The battles against Russia would be somewhat easier, as I only had one direction to go: up (well, North actually, as I hadn't yet learned how to fly). I still had to split my forces into groups of 2 or 3 stacks, but it would take a lot less co-ordination than before.
If anyone knows how to set up Rally Points, I'd love to hear how. If there is a way to set a Rally Point for all cities at once, I'd be thrilled to know how to do so, too. The game was getting pretty laggy at this point and it became a bit frustrating to have to manually move units being built from almost every city. If I had had a technological advantage, the situation would not have been so bad, but as it was, I kept having to replenish the hordes of units that I threw away in battle.
By this time, thanks to some trading with Mongolia, I'd been able to upgrade most of my units to Riflemen and Cannons. Of course, most of the Russian cities had Infantry, while their field armies consisted of Cossacks and Cannons.
I turned on some game-simplifying options, such as Stack Attack and Auto-promote. I didn't really like the promotions chosen, but I was getting sick of having to click them myself.
Here's a great idea for an add-on mod, especially if you make it compatible with the HOF mod: give the player an interface to choose what types of promotions are assigned in a particular order for each unit type. Perhaps a text or .ini file would control the promotion order, with some smart default values assigned for the case where the input file was incorrectly formatted. You would lose out on flexibility for promotion customization of the same unit type, but I'd be willing to take that trade-off, since you would always have a choice of either using customized-auto-promote or manually promoting your units.
It was a slug-fest, as I slowly took city after city. The counter attacks were brutal, however, and if it weren't for a constant stream of newly-built units supporting my troops, my forces would have been overrun. I honestly could have lost to a Domination win by Russia, the way that things went in some battles.
I got a Great Artist in there, which I brought to the front lines, fortified until I saw a good opportunity, and promptly forgot about in all of the macroing of troop stacks. It wasn't really going to make a substantial difference, however, with one city falling to my units an average of every three turns.
The biggest battle was for the city of Moscow around 1900 AD, with battles over a series of turns. I must have killed about 30 units in that city, consisting of Infantry, Machine Guns, Cossacks, and Cannons. I think that I lost even more units than I killed and my resources were stretched pretty thin, but with Domination just around the corner, I would pull out as the overall victor.
I simply kept Mongolia as happy as possible and kept up the pressure on Russia. As I neared the North end of their long strip of land, the Domination limit kicked in, saving me from the pain of watching any more of my troops lay down their lives for the good of their country and apparently, for the unification of the whole world, if the red flag that is planted in the Domination Victory video is really as powerful as it appears.
Thanks once again for a great game!
Additional comments about naval units:
I didn't build a navy. A couple of work boats in the later part of the game, but that's it. I was too bogged down trying to keep my land unit production up. The AI kept sending a lot of triremes to harass me, especially around Seoul, so it would have been a major investment to fend them off. Since I wasn't even working any of the Coast tiles around Seoul, I really didn't care about their boats. It wasn't until I started automating my cities' production near the end of the game, in the 1800s, before my first naval unit was produced. Even then, I just pressed the 'e' key and had these boats randomly explore, rather than bother to wage wars at sea.
As a result of the AI having triremes around my capital and the fact that I was at war with China and Persia for many millennia, both of them took advantage of my lack of a navy. They dropped several raiding parties off around Seoul. There were a few close calls, such as when Persia dropped off two Immortals, and I only had an Archer and a freshly-built Hwacha to defend with. Fortunately, with a Combat I promotion, the Hwacha managed to take them out. However, in reviewing the autolog, I realise that it could have been my doom at that time. When I spotted two triremes and a galley coming at me, I quickly switched Seoul's production to an Archer. It was only when I looked up Immortals in the Civilopedia and realized that Immortals received a bonus against Archers did I change my mind and start building a Hwacha instead (I fortunately changed my mind on the same turn).
With the Warlords patch, we're going to be in trouble. We won't be able to see what's coming on those galleys. Take that warning to heart.
Now I'm not sure whether the AI chose to attack Seoul by sea because of which of the following reasons:
a) it is my capital and thus a really smart target
b) it was my only coastal city for a long time
c) it was the closest city to China and Persia that could be reached within a couple of turns by troops marching from a beach landing
It would be nice to know which of those options dictates the Computers' behaviour, so that one could prepare for future Warlords games by beefing up the defense of the appropriate city.
About this time, I hooked up both my Elephants and my Iron. The Elephants were from a previously-Japanese-occupied Barbarian city. I actually had two Iron cities, one in the icy tiles and one closer to Japan. Religion only spread to one of those cities, the one closer to Japan, so that's the only Iron that was in my borders and that I was able to hook up for a long time. Fortunately, one is enough.
So I began the production of War Elephants, Axemen, Spearsmen, and Swordsmen, along with a steady stream of Hwachas. Soon, I would have a more diversified army and would be better equipped to combat the unit combos that China was fond of throwing at me.
Shortly thereafter, China finally obtained Horseback Riding. I think that everyone else except for me, even the beleaguered Japanese, had researched it prior to this time. I couldn't tell for certain, but I believed that China's only Horses came from the next city to the North of Assyrian, Assyrian being the city that I had just captured.
So the next goal was to besiege that city (Hangzhou) and pillage the Horses.
About this time, Persia, seeing the newly conquered Assyrian, took advantage of the city being in revolt and used the roads to walk right up to the city with a Horse Archer.
That unit was exactly the kind that I did not want to see, as I really only had a couple of Archers and several wounded Hwachas in the city. Seeing that I'd probably start losing units that I could not afford to lose, I felt that it was time to consider peace. I had been busting down the defenses of the Persian city with two Gems and Pigs to the East of Pusan, but he had a Longbowman, an Axeman, and a Maceman there vs my 3 Hwachas and 1 Archer. I couldn't take that city any time soon, and I could use those units to help solidify my push on China, so I gave Cyrus Peace.
I pushed on China. I didn't like where they'd put Hangzhou, the Horse city, so I raised it, quickly re-building a city with the same name (Hangzhou) one square away. I was afraid that Persia would try to settle the spot first, so I waited until my Settler was almost there before finally taking down the city.
In the early 1500's, I began building Courthouses, whenever I felt that I could spare some time from the constant stream of military unit production.
After this point in the game, it would be rather tedious to talk about individual battles.
Let's just say that I pushed on China with a mix of units, slowly battering down each city's defenses, then pummeling the city.
The toughest part to crack was when I went for Guangzhou and Beijing at the same time, exposing my units across a long cultural front. China had large cultural borders and my unit quantities weren't very high (I think I had 1 War Elephant on the war front, for example), so the fighting was fierce. There was a pretty good counter attack that came out of Beijing which forced some of my units to retreat and heal, while I took down Guangzhou. Fresh units soon arrived, putting down any hopes of holding me off.
In 1595 AD, Japan threw me a curve ball and declared war. At least they saved me the war declaration's reputation hit with the AI that liked him, such as Tokuwaga's Taoist block of Catharine and Genghis.
I was still fighting China at this time, and China was using Longbowmen and Pikemen. The war was bloody, but I had numbers on my side, as well as ownership of many of the Chinese cities, so I kept pushing forward.
Meanwhile, War Elephants and Hwachas went up against Japanese Horse Archers, trading kill for kill while I built up enough forces to deal with Japan.
At first, I was simply trading unit kills with Japan. Slowly, though, I built up an offensive force and was able to take out one of their poorly-placed "land grab" cities in 1658 AD.
I was also using my own Longbowman in this war.
On the Chinese front, I lost several Hwachas per city, but I kept up the pace, capturing one of their remaining significant cities, Shanghai, in 1664 AD.
I captured Stonehenge, The Great Wall, and The Pyramids. It seems that the Stone had been wisely used. I had already chosen Hereditary Rule and was doing fine with that civic, due to a massive military presence throughout my empire, so I didn't feel the need to switch Government civics.
Stonehenge was already obsolete and I did not get any culture from these Wonders, but you know what? Thanks to a couple of Wonders having been built in Shanghai which was built to the South East of the Chinese capital of Beijing, I was able to generate two Great Engineers from there. One was used later for Versailles, while the other was used for Wallstreet.
A massive combination of my Swords, Longbows, Hwachas, and War Elephants pushed against the last major Chinese resistance of Swords, Longbows, Catapults, and Chariots. I lost several units, but I captured Nanjing in that final epic battle in 1685 AD, finally finishing off the Chinese.
I finished off China, but was quite behind in techs. I focused on building Courthouses and military units, throwing in the odd Marketplace where I felt it would help enough. A Forbidden Palace in Shanghai helped me get back in the tech research mode, although I was simply researching technologies that everyone else already knew.
At last, I was able to focus the war machine solely on Japan.
I captured Kyoto, the Japanese capital, in 1709 AD at the cost of several War Elephants and Hwachas.
I chose to leave one of the Japanese "land grab" cities that was settled close to one of my cities and I tried to pump out cultural buildings in the nearby city. I never did end up taking that city over culturally, but most of its squares ended up being unusable by Japan, so the purpose was served.
I started making missionaries, to send to this cultural output city as well as to other captured Japanese and Chinese cities, to keep the cultural pressure on and to keep my newly captured cities from flipping to any of Japan, Persia, or India. I didn't have a State Religion declared, so I was able to get cultural points from each of these religions. Essentially, I used Missionaries produced from my production cities to act as poor-man's temples in other cities.
In 1734 AD I finally learned Civil Service and began production of Macemen.
From here on in, my research would be directed towards Chemistry, so that I could hopefully use City Raider Macemen upgraded to Grenadiers, in order to deal with the AI gunpowder units that were starting to show up.
Japan was fortunately still defending with Longbowmen. However, it didn't take Russia and India too long to get gunpowder units and both had Riflemen around this time.
Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the city of Osaka. The trouble was more technical related than tactical related, however. While taking over Osaka and another Japanese city on the same turn, my game crashed while trying to attack one of their cities. My units had done exceptionally well in their battles.
I had a saved game of the previous turn and when I played again the next day, I tried to recall all of my actions precisely. I even remembered when to "wait" some of my units that I would move later, so that they would all move in the same order as before. However, I forgot to unfortify the two groups of units beside Osaka and the other city in order to attack the cities before I ended my turn. I had changed history.
A few turns later, I realised my error, but by then I'd already played several more turns, so there was no going back. Then, while taking Osaka, my game crashed AGAIN. I couldn't believe it. It felt like the city was cursed.
Again, I tried to maintain my exact unit order movement, but with so many units on the go, I messed it up. My losses were heavier upon reloading from the previous turn's save, but I felt that there wasn't much I could do but to continue playing. If any player wishes, they may reply and say that my submission should be rejected. If anyone chooses to do so, I will ask that my results be removed from the listing, if it's not too inconvenient to do so.
After Osaka was captured, Japan became a vassal of Russia. Now I really suspected an internal game mechanism related to the capture of that city, but what could I do but play on?
It then became a race for me to pump units, gather strength in big enough forces, and then take each Japanese city one by one, with the ever ominous threat of Russian Riflemen looming on the horizon.
Fortunately, I took up a defensive position between the Russian and Japanese border, with Longbowmen, Hwachas, and Elephants on a Plains Hill. Their border was at the natural chokepoint, mostly West and slightly North of where Kyoto stood.
I kept taking Japanese cities, losing 2-4 Hwachas and the odd attacker to each city, but otherwise I was steadily taking them over.
Japan was down to two cities when the Russian Riflemen came, along with a Knight and a Crossbowman, blasting their way into my troops. Fortunately, I had backup, with an overwhelming number of units, so after losing only 2 Longbowmen, I was able to clean up the Russian assault.
Leaving Japan with one city, the one which I was putting under cultural pressure, I signed a Peace treaty with Russia. No techs, but also no impossible war with Russia.
The beauty of the arrangement was that I did not take a reputation hit with Russia, so although I had a negative reputation with Catherine's vassal, I had a good +9 or so relationship with her. Tokugawa's move of becoming a vassal had essentially prevented him from declaring war on me again, or at least if he did, it would only be if he threw off the reigns of Catherine and did it alone.
At this time, I was pitifully behind in technologies. Tokugawa was technologically behind as well, but thanks to contributions from Catherine, he went on to build a couple of Riflemen, a Grenadier, and later switched to Emancipation.
Toku hated me and most of the others were either asking for ridiculous amounts of cash for technologies or weren't interested in trading at all.
So I pulled a Civ3 tactic of researching on their coat tails. As I said, I made a beeline for Chemistry, in order to get Grenadiers. With my capital of Seoul pumping out City Radier III Macemen, I just had to get enough cash to be able to fund research and simultaneous keep upgrading my units.
Then, I pulled another Civ3 tactic of researching techs that the most technologically-behind opponent lacked. This AI happened to be Mongolia. Mongolia seemed to completely ignore the religious techs with a passion. That opened me up to researching techs like Philosophy, Divine Right, and other techs that he was unlikely to research.
The trades I received were unfair, but at least I could pick up technologies like Optics, Music, and later Drama.
When I ran out of the religious-like techs to research, I simply picked ones that everyone else (including Japan) except for Mongolia knew. If I waited 3 or 4 turns to trade, Mongolia would either research or trade for the tech, so it was hard to "collect" two techs to trade for one good one. I ended up taking a lot of bad deals, but deals they were, saving me time. I figured that even if I gave away military techs to Genghis, he'd be too far away from me to have to worry about, so I let him have them. This Mansa-Musa-style of trading on my part helped me to catch up enough to keep from being left in the dust.
India had 5-6 Riflemen in each of their cities, while Persia only had the odd Rifleman and still was mostly using Macemen, Longbowmen, and other random non-gunpowder units for defense.
With Russia also likely entrenched with Riflemen, I could either give up on war-mongering and likely lose to a Space Race victory, or I could push on to Persia. Persia it was!
My goal was to build up a large enough force of Macemen and Trebuchets to complement my army of Hwachas, Longbowmen, and War Elephants, have a huge force (of anywhere from 6-16 units in a stack) gathered near as many Persian cities as I could get to (thanks for the Open Borders, India!!!), and then to simultaneously strike as many Persian cities as possible, before they could respond and start upgrading to Riflemen.
In 1810 AD, I declared war on Persia. The plan went well, but my losses were heavy. Close to 40 fights led to the capture of 4 Persian cities two turns later. My saving grace was that the first 4 cities fell with only 1 battle against a Rifleman. The next 6 or so cities that made up their core cities ended up having mostly units upgraded to Riflemen and Grenadiers, so they were tough to crack.
I was slowly upgrading as many units to Grenadiers as I could, but I could only pull in about 130 Gold Per Turn at a 100% Commerce rate, so it wasn't very easy. I couldn't have afforded to wait longer to attack than I did, though, as then I would have been facing 10 or so cities with Riflemen, instead of 6 cities with them!
At this point, however, I faced another threat. Cultural pressure from both India in the North and Persia in the South kept two of my recently-captured Persian cities at the North of Persia's core from being very useful.
Most of their populations starved. I had never switched to Slavery. 3 turns of anarchy to wait for it now was too high of a price to pay. Further, both cities kept revolting, causing any units stationed there to go to half life and causing several more turns of non-cultural-producing anarchy.
I wasn't able to build cultural buildings, maybe one at most in each city, but my saving grace was that I kept sending missionaries from all of my religions. Several religion-spreading attempts failed, while other missionaries were waylaid by Persian Cavalry that were also taking advantage of India's Open Borders, but I eventually sent enough missionaries to keep the cities from flipping. I had also started sending most of my units from these cities southward, soon to be backed up from my units that had captured some of the other Persian cities, such as the Gems and Pig city to the East of Pusan, located closer to my capital than to theirs.
It was only a matter of time and many sacrifices later that I finally took all of the Persian cities. One funny moment occurred when Persia decided to hide all of its Trebuchets on boats--they had Galleons at the time, being the only Civ with Astronomy. Rather than help out in the fights, the Trebuchets lived and died on the boats, if for no other reason that a Civ is wiped out when it loses all of its cities, no matter how many units it has remaining. Persia even had a Longbowman and a Settler on a Galley close to Russia, but they decided they'd rather die at sea than settle on land and have me capture their city.
After this point, I almost solidly kept up the unit pump. I started to make the odd Musketman, remembering that I'd get 2 free promotions this way, even if they took a long time to build. These units would simply start to replace my Longbowman as the fodder that would defend my other units and would sit in my newly captured cities (instead of say, Horse Archers or War Elephants guarding my new cities).
I built and built and built some more units, until I had built up stacks of 12 or so units for each of the 7 Indian cities. Only then, in 1847 AD, did I dare to declare war, as stacks of 6-7 Riflemen and SAM Infantry were pretty scary for my outdated military.
On the way to their cities, I lost some Grenadiers to Cavalry, but my War Elephants provided quick retribution.
I realised that I didn't have enough Hwachas and Trebuchets remaining, so some Grenadiers had to attack Riflemen that weren't softened up. It came pretty close as one stack lost most of its units, giving the defenders a lot of experience. I pulled through with some patience, choosing to keep my remaining units alive and fortified instead of suiciding the whole stack. This approach worked well, as half of the defenders had died in the initial assault, while two of my stacks from nearby captured cities were able to come and provide some relief. With the combined forces of those stacks, the last Indian city on the continent fell in 1853 AD.
India had one city remaining on what appeared to be a Barbarian-city-infested island. They never seemed to get more than a 1 city foothold, however, but they weren't about to lose that city either. I held out several turns, hoping for some techs or money, but I ended up just taking them on as a Vassal without any other perks, in order to get me that much closer to the Domination land area limit.
From here, it was mostly a matter of logistics and overwhelming amounts of units. I sent everything that I had to the South end of Russia. The battles against Russia would be somewhat easier, as I only had one direction to go: up (well, North actually, as I hadn't yet learned how to fly). I still had to split my forces into groups of 2 or 3 stacks, but it would take a lot less co-ordination than before.
If anyone knows how to set up Rally Points, I'd love to hear how. If there is a way to set a Rally Point for all cities at once, I'd be thrilled to know how to do so, too. The game was getting pretty laggy at this point and it became a bit frustrating to have to manually move units being built from almost every city. If I had had a technological advantage, the situation would not have been so bad, but as it was, I kept having to replenish the hordes of units that I threw away in battle.
By this time, thanks to some trading with Mongolia, I'd been able to upgrade most of my units to Riflemen and Cannons. Of course, most of the Russian cities had Infantry, while their field armies consisted of Cossacks and Cannons.
I turned on some game-simplifying options, such as Stack Attack and Auto-promote. I didn't really like the promotions chosen, but I was getting sick of having to click them myself.
Here's a great idea for an add-on mod, especially if you make it compatible with the HOF mod: give the player an interface to choose what types of promotions are assigned in a particular order for each unit type. Perhaps a text or .ini file would control the promotion order, with some smart default values assigned for the case where the input file was incorrectly formatted. You would lose out on flexibility for promotion customization of the same unit type, but I'd be willing to take that trade-off, since you would always have a choice of either using customized-auto-promote or manually promoting your units.
It was a slug-fest, as I slowly took city after city. The counter attacks were brutal, however, and if it weren't for a constant stream of newly-built units supporting my troops, my forces would have been overrun. I honestly could have lost to a Domination win by Russia, the way that things went in some battles.
I got a Great Artist in there, which I brought to the front lines, fortified until I saw a good opportunity, and promptly forgot about in all of the macroing of troop stacks. It wasn't really going to make a substantial difference, however, with one city falling to my units an average of every three turns.
The biggest battle was for the city of Moscow around 1900 AD, with battles over a series of turns. I must have killed about 30 units in that city, consisting of Infantry, Machine Guns, Cossacks, and Cannons. I think that I lost even more units than I killed and my resources were stretched pretty thin, but with Domination just around the corner, I would pull out as the overall victor.
I simply kept Mongolia as happy as possible and kept up the pressure on Russia. As I neared the North end of their long strip of land, the Domination limit kicked in, saving me from the pain of watching any more of my troops lay down their lives for the good of their country and apparently, for the unification of the whole world, if the red flag that is planted in the Domination Victory video is really as powerful as it appears.
Thanks once again for a great game!
Additional comments about naval units:
I didn't build a navy. A couple of work boats in the later part of the game, but that's it. I was too bogged down trying to keep my land unit production up. The AI kept sending a lot of triremes to harass me, especially around Seoul, so it would have been a major investment to fend them off. Since I wasn't even working any of the Coast tiles around Seoul, I really didn't care about their boats. It wasn't until I started automating my cities' production near the end of the game, in the 1800s, before my first naval unit was produced. Even then, I just pressed the 'e' key and had these boats randomly explore, rather than bother to wage wars at sea.
As a result of the AI having triremes around my capital and the fact that I was at war with China and Persia for many millennia, both of them took advantage of my lack of a navy. They dropped several raiding parties off around Seoul. There were a few close calls, such as when Persia dropped off two Immortals, and I only had an Archer and a freshly-built Hwacha to defend with. Fortunately, with a Combat I promotion, the Hwacha managed to take them out. However, in reviewing the autolog, I realise that it could have been my doom at that time. When I spotted two triremes and a galley coming at me, I quickly switched Seoul's production to an Archer. It was only when I looked up Immortals in the Civilopedia and realized that Immortals received a bonus against Archers did I change my mind and start building a Hwacha instead (I fortunately changed my mind on the same turn).
With the Warlords patch, we're going to be in trouble. We won't be able to see what's coming on those galleys. Take that warning to heart.
Now I'm not sure whether the AI chose to attack Seoul by sea because of which of the following reasons:
a) it is my capital and thus a really smart target
b) it was my only coastal city for a long time
c) it was the closest city to China and Persia that could be reached within a couple of turns by troops marching from a beach landing
It would be nice to know which of those options dictates the Computers' behaviour, so that one could prepare for future Warlords games by beefing up the defense of the appropriate city.
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