WOTM 07 First Spoiler

[fizbankovi]

Thx for the detailed spoiler Erkon. Just what i meant....

 

[Vynd]

Um, I think my execution was pretty close to perfect; my point was that the strategy itself wasn't as good as expected, and the experiment prove that.

Ah, well pardon me for misspeaking then. What I was really trying to say is that while you may see some room for improvement in your game, I think most of us wish we'd met with even a fraction of the success you had.

 

[Obormot]

Yeah, resource denial doesn't seem to be worth it on this map (Although it is propably very usefull on lower levels). I never encountered that many defenders in AI cities, as I see on Balbes's screenshots, so it looks like declaring war and having units inside their borders makes them build more archers. Besides spearmen are not an ultimate disaster, the AI doesn't build a lot of them, and one spearman is just about as bad as 2-3 archers. So if you have to kill 5 archers instead of 2 archers and a spear it doesn't really help.

I managed to get a domination win in 10BC using the conventional strategy. BTW, I discovered construction and built some catapults, but I didn't really need them actually. Could have won with only immortals just as well. The key was capturing some cities early to boost production.

I settled on the bananas (if I knew where the horses are, I would have chosen 2S or course), then built another city to get horses &second gold. I built Stonehenge in Persepolis for culture & happiness, and I never learnt calendar. I took out Arabia & Greece by 500AD or so, so I had a solid production base soon. The map was perfect for that: two resourceless neighbours very close, no cities on hills, etc. I also built the HE in Persepolis, to boost my production further. The I crushed the AI one by one easily: Egypt, then Carthage, then Zululand. The catapults only took part in the two latter wars.

As usual I messed up the endgame and started spamming settlers to fill in the gaps too late. I think it was possible to win 10-15 turns earlier. Killing Shaka was completely unnecessary of course, I had enough land with just Greece, Arabia, Egypt & Carthage, plus the massive tundra regions.

 

[Harbourboy]

managed to get a domination win in 10BC

As usual I messed up the endgame

Hmm. Those two quotes seem to be completely incompatible. A win by 10BC? I barely had 3 cities by then and was under threat of being overrun by Arabians at that point. How is a win possible by 10BC, including "messing up"?

 

[Htadus]

Besides spearmen are not an ultimate disaster, the AI doesn't build a lot of them, and one spearman is just about as bad as 2-3 archers.

I wish that was true in my case. I lost 8 highly promoted Immortals taking down 1 impi.

I managed to get a domination win in 10BC using the conventional strategy.

What do you mean by "conventional strategy"?

As usual I messed up the endgame and started spamming settlers to fill in the gaps too late. Killing Shaka was completely unnecessary of course, I had enough land with just Greece, Arabia, Egypt & Carthage, plus the massive tundra regions.

I would love to even come close to the "messed up" finale of your game.

I think you wisdom to take shaka out is right on. I left him with 1 city just to find him a few centuries later with 3 more.

 

[MarkM]

Hmm. Those two quotes seem to be completely incompatible. A win by 10BC? I barely had 3 cities by then and was under threat of being overrun by Arabians at that point. How is a win possible by 10BC, including "messing up"?

It must be a typo. Notice he mentions later that he'd taken out just Arabia & Greece by 500AD. But I agree, this requires a bit more elaboration than "I won the conventional way!" There was nothing at all "conventional" about this map!

 

[ungy]

It must be a typo. Notice he mentions later that he'd taken out just Arabia & Greece by 500AD. But I agree, this requires a bit more elaboration than "I won the conventional way!" There was nothing at all "conventional" about this map!

Obormot is one of the strongest players around. The typo is surely that 500AD should be 500BC.

 

[MarkM]

I am currently at 1100ad. While I did better than I expected, I'm pretty clearly not going to win -- not trying to give anything after 500ad away here, just want to give the context for others to read my comments, as instructional or cautionary. But I did have some early success in the BC and early AD years (well, by my standards anyway, not by a great player's though I suppose) that does give me hope that I will reach the level of being able to compete at this level some day, I definitely made progress just within the last week of prepping playing with the test games AgedOne & RobertTheBruce posted to the pregame discussion thread (thanks again!) & then playing the game itself.

Frankly overall my game wasn't that instructive for others to study. However in my brief history posting to these GOTM threads, what I try to do is find one interesting event/turning point and focus on it, trying to identify at least one lesson to take out of each game I play; by posting it here after establishing general context, maybe others can learn from it too.

Background: A casual Monarch player takes a shot at Immortal

Spoiler :

This is my first "real" game ever on Immortal (or even Emperor or above really -- I played one Emperor game a long time ago in an early version vanilla game, and got thoroughly spanked. I would say I am a Monarch player, leaning to the side of Prince? I also don't play much, Got civ4 about a year ago after not playing civ since civ 1 (!), didn't play much in the summer, then started playing again towards the end of the year. I'm stretched to finish one GOTM a month and I've only played a few games so far in Warlords. Given that I was pleasantly surprised how I was doing, by ~ 200 AD I was ahead of two other civs, and had come out on the positive side from the two real wars I had, with Shaka and Arabia. But then came the moment I had my lesson handed to me.

Initial settlement: Where to?

Spoiler :

I established Persepolis on the bananas, based upon the pregame discussion & my test play of RobertTheBruce's save. Like AU_Armeggedon I moved 2 sw to the hill and when I got there & saw both gold, I thought about settling on the hill instead of banana. Unfortunately I went ahead and settled on banana -- I still think it was the right choice given what I knew at the time, but luck would have it of course that the horses turned up where they did, in hindsight the hill would have been a better choice?

First 2000 years (70 turns): building up capital, connecting resource, & developing tech infrastructure

Spoiler :

My first 70 or so turns (to about 2000bc) I concentrated strongly on the above list. By turn 80 I already had all the resources in the cross hooked up (including both sea), had both barracks plus a couple archers, and even soon would have a library there, already researching writing and whipping the building right after discovering it in 1690 bc (I was worried about falling behind in tech like I did in my practice game, as detailed in my pregame post -- it turned out I had good reason to worry). Having all 4 of the food squares in the fat cross (not to mention banana city site) let me bounce back really fast from whipping. Believe it or not I never used slavery much before, but this game I went into overdrive. Building the library also allowed me to expand my borders twice as fast, after discovering AH and seeing the horses I realized the double use of the library, cultural expansion as well as research (I did not have any religions yet, or stonehenge). Unlike some others though when I was looking for a second city I chose not to put a city down there to work it directly -- I was worried it would not amount to much other than hooking up horses, there was not enough food, and I saw I could get it hooked up before 2000bc without it. Instead I built Pasargadae on the other side of the starting settler position, on the hill along the other lake coast a few squares NE of the settler starting position. Concentrating on building up Persepolis, I did not found it until 1750bc. FYI the only other city I built, Susa, was not built until 230ad, almost as an afterthought after I had already captured a handful of enemy cities. I founded it north of the mountain near the top of the same lake coast that Persepolis/the bananas etc were on. I mostly founded to to keep Hannibal who had built/captured from barbs a couple cities in the north end of the home "section."

I don't know if I'dve been better off building more cities and/or earlier; I guess I was trying to avoid the maintenance drag I found in my test games from building/keeping captured cities too much. I sent the scout more or less straight north (wandering to the north coast far away) and did not realize the character of the map -- that there were these three strategic "Themopolyae" mountain passes (ainwood, you really got in the spirit of 300 this month, didn't you? LOL) -- until it was too late. If I had known I probably would have strongly considered "sealing off" the space by building the two cities ASAP at the mouth of each, perhaps letting only one other civ in (then declaring on them most likely). This is a game IMO that preknowledge of the map would be more valuable than ever. But by the time I saw the layout clearly I already had Shaka, Caesar, and Hannibal (the latter being #1 & #2 in score) inside the "sector," plus Saladin eventually built a city on the plains at the opening of the southern pass (though much later, too late to grab the horses from me).

First Zulu War (1060-730 BC)

Spoiler :

After building nothing more than one warrior & then a couple archers late in the first ~80 turns, when I finally got the horses hooked up around then I went into full scale Immortal production. After about 20 turns of that, in 1060 BC I finally declare war on the Shaka, who have founded uMgungundlovu at the north shore of the bay straight west of Persopolis/bananas 5 squares. It is a very successful war, uMgungundlovu falls to me within 3 turns, pushing Zulus completely out of my home "section."

The Zulu war was a war of convenience and ease -- they founded a city far from their home base, separated from the rest of their lands by Roman territory, and it was easy to pluck that city, nearly perfectly located for my purposes, and add to my production research base. Not to mention, it has copper in fat cross and that becomes my first military metal source! I had been well in last place until capturing uMgungundlovu, but with it I quickly move into striking distance of the lower half of the pack.

I heal/build up a little more and, with objectives achieved & Shaka's remaining territories far away, in 730 BC I end the Zulu war after just 12 turns (getting a little money as well as the captured city) and turn to declare war on Saladin immediately. Effectively the war actually ended after only three turns, the remaining nine I had to wait before he would speak with me, and I had already move the immortals south to scout Saladin & position for attack immediately.

Arabian War (730 BC - 185 AD)

Spoiler :

As I said above, the Zulu war was tactical, to grab that one city, and even to build XP to some degree. The Arabian war was strategic, I aimed to take them out & use their empire to catapult me into the upper half of the pack and contention. Saladin is actually in 2nd place when I attack, but I think mostly on the basis of tech and religion (he founded two, Hinduism and Christianity). His military, my scouting with immortals finds, is mostly archers, he has no spearman, and he only has one metal (iron) which he has just hooked up (I got just IW myself in 850bc, along with 3 other techs, after getting alphabet and then trading -- yes, I got alphabet before IW, maybe that's strange but I knew my initial military push would be based on immortals so I thought the different path worked for me). Archers! Perfect adversary for the immortals!

Saladin has a ton or workers (well over a dozen) and in the first turn I nab at least four. Then I settle in to pillaging mode, stripping his land clean with mobile immortals (beelining in particular for the iron hex) while his heavily promoted-archer defended cities sit passively. Fifteen turns into the war I have a lot of gold & take and raze Narjan, the city he built at the southern pass (it may have been a mistake to raze that, more later). I also have pillaged the iron. Pretty much all Saldin can do is build archers, and whenever they venture out of the cities over the next couple dozen turns I take a break from pillaging and kill then, building up my immortal XP (I have a few that are over 20 xp by 0 ad). He is putty in my hand, powerless to stop me. I grab (and keep) Baghdad, SE of mecca & the birthplace of Christianity, in 340 BC, using immortals and maybe one axeman. It takes one immortal sacrifice to soften up each defending archer though, so I decide to wait for catapults (I was 17 turns away from finishing research on construction when Baghdad fell) before taking on mecca or other non-tundra cities which, unlike Baghdad, all have walls. and 50%+ defence. i continue pillaging to fund my research effort & keep Saldin helpless, pausing military production to build mostly infrastrucure (including barracks in non-capital cities) in my 4 city empire for that 17 turn stretch

I get Construction in 85 BC, whip out 4 catapults, and 18 turns later (185 AD) I capture Mecca. My territory now stretches through the southern pass and then to the SE through Mecca (next to the iron) and on to Baghdad, almost down to the coast.

Two other things happen in this period: 1) Caasar asks me to DOW on Shaka again in 25 BC, and I comply, even actually sending two immortals over to the far west to do some selective pillaging. I am one of Caesar's best buddies now, and I haven't even declared a religion yet (which I plan to do, matching his). 2) Alex declares on me 3 turns before I capture Mecca. It doesn't seem like he can do much to me (I'm even ahead of him in score, see below), but as he borders the west of the Arab territories, I have to at least watch my back.

My strategy has gone well so far I think, much better than I'd thought I'd do at immortal level, I've climbed from initially deep in the basement score-wise to the middle of the pack by 185 AD, with Caesar and Hannibal ahead of me, but relatively friendly (+5 and +2 at the time I think, without me declaring religion yet & they are both Hindu, which I get from capturing Mecca), Shaka and Alex behind me, though Alex only slightly. Ramses I'm a little behind too, but not much & he is on the other side of Hannibal and Alex and irrelevant to me at this point (and for at lleast the next thousand years it turns out, as anythign other than a trading partner and potential enemy-of-my-enemy), and my power will grow quickly I figure as I assimilate Baghdad and Mecca, and finish rebuilding up the Zulu city I captured 80 turns before -- not to mention when I finish off Saladin, whose poor archers can't stop me without outside help.

The Arabian empire is also still slightly ahead of me in score, but Saladin is essentially defanged, ripe fruit ready to be plucked. I have taken away it's metal sources and it has been split in half, one major city to each side of Mecca. The one to the east, now completely isolated, is the Hindu holy city, and Hinduism is the #1 world religion, and the religion of both Caesar and Hannibal, the only two civs well ahead of me.

December 31st, 185 AD: The Day that Will Live in Persian Infamy!

Spoiler :

OK, here comes the moment where I learn my big lesson, the turning point of the game perhaps, the one that others may get something out of (sorry it took so long to get here, didn't intend that!) This is where I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the Arabian War. This was my "Santa Ana moment" (for those that know Mexican history).

The scene was set above, I'm poised to move from middle to upper echelon of the score rankings by finishing off Saladin, he is helpless at my feet, at this point his lands are just about 100.00% pillaged and all he can really build is archers, my now heavily experienced immortals slice through them like butter whenever they venture outside city walls. I may even have more immortals than he has archers, maybe a dozen by now. His remaining cities have high defense values, but I still have two (heavily wounded) catapults that survived the Mecca siege and more in the queue. I can probably take each city at <= the same cost as Mecca (2-3 cats and maybe an immortal or two each, after a few turns of barrage?) BUT, I need to finish the next batch of cats & let the immortals heal. Also, I've been concentrating on production and worrying about falling behind in tech vs potential future targets.

Thinking that I am acting in my long term interests (catch up in tech) with no significant impact to my short term goals (finish conquest of Saladin), I inquire what he will give me for a 10 turn cease fire. He offers Priesthood, Monotheism, and Currency, plus a little gold. That's everything he has to offer except Calendar, and well over 1000 points of research. Figuring I'd be regrouping/healing/finishing & moving up the cats for almost 10 turns anyway, and also running into some war weariness problems after 101 turns of continuous war (wel;l over half the game), I take the three techs plus gold that Saladin offers me for a 10 turn cease fire in 185 AD, confident I would be exploding back upon him to finish him off completely right after it expires. He still has a gob of workers holed up in his cities but I'm not worried about him reestablishing his economy/military much with them, in only 10 turns he'll just be improving the land for my benefit when I capture him, and/or giving me more pillaging revenue.

This was the moment I unwittingly squandered my chances in the game, partially due to lack of experience with Warlords .. and maybe partially because it was well, well after midnight! I'll give you a chance to predict what happened right after I hit "next turn" after signing that peace treaty with Saladin in 185 AD ...

... OK, time's up! After I click next turn, I see the message that makes my heart stop: "Saladin has agreed to become a vassal of the Carthaginian Empire." Hannibal, the #2 player, the one that borders the opposite side of my empire from Arabia, the one I had been (successfully) courting to be friendly to me. Now I could only resume my war and finish off Saladin & take the Hindu holy city, etc. by essentially declaring war on Hannibal as well & opening up myself to invasion from the opposite side of the empire. Sigh. Mecca's still in rebellion obviously, without any cultural borders yet (I just captured it the turn before) and so to add insult to injury, within a couple turns Saladin has moved a settler to location just south of the mountain pass and founded a city there, sealing me off from getting any more units south to Mecca or Baghdad, without taking the long way through Roman lands. Obviously that inability to move north-south easily makes a two front Saladin+Hannibal war even more unpalatable, as if there needed to be any more reasons.

Just how much can one little 10 turn peace treaty hurt you?

Spoiler :

If I'd been able to resume the war after the peace treaty expired that new city might've been a minor inconvenience, an extra target to get money from, but having concluded I couldn't bring a war with Saladin's master Hannibal upon me, well I was stuck with living with it, aka really screwed. Two of my six cities were cut off by the closed borders with Saladin's new city, and I had the war Alex declared four turns earlier to deal with. Meanwhile Alex DID have the open borders with Saladin, which allowed him to use the roads all those Arab workers were rapidly rebuilding to harass me effortlessly, pounincing on any poorly defended workers or improvements. I couldn't attack any of these units sitting just outside my borders because that would require declaring war on both Saladin and Hannibal to go along with my war with Alex. Sigh.

Consequences: I've played another thousand years & not to give anything away about after 500 AD for others, but I think it's safe to say my decision to dally 10 turns for the ceasefire was my ... well, my Thermopylae (ainwood should be happy). Just like the with the 300 in that battle, the brief delay Arabia bought with their tech sacrifice gave time to save the rest of their civilization. Xerxes dallied, then was held up three days, which was turned to critical effect by the Athenians at the great victory at Marathon, defying all odds to save Greek & (and thus all future Western) civilization. Cyrus (me) gave Saladin time/opportunity to obtain protection from Hannibal, and Arabia came back with a vengeance, with Alex's (unintentional?) help. I still hold Baghdad, but eventually lost Mecca to Alex not too long after 500AD. This flipped the iron next to Saladin into his borders (although he may have already gotten some from the tundra areas to the south by then?) and let him establish a non-archer army, a thousand years later he is probably in better shape than me, and some time ago expanded enough to break away from vassalage to Hannibal! I spent most of those years fighting off Alex. So, I pretty much stagnated/fell further off the leaders for those next thousand years. In hindsight to better recover from my blunder I might have been better off giving away Mecca to Rome to bribe them to enter the war on my side, but by the time I thought of it Mecca could only hold off a couple more turns, and Caesar was in another war and not interested in declaring. I maybe should have just given it away to him even for nothing, in the end defending it cost me more than it was worth

My ultimate conclusion:

If I had just slogged on in continuous war another ~30 turns and ignored building war weariness, pressing my huge advantage over Saladin, I would have almost 100% certainly completely conquered him, and might have been one of the three major empires in the game at 500AD, nearly a peer to Hannibal and Caesar. I would have owned the Hindu holy city, and both were Hindu at the time (Caesar later flipped to Judaism). I would have had a lot of options for paths to victory from there. Likely I would have eventually routed Alex next, and then perhaps Ramses? Instead, well .... ​

Well, that's it, this was a lot longer than I intended. At 1100 AD, I can perhaps survive indefinitely, maybe even to the end, but I'm now a civilization backwater, too small to compete & too far behind to grow. So I'm thinking about just resigning and move on to the vanilla GOTM. Like I said I don't want to say much since it's post 500AD, but I'm giving no useful details so I hope it's OK, and I don't really have much to say for spoiler #2 so I might as well put it all here. I will conclude by saying that I did enjoy the game though, the map was really a surprise (I did not expect ainwood to go that far with the "300" theme!) and that I think I learned improved my game a lot through my practice and play. Though I did not win, ironically the experience gave me for the first time the confidence that I might be able to play above Monarch successfully. I look forward to furhter reading & learning from others posts on this game, and also to the next Emperor-level GOTM, I've never tried one before but now I'm eager and (ironically) confident ...

 

[Obormot]

Hmm. Those two quotes seem to be completely incompatible. A win by 10BC? I barely had 3 cities by then and was under threat of being overrun by Arabians at that point. How is a win possible by 10BC, including "messing up"?

I could have won faster then that. In GOTM, it is important to synchronize many different things in the endgame, for example when going for a culture win all 3 cities should ideally reach legendary status on the same turn, when going for a conquest win you should have your forces split into several groups and each such group should capture a city on the last turn, etc. Fast domination is like conquest, but much more tedious, because you also need to estimate how much land to conquer, build the settlers to fill gaps, move the settlers to spots you plan to settle, etc. This is not important when you are playing "just for fun", but in a competition game carefull planning of the endgame saves many turns. I find it to be quite boring though, and I am not very good at it. The result is good, but could have been better if I was more carefull in the end.

In this game the AI didn't have enough time to fill all of the map and the vast tundra areas were mostly empty. So the plan was to settle all this empty land and expand borders by hiring artists in the last few turns to push myself over the domination limit. I needed about 15 settlers to fill all the gaps, plus there is some time needed to move those settlers into position, so I should have started building them well in advance. Conquering Greece, Arabia, Egypt and Carthage, plus settling all the tundra would have been enough for domination. But by the time I conquered all that the settlers were still not ready, because I miscalculated the time needed for my army to conquer Carthage, etc.

I wish that was true in my case. I lost 8 highly promoted Immortals taking down 1 impi.

I think that for a typical AI capital (high culture, but not on hills) you need about 2 immortals per archer and 5 immortals per spearman. (But I try to bring more, just to be sure). 8 immortals per impi is a bit unlucky, but quite possible. I killed Arabia & Greece before they connected metal. Egypt had metal, but they only built 2 spears, and one of them moved out to kill my immortal. When I was fighting Carthage & Zulu I already had catapults, so spears/impis were not a big problem.

I think you wisdom to take shaka out is right on. I left him with 1 city just to find him a few centuries later with 3 more.

Shaka was the last AI I killed. It was not necessary, because I could have reached domination without killing him. To put it short, I should have stopped building troops and started building settlers much earlier then I did.

What do you mean by "conventional strategy"?

Conventional compared to Balbes's strategy. He sent several small groups of immortals in all directions for resource denial and choking, while I concentrated on one AI at a time in the early game. The downside was that the AI got metal in my game, but capturing some cities early turned out to be more important.

The typo is surely that 500AD should be 500BC.

Yes, that's right.

 

[MarkM]

When am I going to stop playing real late at night?

Does any one know how you can dow on a civ by just trying to contact them? I just did but do not know how.

I was doing well too on my first immortal Immortals.

Once I stop crying, I will post the essay I was putting togather.

Ouch, that was worse than my two brainless boo-boos in this game. I'm not talking about my decision discussed above to get a 10 turn ceasefire with Persia when I had them on the ropes (thought it was in fact way too late, I might have made that mistake when more awake too, the consequences required foresight), I'm talking about these two smaller mess-ups I didn't mention:

1. I wanted to use one of my first great generals to add a military instructor to a city. In a semi-conscious state I click on the button ... then realize I have clicked on the attach to unit icon, not military instructor. I now am the proud owner of a city garrison archer with 26 xp. I'll honest, in any game other than a GOTM I would reload from last save here. All units produced in my main production city (which later had heroic epic) had 2 less xp for the rest of the game. That's just correcting stupid human error, and not cheating. I want to lose because I didn't play the right strategy, not because I clicked the wrong button by accident (not that this boo boo changed the outcome of my wotm07 game).
   
2. Late in my Arabian war Hannibal contacts me and asks me to convert to Hinduism. I was planning to do this soon anyway, but just to be safe I hit F4 to look at relations to make sure there is no unintended impact, when I 'm done I click on exit from the F4 diplomacy screen. I guess I've never done that before? I thought I was just opening then exiting from the diplomacy screen but somehow that also was interpreted as a refusal to convert! I see a dialog box with a frowning Hannibal saying I would regret my refusal, and I have a nice a -1 relationship modifier with him (someone important to court in my strategy). Argh! Isn't it supposed to be possible to open and close an information screen while in dialog with a leader? I'm still not sure what happened.

 

[ImperialGuard]

The game did not go well

(It did in the start, or so I thought .... took out most of Zulu, and was doing good at harassing the Carthaginians ... then "turtled" to try and catch up to everyone else ...)

Arabia and the Carthaginians are closing in on my last three cities .. with Knights and Maces against my archers, immortals and axemen...

I expect to be conquered in the next few turns...

Question: What do you do for a conquered endgame?? (might as well post my loss) .... Do I save the turn during which I will lose and submit that, then wait till I;m conquered and then submit save and replay file

-thanks

 

[Harbourboy]

You submit the save immediately before you got smoked and tick the box on the submission form that says that this is the save before conquest (otherwise know as the "I got beaten up" button.)

 

[Thalaba]

My ultimate conclusion:

If I had just slogged on in continuous war another ~30 turns and ignored building war weariness, pressing my huge advantage over Saladin, I would have almost 100% certainly completely conquered him, and might have been one of the three major empires in the game at 500AD, nearly a peer to Hannibal and Caesar. I would have owned the Hindu holy city, and both were Hindu at the time (Caesar later flipped to Judaism). I would have had a lot of options for paths to victory from there. Likely I would have eventually routed Alex next, and then perhaps Ramses? Instead, well .... ..​

I sympathize - my game played out similar to yours with some differences. I'll post my endgame in the other thread when I have time.

I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of your downfall, though. I think it's quite likely that Saladin would have become a vassal of Hannibal whether you had sued for peace or not, which would either have forced you to make peace with Saladin (and get no tech booty from the deal) or drawn Hannibal into the war. I've seen both happen, but much more the latter. So it's quite possible that if you hadn't made peace then, you would have been in a worse state by having Hannibal enter the war and/or a peace with fewer techs.

Thalaba​

 

[pigswill]

MarkM: May I suggest that you continue your game past 1100ad. I was in a broadly similar situation and the game got very interesting very quickly (AIs get cheap upgrades on immortal).

 

[Thrallia]

hm...well, I'll just say for now I was conquered in 830AD. I'll post my spoiler up through 500AD in here later, nothing worth mentioning past that, unfortunately.

 

[Jove]

I managed to get a domination win in 10BC using the conventional strategy.

That's an amazing time Obormot. How did you deal with the economy problem? Caste system?

 

[MarkM]

I sympathize - my game played out similar to yours with some differences. I'll post my endgame in the other thread when I have time.

I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of your downfall, though. I think it's quite likely that Saladin would have become a vassal of Hannibal whether you had sued for peace or not, which would either have forced you to make peace with Saladin (and get no tech booty from the deal) or drawn Hannibal into the war. I've seen both happen, but much more the latter. So it's quite possible that if you hadn't made peace then, you would have been in a worse state by having Hannibal enter the war and/or a peace with fewer techs.

Thanks, I'll watch for it.

Like I said, I don't have a lot of experience with Warlords. I assumed a civ could not become vassal of another civ while they were at war, and that me granting the peace treaty is what gave Saladin the window to do it. Are you saying Saladin would have been just as likely to become Hannibal's vassal if we were still at war, and it was just a coincidence it happened right after I granted the treaty? Would Hannibal have immediately declared war on me then if he had accepted Saladin as his vassal (since if one civ in a vassal-master pair is at war, the other one automatically is too, right?) I thought maybe the fact that Hannibal was mildly disposed to me at the time (something like +2 or +3) might have at least affected his decision about whether to accept Saladin as his vassal if Saladin offered -- in other words, he'd at least be less likely to take Saladin as vassal if it meant having to DOW on me, if his relationship with me was at least a little warm. It seems like that should figure into the AI decision, I know as a human I'm influenced in a decision to accept a vassal by whether he comes with "strings of war" attached.

By the way, I perhaps overstated how strong I would be once I wiped out Saladin, I probably would still be an underdog in the game. But I had made a climb from the absolute cellar in the first 2k years to almost middle of the pack, and grabbing the rest of Arabia would presumably only push me higher. In other words, my point was I was doing better than I expected (score-wise) and was at lest steadily rising in the ranks, and it seemed to be this one specific event (and/or my reaction to it) that ended the climb.

 

[MarkM]

MarkM: May I suggest that you continue your game past 1100ad. I was in a broadly similar situation and the game got very interesting very quickly (AIs get cheap upgrades on immortal).

I'll consider that. My only problem is that I pretty much abandoned my game strategy at that point, I did not much more than just try to hang onto what I already had for the next 1000 years, and surrendered the initiative. Maybe my reaction to this unexpected event (pull like a turtle into my shell) was more the problem than the event itself. As I said in my post, in hindsight I should have considered trying something decisive, for example giving away Mecca (which I expended great effort in a failed attempt to hold) to Caesar as a bribe to bring him into a war on my side & distract Hannibal and Alex. Or to Ramses to get him to DOW against Alex, and regained a city or two that way. they may not even have bit, but it would have kept the initiative. I lacked the imagination to even think of it until much later (too late), instead I just cranked out longbowmen and pikemen for continuous defensive stands.

 

[Thrallia]

Thanks, I'll watch for it.

Like I said, I don't have a lot of experience with Warlords. I assumed a civ could not become vassal of another civ while they were at war, and that me granting the peace treaty is what gave Saladin the window to do it. Are you saying Saladin would have been just as likely to become Hannibal's vassal if we were still at war, and it was just a coincidence it happened right after I granted the treaty? Would Hannibal have immediately declared war on me then if he had accepted Saladin as his vassal (since if one civ in a vassal-master pair is at war, the other one automatically is too, right?) I thought maybe the fact that Hannibal was mildly disposed to me at the time (something like +2 or +3) might have at least affected his decision about whether to accept Saladin as his vassal if Saladin offered -- in other words, he'd at least be less likely to take Saladin as vassal if it meant having to DOW on me, if his relationship with me was at least a little warm. It seems like that should figure into the AI decision, I know as a human I'm influenced in a decision to accept a vassal by whether he comes with "strings of war" attached.

I believe if Hannibal wasn't at war with Saladin, he would have ended up at war with you as well by accepting him as a vassal...however, if he had been at war with Saladin as well, then your war with Saladin would have been ended. That's only what I've heard though...in every case I've experienced where someone I was at war with became someone else's vassal, my war ended immediately.

As for if your war would have influenced his decision...as far as I've seen and heard...it wouldn't have factored in one bit.

 

[Thrallia]

Contender Conquest Loss 830AD

Settled in place...I couldn't bring myself to settle on the bananas, so I just settled...in hindsight, it was a bad decision...although the city was powerful, my second city ended up a really bad one...I had a brain fart and settled on one of the golds so I could get the horses within the city radius(shoulda just overlapped with the capital to get the Wheat and be able to grow...)

Anyway, I decided I would go early conquest, and later diplo or space race...so I concentrated on building Immortals exclusively in both cities once I had horses hooked up.

Um...early tech path was AH>Mining>BW>Wheel ...I think I went Writing afterward, but I'm not sure...I do know that not fitting in Pottery right before or after Wheel is what doomed my game.

I lost out to both nearby coppers, E to Zulus, SW to the Greeks. I chose the Greeks for my first target to keep them from getting Phalanxes. They went down fairly easily...Sparta was taken in one turn, Athens was taken with a loss of 1 Immortal while taking down 5 archers, and Corinth was razed while losing 2 Immortals...I should have kept Corinth in hindsight...but for some reason my brain wasn't working strategically while I was playing, thus since I was losing cash while at 0&#37; science already I razed Corinth with the goal of rebuilding a new city on the coast right next to the copper(never got to it). While taking Corinth, Alex took over a barb city to stay in the game and I peaced him so I could go after a different AI.

Next, I attacked Rome...I didn't have IW yet but saw that he had a mine on grassland where I saw nothing...so I knew he had IW and iron...obviously he had to go before he could build any Praetorians! I took and razed his iron city and the city he had on my border on the first turn, lost 2 Immortals but gained 3 workers. I razed a third city soon after while moving toward Rome...unfortunately, when I got there he had 5 archers and I only had 8 ready Immortals. I waited around a few years for my other Immortals to arrive and give me an overwhelming force, but that didn't happen...by the time I had 14 Immortals, he had 8 archers, so I then went and razed all his other cities...unfortunately he had a single spearman in a city that killed off 4 of my spears. I came back to Rome and found he now had 9 archers, so I left him with Rome and went back to Persia.

At this point it was about 300BC, and I had only discovered Writing just before declaring war on Rome, and still did not have Pottery or anything after Writing...I was falling way behind in research, and needed to stop my wars and consolidate...Unfortunately, I still had no metals and Saladin and Shaka were both cautious with me.

I threw caution to the wind and declared war on Saladin because Shaka had more Impis than Saladin had Spears...I had forgotten about Impis or I woulda taken Shaka on before Caesar. I had also falling to yet another brain inactivity...I forgot Saladin was Protective, giving him stronger archers.

I took and razed a barb city Saladin had taken, along with his southernmost city quickly...I then conquered Kufah, the city he had placed where Corinth, the former Greek copper city had been. Unfortunately, I had no way to expand the culture to include the copper, as I hadn't yet researched Mysticism(yet another lack of strategic thought). So while I then floundered about, losing Immortals to AXES!!! and Spears and, now that I had finally learned Pottery, no longer working mines, but cottages trying to reach a positive income at 0% science, I couldn't reproduce my lost Immortals at anywhere near the speed needed. I gained 3 GG, using 1 for a 70% withdrawal Immortal, I used him to 'suicide' on Spears...he killed 2 and withdrew from 6 before he died against an archer(ARGH!!). The other two I settled in my main two production cities for 5 exp Immortals straight out of production.

With my offensive against Saladin at a standstill, losing cash at 0% science, and quickly being outteched and now outmilitaried, I tried to get peace with Saladan but he refused for anything less than Sparta. Unfortunately, without Sparta, even once I got the copper mined, I wouldn't be able to use it in my capital thanks to the funny mountain passes(speaking of which, what was with the Sheep, Cows, and Goody Huts being on Mountain peaks?!?).
I refused to give him Sparta, so war went on until he took it by force...I retook it, but just after I did so Shaka decided to help Saladin out.

That was around 200AD....I soon after discovered Alphabet by working 2 scientist specs in Persepolis...much to my skeptical eyes, I saw that while the turn before I discovered it, 3 of the AI knew Alphabet, but the turn I discovered it, somehow everyone else did as well. Lucky me...I had spent 700 years developing an alphabet, only to have everyone else make one at the same time!

It wasn't until then I researched Mysticism, so that I could finally get some culture into Kufah and mine the copper.

at 500AD, I was just a few turns away from my borders expanding in Kufah, I had lost Susa(Zulus) and Persepolis(Arabs), and Hannibal had joined the fun.

Normally, I would end my game there...but so little happened in the ensuing 300 years I'll go ahead and mention it...Pasagardae was razed by Hannibal soon after, I lost Sparta again, I mined the copper, built 4 spears, and lost Kufah, then finally lost Athens to the Zulus.

Final Score is around 200 points...maybe I'll get my second red ambulance award lol