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Gen.Dragolen
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Txurce,
I was surprised that the Egyptians hadn't pulled out the Nukes after you took Memphis.
I concur with Arrian that the Iroquois must be the next victim. An amphibious operation should be able to give you a chance to block the Chinese in their toe-holds.
As for how to deal with China and England, it looks you will need to play them off each other if possible. One or the other has to be missing some luxuries or resources. That may at least allow you to break any alliances between the two. After your dealings with the late Egyptians, I don't think an alliance with one is possible.
One curious question: with so few cities, how did England build a fistfull of very expensive ICBM's ?
In the mean time, while preparing for the Iroquois campaign, I would start rush building cultural imporvements in the border cities if they are close to a luxury or resource. You should be able to peacefully aquire them to allow greater production for yourself.
Otherwise, you have two options left: the SDI wonder and out build them all or invasion. If you can locate the ICBM's using embassey/espionage, you might capture them or at least destroy them before they could retaliate for the invasion.
Too bad you couldn't just steal them, eh ? Never a 00 agent when you need one.
D.
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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Life is what happens while you make other plans, as I soon found out. While I built temples in all my new cities, saved my gold to buy the next tech on the ladder, and painted crosshairs on the Iroquois, the Chinese signed an MPP with England. I hoped they would gang up on the weak Iroquois, but in 1770 - five turns after the world's powers were reduced to four - China attacked me from their five central continental cities. They didn't get anywhere, and I used my armies to take four of their cities and destroy the fifth on my next turn. (I also captured 13 stealth bombers.) England promptly declared war, and now here I am, recalculating my situation. So much for my hopes of continuing to be a puppetmaster!
On the plus side, the quick victory and lack of borders means I should be able to keep warring in democracy. I intend to avoid war with the Iroquois, since they are my only source of tech, and staying in democracy maximizes my tech-buying income. At this point, I think not antagonizing my enemies while racing for SDI is the wise move.
Dragolen asks where the English got all those ICBMs... and I have a question of my own: what have those two island powers been building for the last couple of centuries, while I caught up? My suspicion is that it's a lot of MI, and a fair share of nukes. I learned in "Babylon and on" that multiple armies are the best way to crack massive numbers of MI, but in my current defenseless state, I think I have to respect those nukes. What do you guys think?
In the meantime, I expect a lot of naval shelling from the two island powers, and my navy presently consists of one transport. I am preparing a defense for this that I learned from the AI a long time ago, but have never used: combined arms. One or two bombers and a destroyer can instantly neutralize a pillaging vessel, and the casualties are negligible. (Naval shelling is rarely critical, but the AI humiliated me one game with this tactic.) I already have the bombers, thanks to China, so all I need now is some destroyers.
I don't think I can generate enough culture for any purpose other than to connect my borders. What else could I do? Given the havoc I wreaked in Egypt, I don't think blowing a GL on a palace move would benefit me much. Should I start spying? Dragolen's suggestion that I neutralize the nukes is very tempting... but can I afford it?
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Gen.Dragolen
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Txurce,
It becomes a question of can you afford not to ?
As for dealing with the Chinese and English navies, may I suggest Cruise Missles. In sufficient quantity, they can sink a large number of ships that stray too close to your coastal cities.
And you definitely need to start spying on your enemies: if you can determine where the nukes are stored, it would be worth sacraficing a couple of armies in a suicide mission that would save your best cities if you can't complete the SDI in time. Personally, I would not build it as it will only stop some of the ICBM's, not all.
I can't remember if they are less expensive that destroyers, but definitely build a couple of subs: you need to be able to see enemy nuclear subs near your coast, and then you can use detroyers to finish them.
What you might want to consider is that the only safe time to assualt the islands is when they are trying to invade your continent. At least then their forces will be scattered and you can bee-line for the nukes and hope that you don't have to take out 100+MI to get at them...
Good luck and good hunting.
D.
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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Defending against the Chinese and English
My strategy after the Chinese attacked and I took all of their central continental cities was to not be too aggressive, and hope that nuke fever had died down. The Chinese landed about two dozen units and lost them in one turn. I started building destroyers, and did very well in fending off naval pillaging with the one-two punch of stealth bombers and destroyers. The Chinese paid 100 gold for peace in 1782, and after losing a couple of ships, so did the English in 1786.
The end of the Iroquois
Still eager for action, the Chinese promptly attacked the Iroquois from their remaining continental cities in 1788. This coincided perfectly with my expansion plans, and I took two cities and destroyed a third in my first turn, while opportunistic England joined in. I had two primary goals - taking Salamanca and Philadelphia, whose combined wonders included both Bach and the Chapel. Philadelphia was the tossup, because it was adjacent to the Chinese border. My armies barely made it on the next turn, and I was able to seal off the Chinese with an armored wall (they were ignoring my borders). I then took Salanca and the rest of the Iroquois lands in the next five turns - conserving units by mainly using armies - and finished them off in 1802.
Preparing for the final conflict
I now have Battlefield Medicine and the happiness wonders to fight a mid-length war on foreign soil. I am amassing a small ICBM arsenal, a good amount of destroyers, and more armies than I have ever seen. On Gen. Dragolen's advice, I foresook SDI - not effective enough given my many needs, and I still wouldn't have it - and also planted spies in both China and England during my brief war with them, and have the gold to inspect all of their cities.
My assumption is that England will be easier to take than China, so my plan is to load my armies into transports, sail them over, and then inspect each of the English cities. My initial attack will focus on the ones that have nuclear weapons. Once I'm past that hurdle, England should be easy, as I can methodically chew up its cities with my armies.
Unless their MPP expires soon, China will declare war on me. I will respond by taking China's continental cities as quickly as possible, and then fend off any future invasions with my bombers, destroyers, and the MA that took those cities. The question is: will China nuke me? I haven't fired off a nuke yet, and don't expect to. The alternative is to inspect their cities as well, and attack their nuclear weapons at the same time I do those of England's. For me to pull this off, I'd need to wait and build a lot more units, so I lean against it. Am I taking too big a risk?
 Attachment: aztecs1802.jpg
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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Catt, Egypt nuked a city I took from them after screwing them on a treaty for the third time (and in the same turn). England then nuked Egypt, and Egypt nuked England and a second city I took from them. That neither China nor England nuked me in our brief war (which they initiated) is a good sign that I won't suffer a first strike... but is there an itchy-trigger-finger factor built into the game?
Arrian, I have a response in the works to this, based on your advice that I "shoot zem both." Details to follow.
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Arrian
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Kneel before Grog!
Jul 2001
time: 00:21
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Catt,
That wasn't exactly "advice." It just seemed like the thing to say  I would actually probably focus on one (England) until they were done and then deal with the other. I don't like dividing my forces or my attention, unless I have near-ultimate power. You don't have that... not on Diety.
The thing is that they just don't have very many cities (either one of them, but particularly England). Therefore, all it takes to cripple them is a nuke-driven blitz that takes and razes their best cities. At that point, their empires are FUBAR.
This calls for marines. Nuke a chosen coastal city, take it with marines, and then bring in your land force, unload, and use those three moves to strike inland (more nukes will soften those targets as well). The objective, obviously, is maximum damage to the enemy on turn 1 of the war. Units in the field mean almost nothing. It's destroying their cities that counts.
-Arrian
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Lord Merciless
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I think you can wipe out England in one turn:
1. Nuke following 4 cities: Nottingham, New Castle, Hastings, and Liverpool.
2. Assign the majority of your invasion force to Nottingham. Once on land, you can take cities in the following order: Nottingham -> Coventry -> London -> York and Nottingham -> Warwick.
3. The landing force at New Castle has to take the cities Oxford and Canterbury.
4. You don't need large forces for Hasting and Liverpool, just enough units to pacify the city.
Your MAs have to take six cities, your Nukes and Marines the other four. I assume that 20 MAs per city will be required, so it means a minimum of 120 MAs. I would add 20 more MAs as reserve here. How the Nukes would work out is a big question mark, so I would bring along enough Marines just in case there are defenders still alive in the coastal cities. Personally, I would assign 15 Marines for each city.
Your total invasion force now amounts to 140 MAs and 60 Marines, plus 25 Transports and their escorts.
Finally, you need to plant a spy in England. You can simply use "Investigate City" options to calculate your actual troop deployment.
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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So as not to make this summary longer than it needs to be, I'll reply to all of the endgame advice in the context of the actual game.
Taking the AI's lead... and the continent as well.
I started building transports for a projected invasion of England from east and west (Jaybe, I investigated the cities I intended to invade as well). Still worried about getting nuked, I spread my armies around, even though like Catt, I usually keep them in one city. The English had 3 ICBMs and 4 Tacs; the Chinese had 4 ICBMs and 9 Tacs. That was too many to take out in one turn, so - given that I only had 3 at the time - I ruled out nuking my way to victory in England. (The marine-led nuclear invasion would have been nice, Arrian, but I also hadn't thought of building marines.) I feared having my main cities ravaged, and getting into trouble with the Chinese, who maintained a production lead throughout the game. LM's one-turn campaign is brilliant, but I didn't have the units to pull it off. My offensive forces at this point consisted of 12 armies and 32 other MAs, which meant my 13 bombers and 4 artillery would be left guarding the home front along with my 4 MI (!).
As I suspected, things didn't stay quiet long enough for me to marshal my invasion fleet. After failing to provoke me with maritime incursions, the Chinese invaded from their continental cities, taking two of my lightly defended ones in 1816. I took them right back, and used my armies to take all five of theirs in the next turn.
The English came in with the Chinese, and the war shifted to the seas, as my opponents tried to pillage my coast and land several transports of forces. My 13 stealth bombers, augmented by 8 more captured from the Chinese, were spread along three of my coastlines (Jaybe), along with most of my 20 destroyers. The enemy had battleships and cruisers, but they were destroyed as they came near my coastline. After sinking the last 3 Chinese tranports in 1822, they sued for peace the next turn.
Invading England... and the nuclear consequences.
I kept peppering the English sea raiders while assembling an invasion from one side... I didn't have enough destroyers on the other. After switching to monarchy in 1838, I landed 6 armies in the higlands outside Coventry, and 6 more outside Canterbury, along with a couple of dozen MA. The English all but ignored them, and the two cities fell in 1840, bringing the Chinese back into the war.
Elizabeth didn't like this, and promptly nuked five of my cities, as well as Canterbury. (Interestingly, there didn't seem to be rhyme or reason to the AI nuking - they skipped both my capital and Iron Works cities. This held true throughout the game.) I had five nukes by now, and used them selectively. After nuking the two cities I could reach in one turn, I took them, then nuked the city with uranium in its radius, to make sure no more nukes were built to be used against me. I then offered the English a peace treaty in 1842. They accepted, and I set about consolidating my position. (In hindsight, this set of events makes me wonder if I would have been better off following Arrian's nuke'em advice.)
Nuke fever... and making the Chinese sue for peace.
Elizabeth, apparently suffering from radioactive dementia, declared war on the Chinese in the same turn. This led the Chinese, for reasons too inscrutable for me to figure out, to nuke five more of my cities. My country was a wreck, but thankfully a monarchy. In the next turn, I nuked Peking, hoping to create some unhappiness, and abandoned three of my English cities for fear of a culture flip, replacing them immediately. The Chinese had apparently exhausted their nuclear reserve, so I started cleaning up the mess. But I wanted peace with China to knock off the English in a more relaxed manner. So I sailed a transport with three destroyers over to their northeast island, nuked it, and took it in 1852. Predictably, the Chinese paid for peace again.
England falls... but the AI doesn't.
In the next turn, I broke my peace treaty with England and took two of their cities. Resistance was weak, and two turns later, England was no more, with China taking the last English city. This left me wondering when I was ever going to get enough tiles for a domination victory. Eyeballing the map clearly doesn't work... or do you guys see it differently?
The Chinese no longer had any oil, so I wasn't too worried about too many units standing up to me when I landed on the Chinese mainland. In 1870 I landed all of my armies but one in the mountains outside one of their cities, and took the city on the former English lands. The next turn, my armies rolled into three of the closely-packed Chinese cities. I abandoned two and rebuilt them, but there was no need... a domination victory was finally declared in 1874.
Final observations.
I was happy with how I played the early game for a rookie, but now think that an early GL should be spent on the Great Library ahead of the FP. The financial savings and opportunity to keep fighting with up-to-date units thanks to research is too great to ignore. GLs make the difference between hanging in there and being a contender throughout, which makes militaristic an irresistible trait. Given how many times I changed government, I don't see myself playing anything other than the Aztecs or Japan for a while at this level.
Early pillaging for tech and parity works, but I suspect that a surprise rush would result in similar gains. In a nutshell, we have become excellent warmongers thanks to this forum, and most of the lessons learned on emperor and monarch apply here. The biggest difference is that you almost never fight a technologically-inferior AI.
Diplomacy and geopolitics were the key to the mid-game, where I was at my weakest, and needed to pile on without getting knocked out of the game. Isolated cities tend to not have updated units, and are prime targets for a midgame scavenger. This worked out perfectly for me, but I should have been in a stronger situation, like LM.
My relative weakness and lack of happiness wonders for much of the game led to my needing to make my wars quick. This may be old news to some of you, but wars can be limited to five turns if you can do some damage right away, and then take a city on the fifth turn. (Sometimes just killing a lot of units does it, but not against an angry opponent. And none of this applies against an enraged opponent, like Egypt.)
The modern war made some things very clear:
First, the lesson I learned in my "Babylon and on" game - that multiple armies cannot be stopped by any AI - held true; my invasions were uninspired, but they steamrollered the opposition in every single case. It's worth building as many armies as possible, and rushing them if war is imminent. I was also able to win in my usual style, which is with a lot less units than most people use. On the other hand, my habit of building almost no defensive units almost resulted in disaster in my wars against Egypt, where I crippled my economy with wholesale drafting of cannon-fodder conscripts in order to stop their MA-heavy counterattacks. Next game, I'll be building lots of spearchuckers to upgrade later.
Second, it was shockingly easy to destroy all invasion forces, as well as send the hugely superior AI navies packing, with the combined use of bombers and outdated destroyers. This is a very cheap defense, and the bombers double against land-based offensives, while two or three destroyers are all you need to escort loaded transports, no matter what the enemy has.
Third, nuclear war is, as many have said, a slippery slope. Once it starts, don't expect the responses to make sense. Egypt nuked me because I might have razed more of their wonders than anyone in the history of Civ3, and I broke three straight treaties with them, including a ROP. But this resulted in England nuking them, and them continuing to nuke me. Likewise, there was the truly illogical nuking of 1840-2. Also worth noting is that the AI seemingly shot its nuclear wad in one turn, and did it shotgun style, choosing the target cities indiscriminately. Finally, SDI did the AI almost no good. I fired seven nukes, and six hit their targets.
•
Skywalker, I called this thread "deity for beginners" because that is what I am at this level, and because my overall approach can be fairly easily duplicated. No one's going to be asking "how did he do that?"... which is meant to be encouraging, and my point as well.
Attachment: aztecs1874ad.jpg
This has been downloaded 196 time(s).
Last edited by Txurce on 29-08-2002 at 12:55
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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Arrian and Theseus, I enjoyed the strategic ruthlessness of razing Thebes and Memphis, partly because of its outrageousness. In retrospect, I came to a similar conclusion as Theseus: that I may have been able to keep them both - definitely one - by razing the generic big cities, keeping the smaller ones, and saving the two wonder cities for last, when it's too late for a flip.
Thebes is questionable, since my second war with Egypt - the one in which I destroyed Thebes - was a very close call. My defenses were on the verge of collapsing, despite ruinous drafting, and I needed a knockout blow. Would they have surrendered if I'd taken a big city like Alexandria? Probably. But I worried (probably needlessly) that given Egypt's depth and my thinness, I had to really hurt them.
Memphis is a different story. By taking it first I pretty much broke Egypt's back... but by then I was pretty sure they were nearing exhaustion, and saving Memphis for last would have given me the varied and highly specific benefits of Hoover's, Smith's and Cancer. As unorthodox as my choice was, I probably played it too safe.
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punkbass2000
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Waterloo, ON, Canada
Feb 2002
time: 00:21
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Alright, seriously, is there anyone who plays deity without war? I feel like most of the strategy I'm hearing is military-focused and I'm interested in discussing peaceful deity strategy. To get the ball rolling, I believe that ToE may be the single most important wonder for peaceful deity wins. I find that in all my peaceful deity wins (read: all my deity wins) building the ToE is the turning point for my game. Without war (well, without offensive war) I am obviously very far behind tech-wise in the beginning, I'm usually half an era behind by the time the AI has Nationalism, which is when I can typically start trading aggressively, prebuild the ToE, complete it, grab two techs no one has (usually Atomic Theory and Electronics) sell Atomic Theory to everyone and the rest of the game is just technique and me deciding how to win. Anyone else with similar observations?
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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Punkbass, how do you expand enough to generate sufficient beakers without offensive war in deity? (Or emperor, for that matter; I've only done it once, and that was in the archipelago GOTm, when there was a low number of civs.)
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Lord Merciless
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Guys, I have a similar Deity game on going as the Japanese. I just entered the Modern Age in that game and faced a difficult choice. I will post more details about this game later today.
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Lord Merciless
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It's year 1670. The world is mostly at peace, except that Romans(red) has sneaka attacked me a turns ago. Since I signed MPP with most other nations, everybody declared war against them. I'm pretty left alone to built up my civilization.
The problem is that my victory is by no means certain. The Persians got an early lead in Space race, already completed 2 components, and probably leads me in Tech race as well. If I want to win this game, I must attack them.
However, the Persians are in MPP with at least 3 other civs. An attack on them would not only force me to fight a multi-front war, but also cut off from most of my luxury imports. I'm kind hesitant in executing the campagn.
The option is going completely peaceful. Since my civ has much larger production and research capability than anyone else, I can just try hard in the space race and hope to get ahead in the end.
Suggestions?
This is the general situation of the game:
Attachment: tokugawa_jap_deity_1670_1_small.jpg
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Txurce
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Santa Monica CA USA
Mar 1999
time: 05:21
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I recall Soren having said that the AI would be more efficient in pursuing the space option in 1.29. That notwithstanding, if Persia has completed just two components out of ten, and is only slightly ahead of you (if at all) in tech... and you are dominant in beaker and shields output... then I'd say you have an excellent chance of beating them to the launch. (You also seem to have a lot of gold on hand... could you buy tech parity?) You may want to hedge your bet by positioning an invasion fleet near their capital, or alternately spying to see where they're building their last component or two, and nuking them. If it's down to the wire, you could switch production from one city to another if you're nuked in return, using the palace gambit or something similar.
The alternative means crippling your civ with war and a loss of luxuries, presumably in the hope that Persia will wind up in worse shepe, so that you will come out ahead in the long run. Given your grasp of the game's particulars, which bet seems better?
Last edited by Txurce on 30-08-2002 at 22:14
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punkbass2000
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Waterloo, ON, Canada
Feb 2002
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Txurce
Punkbass, how do you expand enough to generate sufficient beakers without offensive war in deity? (Or emperor, for that matter; I've only done it once, and that was in the archipelago GOTm, when there was a low number of civs.) |
I'm not sure how to answer your question in a meaningful way. I don't think I do anything other that what is generally considered to be the most efficient means of expanding, ie. pump out settlers, city specialization, etc. If it would help I'll be able to post a series of saves from one Deity win I think, after I move for university on Tuesday. Once there the computer I play civ on will be connected to the internet.
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27-08-2002 20:50
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