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Konquest02
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Somewhere up in the trees
Jun 2002
time: 00:25
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When the Medieval time come...
After the semi-epic conquest of the Greeks by the vailliant English people, achieving what historians may remember as Arrian Deception©, life became quite easy on the british island, despite occasionnal wars with the northern folks.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." -Dickens
It applied to what the English were living. Building the cities were quite easy. They acquired great knowledge in building, even marketplaces! They even followed their seers who told tales of great achievments that will enlighten the English cities.
On one day, probably because they were getting jealous of the brilliant english, the evil Egyptians, with whom I had been trading frequently, land a swordman next to Reading, a city on our minor northern island. All discussions with Cleopatra led to nothing and she persevered in her plan to take Reading.
[I wanted to sign a gpt deal with Cleo so that she would get a reputation hit from breaking her treaty. I had no doubt she would attack me as Reading had only a vet. spearman guarding it. She was decided to attack and she did so.
As you can see on the screenshot below, I could not go and help Reading, as a german archer was blocking the way. Reinforcements were en route, but they came to late to defend the city.
 Attachment: 11-war egypt.jpg
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Konquest02
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Somewhere up in the trees
Jun 2002
time: 00:25
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Things finally settled. Germany had learned their lesson; they ceased to exist with this war. Japan got reduced to 3 cities by Egypt, and most of all...I got Reading back!!
I then made a difficult choice... Either I pump military units as fast as I can and try to invade Egypt while they are not that strong, either I turtle on my island(s) and go for the Diplomatic/SS win. I chose the second option when I looked at my military advisor. He told me that Egypt were much stronger than I was and that I should not provoke them. I did so...
Being the English does not encourage military action as far as I am concerned... Their commercialness(?) give a decent outcome even with a relatively low number of cities. Add this with lower corruption, good trading and good FP placement, a civilization like mine could compete with a mcuh bigger civ.
So the English poeple started piling rocks, waiting for someone to know what to do with them... Some crazy architect thought that we could we could build the Sixteenth Chapel, the previous fifteen being mere temples... Unfortunately, the idea was just a vague project when we heard through the clouds that someone named the Babylonians already built a Sistine Chapel. Our idea was too similar and had to be rejected...
We then wanted to know who were these people. They started to intrigue our townsfolk (they already built the Great Library (stolen from us by 4 turns), the Great Wall, The Oracle, to name a few...) Some kamikaze then embarked on fresh new boats, sailing madly in all directions to find the Babylonian land. One made it and saw their borders, but sank in the process. The survivors managed to swim a couple of hundred miles to the coast and we finally made contact with the Babylonians and the French...
I actually thought the Babs had almost wiped their continents because I had not heard from anyone else and from the reports of some in the spoiler thread.
Attachment: 18-babylon.jpg
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Konquest02
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Somewhere up in the trees
Jun 2002
time: 00:25
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In fact, the virtues of playing Civilization...
We exploited this advantage as much as we could. The western folks were much richer, because they had not been foolish like the eastern folks and have not been involved in any (damaging) war.
In fact, I never seen a Bab town with a french name, or the opposite; therefore my conclusion.
Techs were getting cheaper and I could get back where I belong (in the lead...) I bought some, sold them a couple of turns later the the eastern folks and researched techs the AIs does not go for.
As a matter of fact, I became rich because of my beeline for printing press and democracy. In this manner, I could sell this highly wanted tech for important ones, like astronomy (for Copernicus' Lab) and most of the lower branch.
One of my nice pile of rocks in London became Copernicus's Observatory. Half of my goal had been reached: I needed Adam's Smith to enter what historians will call a turning point in English history: Golden Age (referred as to GA) which became reality only a couple of turns later.
This period in time was great. The English republic researched techs at a 4 turn pace, while getting 100's of gold per turn. From 600 gold at the beginning of our GA, we ended with 4200!!!! During taht time, we finalized our infrastructure and built a couple of units. We also got JSB, Newtons and a 2-3 tech lead...
I think the game has been almost won there. It's not over yet, but I'm on cruising speed and going straight either for SS or Diplo win. Since the AI cannot organize a good overseas invasion, I will be at ease at home...
More updates soon!
--Kon--
Attachment: 24-resume2.jpg
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Dominae
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Nice going Konquest, you seem to be mastering the fine arts of AI diplomacy and tech trading. Those Man'O-Wars coming in handy?!
Dominae
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Jawa Jocky
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Seattle, WA
Dec 2001
time: 21:25
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And now “Random Thoughts” by Jawa Jocky
I never thought we had enough land to win this game. I made a big push to expand beyond the continent in what in hindsight can only be called a “Big waste of Time”. My hats off to Catt (again) for realizing the most efficient strategy from the start (great AAR by the way).
I made four fundamental mistakes in this game.
I let my war with Japan drag on for too long. I’m learning a new philosophy toward war. If you can’t take and hold what you want without reinforcements you shouldn’t go forward. If you rely on reinforcements to finish the job, you’re setting yourself up for a long grinding war.
Don’t trade newly acquired resources unless your positive the city won’t flip. We often bemoan “unfairly” losing our reputation. However, it’s really the players fault for not realizing (or choosing to ignore) all of the parameters. Flipping is more than just losing a city even if it’s only for just one turn (assuming IDGAFIYF).
Beware when you call a friend to help finish the enemy. You will find a stronger enemy in your friend when the mutual enemy has been destroyed. The Vikings and Egyptian tag teamed the Japanese into oblivion. The problem was really a post war issue. I had to get caught up in infrastructure after the war, but Egypt who didn’t get in till the end was already doing well. In fact after the war they had nothing to due but continue building units.
The ICS trap. A tight city spacing (C-s-s-C) is an extremely powerful opening strategy. I used it to steamroll through Greece without any problems. In fact if all you’re doing is cheap units, and base level improvements (temple, library, marketplace) you can’t go wrong. The problems start in the middle ages. The 2nd level improvements (cathedrals, universities, banks) are harder to build in smaller cities and some of the more expensive units (knights) become hard to build too. I couldn’t afford to make anything better than medieval infantry in my game (the problem worked in tandem with my 1st problem). Even further into the game the problem gets worse. In fact, my cities were useless in the Industrial era until they had a Factory and RR all over them and even then there is no way to snag a Wonder unless you’re ahead or have GLs. I’m really going to make an effort to overcome a bad habit here. CITIES ARE NOT PERMANENT!!! I still like ICS but I need to have barracks only cities that are deconstructed later. I want the best of both worlds (why do I get Sam Hagar’s voice in my head whenever I hear that expression?).
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Dominae
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Jawa Jocky, check out the thread "City placement redux..." for a current discussion of city-spacing. My own view is that it depends largely on the terrain, but 3-spacing is best most of the time.
The fact that you did not feel your cities were very productive was due to the geography of the home island. I presume you had a lot of coastal cities. These compete for productive land tiles with the cities in the interior. It takes a long time to get them to the state (number of improvements) you would expect from a land-locked city with access to 12 "real" tiles. But that's not really a problem because by the time you do get those improvements up, you've got more of them, and therefore more Commerce that you ever would with a looser city-spacing. The key is to focus your cities into "Production centers" for military units and such, and into "Commerce gatherers". An example from recent memory is my AU203 game, where my interior cities would produce all my units, while the coastal cities just sat back and raked in the cash.
Dominae
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Bluefrog
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Just east of nowhere.
Dec 2001
time: 00:25
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First, let me apologize for lack of screenshots. I’m at work right now, and didn’t really take that many screenshots in the first place. On the plus side, my game is a pretty easy one to conceptualize. Also, I know I started a post early on in this thread about being Korea and borging out the continent. I quickly got a distaste in my mouth…I might try borging a bit more in the future, but the micromanagement didn’t come very easily, most notably the managing different tiles shared by cities. So, I decided to start again, and got the Secret Civ! But, alas, I didn’t want to stray from my first game that much, so I started again and got Korea again. Monarch level.
The Power of Gold! (maybe an idea for the next AU?)
Things started rather uneventfully for Korea. Greece didn’t help much in the tech side of things, but at least I was able to curb their expansion by blocking settler teams with warriors. They did get two additional cities built, but defended the one nearest me with a warrior! Seizing this opportunity, I razed the city, sued for peace (netting me a couple of techs), and stifled further Greek expansion by closely monitoring its borders.
After I fully explored the initial landmass, I printed a gridded copy of it so I could plot out my cities. I overlapped a number of tiles, but not near as much as pure borging. I had decided what my goal was in this game, before knowing the rest of the map: I was going to create a gold-making machine.
The first step was a combined effort of assimilating the Greeks and researching towards a representative government. All my tech research went toward the Republic, which did a couple of things. I was able to build up a decent treasury…even at 100% science, I was barely making a dent in the number of turns for the second- and third-tier techs, so I decided to just research them at 40. I was able to trade for the techs I skipped with Greece, for the most part, making sure I got Iron Working. After all, I was amassing warriors that wouldn’t stand a chance against their hoplites, if it were not for iron. The mass upgrade of about 15 warriors (not a huge amount, but keep in mind the Greeks were piddling around with 2 cities to their empire, with only Athens truly defended properly.) One ROP violation later, and the Greeks were finally erased from the annals of history. About 6 turns later, I made contact with Egypt. Hail, hail the Arrian Deception!
The game went rather quickly at this point, since I had commited myself to the builder mindset. The Greek blood was easy to wash away, as I welcomed their slaves into my society with open arms. I had some brave sailors in my fleet who sailed west, but they never made it back. Shortly afterward, though, I received word from the French. (My galley took on water after glimpsing the French border, and luckily, Joan showed up in my advisor screen).
My city spacing would allow all but one of my cities to grow to metro size, with very nearly all of them being coastal. The problem I ran into was that I only had 11 cities on my continent, and I needed 12 for my FP. Egypt already claimed the little island to the west, so I was forced to built a very temporary worker city in order to start construction on my FP, which I placed on my western coast.
Which brings me to a quick question…how do you disband a city by building workers? I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t seem to get a pop 1 city to push out a worker and disband the city. I had to abandon the city, and didn’t get the worker that was complete in the production queue.
At any rate, my cities progressed rapidly. After I switched to Republic, I was able to build up a huge treasury and rush improvements like mad. I wanted to get the most out of each improvement, especially the financial ones, so I made it a point to rush them in any city that couldn’t produce them quickly. I was able to nab the Colossus, Coppernicus, and Newton’s all in my capital, which lent itself very nicely to my tech lead. Things were going famously…I was able to keep a small military, due to having no physical borders with anyone. While the other civs were fighting amongst themselves, my scientists were hard at work. There were times when I needed more gold for rushing, and I increased my taxes for a turn or two. I was determined to make the Koreans shine through their civ traits, and really, it wasn’t that difficult. I had to resist the urge of invading someone, because at this point, I had no idea if I had any of the later resources, which would be key to my Spaceship victory. But, I kept everything in close, only lashing out toward the much-larger Egyptians to wrest the island off my west coast from their grasp.
At any rate, the late game was a lot closer than was comfortable. Japan swallowed the Germans, but Egypt overran the Japanese to take control of their large continent. China got off to a bad start, and were never a factor. France ended up swallowing Babylon. So, from the mid-Industrial period on, the game was down to France, Egypt, China, and myself.
I was determined to get SETI in my capital, to have all the science wonders in one city, and it was nearly my undoing. The only super-productive city I had, in terms of shields, was my Iron Works city. I could have built SETI there without incident, but I wanted the better effects from combining it with Copp. and Newton’s. France started build it, too, but in a city far, far more productive. I saw that unless I sabotaged their production, and quickly, I was going to lose the wonder. This was not an acceptable outcome. So, tech went to 0%, and I was gaining somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 gpt. I was going on 25 turns to completion, but Lyons was able to get to it in 13, so every bit of that gold would be needed, as I attempted a safe sabotage as often as I could. And…sabotaging wonders is costly. After 3 successful sabotages, I was able to secure the wonder.
But at great cost. My tech lead had all but vanished, and it was difficult to regain. But lo and behold, the economic engine I had constructed would again come to save the day! I put science again at 0% for a couple of turns, and rather than trade out the wazoo in gpt for the techs I needed, or spend 4 turns researching them myself, I stole the techs for a fraction of what it would cost to buy it. I was then able to out-research the French and Egyptians to the next tech, and drain their treasury by trading it to them. The real test to the endgame was in Spaceship construction…I had to rely not only on getting the techs first, but on doing proper prebuilds. (And with an empire as small as mine, the Palace prebuild wasn’t going to work…it would be built too quickly!) My Iron Works town was cranking out over 100 shields, and a few more were in the 50-70 range, but when Egypt has some great land and no city overlap, they had more industrial powerhouses than me.
I ended the game via Spaceship victory, by margin of one part. But, Egypt hadn’t started the final piece yet, but I know if this were at any higher difficulty, I would have lost using the same strategy, at least if the Ais developed into Killer Ais like they did here.
Some things I learned: Commercial/Scientific are very, very synergistic. Sure, the former benefits from tigher spacing, whereas the latter has cheap libraries that can link borders pretty quickly. But, the fact that they both benefit so much from coastal cities is so very sweet. I could switch between 4-turn modern techs to 1500+ gpt…from 12 cities. It would have been even higher gpt had I not strived for WLTKD and devoted 10% to lux. Which…I probably shouldn’t have done that, since something tells me WLTKD only affects shield production, which wasn’t a priority in most cities.
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Dominae
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Nice angle on this game Bluefrog. 1500 gpt! One question: did you use the AU mod? I ask because the SS victory in the mod is quite different from stock Civ3.
Dominae
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Catt
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California - SF Bay Area
May 2002
time: 21:25
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Nice game Bluefrog  Glad to see the peaceful route worked for another player as well! And it's amazing how much your thought process and game circumstances matched my own!
quote:
Originally posted by Bluefrog
The Power of Gold! (maybe an idea for the next AU?) |
Believe it or not, I think this was the very title of an AU game played some time back and then re-played with PTW civs when PTW was released in the US!
quote:
Which brings me to a quick question…how do you disband a city by building workers? I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t seem to get a pop 1 city to push out a worker and disband the city. I had to abandon the city, and didn’t get the worker that was complete in the production queue. |
The city must have no food surplus at the time of completion -- i.e., the one remaining pop point must be converted to a specialist or working a tile that produces no food (mountain).
quote:
I was able to keep a small military, due to having no physical borders with anyone. |
This is always one of the harder balancing acts for me in peaceful games -- keeping a small but effective military -- small enough to not be a drain on the economy but large (and strong) enough not to invite invasion. In my game, I spent a fair chunk of gold upgrading spearmen to pikemen out of fear that an invasion of knights would quickly take a city or two if the AI landed more than one or two units in the initial landing. The invasion never came, and I ended up disbanding most of my pikes as infantry came online (a few riflemen before that, as well). Was my upgrade money well spent? I don't know, because I don't know if an invasion would have occured but for the upgrade.
quote:
I was determined to get SETI in my capital, to have all the science wonders in one city, and it was nearly my undoing. The only super-productive city I had, in terms of shields, was my Iron Works city. I could have built SETI there without incident, but I wanted the better effects from combining it with Copp. and Newton’s. |
In games that I'm winning going away, and just playing out to the end, I often like to have such a "city of pride" as part of my empire. But you should be aware that building SETI in your science city isn't necessarily any better for tech research than building it elsewhere. The science wonders are best in your cities that produce a lot of commerce (hence the Colossus with pre-flight science wonders is pretty great). But absent the effects of the Colossus (which adds a one commerce to each tile already producing one), the three science improvements only operate on the city's base commercial output -- meaning that a city that produces 20 gold towards science will produce 40 gold with Copernicus (20 + [100%*20]) and 60 gold with Copernicus and Newton's (20 + [100% * 20] + [100% * 20]), not 80 gold -- in other words, the science wonders don't work on each other, only on base city production. In other other words, building each of the three science wonders in three different cities that each produce 20 base beakers (after taking into account corruption and a common science slider position) will yield the same science productivity as building all three wonders in the same city that also produces 20 base beakers.
None of that takes away from your valiant sabotage efforts, however!
quote:
It would have been even higher gpt had I not strived for WLTKD and devoted 10% to lux. Which…I probably shouldn’t have done that, since something tells me WLTKD only affects shield production, which wasn’t a priority in most cities. |
You're correct - it only affects shields, and, in my game, given the dearth of any real shiled producers -- especially any producers suffering from any significant waste (it was a small land-mass), I found that WLTKD did almost nothing for my empire.
Catt 
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Bluefrog
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Just east of nowhere.
Dec 2001
time: 00:25
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Dom -- Yes, it was the AU PtW mod, which made the sci/comm combo even more potent, because I needed to research more techs. Also, my gpt was aided from all my cities not building SS parts being put on wealth, heh.
Catt -- I haven't read through your AAR yet, though I plan to tonight. As for my military, I upgraded spears to pikes, then pikes to, er, infantry, I believe. Maybe a few riflemen in there. I had very few offensive units...after Greece was gone, I disbanded all of my swords to aid in construction of marketplaces/libraries. The only civ to ever demand tribute was Japan, whom I told ever-so-politely to shove it. They backed down, as Egypt was currently laying into them.
My only war after the Grecian Downfall was with Egypt, who was much, much bigger than I. I wanted that island. The location was perfect...just a few tiles from my FP, and so much coast! And it was woefully underdefended with 2 spearmen (I was building tanks). The island fell quickly, and Egypt's counterattack was through combined naval/air strikes to the mountains around my capital. I repsonded with some naval and air power of my own, but luckily sued for peace soon after. This was right before I was going for SETI, which is the main reason my capital wasn't producing shields like it should. My depleted worker staff just wasn't large enough to rebuild everything fast enough...I only had 5 workers at this point, heh.
I just realized I never even built one H'wacha (bless you).
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Catt
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California - SF Bay Area
May 2002
time: 21:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Jawa Jocky
Sorry, a bell just went off. You don't upgrade to musketmen? I'm assuming you have analyzed this thoroughly and found the upgrade isn’t worth the gold? |
I frequently upgrade some pikes into muskets (and then into rifles, etc.), particularly in my border cities and/or for a large enough reserve force to garrison conquered cities when a war looms.
The upgrade cost from pike to musket is significant (60 gold w/o Leo's, IIRC), and I often stop upgrading at pikes (and spears!) in many "safe" interior cities and start building new defenders at Nationalsim or Replaceable Parts. In a pinch, I can still upgrade as needed; at Nationalism, I can draft if needed; and at RP, I can start churning out infantry and arty as needed as factories come online. A pike-to-infantry upgrade chain costs 120 gold without Leo's (IIRC), and, given the right circumstances, I'd rather preserve that 120 gold and build infantry in core cities with little else to build, sequentially replacing old pike defenders with infantry, and using the old pike to hurry improvements in outlying border regions.
Under AU 204 and my decision to "go peaceful," I saw no reason to spend the gold to upgrade pikes for one extra defensive point. I shared no land border, meaning the only attack would come via intercontinental landing, and meaning further that I would have first crack at the invaders as they waited, unfortified, on my road system. I preferred having a few mobile defenders (knights and then cavs) and relying on my ability to move additional pikes to the threatened cities before an attack (much of my city spacing was 3-tile spacing). I probably could have avoided the upgrade to pikes from spears, but I could see warfare involving knights on the other landmasses, and if someone landed three or four kinghts next to a city guarded by a spearman (or two), I could have taken quite a blow -- the pike upgrade was as much for defense as it was for wanting to appear stronger and therefore deter an attack (we're told by Firaxians that the AI uses some calculation involving not just number of units, but the A and D values of units in determining whether another civ is a juciy target). Finally, the age of "pike" or "musket" was when I was planning on making my technology judo move and springing into the tech lead -- I wasn't willing to spend gold on anything that I felt wasn't absolutely necessary (and rushing universities was far more important than moving defenders from "3" to "4").
Catt
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Nor Me
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I loaded AU204 (Incidentally, I used the New Game button the other day. It still works in PTW!) and got Russia. My previous game was as the English so I judged them too similar and resolved to restart. Looking at the poll, it appeared that some civs came up much more frequently than others so I decided to play with the last civ I was given. Dominae, you're too predictable. The secret civ could have been Babylon. That would have caused difficulty for players like me.
Over half an hour later, I started playing as Spain (AU MOD PTW Emperor). Right Commercial, Religious, Conquistador... That's an ICS opening with a Democratic GA perfect for building. Obviously.
Can I start by apologising to the many expansionist players out there. My first hut gave a settler.
OK. Met Greece, researched Pottery, did some exploring, panic. I'm alone on an island with Greece. Against hoplites, I really need swords or horses, preferably swords. So that's Iron Working and a pile of gold for upgrades. It would also be nice to make contact fast and preferably have a decent shot at the Great Lighthouse or Library if not both or at least something that could be one or the other. That's Writing, Map making and Literature. I can rely on the Greeks to get Writing and maybe Map making but I might not want to give them Iron Working and want to wipe them out too fast for extortion. Which ever way you look at it, that's ****loads of gold as early as possible. The only way I can get that is by the Colossus and early GA. No ICS: Madrid doesn't really want to build more than 1 settler and I don't want to be expanding during my GA.
That should justify an OCP expansion and researching Masonry as my second tech, right? And clearing forest around Barcelona first for a fast granary there as well? This is my empire one turn before the start of my GA:
Attachment: au4ga.jpg
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14-02-2003 13:31
But if she isn't here it can't hurt, right? 
Thanks for all your help.
) -- Aeson figured out the point value some time ago. Given how important score is to most of the players around here (at least in SP), it's not hard to imagine how many seek out those juicy Future Techs!
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