Epic 12 - sooooo's report

[sooooo]

Epic 12 - The Gauntlet

This was a Emperor difficulty game with Genghis Khan. A cold start on a standard sized tilted axis continents game. From reading the Civ3 version, it seems the point of the game was to play a high level game without access to the possibly-broken tactics that were commonly used at those levels before. Knowing Sullla's dislike of slavery, I was sure a no-slavery rule would be present. I was correct, and there were also two more rules: no drafting and no troop upgrading.

So on a continents map, the varaint would seem to limit overseas invasions. No upgrading is quite annoying when you want to upgrade your airfleet or tanks. No drafting means a common tactic I use of getting early flight, using the hammers for carriers and fighters and drafting for infantry for overseas invasions would also not be possible. Finally, no slavery means that newly captured cities are going to be fairly useless for a long time. All in all, it seems that a spacerace or diplomatic victory would be more likely than a domination win.

So our capital is really good. Two commerce plots (furs) on plains, food and hills. Furthermore, the food is sheep. I much prefer a capital's food resource to require a pasture than a farm, because animal husbandry also reveals horses. Which could be useful as the mongols.

So I started with a worker and animal husbandry. Unfortunately after doing so, I could not see any horses. There would turn out to be some in the south near the ice, but I could not see them at the time and anyway they were too far away.

Some stratergery: On starts like this, I've started building my second worker before my first settler. So this game's build order was worker, warrior, worker, archer, archer, settler.

I researched archery because with no slavery I really did not want to be defending with just warriors when barb archers approached. I built enough archers to ensure my capital was fairly safe. After archery, it was bronze working.

Scouting revealed a continent with huayna capac and asoka, neighbours I both like. Asoka had an abundance of very fertile land, with beaucoup de flood plains. HC seemed to have a tundra-desert combination.

The nearby territory was ... cold. Asoka stole my planned city site.



Well, city site before I saw either bronze or iron, so therefore not really my first city site if you know what I mean. Huh? Copper was found in the northwest tundra with no food nearby. I had roaded towards it, but had a change of heart because it would not take too much time to delay settler slightly until iron working was finished. If no iron, I would settle the copper. Well, there was iron; it was also in the tundra with no food nearby.



I settle it anyway. With mines on the iron and a hill, that city would get 8 hammers, stagnated at size 2. That's fine for what we need.

Now Sullla said that he rolled 30 starts before he settled on this one. I'm pretty sure that the only reasonable strategy here is to rush Asoka. The guy builds the joint-least military in the game, had not hooked up metals, had founded three religions, and had expanded nicely.

But I am the world's biggest h8er of the axe rush. I just think axes are really bad. I don't know why, but I just lose too many when going up against archers. Now swordsmen on the other hand, I like (see epics 5 and 6 ).

So you know how these parties go. One things lead to another, some lumberjacks enter the woods and return with sword blades, and next time you look you have declared war on India. Six aggressive swordsmen advance on Bombay, guarded by two archers.



Even being a holy city, the C1, CR1 swords have over 50% against the archers. In fact, I get fairly lucky and both the first swords win.



Then we advance on Delhi. This time there are ... 3 archers! This time they are promoted. With combat 1. Thanks, Asoka. Bye, Delhi.



Then we capture Madras.



I raze that city in the north and sign peace with India having one city left which is too close to Incan lands.

Well, "crushingly brutal" this start was not. Both iron and bronze nearby and plenty of forests to chop. The easiest AI in the whole game to rush was close by, with very ferlile land and two holy cities.

I don't know why I do this, but I am incapable of learning my lesson. At 10BC, I have expanded to seven cities and am making 1GPT at 0% science.



Every single time! Learn your lesson, idiot! Then I lose the great library by 4 turns, grr. Anyway, HC has been busy settling his plains, tundra and desert. He has founded confucianism, and spread it to me. My plan was convert to his religion, sign a defensive pact and cruise into space or win the UN.

But having no economy I build workers until I have over 2 per city (seriously, I mean over 15). They just cottage everything and eventually my cooker converts to gas.

Being a continents map, let's go for optics!

I get a rather wonky (vertical) circumnavigation.



Cyrus turned out to be on a continent on his own ... bless him. The other continent was getting jiggy with it shorly after I rushed Asoka. In their world, Alex had declared on Mansa and reduced him to an OCC. But Frederick also had a few cities with Malinese names. Possibly he dogpiled, possibly he settled in such a was as to flip some cities that mansa captured. Either way, it was not good. Alex and Fred are both decent techers, and now they both had more than their fair share of fairly ferlie land to use.

And then we get to liberalism first, taking astronomy in order to build observatories.



More years passed and I missed out on another nice wonder by six turns (Taj Mahal, by Huayna). But I get a better one:



Well, it was hard to miss the SoL going straight to democracy. Democracy got me emancipation (a no-brainer in a no-slavery game) and universal suffrage which greatly increased my production from my many towns. Meanwhile, HC had finished off the OCC games of both Asoka and Capac. He was actually teching pretty well despite his seemingly bad terrain. I believe he had colossus and was working a lot of coast.

While he wasn't at war, I was signing defensive pacts with HC whenever I could.



The tech situation at the rennaisance -> industrial transition was that frederick was ahead, and there was a 3-way tie for second between HC, Alex and myself. Cyrus was struggling on his small tundra island.

Something was worrying me about this graph, can you tell what it is?



Yup. Hmm. I decided I had to raze some german cities, or Fred would just sail away to alpha centauri. So I priotitised combustion and flight, and built a whole bunch of destroyers, carriers, fighters and artillery for some Sirian Doctrine business.

However, shortly before my army was big enough, I spot an opportunity. Could this work?



Well yes, yes it would. In fact, that war I started would last until the end of the game, putting both out of the space race. Their cities were located in such a way (lots of isolated ones) that many cities changed hands or were razed in the first turns of the game. Frederick suffered worse, losing about 6 cities.

I get two huge wonders:




I believe the internet only got me one useful tech, satallites, but that made quite a bit of difference (6 turns of research). I did some nice trading for plastics, and other late but non-ship techs. And then we overtake Fred in tech and go to space. Check out this for a spacerace planning!



Beautiful, that's what that picture is. The last four parts due on the same turn. Shortly before the launch Alex had finally taken Berlin. I knew HC was 8 turns behind me, that's why I did not bother saving money for spy missions.



And we win! In 1936.

Not bad, not bad. I enjoyed the game. I don't think it was close to being crushingly brutal as advertised on the info page. I think there was one very obvious strategy at the start - chop rush asoka. From then on you could either kill HC or not kill HC. Then I think people will go for either diplomatic or space, because the variant rules make intercontinental warfare a touch difficult.

[darrelljs]

Rush meister sooooo . You were able to get a decent stack of Swords in position to attack BEFORE I got my Axes into position. Looking it over, I think the key was the second Worker before Settler. I didn't build mine until after my second city was built and the Copper connected, so my chopping throughput was too low. My logic was that one Worker would improve the capital as fast as it could grow, but that was a mistake (as evidenced by the fact that my capital was working two forested hills during the war build up). Its interesting .

Darrell

[T-hawk]

Hey, a fellow brother in sword-rushing! I also considered having my first settler wait until Iron Working, but figured that Sulla wouldn't give us both copper AND iron. And yes, it was key to have a second worker connecting roads and chopping forests. I trained my second worker right after the first settler.

1 GPT at 0% science? Amateur. I went as low as -24 GPT at 0% science. And yeah, the way to dig out of it is simply to cottage everything and wait.

Interesting that you didn't conquer Inca, and it seems that you turned in a launch date significantly behind Kylearan and darrell and uberfish. So from a finish date perspective (although yes this game was unscored), conquering Huayna was in fact the way to go.

[sylvanllewelyn]

Another confirmation that swords are really a lot better than axes against city archers. I'm still all for the axe rushing, but now, I'll only do it if I start with good terrain. In other words, I'll only send in those axes if get a lush copper city near my capital, and an enemy capital nearby, so that I can attack someone's capital 1500BC-ish. Which is to say, swords were a better choice in this game indeed.

[sooooo]

Interesting that you didn't conquer Inca, and it seems that you turned in a launch date significantly behind Kylearan and darrell and uberfish. So from a finish date perspective (although yes this game was unscored), conquering Huayna was in fact the way to go.

In my particular game, I don't think conquering Huayna was a good idea. I was trying to tech to flight and combustion as fast as possible to take down Frederick, who was researching like a madman. I have not read many other reports yet, but so far I have not read any games where Alex and Fred carved up Mali between them, thus giving them a big advantage.

It only became apparent just after I had built my big army that I could bribe Alex to war on Fred instead of doing it myself.

One thing I forgot to say in my report is that for the most time, I closed my borders to Alex and Fred and refused to trade techs or resources with them. Instead I traded with Cyrus and Huayna, both of whom I could conquer with little trouble if I needed to. That meant that I have to adopt environmentalism (!) for the health.

[T-hawk]

so far I have not read any games where Alex and Fred carved up Mali between them, thus giving them a big advantage.

sylvanllewelyn noted in his report that the Malinese civ was eliminated, though he didn't give much detail as to who did it or the ramifications.

One thing I forgot to say in my report is that for the most time, I closed my borders to Alex and Fred and refused to trade techs or resources with them. Instead I traded with Cyrus and Huayna, both of whom I could conquer with little trouble if I needed to. That meant that I have to adopt environmentalism (!) for the health.

Really? I had little problem with health the whole game. The starting continent was light on happy resources, but it had plenty of health - deer, cow, rice, wheat, sheep, banana, and two seafood. That's +11 with granary and grocer, plus 4 base with Expansive and 2 from an aqueduct, for 17 health even for inland cities without fresh water or forest or harbor.

[sooooo]

Really? I had little problem with health the whole game. The starting continent was light on happy resources, but it had plenty of health - deer, cow, rice, wheat, sheep, banana, and two seafood. That's +11 with granary and grocer, plus 4 base with Expansive and 2 from an aqueduct, for 17 health even for inland cities without fresh water or forest or harbor.

Alas, I had no bananas in my half of the continent. And I did not have a city to get fish either. Also floodplains and forges, factories, coal plants hurt the health. I honestly, really, did need to go to environmentalism, I didn't do it just to be a hippie!

EDIT: Actually, I did have fish later on.