Epic14 - Jabah (unfinished)

[Jabah]

Very short and incomplete report (stop in 1170AD), starting friday 10 days ago, I didn't expect to finish (+baby to play with/look after in most of my daylight freetime).

The position of the cities could be found on the the last pictures presenting the state of the empire.

Settle on the spot.
Research archery (3775), then mining (3550) towards Bronze (2850) with a detour to agriculture (3200) to give the worker more things to do.
Copper far away, so Animal (2525) then wheel (2350) to connect to horse (later Iron 1550 after Fishing and Pottery).

Build a worker first, then archer, barracks, and more archers/charriot then settlers/units/workers.

Settle Vienne in 2125BC on the river next the West Copper with Gold, Sheep and lots of hills for production (leaving room for a decent city between it and Bibracte able to get corn and gold). That will be the biggest troop provider (even before capital), with the first 2 Great Generals.
Settle Tolosa in 1425BC north of Vienne, closing the west front. With lots of rivers and food (unfortunatly on the wrong side for improvement), it was supposed to be farmed for GPP (but will be cottaged for finances...)

Send a strong pillaging party to the Zulu a bit after 1000BC and razed Teotihuancan (700BC) and Tlatelolco (575) before setting Tenochtitlan under siege. It was unfortunatly far too defended to be cracked at once, so we had a stand-still were my most experienced gallic warrior was killing the top unit every 4t then healing while Monte build/whip another one...

Settle Gergovia on the East to start securing the East front and another source of copper (never manage to build the 2nd "front city" there) and to build another strong producer.
Settle Camuludonum in 335BC north of Bibracte (another river+hill mixt production or cottage city)
Settle Verlamion in 230BC in my interior for massive cottaging.
Settle Durnovaria in 25AD between Bibracte and Vienne to get the extra gold and massive forrest chopping (Pyramids).

The economy started to collapse seriously around 500BC, but was OK as long as pillaging money was coming in. With Kmhers and Zulu pillage to death (nothing left to get) money was not coming anymore. Massive cottaging was ordered, production was set to mainly no-units, research was at 0%...
Around 230AD the situation was critic, I had to revolt out of Slavery to gain 1 turn, suicide lots of experienced troops that were outside the border against the wall of Nagara Jatyasri, capturing the city (keeping it, so (1) the survivors would be inside my borders and (2) it would release the pressure that the AI are putting on Tolosa, and (3) being on a hill, it is easier to defend).



I delete all the not critical unit (extra defenders, extra medics chariot), worked the most commerce even useless sea tiles but miscalculating (and WW for 1t) caused the disbanding of the medic unit in the Zulu task force, which was starting to reduce Tenochtitlan units significatively and now had to go back home...

I still settle Isca in 280AD to get access to stone, as I wanted to try to get Pyramids and Hanging Gardens (or at least lots of money for a refund). I will have both Wonders (Hanging G 535AD in Bibracte, Pyramids 745AD in Durnovia)

The situation was better getting better on the finance (not great, I still was at 0% research but earning a bit money), but on the military aspect, that is what Nagara had to face on a very regular basis (with Dun being sabotaged every now and again)



Thanks to being on a hill, with several guerrilla II units, and specially the AIs never attacking at the same time, Nagara was a highly promoting place. On the other hand, I had no hope to dislodge the stack as the top defender was always a fortified Pretorian or Longbow or even hatchwa...

I manage to restart sending pillagers in Khmers lands and a razing party to Zulu soon after, and get more money alowing to raise the research slider back to 10%/20% getting us back in the game. (Meditation 715AD, Priestwood 775AD, Code of Laws 950AD, Horse 1030, Aesthetics 1070, Alphabet 1140, Philosophy 1150 (Lightbulb - first getting us a needed religion) and Polytheism 1150)


The Zulu/english party did a good job : Texcoco is burnt in 700AD, Tenoch captured in 760ad (keep for Ivory) then after reinforcement Liverpool and most of the english army are destroyed (990AD), followed by relatively undefended Nottingham (1010AD), Oxford (1090AD) and Canterbury (1140AD). London is soon to be next when a Roman SOD is spotting coming our way... Retreat back Teno is ordered as we have no chance in the open (the last english cities costed a few axes and gallics)...



I had to stop there.
The situation is not that bright especially on the tech level.
Some bad news had been happened around 1060



Wang has Crossbow (and attacked our pillagers getting to close to his border), and Rome has bureaucracy...

Situation in 1070AD
1. The roman SOD will be dealed with lots of horses doing flanking attack to get ride of the catapult then we will burry ourself in Tenoch until he suicide his stack.
2. General : need to change research ASAP to Construction for elephant as a general solution to crossbow, horse, other elephant and praetorian and soon to be mace... (was going for Great Lib right now)


The lands :






The techs (no comment!) :



The ennemies
Kmher and english are not a danger as they have 2-3 cities and weakly defended capitols





To end a few stats





Some scoring element
Dun : no idea (but around 0BC when not building units to save money)
Great General 700BC (I had 5 up to 1170)
Gallic Warrior 83XP (level12: C5+CR3+Sh+Co+G1+Mo?) still alive but for how long fleeing from the roman SOD.

Jabah

[Sullla]

Sorry to see you ran out of time on this one. You definitely crippled three of the five AIs, it would have been interesting to see if that was enough in light of the technological advantage that the other two would have had. Crossbows and elephants would have made for an interesting battle!

I guess I'm a little surprised at how much economic trouble a lot of these games run into. I never really fell below 40% science in my game; maybe having a religion and shrine made the difference (?) Several other players were on the verge of disaster financially as well - this was definitely not an exception!

Thanks for the report, even an unfinished one.

[LKendter]

Several other players were on the verge of disaster financially as well - this was definitely not an exception!

I don't have enough to report as I tossed my first attempt sometime in the early AD timeframe, but that one was already hitting economic collapse.

I have my second try on hold, and that did much better. However, that is still suffering from tech and economic problems. Getting enough troops to handle all of the attacks killed my economy.

[Jabah]

Well, at least for me, inexperience in AW was the reason for crashing my economy. Despite having played at lot of Epic since I 'joined' the RB (probably start around Civ3 Epic4?) I ALWAYS had a valid reason not to play the AW ones .

I went into the beginner default (which I also have often) that is founding and specialising cities for production mainly, and delayed building and cottaging my inner cities for far too long.

I also realise I was going to bankrupcy while my research was completely wrong, aiming for Litterature (GL et Epics) and neglecting both Code of Laws AND currency...

Jabah

PS - Even for an incomplete game, I had quite a lot of fun and interesting time, I might finish it if ever I manage to find some time. (Also don't loke at the 23+ hour played, the game and PC were 'on hold' for hours while doing something else like looking after an upset baby )