Adventure 52: Compromise's report

[Compromise]

Unexpected travel means I can't get a report up until next weekend. Hope it's still worth reading then.

Bottom line:

Chose a slightly more restrictive variant. Never cashed in any EPs, so no techs stolen. Domination victory in 1320AD.

[sunrise089]

Thanks for playing Compromise! Nice domination date too.

[Compromise]

Compromise's Adventure 52 Report.

First, I apologize that this report. Life introduced unexpected delays sometimes. Anyway...

Pre-game thoughts.
Given the discussion at the game's announcement about whether or not tech trading was...fun...or not, I decided to play without it. But I didn't want to just say "okay fine: no tech trading (by me)", so I decided to play a variant wherein I would make no deals at all with the AIs. The only thing I would do on the diplomacy screen were ceasefires.

So, no tech trades, no open borders, no gold exchanges, no nothin'.

Except worker steals . Quechuas just demand that you abuse the AI with them.

The Start:
I was sure that T-Hawk had messed around with the start. Two clam resources without Fishing. Lots of coast and just out of range of river tiles. The settler didn't even stand near fresh water to start. Craziness!

So, of course, I had to move. And with perfect initial information, there seemed a clear best spot:


That is just an awesome spot for a financial and industrious leader. Lots of green riverside tiles, plenty of hills, a 6F tile, a Hunting happy place. Wow.

Huts:
Of course the main thing to do with early troops and goody huts is to find them. Hut luck was okay:
- 47g
- Mining
- 26g
- Hostiles
- Map
- Map
- 32g
- 33g

Techs:
Tech order was pretty standard:
- Animal Husbandry (Pigs...and revealed bonus Horses in BFC)
- Wheel
- Pottery
- Bronzeworking
- Hunting
- Meditation
- Priesthood
- Writing
- Monarchy (via Oracle)
- Math (partial)
- Ironworking
- Fishing

The Play:
3520BC First Great Spy infiltrated Mansa to save 1gpt, after Worker completed, I think.

Of course, we didn't waste any time putting those quechuas to use
3400BC Steal Qin's worker


3040BC Steal Toku's worker


The no-deals variant was...not very restrictive really. I stole so many workers from the Protective AIs that I started deleting them.
~2720BC Qin
2640BC Toku
2120BC Qin
2040BC Toku (Worker+Settler! During war, no less)
1680BC Qin
1160BC Qin

Stifling the AI meant there were awesome sites near them available for settling:

Second city:
2080BC Future site of mostly chopped, gold-mined Oracle (in 1600BC)


Third City:
1600BC Great production and commerce


Even though it was jungle, we had to hem Mansa in a bit:


And another one up the middle too. That oughta contain him.

Behold...the power of the quechua: I simply couldn't afford to make peace with Toku because he would have escaped, ie sent out settlers and actually expanded. I completely took advantage of the fact that the AI can't break a choke:


After the initial tech set, we researched a few more. We finally had a site requiring workboats. And then it was on to the key early/mid-game war tech:
- Fishing
- Masonry
- Construction

Note the choke in 400BC as Construction is discovered:


A short 350 years later, Kyoto falls to a combined Catapult+Quechua attack!


The Japanese were eliminated in 175AD.

Since the Chinese never expanded at all, he simply stacked protective archers behind the city's hilled walls But, with sufficient Catapults and newly pressed Axes and Swords (who knew that quechua's didn't go obsolete with BW or IW and Hunting!), Beijing's 10-archer defenses were destroyed in 300AD.

After eliminating the two Protective AIs, I felt it was time to consolidate my territory and build up to attack Cyrus.


But alas, this was not to be. A bold move by Boudica:


What the...?!

Literally the turn after I'd taken out Qin, Boudica and Cyrus both attacked. It took me a few minutes to realize that Boudica had actually taken advantage of the fact that I had not put any troops in Beijing. She actually stole Beijing from me with a passing Axeman.

Irritating? Yes. Smart? No.

On the same turn (325AD), Cyrus completed the Hanging Gardens and the Mausoleum of Mausollos. Not the kind of thing you should be doing if you're going to declare war. I'm sure Boudica bribed him in on me.

Well, whatever. I'm about 10 turns from Horseback Riding and Machinery. I've just added two AI capitals to my empire, and Cyrus is still a couple turns away from Construction. My catapults will be more experienced than his catapults.

500AD was the first battle of the stacks. Here's the before image:


And here's the after image:


Needless to say, we feel that we won the encounter.

The city of Sardis became the site of the major bloodshed. Boudica and I kept capturing it from each other. I simply didn't have enough non-siege troops to hold it.


Eventually, I had to call for a ceasefire with Boudica. While I was busy decimating her stacks, Cyrus was rebuilding in his core. When I pushed to his core, I lost most of my Stack of Doom to a counterstrike by him.

But the writing was on the wall. With the entire empire pumping out troops and sending them to the front, it was only a matter of time. Slowly and methodically, we pressed into Persian lands, finally eliminating him in 1250AD.

As the Persian campaign drew to a close, I was keeping tabs on the demographic screen:


Population was no problem. Getting enough land was a little close. I didn't really want to have to invade either Boudica or Mansa, both of whom were plenty advanced and hated each other.

I did some tile counting and calculated that with some settlers and some culture building, I could grab enough tiles for victory without having to attack either Boudica or Mansa. In 1320, it was over:


In conclusion, I think think this game is a clear example of how overpowered the Incans are. Keeping two Immortals AIs under tight lease with quechuas and chariots was completely exploitative...but kinda fun too. My river-cottaged, hereditarily ruled capital financed a big enough expansion in land and troops to decimate several Persian and Celtic stacks combined. And we didn't even need trade routes or trade deals or resources from any AIs to manage it.

Thanks again for another fun Civ4 game, T-Hawk. I hope they keep coming.

[T-hawk]

Thanks for sharing. Yes, a major point of this adventure was that Immortal difficulty is not scary. The AI bonuses are just a few percentage points more than Emperor. Their biggest extra boost is a free worker to start, which the player can obviously turn to his advantage by stealing. So with a strong leader and civ, yes Immortal could be handily beaten here even without using the AIs for any goodies at the diplomacy table.

And of course we know Huayna/Inca is by far the most powerful leader/civ without going unrestricted. I figured we'd try him just once for an event here, since Fin/Ind played well with the concept, and a quechua rush/choke was less prone to luck when given the perfect scouting info. Yes, quechuas have a unique advantage for choking on high difficulty since they beat the AIs' extra starting archers. You deleted stolen workers? I've never brought myself to do that. They can always be busy building roads and pre-chopping forest.

Nice choice to conquer Cyrus for domination, since he had more land and you hemmed in Mansa earlier by blocking.