Epic One - Doh!

[doh]

The good news: I played an honorable game. I finished the game. I have the savefile. It was my first Prince game and I can say I didn't suck.

The bad news: My report is going to be bad. Since this was my first report (ever), I naively assumed that I could capture the autolog somehow and make a report from there. So, I have very few notes; and since I've played the CivFanatics GOTM since then, I've forgotten much of this game. I captured a few screenshots, but made the mistake of using the Shift-PrintScreen for the first few, which leaves the dialog box open.

Lesson learned: Next time I will have an awesome report. Reading the examples of those already posted has given me many good ideas.

By the way, I enjoy any criticism, as long as it's well-worded. I know I made a lot of mistakes, but I like to learn from them. Civ4 has already changed my playing style a lot from Civ3 (and Civ2 and Civ), and I plan on continuing to change.

Without further adieu...

The Game Starts
I chose to settle in the starting position. I liked the idea of the close resources and the lake tiles. Religion should be an easy grab, right? Well, the Holy Hydra was not to be. I grabbed Buddhism, that's it. My main focus at this point was to scout out the territory and find the best place for my second city. I think this is often one of the most critical (and debatable) decisions. My scouting was helped greatly by my doubly-upgraded super-scout.



You can see at this point that I've discovered Monty's lands and scouted out my side of the continent. At this point, I've decided to make my second city near the narrow neck so that I can cut off expansion to my side. I've also made it a priority to build Stonehenge as I enjoy the free early Obelisks. And with the Stone, it's an easy one to build.

But, here's the biggest risk I've taken (in this game as well as any other). In my rush to explore and build infrastructure, I've left Paris completely undefended. And, once Stonehenge is built, I decide to build a barracks before an archer.



I'm interested to see what others think about this. Is it as risky as I make it out to be? Was I bonkers? Yes, I was getting various barbarian excursions, but my scouting warriors were knocking them out before they got to Paris. Anyway, eventually, I got the barracks built and an archer to defend my capital.



Here's a very typical shot for me. I always seem to focus on infrastructure and the various wonder which gives my a great cultural lead. On the plus side, culture is good. On the negative, I do this more often than I should and often neglect my military side. Civ4 punishes me for that too often.



The Middle Game

It is about this time that I discover the source of the barbarian excursions. There are TWO barbarian cities in the south of my side of the continent. I have not seen this before and I noticed that many others have reported the same thing. Is this hard-coded in a map at the start?



I originally view this as a great blessing as I will be able to get some free cities without spending shields on settler points. In hindsight, however, I handled this very poorly. While I scheme how to take the cities, I do FINALLY build my second city placed so that I can cover the neck (seen in this shot from 1 AD).



Here's also a shot of where I stand in 1 AD. I am sorely lagging in most categories, even the ones covered up by the silly dialog box. :mad:



My goal for the next bit is to expand quickly. I need to take out the barbarians and fill up the rest of my side. Unfortunately, this was easily the worst part of my game. Also unfortunately, it was about this time that I became so engrossed in the military campaign that I forgot to take screenshots.

Here are the mistakes I made during the barbarian military campaign. Over and over, I refused to bring enough troops. I would knock down all the defenders but one and then have to start over. I was smart enough to bring City Raider swordsmen, but would then waste them attacking barbarian pillagers, sometimes losing, but always having to waste time to heal. The military side of my skills has always been neglected, but Civ4 is refusing to let me neglect them any longer. I am slowly learning to become a warmonger. Unfortunately, too many lessons were learned to late in this game.

During this campaign, a most peculiar thing happened. I had sent a big stack of swordsmen south to the barbarian cities when suddenly a barbarian pillager appeared to the west of Paris and advanced directly over my only source of Iron and right next to Paris. I only had one defender in Paris as I was focusing my military down south. I had a choice to make - stand fast and lose the iron or send the defender in a risky mission to take out the pillager. I debated this for a while and went with the more risky "No Pain, No Gain". I could not lose that Iron. I had a slight combat edge (I forget the combatants). Everything would work out, right?

WRONG! The Fighting Pansies lost horribly to the barbarian and suddenly I was faced with losing my iron AND my capital. At this point, I figured my game was over and I was trying to figure out to lose quickly so that I could fade into oblivion. Here's the surprise. I had an open borders with the Mongols. On the turn that I lost my defender in Paris, he moved in THREE UNITS to Paris. Because we were not at war, I kept my city and the barbarian died the next turn. I quickly built multiple defenders and the Mongols moved out. Why did he do this? Pure chance? Looking out for me? I have no idea, but it saved my whole game. As the saying goes, "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good."

The best part about having open borders with the Mongols was what I just described. It also strengthened our relationship so that I was able to maintain peace for a while. However, in the long run, this really hurt me. Not only did he establish a few cities on my little side, he also took one of the barbarian cities (after I knocked it down to nothing). At the end of the expansion phase, instead of having my little empire with one border to the east, I had 3-4 Mongolian cities dotting my side. I took one through culture, but the rest haunted me to the end.

In hindsight, this phase was the worst for me and it's where I lost the game. I started out near the top in tech and ended at the bottom. My military ineptitude and open border policy with the Mongolians was the cause of all of this.

End Game

At this point, I was fighting a losing battle. I badly needed to catch up in tech and I needed to prepare myself better for war. I was doing ok in infrastructure, but with fewer cities than I expected, research was too slow. I also knew it was only a matter of time before I had an AI war.

I founded a few more cities and used some Great Artists to quickly expand some borders, flipping one city and stealing some critical resources. With the closeness of borders, the Mongols quickly became annoyed with me and eventually declared war. I was slightly more prepared this time and was able to ward off the offensive, suffering only pillaging losses. Still learning militarily, I conquered a few of the cities on my little neck of the woods, before finally having to settle for peace. My wars are inefficient and stretch on too long so that I am forced to make peace before I fall behind in other areas.

After this, I kept up my efforts to catch up in tech. I was eventually able to jump up from last place all the way to third based on these efforts. During this time I was stuck in a hate triangle with Monty and the Mongols. Each one would take turns threatining me and then asking for my help against the other. Based on the closeness of borders, I decided to start helping the Mongols and rejecting Monty. Soon, the Mongols and I were back to open borders and Monty had declared war. I either joined the war as he declared on me, or as the Mongols invited me. Can't remember which. I had a small tech lead over both of them, so my units won most of the battles. I was even able to retake a fallen Mongol city and regift it to him. Never done that before, so that was fun.

Although I was constantly at war with Monty, I was never able to make much of it. I took a few cities, but never developed them and they were separated from my others by Mongol territory. I was now solidly in third place, trailing only Gandhi by a little, but Washington by a lot. Being way behind on tech, I knew a spaceship victory was impossible. Cultural was going to be hard as only Paris was close to legendary. Somehow I was going to have to pull out a military victory. In an honorable game. With my weak military skills.

With this goal in mind now, I played closer attention to my wars with Monty. Unfortunately, every time I started to make headway, I would lose a stack of units in a dumb attack. Suddenly, Alexander, who had always been threatening, made good on his threats, declaring war, and shuffling galleys of units over behind my lines. Being poorly protected, I lost one of my main coastal cities to razing. I was able to wipe out the rest of his forces, but this was yet another lesson learned.

Soon after, Washington completed the spaceship. Yes, I lost, but I had fun. My first game on Prince and I ended up 3rd. Some good moves, some gutsy but dumb moves, and some dumb moves.

Obviously, I need to hone up on my military manuevers. I need to pay closer attention to what is going on in each city. I lost out a wonder once by one turn. I should have focused that city on production. I need to keep more defense at home. That hurt me a few times. I need to be more careful about my Open Borders agreements and make I sure get my good settlements earlier. (I didn't have my second city until about 500 BC!)

Great fun and I'll be back for more.

<Almost forgot> 1971 AD, Spaceship loss (to Washington), 3312 points.

[Sullla]

d'oh: There are no bad reports. Only bad people who play and don't report.

What, did you seriously get Buddhism? That's the only game I've seen Indian not take Buddhism immediately out of the gate. Craziness - I wonder what happened? No wait - you actually got Hinduism and misreported it. Whew. Thought I was going crazy there.

Um, leaving cities completely undefended is not the best move. Even if the AI doesn't attack you (and that's a big IF with Temujin next door), there's barbs to deal with too. Paris looks awfully naked in that one screenshot! Was it as risky as you made it out to be? Well - look what happened to Sirian in his report with the original city of Rheims!

You've got to build some more cities too. By 780BC, you definitely want to have more than just your capital, unless you're playing some crazy variant. But I don't think you were going for a One City Challenge here.

Not a bad site for Orleans at all, but very far out there from Paris and potentially hard to defend. Bringing not enough soliders to take out the barbs is very much not good. Look at my report and note how when I attacked the barb cities, if I had brought 2 units instead of 4, I actually would have accomplished worth than nothing by promoting the defenders. With experience, you'll get more of a feel for what's needed to take out those cities, but until then - overkill is your friend. Better to err on the side of caution!

Attacking OUT of your capital to stop iron from being pillaged? Umm, I saw where that was going. Your luck with the Mongols was phenomenal though - can I buy lottery tickets from you?

All those wars clearly slowed you down and gave the peacenik AIs the chance to run away with the game. (Side question - how close were you to Wasington when he launched the spaceship in 1971?) It sounds like you learned a lot though, and I hope you get more out of reading some of the other reports. Thanks for sharing your report with us.

[Griselda]

Hi! As you've discovered, learning how to write a great report is as hard (if not harder) than learning how to play a great game in the first place. It's definitely a learning process in both areas. You've got all the pieces of a great report, though. I like how you included information about what you were thinking about and planning, and avoided making it just a list of what happened. That made it easy to follow and enjoyable to read.

If it were me, I never would have left my capital unguarded like that. One thing that CIV does well compared to Civ3 is it punishes players for running a farmer's gambit. In general, there are too many barbarians to take Civ3-style risks like that. I probably would have built a quick warrior to get coverage in the city, then built the barracks and the archer. An extra warrior is always good to have around, even if you never upgrade them, as an extra unit protecting a city in case of a bad dice roll. You might have been able to cover Paris for yourself later on, instead of relying on the Mongols. This is also good practice for higher difficulties, when you might need a cheap unit in the city very early on to cover happiness.

But I've always been over-cautious with defense, so keep that in mind.

The other thing I tend not to do is go after barbarian cities if I still have a lot of open land to grab. I think this is especially important in a game where you can't declare an unprovoked war- you might not have an opportunity to take back a disputed site later. I will tend to focus on grabbing open land and resources, then on infrastructure, and then on getting the barbarian cities (unless it looks likely that they will fall to an AI first, although even then I sometimes let the AI soften the city up for me). A lot of the units in barb cities don't come out and threaten my civ, especially if I have a decent border patrol, and cities are tough to crack in CIV. So, I wait until I'm ready and can fight on my terms.

CIV definitely is better at showing a player where they need to improve to do well. No more waltzing in with a stack of doom and obliterating the enemy! You didn't talk a lot about unit choices during your wars, but have you discovered the power of atrillery for capturing cities in CIV? I don't leave home without them anymore, as slow as they are.

Anyway, it was your first game on Prince and you survived up to 1971 AD, had fun, and learned a lot. Sounds like a good result to me!

[Drasca]

Bhuddism grab is amazing. Absolutely amazing.

As for warmongering, take it from a guy who almost won domination. Bring at least 2 units for every "Difficult" city defender, and use 'throwaway' units at that. By throwaway, those units with the least experience, the least production cost, and generally the least valuable.

In your case, wait near, but outside the range of barbarian city until reinforcements arrive. Designated city defenders rarely leave their cities, but sometimes will if your stack is comparatively small (like, 1 per their 6).

Why 4 units to 2? One might die outright for reasons of bad luck, and do no visible harm to the enemy defender (no health loss at all). The computer likes to be cruel like that. For barbarian cities with 2 archers, 3 axemen is usually OK gambit, if your units are city-raiders. Kill one, wait to heal. Kill other. I sometimes get away with just two on two, but that's a gamble. Usually takes 3-4 attacks one way or another.

For waging war on the AI cities with defense, you need a minimum of one catapult piece, 1-2 'combat' units (counter units, spears, macemen, archers), and 2-3 offensive units (Swordsmen, Elephants, Knights...) At least one strong offensive unit capable of taking down, or seriously wounding a strong enemy defender (more if they cannot), and enough secondary 'counter-combat' oriented units strong enough to wipe out the rest. Catapults are a godsend if you wish to keep your elite units when your odds aren't favorable. I prefer a minimum of 4-3 combat odds in my favor.

[doh]

Thanks for the feedback everybody. Sorry about the Buddhism error. Got my little symbols mixed up (yet another reason to keep good notes )

I did play risky this game; I almost felt that I had to as it was my first time on Prince and I wanted to do well. Next time I will not be so bold. I also appreciate the advice to get a second city earlier and especially the advice to leave the barbarians alone until I have expanded more. Makes a lot of sense.