Dantski's Adv-19: Why the World hates Democracy

[Dantski]

I really wasn't sure how I wanted to play this game. I hadn't played a warlike game for some time so I made up my mind to be aggressive with other Civs.

However I also decided to pick Democracy to try and get Towns up fast and stunt the AI growth.

I think this was the first mistake.



I settle in place, to grab the Cows you need to grab tundra or desert tiles and thats not worth it. I go worker first and head towards the mostly useful worker tech in the wheel to start.

Settle Shanghai some way to the west to set up a commerce city and make a late run at the Oracle but it fails miserably.

Monty demands my spare Copper in 850 BC



Toku Demands my spare Copper in 825 BC



Toku is gearing up for war



Monty gets his declaration in first



Toku joins in while the barbs spill out from the north.



While mostly Chariots, the Aztecs pillage Shanghai completely and I lose all of my cottages. A combined Japanese/Aztec force arrives on my eastern border and I get defenders in place just in time.



Mahavira pops Theology and Christianity is founded in Nanjing, one of my border cities with Huayna which increases tensions.

In 250 BC I notice Huayna has 'enough on his hands right now'.

And next turn he declares...



He captures Nanjing for one turn, then my reinforcements take it back.



With Spears being sent west to Shanghai, east to Guangshou and axes south to Nanjing, my central capital is weakly defended and 2 Incan HA's sneak through before I have a chance to help.

He RAZES Beijing :mad:

And yes my entire defence on my capital consisted of the starting warrior...



And I no longer have metal...

In 75 AD I finally make peace with Toku

In 225 AD Huayna throws 60 gold into the peace deal.

In 500 AD I pay Monty 60 gold for peace and the war years are over.

Since I had to build units constantly to defend my cities on 3 fronts, I still only had 3 cities at 500 AD (since capital was razed) and I start settling ASAP starting with Peking on the old capitals ruins.



In 500 AD I notice Huayna has enough no his hands again, and its the same for Monty in 720 AD



Americans wiped out in 920 AD

Build Church of Nativity in 1280 AD and Shanghai has begun building SoL.

In 1540 AD Monty demands 140 gold I refuse.



So he throws a tantrum.



I figure I'll be ok since I'll only be fighting him and I don't see any units on my borders.

However next turn massive stacks of Knights/Elephants and Macemen swarm towards Shanghai (after looking at a couple of other reports I'm amazed how many units the AI attacked me with).

I immediately go all out on unit production but its already too late.

Shanghai falls swiftly, my ice city grabbing Iron to the north follows as do Peking, Nanjing and Xian, without Pikemen to oppose the Knights/Elephants, this is just a turkey shoot. In fact I reckon I killed maybe 2-3 units total in losing those 4 cities.

So it comes down to a final stand on Guangshou, I've massed all my Longbows in the city to face their Knights which have forged ahead.

At first it goes well



But then the catapults etc catch up and thats me out in 1660AD



Although I'd like to point out the heroic defense of Guangshou which killed maybe a dozen of the AI units which was far more than my other cities managed together.


So I got eliminated by a rival Civ for the first time in all my playing (got eliminated by Barbs in Epic 4 so it doesn't count!), and this was really sickening. I'd just completed Epic 10 before playing this and managed to avoid war all game and survive against massively powerful AI's. Losing at Monarch (the difficulty I normally play at) was really a kick in the teeth.

Ultimately being at war on 3 fronts absolutely crippled my expansion and when Monty came calling later on, I still didn't have Engineering. While I grabbed it halfway through the war, I was only able to build 1 or 2 Pikes before the metal was denied me.

Also before the game I totally committed myself to running Universal Suffrage and Emancipation which also meant no Hereditary Rule and no Slavery and that probably hurt a lot.

I'm not sure if the AI's were overly aggressive towards me because by running Emancipation I was causing them unhappiness or whatever, and I'd be interested in knowing if that had any kind of effect.

I guess you could label this game as one where I called the AI's bluff on multiple occasions when they weren't bluffing. Maybe I deserved it after being lucky with Epic 10

I wish I'd chosen a diff tech...

p.s. After this game I started my first non RB solo game in months and thoroughly stomped Monty as payback.

[Sullla]

Wow, I was not expecting that! A mixture of some bad luck and possibly some bad decisions. Let's try to take a look in more detail.

I settle in place, to grab the Cows you need to grab tundra or desert tiles and thats not worth it.

IMO, this is not the best analysis. Let's say that you have to pick up 3 desert tiles to grab that extra cow at the capital. Is it worth it? I'd say overwhelmingly, yes it is! The most important turns in the game are the early ones; having one food resource at the start versus two makes a gigantic difference in early expansion. Not to mention that with more food you can run extra hill tiles for production, or specialists for Great People, etc.

The desert tiles won't make a difference until your city hits size 17, and that won't be until the Industrial Age. By then, 95% of games have already been decided. Look at T-Hawk's game, for example; he also took Democracy tech and moved to get the cows in range. By the time that those desert tiles mattered, he was an age ahead of the AI civs in tech.

Monty demands my spare Copper in 850 BC

Toku Demands my spare Copper in 825 BC

So why didn't you give it to them? What use did you have for an excess copper, anyway? (Don't forget, you can cancel the deal 10 turns later at no penalty.) If you refuse demands with Montezuma, he's going to declare war on you. It's just a matter of time. I always give in to AI demands if I don't think I can afford to fight a war with them.

While mostly Chariots, the Aztecs pillage Shanghai completely and I lose all of my cottages. A combined Japanese/Aztec force arrives on my eastern border and I get defenders in place just in time.

I notice you still didn't have Hunting tech in that picture, and thus no spears. If you knew for sure that the AIs were going to attack you, why not research that tech? Axe vs. chariot really isn't a great matchup.

In 1540 AD Monty demands 140 gold I refuse.

So he throws a tantrum.... However next turn massive stacks of Knights/Elephants and Macemen swarm towards Shanghai (after looking at a couple of other reports I'm amazed how many units the AI attacked me with).

Again, was 140g really that valuable? Obviously it's much easier to say that in retrospect, but the point still remains valid. This reminds me of Civ3 Deity, where the AI would always demand stuff early and often of the player. If you refused, they would attack and you'd get wiped out quickly. The way to beat them was to swallow your pride, give them whatever trifle they were asking, and live to fight another day. Something to keep in mind!

I hope the game was enjoyable nonetheless. Thanks for your report!

[T-hawk]

Having one food resource at the start versus two makes a gigantic difference in early expansion.

Indeed. Resources are gigantic growth boosts. It's even more than one might think, because tiles should be valued on marginal value, not total production. Compare a 3-food farmed plain grassland with a 5-food pastured grassland cow. 3 vs 5 may not sound like much, but it's not the proper comparison. The food to sustain the laborer must be subtracted, so the proper comparison is 1 marginal food for the grassland vs 3 marginal food for the cow. In other words, one single cow is worth as much as three farmed grasslands! One cow plus two desert is equal to three grassland in the long run, and is far superior in the short run.

This reminds me of Civ3 Deity, where the AI would always demand stuff early and often of the player.

Indeed. I don't even mention tribute demands in my reports because they're just always granted. In Civ 4, paying a demand gives you a lasting diplomatic bonus which is almost always worth it. The only demands I ever refuse are for expensive monopoly techs, and some rivals (Montezuma) usually get even those.

[Dantski]

I only fell to one tribute demand just before the end of the game when it was already over.

I made the decision to be aggressive towards the AI's from the beginning, not handing out tribute and striking out on my own religion were part of that.
I realise thats a good way to make enemies but thats how I felt like playing.

So why didn't you give it to them?

Well if you have war happy AI's around, I'm not exactly anxious to give them metals, obviously I should've picked up hunting much earlier but these things happen.

IMO, this is not the best analysis. Let's say that you have to pick up 3 desert tiles to grab that extra cow at the capital. Is it worth it? I'd say overwhelmingly, yes it is!

One thing I didn't mention in the report was that I also settled just north of the capital using those cows later.

I think my problem in regards to not wanting 'junk' tiles is that I'm always thinking in the long term when I settle cities (See Tokyo in my Epic 10, pretty useless before Biology). I've found this happens in the few multiplayer games I play as well, I just really hate useless tiles!

[sunrise089]

@Sulla and T-Hawk: Wow, two valuable things learned. I am definitely no prioritizing special tiles enough: I would have never thought to grab cows if it meant three desert tiles. Also, I say no to most demands except from my closest friends. Time to change both of those things.

@Danski: You and I play at pretty close levels, and I'm with you with most of what you said. I wouldn't have given the metal (don't want to face Axes when they inevitably attack anyways) and I too think too long-term about city founding (apparently in MP a city that can only work 5 tiles, but they're all great tiles, is the way to go). I think you had terrible luck: I felt my game saw a stupid number of AI declarations on the player for Monarch, but my attacks from Monty were easily dealt with. Sending huge stacks at you was just unlucky. The one mistake has to have beem that gold demand - gold is so easily obtainable that I will always give it up. Why risk war over 1 turn's worth of research?

[darrelljs]

Another game to remind me I chose opponents poorly .

Just to echo Sulla and T-Hawk, early game is about adding new citizens as fast as possible, and maximizing the impact of what few citizens you have. That generally means resource tiles need to be worked ASAP, and as often as possible (especially food resource tiles). Even for cities 2-4 I rarely think much beyond size 10. I did re-roll until I got a start that required an initial decision, and it is good to see people going in different directions for comparison purposes .

Darrell

[Atlas]

Wow, Dantski! That was tough. There are a couple of rules for founding a capital (especially, but any early city) that are worth following. Always get as many food resources as you can (food that you don't have the tech for to improve does NOT count- sugar for example). You don't need more than 3 food resources though, if you found a city that has more than 3 make sure you can easily break off one or two food resources for a later city. Found on a plains hill if you have 2 or more other hills nearby(for the 2 hammer capital), founding on a plains-marble,stone, copper, iron hill for you capital is AWESOME(3 hammer capital tile) (for the metal resources only found on the metal if it is your capital or if there is not enough food nearby to work that metal/plains tile then go ahead and found on the metal/plains tile). Finally consider worker turns to improve your capital, a capital with one corn and nothing else but river grassland v. a capital with 2 floodplains and nothing else but river grassland both have the ability to add 2 more food- the first through farming the corn, the second through farming both floodplains- which is better? The corn because you get the same food benefit for half the worker turns. I hope this was helpful.

If you want to play some MP sometime I will get you the RaY teamspeak information, just let me know. We are always looking for good and friendly players.

[sunrise089]

Good capital settling tips Atlas...I'm not sure if I've ever seen those spelled out at Civfanatics, so it's good to know.