Pb's Adv 44: So many AIs to kill, so little time...

[pocketbeetle]

No scoring, only goal is to smash the Emperor AI.
Limitation on what types of units we can build, means we have to spam one type (no problem for me!).

Start:



What a capital! Going with a country themed naming scheme.

Then I realise what that archer to the West means, at which point I renamed the capital.
No way I’m going to tolerate Korea so close to my capital for long, protective archers or not. Can’t afford to damage my start too much however.



Decide to build a worker, research will go AH -> Mining -> Fishing -> (BW?)
Need to get those wbs out soon since they’re my only decent food.

Turn 1 – Stalin starts to the North of us. Didn’t realise that these map settings would mean no space for a second city. Oh well, at least neither neighbours are creative. We also started with archery.

Turn 3 – Meet Byzantines.



Turn 7 – Buddhism founded by Justinian.

Turn 10 – Hinduism FIDAL.
AH comes in to give horses in our BFC. Was kinda hoping that would happen.
Chariots ftw.



Turn 20 – Fishing -> BW(11) (-> Myst -> Masonry -> Medi -> Priesthood for Oracle to tech HBR, since we have the archery prereq)

Both Horses and Cows pastured now. Set existing worker to roading the gold (route to Stalin who will be target #2).
Second worker builds next turn, will road cows while waiting for gold road to be built.

I’m not expecting copper in the BFC, but I do note an oddly empty grassland square to the west.



Turn 27 – Wb built -> barracks.
Korea switched to slavery this turn, not good for my chariots, need to kill him asap.

Turn 29 – Contact Persia, he has writing for OB.

Turn 31 – BW comes in, no copper in the BFC. Luckily can’t see any in Korea’s either.

Turn 36 – Buddhism spreads to Oz sucks. Will convert soon.

Turn 40 – Contact France (DeGaulle). Masonry -> Medi -> Priesthood -> Writing.
2 chariots currently.

Turn 45 – OB France and Persia for trade routes.
Size 6 capital now producing 2 turn chariots.



Turn 48 – Tile switch 2S of the chariots gives me visibility into Korean capital.
He’s got 2 archers in there.
2 protective archers, across a river with 20% culture vs 5 chariots all with flanking 1.



Hmmm =)
Let’s go for it, before he gets 40% culture.



Doh, slight mistake. Forgot one of those chariots had only just been built, and so didn’t have enough movement to attack the capital. Can’t complain about the results of the other 4 chariots though, 3 withdrew, 1 won, to leave an archer at 0.7 health.
1 more chariot would have done it. Hopefully next turn then.
Oz sucks starts Oracle for a 5 turn build.

Contact Boadicea. Writing -> Pottery -> Alphabet (no-one has it yet sigh).

Turn 49 – Take Korean capital, rename to NZ sheepies.



Notice Stalin is mining a hill, and I’m not sure if he has IW or not. He’s next for the chariot squad.
Worker force springs into action around NZ sheepies. Cottaged sheep, 3 forests still standing and unboated crabs x2, no wonder Korea was doing badly. Got a free worker also to take our tally up to 3.

Turn 50 – Take sentry on a chariot to get contact with Hammurabi. (Could just see his borders, thought it was Mao)
Byzantine has only 3 archers visible, and copper hooked up. Maybe he should be next?



Decision time:
There are multiple paths that I want to take from here.
The priorities are the same though – 1) Gain military advantage ie either HAs or copper/iron for vultures. 2) Increase hammer production at capital so can spam more units ie forges, (OR), discovering iron etc. So:

• Poly -> Mono for OR (290ish beakers total), with a possible follow on of Hered rule.
  This map is almost playing out like a One City Challenge, and so having a big bad capital would be extremely desirable.
  
• Alphabet. (360b).
  Would allow me to backfill techs such as Hunting/Sailing and possibly the above Poly/Mono line.
  
• Iron working. (240b).
  I’m doing what I believe is called meta gaming here. I don’t think Ruff would have left us without iron or copper in the capital BFC. That would mean that anyone not going AH would be utterly screwed, and that empty grassland square is still calling to me. Iron would give vultures and increased hammer production.
  
• HBR (300b).
  Want! But not too soon, still have chariots which I intend to use vs Stalin or Justinian.
  
• Metal Casting (540b).
  Forges mainly. But they’ll take a long time to build.
  
• Aesth -> Literature (600b total).
  Heroic Epic. +100% production to military, but expensive and harder to get a level 4 unit due to scenario rules and lack of barbs. Maybe wait til HAs before trying for a high xp unit.

Oracle builds next turn for a free tech. Will take Alphabet and hope to get lucky with trading up to Monotheism, will research IW then HBR. Don’t have time to build forges yet, still haven’t even got a (creative cheap) library in the capital.
(note, could oracle CoL and try getting bureaucracy, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch yet.)

Turn 53 – Oracle Alphabet. Trade for sailing and hunting. Unfortunately the only person with Polytheism is Boadicea, and she won’t trade, even after a free tech gift.

Convert to Buddhism so capital is a happy size 7. Start building a library there after 1 more chariot. Stalin next, will wait for HAs before taking on Justinian. (He built SH couple turns ago btw, so he’s culturally crushing NZ sheepies. Chopped a library into it.)
Sentry chariot reveals Stalin does have copper hooked up. He dies asap.

Turn 56 – Stalin builds GW. Explains why no spearmen, and free wonder for me!
Revolt slavery.



Turn 57 – Attack Stalin, still only 2 archers in capital.
Goes badly, 3 chariots die, 2 withdraw, 1 wins. Leaves injured archer in capital, 3 chariots alive (2 badly damaged), but on the plus side one is now xp 10 for HE purposes.

Turn 58 – Moscow captured and renamed Sneaky Cossacks.
Contains GW and free lighthouse. The BFC contains 2 corn, clam fish and copper.



3 chariots left, seems like a good time to switch to HAs.
IW research finishes -> HBR (7)
No iron on the map, so much for my theorising. If I’d gone BW/IW, I’d have been screwed for military units.

Oz sucks currently building library -> Lighthouse -> GLH since all 3 cities so far are coastal, and lots of trade routes available to AI capitals.

Turn 64 – Finally manage to trade for Poly/Mono with Gandhi, but have to give him IW which I don’t like. Fortunately it looks like India is stuck on a tiny spit of land.



Sneaky cossacks getting absolutely crushed by Byzantium Holy city + SH culture.
Revolt OR.

Turn 65 – HBR -> Aest -> Lit (for HE).
Whip a temple into Oz sucks, GLH next (9 turns).

Turn 75 – Literature -> Monarchy (-> Maths)
GLH built, increases bpt from around 50bpt -> 61bpt.
However Sneaky Cossacks revolts to join stupid Byzantium.

Oz sucks -> Stable -> HE -> HA spam.

Turn 81 – GSci born for academy. Roll was kind to me, it was around 60% GPro, 40% Gsci.
Byzantium is turning into a real problem now that he has 2 cities. 2 spearman running around and counting.
Oh well, plan goes ahead -> HE in Oz sucks then HA spam.

2 pop whip a HA in NZ sheepies. All chariots deleted.

Turn 93 – (Maths) -> Feud -> Music.
Revolt HR and Vassalage.

Turn 98 – 11 HA later, DOW on Byzantium and retake Sneaky cossacks.

Turn 103 – Music -> Currency (-> CoL -> Civil Service)
Byzantium is making lots of mistakes, sending spearmen out of cities to attack HAs, instead of holing up. GG born on both sides, mine was settled, his was joined to an axeman and has already died.

Turn 105 – 11 HAs move up to Constantinople vs 2 spear/2axe/2archer.
This is going to hurt.



Yup. Move more HAs up from Nz sheepies.



Next turn, manage to get enough promotions to take Constantinople, rename it to Greasy Italians. Justinian is still annoyingly alive however. It seems that Boadicea, who kindly exterminated the Babylonians for me, decided to liberate the conquered capital to Byzantium.



Not a problem though. The French and Spanish are on the menu next – Paris still only has the 2 original archers guarding it.
And this viewpoint is reinforced when I see what Byzantium is willing to give me for peace.



Use G Artist from music to knock Greasy Italians out of its 6 turns of revolt. 6 turns of 16 gold (from the Buddhist shrine) is a lot, in addition to letting me chop all the forests around it for a quick library etc.

Turn 111 – Currently whipping longbowmen out of food rich Sneaky Cossacks like they’re going out of fashion.
Protective Sumeria means they’re CG3 Drill1 straight out of the box, which is…nice.

HAs are nearly finished healing and ready to rumble.
Just did a whip around via the trade screen for any and all spare cash from the AIs. 330 gold, deficit of -13gpt at 100% research, CS in 5 turns.
Running out of foreign trade routes unfortunately, Greasy Italians has only +1 internal routes.

Turn 116 – Paris captured for 3 HAs, renamed SurrenderMonkey. French dead, Celts kill the Indians. (Current count: I’ve killed 3 AIs, Boadicea has killed 2!)

CS -> Drama for theatres, Sneaky Cossacks will make a fantastic Globe city with 2 corn, a fish and a clam.

Turn 118 – Enforced peace with Byzantines runs out, so Justinian quickly falls off a cliff while hunting.
Babylon renamed Inept Brits. Spanish next.
Drama -> Metal Casting (-> Machinery). GPro born, settled in Greasy Italians to compliment shrine.

Turn 123 – Madrid captured for cost of 1 HA, renamed Francograd.
DOW on Monty and wipe out 5 injured jaguars that he’d been attacking Isabella with.

Turn 127 – TGLib built in Greasy Italians – will make it a GP farm with NE to go in there soon.
GG born from Spanish Inquisition used to make a HA medic.
Revolt to bureacracy.



Turn 130 – Aztecs destroyed, city renamed to DodoWorshippers. Probably should have just razed it.

Celts declare war. That’s not great, Celts + Native Americans are the only decent size AIs, was trying to avoid war with them until I’d swallowed all the tiny AIs. Will play defensive vs Boadicea for now.

Turn 139 – Globe completed. Managed to raze Delhi from Celts, but Maya just built the Hagia Sophia, so Pacal is the next target.

Turn 148 – Oblitering a Celtic stack forces Boadicea to sign peace, GG settled for 11 xp HAs in Oz Sucks thanks to Theocracy.
First maceman built, lone warrior deleted.

Now beginning a run to Steel for cannons, currently Gunpowder (3)
Although no drafting yet, Sneaky Cossacks is producing a Longbow every 2 turns thanks to Globe.
No iron found on the map so far, which means the next mounted unit will probably be Cavalry, skipping Knights and Curassiers altogether. So continue to spam HAs in the mean time.
Persian AI builds AP, NZ sheepies builds Colossus. SurrenderMonkey starts on FP.



Turn 152 – DOW and destroy Mayans. Rather cheekily run around their men in the field to take on the three solo longbowmen defending his city. Renamed to YouMayaLeave for lack of a better name.

It would seem there are three AIs I’ve still yet to meet, possibly on another island. No big concern however, as I know from demographics I’m #1 GNP by a factor of 3 and #1 in soldiers.

Turn 164 – Steel comes in, will aim for Rifling now, then Mil Trad for cavalry.

However I’ve just realised the excellent cannons I’ve been beelining for require…Iron.
And there appears to be none on the map ffs. Oz sucks renamed to Oz sucks more!
This is going to cause me problems then.



Persia is sitting with a respectable stack inside his capital, which in turn is culturally pressuring 3 of my captured cities. I’ve been putting off building any siege in the expectation of spamming cannon. It’s too late for trebs now.

3 choices:

1) wait for riflemen (take ages)
2) wait for artillery (take ages)
or…
3) Grenadiers.

Ye Gods, how embarrassing. Grenadier spam it is.
Will build a couple of bombard trebuchet to lower the %age defenses.
Found the other AIs btw, although Persia achieved the circum nav bonus.
They’re all weak.



Turn 165 – GEng born in Greasy Italians, use it to build Ironworks there – it’s currently pulling in around 60gppt and too much of that is prophet points, Ironworks lets me hire 3 more engineers.

Turn 169 – Persia DOW Sumeria and his stack attacks out of Persepolis, with half of it sent (and dying) at Dodoworshippers. (Remnants situated SW of Dodo in ss below.)
Oh well, that simplifies things.
HA stack is gathered together:



Turn 171 – What follows next is a horrific run of lost coin flips, but eventually Persia’s capital is captured and renamed Atomic Fanatic (‘civilian applications my ass’ didn’t fit).

Turn 180 – The two remaining cities of Persia are razed. DOW on Native Americans.

Turn 189 – Grenadiers really not impressing. Take massive losses, but finally conquer Native American capital, rename it to Custer Casino.
Every city spamming grenadiers where possible.



Turn 192 – Liberalise Physics. Use the free GSci for a Golden Age.

Turn 197 – Native Americans crushed. Only Boadicea left on same continent, then have to clear up the dregs on the other island.
Use GMer from Economics to trade mission for 1700 gold. Allows another 10 or so turns of deficit research. Currently saving a GEng for Mining Inc, not sure it will matter though.

Couple of turns later, here’s my nice little stack of grenadiers.
Next turn Mil tradition came in, so the 2 surviving HAs (medic) upgraded to cavalry.
All cities set to galleon production, lone caravel deleted.



Turn 210 – Boadicea crushed. Galleons being loaded.

Turn 217 – Mongolia dead.



Carthage and the Vikings swiftly follow.
Mali last.





Conquest victory 1590 AD, 171k score

Overall, not a bad little scenario.
I did okay, but I’m a little miffed at the late finishing date. I got a strong start, but Byzantium definitely slowed me down. Should have killed him before Stalin/Russia.

In terms of feedback for the map:

I liked the originality of having an extremely cramped starting location and never having to build a settler ever, and Creative/Protective Gilgamesh was an excellent choice of leader. Even if I never used the UU (due to late copper), it was still a nice combination of sword and axe for this scenario.
However I wasn’t keen on the lack of iron, as everything lategame in Civ needs it! It meant that my only choice of units in the timeline between HAs and Riflemen/Cavalry were Grenadiers. (Edit: Oh and macemen)

Similarly, while the idea of a second island with a bunch of leaders was a good idea, it didn’t work out well. I like the term I've seen used in some other forums, called 'doublewin mechanics'. By turn 150-160 the game was effectively over, but I had to waste multiple turns finding a suitable offensive unit to kill the other civs, and then another bunch of turns building boats to go squash some irrelevant civs.
Once the human player is effectively dominating, scenarios should either try to finish quickly (ie don’t bother with the separate island) -or- should introduce a new challenge.
In this case, a good challenge might have been a super-powered Ragnar. Given his own island and every resource he could ever need, he might have shown up just as the human player was becoming established and started boating the crap out of him, ala European history.
But sticking Ragnar/Hannibal on a cramped island with a bunch of opponents that are similarly skilled meant they disappointed.

As for the unit restriction, it caused the occasional hassle early on with regards to military police, but generally fitted into my usual gameplay of spamming one or two types of units.

Thankyou for the challenge, and for reading =)

[seifer_md]

Thanks for the comments, I think you played well. I think you're right about the order of your first targets slowing you down, and I used CR2 vultures a lot for early conquest. At least you didn't lose any cities to angry civs like me. But maybe my paper thin defense and constant moving of troops to the front helped speed up my victory a little. I never fully understood the value of flanking before. I always thought that even though the unit has withdrawn and not been killed, it is effectively useless because of its low health. So I always picked promotions that increase my combat success rather than survival. Maybe I'm missing something but either way, well played!

[Ruff_Hi]

Thanks for the report and the 'character' you put into it. Oz Sucks is obviously wrong but I will let that slide. Seems you got quite a bit of help from the AIs with other AIs being eliminated.

[T-hawk]

Similarly, while the idea of a second island with a bunch of leaders was a good idea, it didn’t work out well.

Agreed. A scenario designer can't ever count on one AI absorbing another to grow large. The Civ 4 AIs are too peaceful and can't manage tactical offense well enough to overcome the defender's inherent advantages. AI conquest can happen occasionally but rarely.

If you wanted a credible remote competitor, the way to do it would be to give a single AI lots of unopposed land. But in this game, I don't think even that would have mattered. Conquering the home continent on this map is easily enough power to win against any opposition, so the far island just adds busywork. In fact, that's exactly why the domination win condition was invented, to skip the mop-up phase of conquest in a won game.

That said, that one flaw didn't detract from this game. I rather liked the twist of no iron: that created significantly more diversity in choice of conquest units (maces, trebs, grenadiers, cavalry) instead of just watching everybody beeline to cannons.

[Ruff_Hi]

yeah - the 2nd island was a non started as far as challenges go. Any suggestions on how to beef that up?

Maybe 1 strong AI starting with established cities (with courthouses, granaries, road networks, farmed food and minded gold / gems)?

[T-hawk]

Any suggestions on how to beef that up?

Don't try to squeeze a boss fight into Civilization? This isn't an RPG. We're not supposed to level up on cannon-fodder enemies to prepare for the big bad boss fight.

More seriously, when a game of Civ is won, it's won. The "next level" of challenge is to start another game. Which I am sponsoring to open next Monday.