Jet's RB Civilization 4 Epic 4 Game Summary
A one-line summary is at the end, if you want to jump down.
I took the started save. I was nonplussed - "hey, this save isn't all that" - but figured I wouldn't have done any better, so, cool.
First, a perverse thanks to Kael. This game was like Fall From Heaven raging barbs on Noble.
Unit shuffling for promotions, lots of Medic II's to help with that, then City Garrisons. But I didn't get much exploring done, and I think that was the beginning of the end.
At BW I don't think I had seen the copper tile to the east, nor had I figured out that I was on a penninsula. So city #2 went on the desert iron tile to the northwest.
So far so good, but in extreme paranoia I put city #3 out on the iron tile that was yet farther to the northwest. In hindsight, that sealed my fate. It was a poor way to turtle. Sealing off my penninsula would have been the best way, but failing to realize that I was on a penninsula, I should at least have tried to build the first 3 cities in a tight triangle, so that I could protect some cottages in the middle. (That belated insight helped later, in a The Ancient Mediterranean game as Egypt on Dionysius's Fertile Crescent map, which is huge and has pretty killer barbs. Recommended.) But in Rome I was so into the fear that even the triangle prospect appeared too difficult.
I hut-popped Metal Casting and rashly put a quick city on the coast (and not in the two-sheep-one-fish spot either; I hadn't explored that far) in an effort to bag the Colossus. Well sure, if I had gotten the Colossus it would have been a superb source of income - barb galleys aren't bad - but of course, the Colossus fell when Colossus City was like 4 turns into its forge.
I did get some cottages going around Rome, on Pig Hill for example, and a road from Desert Iron City to Rome. I did fine protecting the 3 cities and could partially protect the improvements. I sent a force to take a fur city to the southeast, but too late: it had a cultural defense, an axeman, and a big stack of archers. I had no catapults, and was afraid of losing a lot of Praetorians. Meanwhile, supporting my defenders and having only a few improvements wrecked my economy. Once or twice, I lost units to striking. So Construction took a long, long time. With catapults I did take Fur City, but I failed to notice the counterattack force until too late. It was razed, as was Colossus City in a separate attack. I didn't have quite enough troops to go around. Oh well.
Gandhi came by. I didn't have anything to give him for the first impression bonus, but he was still congenial. I was stagnant in my 3 cities. Gandhi started giving me techs, nothing great, but Machinery was definitely helpful. I was extremely jubilant when I reached the end of my 75+ turns to research Monarchy. But of course the barbs were, shall we say, uppity. Swordsmen... Macemen. Uh oh. Grenadiers... Riflemen. Oh, crap. The Praetorians, Crossbowmen, and ancient Medic II and CGIII Archers in City #3 braved out the first few waves before the city was enveloped in barbaric darkness. The lone surviving worker fled in terror through the jungle, failing to notice the tasty smell of light purple curry to the northwest...
I braced for the end, trading Combat II Praetorians for pillaging Grenadiers. There were fewer than I expected, and no killer stacks. It dragged on. Slowly, it dawned on me that something was up. I figured out that I had a neighbor. Two neighbors, in fact; by now, Qin had Paper (probably Future Tech, too!), so I did world map for the first impression bonus. Qin and Gandhi were both Confucian and Pleased with each other.
With less barb action than expected, I finally said, all right, my settler and CGII crossbowman are going to pull a Thelma and Louise and make a run for the ruins of Fur City. There should still be some barb-built cottages, so a city should support itself and turn a profit if it survives. They got down there in one piece and had the following conversation:
THELMA: Look: the ruins of Fur City! And the cottages are still intact!
LOUISE: Great! Let's get down there and get busy!
THELMA: I don't know, Louise. What about that hill? I don't have to tell you about barbs in this game. You could protect me a lot better if I settled there instead.
LOUISE: Good lord, Thelma - that hill is one tile off the coast! I don't have to tell YOU about barbs in this game. Even THEY had the good sense to put their city on the coast, this time! If we start settling cities one tile off the coast, won't that make us even more barbaric than the warriors and archers we've been fighting since 3820 BC? What about culture? What about CIVILIZATION? [long speech]
And so was founded, until the end of the game, the city of F***that,Louise.
Well, since seeing the first barb grenadier I'd also figured I'd better try and find an island to retreat to for my last stand, so I got out settler galleys to look for one. When I finally got around to the other side of the continent, there was no free land except for the one-tile tundra island in the southwest. I came close to doing it. But by that time I wasn't so sure: did I really need it?
With no AI attack, and very little barb trouble, I had gone into full land-grab mode, and got ten cities around Rome. I could have gotten more if I could have fought the barbs, but no way. The barbs were mysteriously quiet, and I figured if the AIs attacked I was preposterously screwed anyway, so I didn't even build any military units. To my amazement, they didn't attack... Open borders, no attack... and after far too many turns of nail biting, I finally got some Confucianism up in that piece. Ahhhhhhhh. AI cities up to my borders, no attack... so I'm like, all right, I guess I'm still in the game. I explored the world and researched the rest of the tech tree. Yeah, you know, the rest of the tech tree - yeah, I researched that. I had fun building up my little empire and was pleasantly surprised with how it came out. A city to the north of Iron Desert City that I had grabbed in desparation turned out to be really good for Ironworks (it was the coal tile, as it turned out); Two Sheep One Fish City was good for GP farming; East Coast Copper City was good for Heroic Epic; Rome got Oxford and Wall St. Meanwhile Gandhi and Qin were alllll good... did a couple resource trades each ("sure, no no, I wasn't using that gold at all, Gandhi!) Eventually I signed defensive pacts with both of them - I wanted to do everything I possibly could to keep from getting run over! Gandhi threw me a second-rate tech once in a while, and even Qin eventually gave me one.
I explored the world and, in a grand military adventure, used Frigates andCRII grenadiers to capture the rifleman barb city on the island off the east coast of the big continent. I thought it was really odd that the AI hadn't nabbed it - that was a great city. By my standards at that point, anyway. I triumphantly put another city on the one-tile island off the larger one. Hell, yeah. So land area was like Gandhi 54%, me 10%. I would have been delighted to finish the game with an AI domination by gifting cities to Gandhi, and me surviving at peace. But I couldn't do that without more land. I put a fishing village up in the tundra off China, but clearly even with more villages, that wasn't going to cut it. I finally eventually got a map trade from Louis, with, to my extreme relief, no demerit from Gandhi, who was Annoyed with him.
Now, I probably would have tried nukes, but with SDI I wasn't optimistic, and I didn't know whether nukes could cross the mountains. But more importantly, my land grab did not secure me uranium, and the AIs were like, no thanks.
I imagined France and Spain were probably designed with some tricky solution for capturing them, but I didn't know, and I didn't solve it. Gandhi did "fight" Louis once, but by the time I got my caravels up there to see what was going on, the action was over.
The other thing I thought to try was a brute-force attack, relying on tech equality and predictability in the AI. First, research as many future techs as needed for happiness to never be a problem. Of course, build every building in every city. (I did get pretty close to that, actually.) Second, find out how many Mechanized Infantry my economy could support, and build them all. (My land grab failed to secure any oil. I was working on a culture attack for the oil tile to the west, but it was a long shot. Still, with extremely prolonged Great Artist farming, who knows.) Then attack one of the AIs. Probably Qin, although his portion of the Rome continent (the east) had no oil - Arrrgh! Also, it seemed like Qin would be easier tactically because he preferred Police State, and so he couldn't do much with his gigantic reserves of wealth. But Gandhi, if he used cash rushing at all intelligently, that'd be one modern armor per city per turn for a practically infinite number of turns. Ugh.
Well, to tell the truth I never did get to the end of the tech tree; I had six techs to go. And of course, each turn was like a minute and a half to complete. I was playing in windowed mode with FreeCell games on the side, etc. I just couldn't do it any more. I put the game aside for a while and was never motivated enough to continue. I reloaded one last time to check the year: 2183.
Thanks for reading!
Summary: barely survived barbs; both AIs friendly; stalemate.
(I had to post this late because of registration problems. So there!)
A one-line summary is at the end, if you want to jump down.
I took the started save. I was nonplussed - "hey, this save isn't all that" - but figured I wouldn't have done any better, so, cool.
First, a perverse thanks to Kael. This game was like Fall From Heaven raging barbs on Noble.
Unit shuffling for promotions, lots of Medic II's to help with that, then City Garrisons. But I didn't get much exploring done, and I think that was the beginning of the end.At BW I don't think I had seen the copper tile to the east, nor had I figured out that I was on a penninsula. So city #2 went on the desert iron tile to the northwest.
So far so good, but in extreme paranoia I put city #3 out on the iron tile that was yet farther to the northwest. In hindsight, that sealed my fate. It was a poor way to turtle. Sealing off my penninsula would have been the best way, but failing to realize that I was on a penninsula, I should at least have tried to build the first 3 cities in a tight triangle, so that I could protect some cottages in the middle. (That belated insight helped later, in a The Ancient Mediterranean game as Egypt on Dionysius's Fertile Crescent map, which is huge and has pretty killer barbs. Recommended.) But in Rome I was so into the fear that even the triangle prospect appeared too difficult.
I hut-popped Metal Casting and rashly put a quick city on the coast (and not in the two-sheep-one-fish spot either; I hadn't explored that far) in an effort to bag the Colossus. Well sure, if I had gotten the Colossus it would have been a superb source of income - barb galleys aren't bad - but of course, the Colossus fell when Colossus City was like 4 turns into its forge.
I did get some cottages going around Rome, on Pig Hill for example, and a road from Desert Iron City to Rome. I did fine protecting the 3 cities and could partially protect the improvements. I sent a force to take a fur city to the southeast, but too late: it had a cultural defense, an axeman, and a big stack of archers. I had no catapults, and was afraid of losing a lot of Praetorians. Meanwhile, supporting my defenders and having only a few improvements wrecked my economy. Once or twice, I lost units to striking. So Construction took a long, long time. With catapults I did take Fur City, but I failed to notice the counterattack force until too late. It was razed, as was Colossus City in a separate attack. I didn't have quite enough troops to go around. Oh well.
Gandhi came by. I didn't have anything to give him for the first impression bonus, but he was still congenial. I was stagnant in my 3 cities. Gandhi started giving me techs, nothing great, but Machinery was definitely helpful. I was extremely jubilant when I reached the end of my 75+ turns to research Monarchy. But of course the barbs were, shall we say, uppity. Swordsmen... Macemen. Uh oh. Grenadiers... Riflemen. Oh, crap. The Praetorians, Crossbowmen, and ancient Medic II and CGIII Archers in City #3 braved out the first few waves before the city was enveloped in barbaric darkness. The lone surviving worker fled in terror through the jungle, failing to notice the tasty smell of light purple curry to the northwest...
I braced for the end, trading Combat II Praetorians for pillaging Grenadiers. There were fewer than I expected, and no killer stacks. It dragged on. Slowly, it dawned on me that something was up. I figured out that I had a neighbor. Two neighbors, in fact; by now, Qin had Paper (probably Future Tech, too!
), so I did world map for the first impression bonus. Qin and Gandhi were both Confucian and Pleased with each other.With less barb action than expected, I finally said, all right, my settler and CGII crossbowman are going to pull a Thelma and Louise and make a run for the ruins of Fur City. There should still be some barb-built cottages, so a city should support itself and turn a profit if it survives. They got down there in one piece and had the following conversation:
THELMA: Look: the ruins of Fur City! And the cottages are still intact!
LOUISE: Great! Let's get down there and get busy!
THELMA: I don't know, Louise. What about that hill? I don't have to tell you about barbs in this game. You could protect me a lot better if I settled there instead.
LOUISE: Good lord, Thelma - that hill is one tile off the coast! I don't have to tell YOU about barbs in this game. Even THEY had the good sense to put their city on the coast, this time! If we start settling cities one tile off the coast, won't that make us even more barbaric than the warriors and archers we've been fighting since 3820 BC? What about culture? What about CIVILIZATION? [long speech]
And so was founded, until the end of the game, the city of F***that,Louise.
Well, since seeing the first barb grenadier I'd also figured I'd better try and find an island to retreat to for my last stand, so I got out settler galleys to look for one. When I finally got around to the other side of the continent, there was no free land except for the one-tile tundra island in the southwest. I came close to doing it. But by that time I wasn't so sure: did I really need it?
With no AI attack, and very little barb trouble, I had gone into full land-grab mode, and got ten cities around Rome. I could have gotten more if I could have fought the barbs, but no way. The barbs were mysteriously quiet, and I figured if the AIs attacked I was preposterously screwed anyway, so I didn't even build any military units. To my amazement, they didn't attack... Open borders, no attack... and after far too many turns of nail biting, I finally got some Confucianism up in that piece. Ahhhhhhhh. AI cities up to my borders, no attack... so I'm like, all right, I guess I'm still in the game. I explored the world and researched the rest of the tech tree. Yeah, you know, the rest of the tech tree - yeah, I researched that.
I had fun building up my little empire and was pleasantly surprised with how it came out. A city to the north of Iron Desert City that I had grabbed in desparation turned out to be really good for Ironworks (it was the coal tile, as it turned out); Two Sheep One Fish City was good for GP farming; East Coast Copper City was good for Heroic Epic; Rome got Oxford and Wall St. Meanwhile Gandhi and Qin were alllll good... did a couple resource trades each ("sure, no no, I wasn't using that gold at all, Gandhi!) Eventually I signed defensive pacts with both of them - I wanted to do everything I possibly could to keep from getting run over! Gandhi threw me a second-rate tech once in a while, and even Qin eventually gave me one.I explored the world and, in a grand military adventure, used Frigates andCRII grenadiers to capture the rifleman barb city on the island off the east coast of the big continent. I thought it was really odd that the AI hadn't nabbed it - that was a great city. By my standards at that point, anyway
. I triumphantly put another city on the one-tile island off the larger one. Hell, yeah. So land area was like Gandhi 54%, me 10%. I would have been delighted to finish the game with an AI domination by gifting cities to Gandhi, and me surviving at peace. But I couldn't do that without more land. I put a fishing village up in the tundra off China, but clearly even with more villages, that wasn't going to cut it. I finally eventually got a map trade from Louis, with, to my extreme relief, no demerit from Gandhi, who was Annoyed with him.Now, I probably would have tried nukes, but with SDI I wasn't optimistic, and I didn't know whether nukes could cross the mountains. But more importantly, my land grab did not secure me uranium, and the AIs were like, no thanks.
I imagined France and Spain were probably designed with some tricky solution for capturing them, but I didn't know, and I didn't solve it. Gandhi did "fight" Louis once, but by the time I got my caravels up there to see what was going on, the action was over.
The other thing I thought to try was a brute-force attack, relying on tech equality and predictability in the AI. First, research as many future techs as needed for happiness to never be a problem. Of course, build every building in every city. (I did get pretty close to that, actually.) Second, find out how many Mechanized Infantry my economy could support, and build them all. (My land grab failed to secure any oil. I was working on a culture attack for the oil tile to the west, but it was a long shot. Still, with extremely prolonged Great Artist farming, who knows.) Then attack one of the AIs. Probably Qin, although his portion of the Rome continent (the east) had no oil - Arrrgh! Also, it seemed like Qin would be easier tactically because he preferred Police State, and so he couldn't do much with his gigantic reserves of wealth. But Gandhi, if he used cash rushing at all intelligently, that'd be one modern armor per city per turn for a practically infinite number of turns. Ugh.
Well, to tell the truth I never did get to the end of the tech tree; I had six techs to go. And of course, each turn was like a minute and a half to complete. I was playing in windowed mode with FreeCell games on the side, etc. I just couldn't do it any more. I put the game aside for a while and was never motivated enough to continue. I reloaded one last time to check the year: 2183.
Thanks for reading!
Summary: barely survived barbs; both AIs friendly; stalemate.
(I had to post this late because of registration problems. So there!)
