Jonottawa's rapid demise Adv 11

[jonottawa]

My strategy for this game was to immediately go to war with the one civilization on my map and cripple them. Meanwhile, I'd go straight for CSS while it's still available, particularly with my gorgeous capital city square.

My first mistake (probably cost me the game, as you'll see later) was not taking the 'hint' and keeping Polytheism as the research tech. I didn't know if it was meant to help, hurt, or distract, but I always go after Buddhism if I start with flood plains and Mysticism. If I get beat, so be it.

I was only about 2/3 to meditation when the Buddhism bong balefully beat in the background. Switched to Polytheism. Ended up founding Hinduism anyway, but wasted 8 turns or so of research.

I pumped out 5 warriors. Found I shared the map with Alex and Catherine. Uh oh. By the time I found their capitals, and looked at the geography, I realized the winning strategy would have been to choke them off with a quick 2nd city (or choke one of them off that way and go to war with the other one.)

I belatedly tried that, switching to a settler immediately after the 5th warrior, then switching to the Oracle.

Everything was going swimmingly. I wasn't able to stop either civ from getting their 2nd city up (I had 2 warriors ready to ambush Catherine's 1st settler, but she sent him out with a 2-archer escort), but I was able to get a city that would completely choke off Catherine as soon as CoL hit (it needed one culture pop.)

Alex built his 3rd city on his side of a natural choke point, so that was A-Ok. I was 8 turns from CoL/Oracle and Catherine sent a settler/archer out. I had 2 warriors in the choke city and figured it was now or never. My first warrior died. My 2nd warrior had 80% or so and WON!!! Now I have a worker, CSS in 8 turns, Catherine is toast and Alex is neutralized.

With 2 turns to go until CSS, Catherine sent a lone archer to the border of my choke city. I had a one star warrior and a no-upgrade warrior fully fortified. The archer killed the one star and had 1.3 left (approx). I sent my other warrior out to kill him and lost an 84%.

My city would have fallen next turn and so I quit. It was about 1500 BC.

[darrelljs]

My strategy for this game was to immediately go to war with the one civilization on my map and cripple them.

Hmm...I believe that one of the variant rules was you could not capture or raze a city (edit: from a civ starting on your home continent). Was the strategy to do an Archer park on each of the AIs cities so they would not be able to focus on expansion?

Darrell

[VoiceOfUnreason]

My first mistake (probably cost me the game, as you'll see later) was not taking the 'hint' and keeping Polytheism as the research tech. I didn't know if it was meant to help, hurt, or distract, but I always go after Buddhism if I start with flood plains and Mysticism. If I get beat, so be it.

I keep going back and forth on this one. Buddhism gives you a useful build, Polytheism unlocks a more useful tech later, and the longer research time gives you a bit more to work with in terms of trading growth for research.

With stone in play, that suggests climbing along Org Rel and Christianity, which gives Polytheism an extra kick. And as T-Hawk noted, Pyramids + Great Libby have great synergy, and you don't have to race to pacifism.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure what situation calls for choosing Buddhism over Polytheism, given that you have to decide before you have a lot of information about your surroundings. Well, aside from the Adventure Four variant.

[jonottawa]

More like a warrior ambush. I had expected only one other civ on the continent and thought I could take his settlers off his hands.

I've been reading the discussion on archer parking and CSS and to me early archer parking is an exploit. But I kind of figured on repeatedly knocking off any and all settlers with my warrior hordes BEFORE they became cities was the way to go. Some might see that as just as big an exploit, but sending out lightly defended settlers has always been a risk and if the AI doesn't bring defenders ...

Just for fun I replayed the turn I quit. If I had only left my only remaining warrior in the city, the archer attacks again and dies next turn. Not only that, my warrior is untouched!!! Sigh.

[jonottawa]

I play Civ4 kind of like I play chess. I'm way better than most casual players and nowhere near as good as tournament veterans.

That being said ...

I tend to choose Buddhism over Hinduism (with a Mysticism start) because I tend to be atheist (or if I convert I don't stay in it for long) and I like monasteries. Plus it's cheaper. The downside is that you do get beat to it more often. The high-level factors you discuss don't really enter my thought process (I don't think I've ever used pacifism, for instance.)

[jonottawa]

I'm even more frustrated now that I've read all the reports posted so far and NOBODY choked Catherine as effectively as I did (with CSS to boot!) My choke city was located 3 squares due west of the fish (way due south of Mecca.) The name of the adventure was Divided We Fall, but I was planning for a Divided We Stand strategy where I divided my continent-mates from all but a handful of city spots (while harvesting their settlers for the workers I'd postponed building.) That's MY kind of permanent alliance (keep sending your settlers out as sacrificial lambs and I might not pillage all of your improvements.)

On the bright side, I didn't really factor in how long this would have taken to play (on a LARGE map) and would have likely missed the completion deadline.

[Sullla]

I think you may have missed the point of this game...

The goal of the scenario was to work with the other civs on your island. That's the whole reason behind the "cannot capture cities" rule. Warrior spamming to kill AI settlers before they found cities wasn't really the direction that Sirian intended. And if you were intending to sign a permanent alliance with Cathy or Alex later on, ultra-early warfare that slowed down the development of both the player and the AI was rather counter-productive.

The problem with risky early-game gambits is that when they don't work, you aren't left with much to fall back on.