Undead Aztecs

[Bezhukov]

I never thought I'd be posting this report, as I left this game for dead no fewer than three times. I actually got off to a stronger start than other reports I've read today, but the sailing was far from smooth after the start.

Started out with my standard opening build (worker), but a non-standard opening tech. I only go for an early religion if I'm likely to be isolated and can do so without idling my first worker. As this was the case here, Meditation was my first tech, followed by Fishing, Mining, and Bronze. The rush to Bronze was so I could chop a settler in Tenochitlan and a Galley in my second city (and first coastal city!) with help from the whip too (Sailing was my next tech, with help from lake tiles in the capital).

I had been tempted to follow a OCC strategy similar to Sirian's, but reasoned that every one of my (tundra/ice) tiles would be earning one less food/hammer than regular terrain, even with mines/windmills. The lake at the capital, lacking a lighthouse (it wasn't technically coastal) and harbor, would also be suboptimal. The third deer was the clincher - I needed to get oars in the water ASAP!

This required a second city, which I built on the bare tundra by the lake to the west (I realized later that one tile further west would have been optimal to get the second plains hill) with that chopped settler. Note: no Stonehenge, no Oracle - there were higher priorities!

The upshot was that I got that third deer developed very early, powering quick settlers/workers from the capital and a decently early sci specialist academy run in the capital. The third city was the slave's paradise on the hill southeast of the capital (I eventually whipped everything there, including Bank, University, and National Epic! Even with marble, that took 7 citizens).
I don't work Ocean tiles, since they only yield one commerce, so this city was home to 4-6 specialists when it wasn't regrowing pop. I later put another slave colony near the other fish (in the site sealed off by peaks), and these two cities also provided lots of troops via Nationalism.

Anyway, the important thing was the fourth and fifth cities. My fourth city was at the SW corner of the lake, netting both coppers eventually (the western one was workable by the city), with a fish off the coast for the food. After this city built the Colossus, it settled another city three tiles south that got stone, crabs, and later uranium. The fifth city was in the familiar site in the SE by Mao, with sheep and gold workable, and whales evenutally in cultural control.

All these early cities made things tight economically (50% research), but I was able to keep up in tech with the sci specialist run in the capital and some decent trades. Once Colussus came in, I thought I was home free. I conquered to barb city to the west by the iron, founded another city securing the pass to Rome, and took out another barb city to the east by the river with silver and another iron. Got Liberalism, etc, etc...

Maybe the mistake I made at this point was trading too many resources with everyone, giving me worst enemy trading penalties. I'd been on good enough terms with Caesar, but had been unable to coax him into any wars, so there was a clock ticking in my head. I did beeline for Rifling and Nationalism - my favorite tactic on a low-hammer map, but then noticed that I only really had three cities that could easily recoup drafted pop. As my first Rifle headed east to take some more barb cities, Saladin declared.

No sweat, I had a nice tech lead, and no really vulnerable cities. Took out Saladin's initial push, conquered one of his frontier cities, and pushed for his core. And then I discovered Steam Power. No coal. That was bad. None even close (wish I'd noticed that one Sulla got!). Caesar had one behind a second line city. In fact he had three (and wouldn't trade any!). This was very bad.

Sure enough Caesar sprung the sneak. I was able to draft rifles and hold off the attack, but these food-poor cities really couldn't afford to spend another 30-40 turns gorwing back to max pop. Peace with Saladin, buy in Mao and Mansa vs. Caesar.

Oh, and Caesar and I had been trading 4 other resources. This was the first point at which I felt like quitting, but I decided to soldier on and see what happened. This might be my chance to get the coal! My economy was still pretty good thanks to Statue of Liberty and Electricity, which I beelined to get the extra Windmill commerce, then State Property greatly reduced maintenance costs in the new barb cities I had taken in the east, while firing up a bunch of watermills in that part of the world (first they got all farms to get to max pop, then farms were changed to mills - all hills got windmills too).

So the economy was fine, and then Infantry and factories and I took three of Caesar's cities, including Versailles...

But WW was up to 40% culture, and my tech pace had slowed down, and the techs I had used to bring in allies cost me the tech lead. And then Saladin snuck again. So it was peace with Caesar, and back to war with Saladin. Another wave of drafting, this time in the east, fouling up optimized watermill cities, and very nearly lost two cities anyway (I had left my defenses too thin there, thinking Saladin was gassed).

I had gone for Radio (foolishly thinking I could get Caesar's coal via Eiffel Tower culture - those cities ended up with 7000 culture, and still didn't get near reclaiming their western tiles), and as soon as Flight came in Caesar was back to reclaim his cities, this time with the full range of modern techs. He even had fighters to blunt the impact of my bombers, while chewing up my countryside, including the food of my Heroic Epic city - starving it down to unproductivity.

This was the second point at which I felt like giving up, and did for a week or so, until someone in a Civfanatic forums mentioned the game, and I figured I'd see if I could salvage it. I started by giving Saladin back one of the cities from the previous war that contained 5 tanks and 2 Infantry waiting for it to unrevolt.

Once this force got back to the western front, I (barely) managed to raze a couple Roman cities using combined forces (marines vs. artillery, SAM's vs. gunships, gunships vs. tanks, tanks to take the cities) and wasted some bombers going into the teeth of anti-aircraft fire. Once I realized how powerful gunships were for pillaging, the tide turned. Caesar had rails right up to the three former Roman cities, so I had to keep large garrisons in them.

Just as I was amassing a force to take Rome and get the holy grail (coal!), I got the worst imaginable news. Alex had declared. I know Alex. Alex likes to sit back and build stacks of hundreds of units. Your only hope against Alex is that he stays busy with someone else. As I said, in this game, my diplo sucked (although I did end up Sec Gen!), so this was Alex's first war. I shuddered to think how many units he had stockpiled. His first move of the war was to move the dreaded dot, dot, dot stack next to Baghdad. You know, the stack so big the screen doesn't have room for it. It contained at least 20 well-promoted Infantry as well.

This was the third point at which I felt like giving up.

What the heck, made it this far.

I had gone for Fission to get Nuke Plants (lacking Coal), then Rocketry to get Apollo started (Vicky already had it, I had 11 turns to go), then beelined for Robotics for the Space Elevator. As if Alex's surprise wasn't bad enough, I discovered that I didn't have a city at the proper latitude to build the Space Elevator! Was that added in the last patch?

What I did have, however, now, was Mechs. Sure wish I'd had those a few turns earlier vs Rome. but Caesar would finally talk, and WW was already at 40% again, so I had to take peace with JC again (it would last til game's end) and kill at least 200 units from Alex over the next ten turns. Someone's spy had cut off my Oil, but the 4 bombers left over from the Roman war, combined with 7 ridiculously promoted Mechs in a hill city, were just enough to give Alex's unit a nice place to die. I did lose the initial city, but when the human has air, and the AI doesn't: hambuger hill for the AI.

Near the end, Alex brought some tanks and SAM's, but it was too late.

I had no stomach for revenge, however, as it was time for space. Used a Great Engineer for Scotland Yard and kept tabs on Vicky. Max sci (all sci specialists, building research) to get the techs, then max wealth to fund sabotage. Passed the foreign trade route and extra trade route via UN, windmilled everything in sight, and got research down to three turns on the last tech. Took out Saladin's capital when Mao invited me to join him in wiping out Sal (if I'd only had that site sooner!).

Ended up beating Vicky to space by two turns in 1983, in an ending similar to Sirian's, complete with madcap procudtion adjustments in the last city, a well-timed final Golden Age, and three successful (and ruinously expensive!) sabatogue attempts.

Considering that I spent much of the mid/late game running 20-40% culture to keep my lily-livered people happy, I was really surprised to get the win. Just shows how important diplo really is...

I switched back and forth a couple times between Free Market and State Property - Free Market boosts revenues, while State Property cuts expenses - but I should have stayed in State Property, as the trade routes on highland maps are pretty unimpressive, and the extra food from watermills made my 5 (!) cities to the Northeast monsters just in time to simultaneously build the last 4 spaceship parts.

[Sirian]

I'm glad you played it out. That was a good read. (A little threadbare to follow the details, but a good summary.)

Some pics would help. Certainly sounds like you had the best economy going of any report I've read so far, but had to burn a lot of units in the late fighting. That's the one clear advantage I got from the religion-denial approach: no native religion for Saladin, no alliance between Saladin and Alex, Alex befriended and Saladin got to experience his massive SoDs instead of me. Yet your economic approach had you finishing at the same time while owning a lot more territory and fending off opponents.

I look forward to more reports -- hopefully with at least a few pics next time.


- Sirian

[Bezhukov]

Thanks for the reply. I'm no Sirian when it comes to reporting technologies, but I'll do what I can.

First, a look at one of my water-mill-fueled northeast cities, a key to my staying power, and eventually triumph:



A wider view of the northeast (there's another city - the best one - in the NE corner), you can also see the world minimap here:



My first fertile city, that used "normal" land to grab some key wonders (I'd added a couple windmills (replacing mines) for late commerce, so its not optimized for hammers at this point. This city also grabbed early copper:



And a couple demographic shots:





I think one thing that really helped my economy was getting that third deer camp built much earlier than other games (I chopped a settler for the second city, then chopped a galley immediately in that city to provide transportation for the worker). That extra two food for Tenochitlan gave me a lot more flexibility for specialists, quicker growth when necessary (meaning less turns not working the marble/mine), and of course faster workers/settlers, which I was building instead of wonders. The first wonder I built there was Great Library, and ended up with four academies from the specialist GPP's.

Having played WAY too much CivIV since it came out, I can say that early food has a subtle but powerful impact upon the game.

[Bezhukov]

Notice also the lack of rails.

I believe this is the first Civ game I've ever played, all the way back to the original Civ, including both Call to Power and Test of Time, in which I launched without rails...

Again, thanks for the challenge.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Wow, I did not see those possibilities in the north east. Are those powerhouses available at once, or do the only rise up once the right end of the tech tree is reached?

[Bezhukov]

The most important techs were biology, to get them up to pop quickly via all farms, communism, for watermill food once they're up to capacity (switch farms to watermills), and electricity, to get two commerce per mill.

I had communism ASAP (for Kremlin, although I believe Representation was a better civic for this game, as it lacked land for cottages - I didn't think of that until I'd rushed communism), and it can be reasonably beelined. I believe biology will also become a standard beeline target too, and I went for it relatively early, though actually it was of limited (but very important) use on this map. Electricity may have been the most important tech of all on the map, the equivalent of giving me the financial trait, as I had windmills literally everywhere on this food-poor map.

I didn't get to the NE until Rifles, and was distracted by war elsewhere from getting them developed as early as I would have liked (lacking Coal Plants was a pain as well, and I couldn't make full use of Kremlin to buy them infra), but I always have a large supply of workers, and the "all-farms until max pop then switch" new city plan got them up to speed in time to build the bulk of my spaceship.

[Sirian]

I was concerned with tech. Thus I skipped Communism and the watermills, and aimed to maximize the Internet. This is also because I had some of the strongest AIs around, though. Despite all the shields you burned in warfare, you were still ahead of me on the tech side because you got to more and better lands. Religion was getting 200gpt and more near the end, but you had some of that going too.

Literally the one thing that pushed up my launch ahead of yours was the Internet (and the runaway Mao). Of course, I couldn't spare even a single turn. So my Internet wasn't just about speed, but about victory. My very late Statue of Liberty is one place where I lost a lot of ground. I had written that off early and was concentrating on Biology. You may have gotten to that ahead of me, despite it all, but surely where you had the best economic opening, I had the most-delayed, including even more delay on getting to sea because I pushed my second city far far west, then split the remaining land in to two weaker cities instead of the one stronger one most chose.

In Civ3, Sulla and I had a reputation for speeding along AI tech progress. I had that happen to me over and over, something about my playstyle just seemed to keep them at peace longer. Sulla got that going in Epic One, and I got it going here. I hope that's not a trend! 8)


- Sirian

[Bezhukov]

"In Civ3, Sulla and I had a reputation for speeding along AI tech progress."

That's funny. In my prior attempt at playing Monty (not on this map), I somehow played a game that was entirely peaceful. Not one war in the world the entire game. Mansa built Apollo in 1620! I think he launched sometime around 1825. That's what I get for not using my traits!

[Bezhukov]

"Despite all the shields you burned in warfare"

I actually ended up losing remarkably few units, as my wars were primarily defensive, only going on the offensive once the AI was gassed, and I had Mao at my side each time. My Heroic Epic city was on troops continuously throughout the game, and I made use of the draft extensively, even a few mechs at three pop per. There were only a couple 20 turn periods where any other city had to produce much military (Wall Street and Oxford built Wealth and Research the whole endgame, for instance, and there's a good bit of infra to get built even late).

Where I was really hurt was war weariness, even with jails and Rushmore, fighting the same AI repeatedly is a bear here, even when they delare on you. Care to say something to Soren about letting this weariness decay over time?

[Sullla]

I like the plan to go to the sea early on - well obviously, since that's what I did in my game. It looks like you played a very solid opening sequence.

Your fourth city in the southwest was one I never grabbed, since I put higher priority on the sheep location - but one which the AI ignored, and so you were easily able to get it with your fifth city, while for me by the time I had my fourth city out, the SW location was already taken. Of course, I also stopped to get Stonehenge and Oracle too.

You got a lot of good cities in the east. A WHOLE lot of them. In fact, almost everyone who won this game except for me ended up getting those spots. But unfortunately, for whatever reason you weren't able to make friends with enough of the civs and kept getting caught in wars. The war with Caesar was killer, obviously. That meant you had enemies on both sides, which reigned in your otherwise excellent start. Maybe you should try doing more with religion to avoid that (?) Diplomacy could have helped you avoid fighting all those wars!

State Property is a powerful civic. I used it in Epic One, and might have in this game too - except I had no rivers in all of my territory! It's also great for managing large empires. Looking at those pictures posted at the end, you clearly got a ton of value out of it.

And kudos on not quitting the game. A number of players gave up when things looked tough, but you soldiered on and WON the game! I hope that this will demonstrate to some of the other newcomers why we encourage everyone not to retire games. Where there is life, there is hope!

Also, I have no clue why it happened, but Sirian and I consistently had the fastest AIs in every game in Civ3. We would be playing the GOTM with 100 other people, and both have AI tech pace in the top 5. I have no clue why that was! We'll see if the same thing happens in Civ4.