Epic 25 - LiPing's unfinished report

[LiPing]

Hullo, first report from me. I tried to play it in one day, and unfortunately ran out of time at 1435 AD. I also overlooked several times that in order for the screenshot button to work, I need to have the F-lock key off on the keyboard. I apologise for this, the subsequent haphazardness of this report, the lack of some screenshots, and also that the report is a couple of hours late.

First Odeon was built at 320 BC



Most Exp on a Phalanx at the time: 85



Produced 7 Great Generals, 4 were settled, one attached to a Phalanx, one attached to an Elephant, and the last wasn’t used at the time.



Most Exp on a Naval Unit: 2
Number of Techs Stolen: 0

I settled in place, decided to take a risk and go workboat first while working max hammers, and research mining->bronze.

Popped Sailing out of the nearby hut.
After scouting out the peninsula I moved the scout north and ran into Toku’s warrior. I wasn’t that happy to see that he was Native America since it meant that bronze/hunting troops alone wouldn’t be sufficient.



The warrior unfortunately happened to be 1 square too close for me to both get my warrior out and occupy the NE forest, it only was able to be out when Toku’s warrior reached the tile, and he then walked the warrior past the city and decided to wander around the south area, which was irritating, and cost time building extra warriors to chase him down before I could settle the area. In other words, my opening was bad



I settled what I felt is a bad city SW of the copper just so I could link it up without researching Mysticism, building a monument and having to wait for it to pop, researched AH, and wasn’t too pleased with the location of the horse, was going to have to make another bad city to get the Horses and have a source of food. Decided to settle a city on the desert hill at the end of the peninsula first, planning to use the forest NE of Athens as a chokepoint and get an army out before trying to claim the horses.



Researched Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing -> Mysticism -> Masonry -> Mathematics, planning to go for the most direct route to Construction for Catapults and also to see if I could get the fastest Odeon, if nothing else

Put together a small force, Phalanx, Spear and a pair of Archers, Tokugawa turned up with a pair of Dog soldiers and a pair of Spearmen, but turned back.





Settled Thebes on the western hill. Tokugawa came back with a different small stack (2 Spears, Archer, Dog Soldier) and attacked into Thebes, not killing anything.



Chopped/Slaved out several chariots and a few Phalanxes, moved north, picking off a few Dog Soldiers in the Jungle on the way, and got the first Great General, attached it to a Phalanx.









Tokugawa’s cities were fairly poorly defended, kept Mound City, razed Poverty Point and kept Cahokia (sorry, screenshot of the garrison missing), which also came with Stonehenge. Made an early Scientist from Thebes and built Academy in Athens.

Finished Construction, started Horseback Riding for Elephants. Founded Argos on the western side of the jungle area, economy was looking pretty bad at +11 gold at 0%.

Shaka circumnavigated on turn 162 (170BC), so I sent a galley around the coastline, eventually finding Darius’s Work Boat on turn 194.



Meanwhile, I set Tokugawa’s old lands up as the main military area, with the backline cities building catapults, settled generals into Cahokia until it could make 11xp melee units.

Researched Iron Working, Mysticism, Meditation, Priesthood and Code of Laws, and set up Argos as a cottage city and an Academy. Confucianism unfortunately fell 2 turns before I finished.

While defending, I built up around ~20 Catapults, around a dozen Elephants, a handful of swords and other melee, and decided to attack Shaka/Darius first since they were the two score and land area leaders, and the west side with Mansa and Montezuma seemed easy to hold, Mansa kept sending unpromoted troops and Montezuma kept sending primarily Horse Archers.







I cleared out Shaka in 29 turns with few losses, other than a single size 1 city that he resettled, I decided to leave that alone for the time being and continue advancing since he was pretty much crippled, and I could just mop it up later. In the meantime I researched Calender, Monarchy… Agriculture… and Civil Service, started Metal Casting, heading for Machinery.







I also built up a smaller second stack and sent it west, to raze one of Montezuma’s cities. I ran into some Darius Macemen, Pikes, Knights and Crossbows while going through Shaka, so I withdrew the western stack to pick up some maces and reinforce the eastern attack.



I decided to try and do as much damage as possible to Darius with what was already nearby to slow him down and hopefully get enough time for the reinforcements to arrive before he could get to Rifles.

I managed to raze his double shrine holy city with just a couple of suicide catapults, as it was primarily defended by knights, and marched on Amsterdam. Unfortunately he had Muskets in the Capital, and I had to use most of the remaining siege to raze it. (He had built the Pyramids and most of the other wonders there)









I pulled back the stack to Shaka’s last city to kill him off and pick up the reinforcements, and then I ran out of time I will try and finish it tomorrow, anyway.

[Compromise]

You look well on your way to victory. Good luck.

[LiPing]

This part is played a day after the deadline, if it is included, it brings the number of great generals up to 8, the number of stolen technology to 2, and finishes with Conquest at 1802 AD.

Based on this, and the aftermath of Darius’s GNP following the loss of his two cities, I decided to change the plan. Mansa looked more likely to reach strong units and Montezuma was still horribly backwards.



I had been planning to try and steal some technologies from Montezuma for the scoring category anyway, so I used the spies to try and find Mansa’s border first. They found it, but were caught soon after.

Killed Shaka on the way back. I decided to send the veteran troops towards Mansa, but also to split off a small amount of units (I had plenty of catapults) with mainly new troops to send back to Darius. I didn’t expect them to actually kill him, but was just hoping to harass him and provoke him into slowing himself down by building more troops.

I upgraded the Phalanx, and used the other great general to join to a high exp swordsman (with city raider 3, combat 2 and cover) so I could upgrade it for a second city breaking unit.

Great General #8, just before 1500 AD, he became a super medic.



This is the small Eastern Force.



Managed to get on the scoreboard for stolen technology from Montezuma.





West Force.



Came across a relatively lightly defended city in the east, decided to sacrifice some troops to raze it.





Stole a second tech.





Advanced on Mansa.



Darius got to Liberalism first, but I didn't think it was a problem anymore with all the damage dealt to his empire.



Managed to raze this too, but lost almost the entire stack in the process due to some bad rolls. The remains limped off to a forested hill and stayed there until near the end of the game.



Ran around Mansa’s land making a nuisance of myself.



The biggest ships I could build were Galleons and Triremes, so I couldn’t realistically do anything about this, it sailed around and pillaged all the nets.



I thought this was Mansa’s last city, or that he’d have resettled one, but instead he happened to have one surprisingly hidden near Darius.





Wasn’t much left to do except clean up Montezuma…





And Darius.





Finished at 1802 AD.





I'm fairly impressed that this guy actually managed to survive the entire game (he stopped being a Phalanx at 85 XP though), the other generals attached to combat units died along the way.



Thanks for reading, and sorry again for the haphazard report.

[LiPing]

Afterthoughts after reading other reports:

Assuming that the resource placement was intentional, I think the map design around the starting location was very clever, with several cases of asking the player what they were willing to give up, either in the short or long term.

The first decision for me was at the starting point, where I was tempted to place the capital in three different places - at the initial plains hill, on the pigs, or on the silk.

The pigs was less tempting, because I erroneously convinced myself that the landmass to the west would be linked to the mainland, and I would be able to walk there in a reasonable amount of time, so it'd be devaluing a +4F tile to pick up another 4F tile that could be used later.

The silk however, was very tempting. I didn't expect to be able to improve the tile for a long time, and settling there would make use of the otherwise-to-be-neglected tile, adding 1c to the city center. It'd also have the best production of the three, and -possibly- pick up a strategic resource on the unforested grassland 2SE of the start position, as I was pretty sure that in an always war game, there would be Copper and Horses close by, but because it'd cost a turn, the forest on top of the silk and take a long time to develop, I decided against it.

I was pleased to see that in two other reports, people had settled on those spots instead, so I hadn't been too far off in my thinking.

Next was the eastern peninsula dilemma – Do you want copper immediately, or can you wait a bit, and which of the clam, sheep or crabs are you willing to sacrifice? If the crab location was intentional, I have a very minor criticism, that it’s unable to be seen from the land without settling the city, which is likely to take the decision away from the player until it’s already completed, unless the intention is to reward people who put out an exploring workboat, but I’m not sure how usual that is to do early on in an always war game.

After those two, and the peak situated at the spot (if this was intentional) which would allow a city to have both a fish and the horse, I must admit I felt slightly disappointed at how good the city site at the mouth of the river on the west side with the fish, dyes, banana and iron was, it felt a tad anticlimactic after the initial sites.

Having little experience with vs Cpu. Always War, I made the mistake of thinking it would be similar to MP, I think I went too trigger-happy on the copper, it resulted in a really awful city (which, incidentally should also have gone 1N, but I got greedy for hammers, making it an even worse city) and increased maintenance, so far there has only been one other first-ring copper city built in everyone else’s reports, and no one seems to have suffered from it.

I should also have built an army more suited to fighting AIs, and let them attack into defensive units with less overall attrition instead of the ~100+ Catapults, dozens of Elephants and little else than I actually built, which crashed my economy very badly.

Thanks for the game, overall I had a lot of fun with the way my game went and the scrambling around from one side of the continent I had to do while living with the terrible economy funded by city razing

[Olodune]

I'm impressed with how far you pushed with those medieval troops. Nice game. Darius had Cavs/Grens/Rifles by 1750 in my game so perhaps heading east first was a better move.

All hail the mighty Catapult

[T-hawk]

Assuming that the resource placement was intentional, I think the map design around the starting location was very clever, with several cases of asking the player what they were willing to give up, either in the short or long term.

Yeah, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to congratulate or strangle Sullla several times in the opening moves. Of course, he may just come along and tell us that that's what the map generator threw out all by itself.


The pigs was less tempting, because I erroneously convinced myself that the landmass to the west would be linked to the mainland, and I would be able to walk there in a reasonable amount of time, so it'd be devaluing a +4F tile to pick up another 4F tile that could be used later.

I think the pigs tile was the best in terms of resources and short-term development, but the starting tile was better into the middle game. Mostly because the starting tile could reach more cottageable grasslands. (The extra food from settling on pigs is basically equal to the plains hill hammer.)

I redeemed the missed fish with an island city pretty soon anyway. What we didn't know was the second fish on the far (west) side of the island. The island was too small for two cities to work both fish, so the overall best dotmap would've been the capital on the pig for fish #1, and an island city on the west side for fish #2. But we couldn't know that at 4000 BC.

I must admit I felt slightly disappointed at how good the city site at the mouth of the river on the west side with the fish, dyes, banana and iron was, it felt a tad anticlimactic after the initial sites.

Disappointed? I loved it. That spot became my commerce center as soon as the dyes were improved, and I later moved the capital there for Bureaucracy. (Full report coming tonight!)


so far there has only been one other first-ring copper city built in everyone else’s reports, and no one seems to have suffered from it.

I also settled a first-ring copper city. I didn't regret it. The city was never spectacular, but it did have five grasslands that it started working as cottages early. That pretty much saved me from economic trouble.

[Compromise]

I settled SE of the near-capital copper too. Thus never improving the seafood over there. That might've been different if I'd known about the second seafood before founding the city.

[T-hawk]

There was a second seafood over there?

:loads Civ and a save:

Holy crap, I never saw it. Yes, it was invisible from land until several border expansions or Optics. Both came late for me (with copper in first ring, that city didn't need any culture until late) and I never noticed it. It wasn't visible until my mop-up phase, when my attention was elsewhere instead of on home seafood. (And I could have used the health, having no other crabs.)

With knowledge of the crab, the best spot is clearly on the sheep, to get both seafood and the copper all in second ring, and chop a monument early. I really doubt Sullla intended the crab to be invisible from land; what would be the point of that design?

[LiPing]

I thought that maybe the point of the location of the crab and the shielding peaks would be to reward anyone who sent a workboat or galley that way early on, because I'm in agreement that with the knowledge, it seems very obvious to settle on the sheep, and it might have been thought that it would simplify the choice too much with that knowledge.

The crab did also convince me to build a galley with slightly higher priority than I normally would to scout because I was suspicious that something else like that might be around.

[timmy827]

Yea for rocky map script throwing up lot of peaks
I doubt that was intentional too, Sulla probably spent any editing time on the general shape of the map and balancing out the T-junction.

For starting position I'm surprised that no one else took the silks to get mines on all the hills.
Interesting that the AI will pillage fishing boats with Galleons but not earlier sea units.

Oh yeah, nice job on the report too