Epic Forty-nine: Domination Dilemma - Reports and Discussion

[Griselda]

You know the drill. Post your reports to this thread, please.

-Griselda

[Kylearan]

Hi,

There's not much to tell about my Epic 49 game. I soon found out that I was alone on a small island, which meant that invading the first AI continent might become interesting, but which also meant that my (small) core would be easy to defend. My core would be shield-poor, and I decided to pack more cities on this little island than I normally would, to provide enough unit support for the war.

The two huts yielded barbarians and 50 gold, not very exciting. In 1500BC, my second suicide curragh found land to the west, and soon thereafter, the AIs were contacted.

In 1000BC, I discovered philosophy first, and as a result revolted to republic immediately, drawing 4 turns of anarchy. I disbanded all my warriors, as they were no longer needed neither as military police nor as defense, since my island couldn't be reached until the end of the medieval age by the AIs.

I researched literature next, then shut down science for the rest of the game. I couldn't do much until I would have the Great Lighthouse, so I build some great wonders until then: The Mausoleum of Mausollos in 730BC (sparking my golden age), the Colossus in 510BC, the Great Lighthouse in 490BC and the Great Library in 450BC.



The Great Lighthouse enabled my dromons to sail to the main continent safely, so I started to ferry over as much settlers as possible. I managed to found six cities peacefully on the main landmass, which sealed the fate of the AIs: The game was won now, as I had a big, secure beachhead on their soil.

I constructed the Hanging Gardens in 30BC and the Knight's Templar in 400AD while preparing for war. Unfortunately, the AIs were all peacefully researching, which meant I had to build up a bigger military than I had hoped before attacking. The spell broke in 440AD when Egypt declared on the Dutch, and most AIs were dragged into the war during the following turns. So in 510AD, the Dutch paid me 98 gold + 9 gold per turn for an alliance against Egypt.



On the picture you can see the Egyptian city of Nicomedia. This had been an outpost aggressively founded by me, meant to be a forward base for the war, but which unfortunately had flipped some turns ago. It was on hills and had walls, thanks to me...

The war would have to be fought with slow units only, as iron was on my home island while horses were on the other continent, which wouldn't be connected until navigation. My home island built MDIs and pikes (and crusaders), while the cities on the continent, which didn't have barracks, provided cash-rushed trebuchets. Busiris and El-Amarna fell easily. Then I discovered that Egypt had knights, and I decided to sign in Sumeria as well, also because they were the only AI still at peace.

In 580AD Egypt had muskets, while I still hadn't fought my way through all the hills and mountains completely, so the trebuchets saved lots of lives now.

Here's another picture showing how the AIs can be relied on causing a complete diplomatic mess:



In 690AD, Thebes fell. In 730AD, navigation was on the table, so I traded for the tech and maps.



As you can see, I had finally put a defender into every of my core cities again, as now the AIs were able to reach me and I wanted to discourage any sneak attacks.

While the war went well, I failed to score a leader for a looong time, which I really longed to have to speed up the war. A milestone was reached in 820AD though, when I captured Byblos and finally had a source of saltpeter.



The Dutch and the French knew military tradition already. In 890AD, I finally had saltpeter connected and traded for military tradition.

In 990AD, I made peace with Egypt, getting their last city (apart from their capital) before Sumria was able to capture it. Egypt was then destroyed in 1030AD by Sumeria.

And I still had not scored a leader!

In 1010AD I made a 2-fer trade and entered the industrial age, drawing nationalism as my free tech. Nice! I shuffled some troops, then declared on the Dutch in 1050AD, signing in France into the war for free. Now I had the two tech leaders seperated from each other.



From 1070AD on, the Dutch had rifles and cavs as well (despite lacking saltpeter...), which wasn't much of a problem though.

And FINALLY in 1100AD, I scored a leader! Two, to be precise: When it rains, it pours... Two cavalry armies were made out of them. A third leader popped in 1170AD, which was also the year I bought steam power and began constructing my railnet.

I destroyed the Dutch in 1295AD, and remained at peace for some time to finish my military railnet. Also, Spain and France, the two strongest AIs, had a MPP which I would have liked to end before declaring. That happened in 1370AD, and I declared on Spain, destroying them in 1445AD - I had overestimated their strength considerably.



I made the same mistake of overestimating their power again with France, and waited until 1470AD before declaring war. Hrmpf, you know the metaphor with the knife and the butter? Only 4 turns later:



Domination victory in 1490AD. Could have been faster if 1) I had scored a leader earlier and 2) If I had declared earlier on Spain and on France. I still like this date, though.

Thanks for the fun game, Kodi! I would have been better IMHO if we wouldn't have been able to found cities on the other continent (maybe because it would have been smaller, or because of different AI starting positions). As it were, the game was too easy: Our core was secure, and we were able to have a large enough beachhead to easily invade the rest of the continent. But I really liked the fact that iron and horses had been seperated for some time.

-Kylearan

[Rik Meleet]

My report: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=122441

Domination victory in 1440AD.

[Rik Meleet]

At Kylearan's game.

Comparing the differences in our games.
* I build a lot dense than you did. I had 5 extra cities on the Island and about 2 or 3 more in the beachhead. This probably was the reason (as well as my popped settler) I researched quicker than you. I had The Republic-tech in 1150 BC, you did in 1000 BC. Navigation for me around 460 AD, yours 730 AD.
* I never planned on going for a slow-unit-attack. I've always wanted to fight with knights or even wait till cavalry. For that reason I didn't build catapults, trebs etc. as they are too slow for a mounted war. That saved me a lot of shield-investments that I could use for horses and knights.
* I didn't go for the Great Library, nor for many other wonders, like hanging gardens. I viewed them as insignificant. GL: my research was quicker than the AI's. HG: too costly with too low benefit on a small island.
* I had my first city on the mainland in 730BC. You had it around 400 BC.
* The techrace in my game was slower; I don't recall seeing AI cavs before 1300 AD. That's probably the result as the AI in my game started fighting eachother between 200 AD and 300 AD. In your game around 440 AD. I didn't join till 810 AD, you joined in 510 AD. So in my game most civs were gassed; while you still had some back-breaking to do.
* Decisive: your golden age started with the Mausolleum in 450 BC, while still having only your island. Mine was planned in 810 AD and coincided with the start of the war. By then I was ready for war and the GA benfits were very helpful. I can imagine your few (and fairly uncorrupted) cities weren't enough boosted by the GA. Mine were; as you can see in one of my GA screenshots in 850 AD; Military tradition in 4 turns @ 70% science while still getting +207 gpt.
* My unexpected 8) long term of anarchy before getting Communism. I lost 7 or 8 turns because of that. The GA-planning however was just too important for this anarchy-blunder of mine to tip the scales. And communism did help with the production of libraries and cavs. But I would have finished sooner if I didn't make that blunder.

I enjoyed the game. We have that in common

[Jester]

Long time no see, everyone.

Yes, I did pick this game up. My first epic in what, 25 or so? Enh. As if that makes a difference. I'm as bad as I ever was at this game.

My "report" has almost no content, since that's how my game went. I sat on my island, and bided my time before finally making a grab for the continent. I got as far as killing *one* AI player, who was hopelessly backwards.

I made some *major* strategic mistakes in this game. I got the Oracle. Yes, the Oracle. What's even better, though? I got it trying to get the *pyramids*. On an island barely large enough to fit a half dozen cities, in a pinch. I built Sun Tzu's Art of War. Yes, that's right. I built one of the most expensive wonders in the game in order to net me 7 or so barrackses (what the heck is the plural of barracks?). My first toehold on the continent was established in 1390... AD.

The only thing I did well was trade for tech, where I stayed at parity for the whole game until the late industrial age, where the AIs took off, with Egypt and the Inca zooming into the modern age.

The military details of this game were both poorly recorded and humiliating, with little to elaborate on. I never really got off my Island until the late industrial age, and even then, it was only because Sumeria was even more bass-ackwards than I was. I conquered them, at least. Well, mostly. They still had a couple cities in the middle of nowhere, so I guess even that didn't work out quite like planned.

It ended rather gruesomely, in 1782 AD, at the hands of a runaway Egypt. Modern Armour vs. Infantry when outnumbered 5 to 1 ( ) is not really a winning situation. I quit at that stage, although it probably wouldn't have taken Egypt much more than a dozen turns to wipe me out. They're efficient that way; they killed the remaining Sumerians (all 5 scattered cities) in a single turn. Railroads and modern armour... wow.

So there we have it. I've since played a couple more games (Civ 4 has me all excited, I can't wait), so maybe Epic 50 will go better. But Epic 49 has me quite firmly losing: game abandoned in 1782 AD, mere turns away from extermination.

Still fun to play, though.

Jester

[Sirian]

Thanks for reporting! Sorry for the tough loss, but if they were all cakewalks, nobody would care about the tourney.


Civ4 has me excited, too. I try not to get too excited when there are still several months to go, though. So, to tide us over, I came up with a fun concept for Epic 50. It is not a "hard fun" challenge like Epic 12, but I hope it is different enough and lighthearted enough to attract some of the old vets out for another spin at it anyway.




- Sirian

[Kylearan]

Hi,

congrats on your fast victory, Rik!

Comparing the differences in our games.
* I build a lot dense than you did.

Ugh...yes, ICS, which I don't like. I will never ever go full ICS no matter what advantage this might bring. I even was uncomfortable with the dense settling I did.
Comparing our games, I don't think ICS was really necessary. You won 10 turns before me and lost about 8 turns of production during your second anarchy, while I lost 13 turns waiting for an MPP between France and Spain to expire, then later another 6 turns overestimating the strength of France - as it turned out, I had too many cavs in the end; you can attack only so many cities per turn because of the wide cultural borders in an enemy's core. So taking this into account, I think we would have won at about the same date - meaning ICS wasn't really necessary.

* I never planned on going for a slow-unit-attack. I've always wanted to fight with knights or even wait till cavalry. For that reason I didn't build catapults, trebs etc. as they are too slow for a mounted war. That saved me a lot of shield-investments that I could use for horses and knights.

By the time I had had knights/cavalry, I already had conquered a good amount of cities with slow units. And even with cavs, one slow stack consisting of crusaders, MDIs and trebs still proved to be useful when attacking cities behind hills/mountains, where the extra speed of the cavs would have been wasted anyway. I don't think attacking earlier with slow units was a mistake, quite the opposite. And I wasn't able to build anything useful anyway before I had cavs and didn't want to have my cities set on wealth.

* Decisive: your golden age started with the Mausolleum in 450 BC, while still having only your island.

Yep, that clearly had been a mistake. After nearly 50 Epics, I'm still surprised about GAs triggered by great wonders... You did a much better job planning your GA.

-Kylearan

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Long time no see, everyone.

Yes, I did pick this game up.

Always nice to see another old-timer suddenly making a reappearance!
Ouch on your loss, but thanks for reporting anyway.

I got it trying to get the *pyramids*. On an island barely large enough to fit a half dozen cities, in a pinch. I built Sun Tzu's Art of War. Yes, that's right. I built one of the most expensive wonders in the game in order to net me 7 or so barrackses

That doesn't need to be a mistake - sometimes, denying the AIs these wonders is stronger than the 7 or so barrackses/granaries they give you. And the gold saved from the income for barracks/granaries can be nice, too.

So there we have it. I've since played a couple more games (Civ 4 has me all excited, I can't wait)

Looking forward to any (full-length) reports from you then; I've always liked you style of reporting!

-Kylearan