Epic One - Katon's Report

[Katon]

I started out by building a settler in Paris, pausing to let the city grow and to build a scout when Hunting came in. By the time the settler came in, I already had a fairly good idea of my surroundings. The area to the west of Paris ought to be mine to take whenever I wanted, with a clear run all the way to the coast. To the east, there was space for maybe one row of cities before I ran into Genghis Khan. After some nasty experiences with Napoleon I’m wary of settling too close to Aggressive leaders, so I decided to grab the two eastward sites I had my eye on fairly quickly, pausing only to grab the horses to the southwest.

After building Orleans at the wheat & pigs site to the north and setting it to cranking workers, I paused only to build another warrior before settling Marseilles near the horses (and the cows, the dyes, the rice, the other dyes, the bananas, and the other other dyes; it was a NICE site). Rennes [a note about the city names: I accidentally named Orleans Orleans/ and didn’t spot it for ages, with the result that the game kept recommending Orleans as a city name and my names got off the normal track] followed to the south-east of Paris, completing my border with Genghis. It was at this point that things went slightly wrong.

With Orleans cranking workers/settlers and Paris making a run at the Pyramids (Stonehenge had gone by without any serious effort on my part, as obelisks are unimportant to a Creative leader and I didn’t have any particular use for a Great Prophet), I’d been running thin on military. I had some archers at my eastern cities, but Marseilles was guarded only by one warrior. I was relying on my ability to get troops in from Paris in two turns by road. Then a barbarian axeman came within two spaces of Marseilles. I called in the Parisian Guard, they started towards the city, then the axeman moved onto the road. Oops. I didn’t have any bronze, and hadn’t completed Iron Working yet, so none of my troops could match him outside of a city. I had to retreat, leaving him Marseilles. The axeman was easily stopped at Paris by an archer, and after finishing the Pyramids Paris cranked a few swordsmen (iron working having been discovered in the meantime) who promptly retook the city with little difficulty. Lesson learnt. I started building better defenses.

While all this was going on, not much had been happening abroad. There were a couple of wars, but I stayed out of them; my only neighbor was Genghis, and I was staying firmly on his good side. I switched to the religion he founded, Hinduism, the minute I could, traded techs with him, and gave him the trade goods he asked for. I just wanted to be left alone, to expand across my section of the continent and then to get my economy into decent shape. Here you see my civ at 1000 AD, with the former accomplished and the latter about to be achieved by means of Representation-powered research (not fully set up at the point I took the shot).

[Katon]

After Paris completed the Hanging Gardens, the extra population gave me enough specialists to research my way to Currency. That got my economy going again, and when I used a Great Engineer to build the Great Library in Orleans I was finally able to start coming back into the tech race. With three research each from my horde of specialists as well as a slowly increasing percentage of my commerce I caught up the gap that had opened while I’d been expanding, and slowly started to pull away from most of the AIs. In particular, I managed to get ahead of Ghandi about the time Metal Casting rolled in. With lots of cheap forges, a tech lead on the only other Industrious leader, and at least tech parity with everyone else (Washington managed to keep pace with me, in spite of a losing war against Alexander), I promptly began to monopolize the wonders. Between them, Paris and Marseilles covered Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, the Hagia Sophia, the Sistine Chapel, the Spiral Minaret, and the Taj Mahal. Orleans added the Colossus, and a Great Engineer saw Versailles built in Rennes (as much for the culture as for the financial boost). Ghandi beat me to Notre Dame, but the cash windfall from the wasted shields paid to upgrade all my archers to longbowmen, saving me from needing to build as much military. I kept ticking along tech-wise, switching to Free Religion the minute I could, ignoring military techs in favor of a beeline for railroad and holding off on Astronomy as long as possible to keep the Colossus running. Things were going along nicely till I hit Steam Power and found out I didn’t have any coal.

Well, sitting around without any railroads wasn’t an option, so I had to go get some. The nearest place, which somebody more aggressive about exploring would probably already have claimed, was at an island just north of Caen, near the Mongol city of Tiflis.



Genghis had been acting belligerent all game, and one of his major cities – Turfan – was coming under severe cultural pressure from Orleans. He probably wouldn’t put up with that for much longer without making some noise, especially now that we weren’t coreligionists. I’d just research Railroad (if I’m going to run up against an Aggressive leader who’s been building more military than me, I WANT MACHINE GUNS), get Astronomy for some galleons, run 100% cash for a while, and upgrade my forces. I’d barely started the first step when Genghis came by demanding dyes. I told him no; he declared war. Our border at the time:

[Katon]

Oops. I was still seven turns from having machine guns in place. Still, I ought to be able to hold out that long, right? Especially if I could get someone into the war on my side. Unfortunately, my policy of staying out of everyone else’s wars meant that nobody was feeling strongly affectionate towards me.

I sent an axeman to nab a loose worker just inside Mongol territory, moved cannon into Rennes, and hoped for the best. Genghis killed the axeman without much difficulty, and sent a stack towards Rennes. Catapult, knight, grenadier, a couple keshiks . . . my current garrison might be able to handle this lot, especially if the cannon softened them up, but if Genghis sent anything more then I’d need a few more longbows. I sent one of the members of the Lyon garrison to help out. Good thing, too. The cannon died the second time it attacked, and fresh troops just kept coming at the city. I soon had to pull longbows out of Paris and Lyon to reinforce Rennes – and I nearly left it too late. Even upgrading all my old swordsmen to grenadiers, I was down to one solitary grenadier by the time the Paris longbow made it there. The Mongol hordes were finally thinning, though, and I was able to survive till Railroad came in and – having sold Ghandi Economics for his entire bankroll of 760 gold – I could upgrade the grenadier to a machine gun. Threat over. Now to start building my forces for the invasion of Tiflis.

It was around this point that I received a stroke of good fortune. I hadn’t been able to get any of the leaders I actually got on with to attack Genghis, but Montezuma – technically the leader of a friendly nation, but not exactly inclined to do me too many favors – decided to do it all on his own. This had two major effects: one, I more or less stopped having to deal with Mongol troops, as he couldn’t spare anything more than the occasional knight from the Aztec front, and two, Genghis’ cities got quite thoroughly pillaged. The cities themselves weren’t in much danger; Monty was well behind tech-wise, and in particular still hadn’t gotten cannons, so he wasn’t going to be beating a full garrison any time soon. I, on the other hand, did have cannons. Why stop at Tiflis? With Military Tradition and cavalry due soon, I could make a real dent in Genghis’ mainland territory. I sent a force over to Tiflis – two grenadiers, one cannon – and kept right on building troops.

Tiflis fell just as the second galleon-load of troops made it to the island. I paused for the cannon to heal, and then headed straight on to Tabriz. When that fell, all the survivors except for a minimal garrison headed back over to the mainland, to meet up with the rest of my army for the invasion of Turfan. Turfan’s garrison lasted two turns after the cannon finished bombarding; Karakorum, packed with almost the entire Mongol army, managed three turns before it fell to my hordes of barrage-promoted cannons (and cavalry, and grenadiers. But mostly the cannons). I promptly accepted peace in return for all Genghis’ cash. I’d had to divert some of my resources to keeping people happy during the war, with the result that Ghandi had overtaken me in the tech race. Washington, busy getting pounded on by Alex, hadn’t been able to get too far ahead. The situation on the mainland at the end of the war:



Of course, Montezuma didn’t feel like letting up on poor Genghis, even if I'd stopped fighting. By the time Karakorum finished revolting, the Mongols had been expelled from the main continent, reduced to one solitary iceberg:

[Katon]

So now I had the second-largest nation (after India), mixed relationships with the other nations, unexceptional culture outside of Paris, the smallest military of any significant civ, and a massive production edge on everyone else. Time to focus on the space race. I settled back, built a few workers to replace the ones who’d died during the war, and began focusing only on spaceship-related techs and their prerequisites. For the rest I’d trade with Washington, who definitely wasn’t going to be beating me to the spaceship. Industrialism came in, and factories went up all around the nation. Paris, which had finished the Iron Works shortly after the war ended, finished its factory quickly and went on to build the Pentagon, thus giving me the ability to keep a functional military together without heavy spending. From there it moved straight on to the Apollo Program, then settled into spaceship part cranking till Robotics, at which point it built the Space Elevator. The rest of my cities covered the cheaper ship parts and kept building the economy. Marseilles did take time to grab the Kremlin, thus giving me the option of cash-rushing an army in a hurry if I needed to.

And that’s more or less how the game went until the finish. Alexander gave me a nasty surprise when he declared war on me shortly before the end, but he was on the other side of the world and I promptly bought in Washington to give him something closer to worry about. It worked quite nicely: Alex landed a handful of troops next to Nantes the turn he declared, but couldn’t follow them up with anything than a couple of destroyers wandering around pillaging sea improvements. Monty threatened my distraction by declaring on America, but I decided to stop Washington from getting double-teamed and asked Ghandi to help a friend out and pound on Alex some more. He was nice enough to agree, and had just taken Delphi when the game ended. Fusion was the last tech I researched; it finished in 1988 AD, and Paris build the engine – the final part – in 1998 AD for a space win.

[Smegged]

India! What the heck, I never even saw any Indian units after my initial scouting Nice game.

[Sullla]

Katon, did you start building a settler in Paris at size 1? (Did I read that right?) Considering how long that takes, and especially on Epic speed, that may not have been the best decision; I've often found it's better to get out a warrior first, or at least grow to a larger size.

Losing a city to the barbs - ouch! They can be as tough as the AI civs, especially as the difficulty increases. There's a reason why I don't guard my cities with warriors in Civ4 as I often did in Civ3. Your military matters a lot more in this game!

Interesting that you befriended Temujin by adopting his religion, that's tough to do. The Pyramids and Representation looked like it really helped you out in getting out the tech hole, nice job there. In your game, you were able to grab the tech lead early on ("Washington fighting a losing war against Alex" being the key phrase) and reap the benefits of that. I wish that I could have done the same in my game!

I saw your coal dilemma and knew that SOMEONE was going to be in a tough spot over that one. Nice job taking on Temujin; I was highly amused by his exile to a tiny iceball.

Interesting that India became the tech leader in your game, whereas in my game it was Washington who occupied that role. In my game, India had been weakened from constant aggression on the part of Alex, whereas it appears that your Alex went after Washington instead. I continue to be fascinated at the differences in how the AI wars play out. I have yet to read a single report in which the AI left Washington totally alone to turn into a commerce monster as he did in my game.

Congratulations on your win! I hope you enjoyed this Epic.

[Katon]

Katon, did you start building a settler in Paris at size 1? (Did I read that right?) Considering how long that takes, and especially on Epic speed, that may not have been the best decision; I've often found it's better to get out a warrior first, or at least grow to a larger size.

I started the settler at size 1, while I was waiting for Hunting to come in; I didn't realize just how much jungle there was to the west, and thought that it would only be worth exploring with a scout. The idea was that I'd switch production after finishing the tech and grow the city while I built the scout. Of course, the scout finished before Paris grew, so I wound up building a warrior anyway. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea.

The Pyramids and Representation looked like it really helped you out in getting out the tech hole, nice job there. In your game, you were able to grab the tech lead early on ("Washington fighting a losing war against Alex" being the key phrase) and reap the benefits of that. I wish that I could have done the same in my game!

The Pyramids were huge. If I hadn't gotten them, there's no way I could have filled my land as solidly as I did without completely screwing over my research ability. Representation's the only way to do decent research at 50%-ish spending, at least in the early game. Even with them, my economy was kind of shaky till Currency came in.

I'm also very glad I didn't have to deal with your Washington. Alex definitely helped out there; looking at the replay he and Washington went to war about four different times; that meant Alex kept him busy, and the Greeks even captured New York in 1610 (which was the only bit I really noticed at the time). Presumably he did some fairly thorough pillaging as well. Washington still did pretty well research-wise, staying just behind me & Ghandi, but he never got the chance to run away with things.

I had a blast, both playing the game and looking to see what everyone else did with the same situation. Writing up a report's also a nice way to make myself really think about exactly what I'm doing and why; I've noticed that for other games, but this is the first time I've tried it for Civ.

[Sirian]

Writing up a report's also a nice way to make myself really think about exactly what I'm doing and why; I've noticed that for other games, but this is the first time I've tried it for Civ.

That's definitely an insightful observation.

I've got long-built habits of observing things during a game and even knowing what is worth remembering and documenting and what isn't, but it still makes me examine my moves and consider what I might have done differently.

No coal in the west... Yep. Like Sulla, I too knew that would bite some people. (Haven't gotten to that part of my own report yet. It's coming!)


I liked your report. Not a lot of screens, not tons of detail, but still very nice -- enough to follow the outline of your game. Shows that you don't have to make a Sirian or Sulla level production to post a great report.

Now I still have about fifty more to read.


- Sirian