AU PBEM AAR: Game 1

alexman · January 23, 2003, 04:56

This is the AAR thread for Game 1 of the Apolyton University PBEM series of games. Each participant will post his version of the game here. Feel free to comment on strategy.

Participants (in order of play):
Alexman : Egyptians
Dominae : Americans
Sir Ralph : French
jshelr : Iroquois
No AI civs

Settings:
Emperor level
Culturally-linked starts off
Accelerated Production off
Small (80x80)
Pangaea
70% Water
Normal
Temperate
4 Billion
Roaming Barbs

This game was forced to end in 1500 B.C. because of a repeated crash in PTW. I have attached the save, just in case Firaxis wants to take a look at it and fix it for the next patch.

alexman · January 23, 2003, 04:57

The story of Alexman the Clueless starts in 4000 B.C. Egypt is but a small village and needs brave Warriors to protect her. After we have enough Warriors (3) for exploration and defense, we will need a place to store all the food given to us by the fertile banks of the river Nile. Surely by then our wise scientists will have found a way to build a Granary.

alexman · January 23, 2003, 04:58

Surely we cannot be the lone inhabitants of this land. Who are our neighbors? Not even our best prophets could say. But in 3300 B.C. a curious Iroquois Warrior appeared in the outskirts of our prosperous lands. He was very friendly, and told tales of a vast Iroquois empire, twice the size of Egypt. We offered to cooperate in advancing the prosperity of both our civilizations. Our scientists immediately changed focus from the Wheel to the discovery of Mysticism. The Iroquois agreed to then exchange the Wheel for Mysticism. It was a relief to have such friendly neighbors. The other two civilizations on the planet would no doubt be cooperating as well. If they weren’t, well, then we are a step close to conquering them!

Eventually, the Iroquois and Egyptian people agreed to share a big chunk of the research tree. We would research Mysticism, Polytheism, and Monarchy, so we can both switch out of despotism as soon as possible, while they would obtain Warrior Code, the Alphabet, Writing, Literature, the Wheel, Bronze Working, and Iron Working.

We would carefully avoid exchanging these technologies until we actually needed them, so that any new civilizations we would meet would not know we were cooperating. The plan was to expand, produce an army of War Chariots and Mounted Warriors, change to Monarchy, establish an embassy, and then attack our closest neighbor with our unique units, triggering a Golden Age outside of Despotism.

alexman · January 23, 2003, 04:59

By 2270 B.C. we had explored enough to know that our only neighbors were the French. The Americans were nowhere to be seen. The Iroquois-Egyptian plan would be far too easy without having to fight two other civilizations. We decided to let the French know everything, offering to continue without alliances, given the unbalanced map.

alexman · January 23, 2003, 05:00

Our memorandum to the French was meant to be something to the effect “Ha! If we wanted, we would have eliminated you, but we’ll make it interesting by breaking the Iroquois-Egyptian cooperation. No alliances from now on.” But they had the last laugh. Little did we know that valiant French, even crippled by early barbarian raids, would immediately attack our glorious, but completely unprepared for war, civilization!

alexman · January 23, 2003, 05:00

What followed was a tense buildup of force. Actually, that’s what we wanted the French to believe, but in reality we were still expanding as Iroquois forces were on their way to defend us. Not prepared for conventional warfare, the Egyptian military resorted to barbarian tactics. Our measly Warriors were once again soundly defeated by French archers, but it was fun to see the world from a barbarian’s point of view!

alexman · January 23, 2003, 05:01

When the game crashed in 1500 B.C., we were still feeling the effects of our early population lost to disease, and the city razed by the French. Our biggest strength was our agreement with the Iroquois to crush the French. We were still expanding, so despite having a barracks, our military was weak. Our only hope for the future was to occupy the French lands to the East, since there was no room to expand towards the mighty Iroquois to the West.

This game is an example of the extreme power of Expansionist civilizations in multiplayer. The Iroquois got an early settler, a huge tech lead, and established early contact. The Egyptians, eager to form a research partnership and not wanting to confront an empire twice their size, gave their word of cooperation to the Iroquois. However, if they had met the French first, they would have certainly formed an alliance with them instead. Such an alliance would have been more balancing for this particular game, and would have ultimately have given the Egyptians a better chance to be the last civ standing. But as it turned out, that last civ would have been the Iroquois without a doubt.

Harovan · January 23, 2003, 06:55

It was 4000BC, when a tribe of gallic nomads, led by Ralph the Brave, settled down at the shores of the Seine river. The location was not great, but good enough for a halfway passable start. Our immediate assets were cows, one bonus grassland and one forest, for later, after having it improved, we had one floodplain and some hills.

Harovan · January 23, 2003, 06:56

Around 3500BC the culture of the French people had become so strong, that the area of our influence expanded. This caused a massive uprising of the former inhabitants of the gained territory. The following civil war was a disaster for the French people. It lasted from 3500BC to 3400BC and destroyed all things the French built in the 500 years from the city foundation. 2 warrior units, our worker force and a big part of the citizens of Paris were killed and all our tile improvements pillaged. If took more than 500 years to compensate these losses.

Harovan · January 23, 2003, 06:57

Around 2500BC-2200BC our exploring warriors met scouts of Grandpa Jshelr of the Iroquois and warriors of Alexman the Clueless of Egypt. The French people offered their hands for friendship and trade, but were utterly disappointed by a diplomatic note of Alexman the Clueless (the later French historians called him Alex the Evil).

In this note Alex told us, that the forces of the Evil, namely the Iroquois and Egyptians, had pledged an alliance against peaceful France and would attack us together, as soon as enough of their superior mounted forces are trained. The question, if this is acceptable to the French people, sounded like mockery. Ralph thought long about his answer to the pact of the Evil. His advisors demanded him to beg for peace. But he refused. "A la guerre, comme a la guerre", he said. If they insist on war, they can have it. Not when they are ready, but right now, when our chances are more or less even. And Ralph declared war on Egypt and the Iroquois.

Our scouts were commanded to attack the newly founded Egyptian town Arrian Deceptown. Unlike our combat performance in the first barbarian wars, our warriors fought outstanding this time and burned the city of the evil Egyptians to the ground.

Harovan · January 23, 2003, 07:00

In the following years, things calmed down a little. We made peace with the Iroquois, because we knew nothing about them, not even where they live. But Alexman the Clueless refused our repeated peace offers. So we prepared for war. We researched Warrior Code, just to see, that our enemies also got this advance, probably from the Iroquois. We founded a third city and prepared our economy for war production. Around 1750BC, we were ambushed by the warriors of our barbarian neighbor. He first tried to attack Paris, but our warriors wouldn't let him advance and stopped him right before the city limits. Then he tried to ambush Orlèans, but we succeeded to get enough defenders in the city. After the Egyptians advanced in the heart of our empire and threatened to capture our 2 workers, Orlèans finished the training of our first Archer unit. The four units, concentrated in Orlèans, immediately attacked the intruders and defeated them without own losses. Our Archers advanced to Veterans for their bravery.

Harovan · January 23, 2003, 07:01

Later, in each city a barracks was built. Our scientists researched Iron Working. Our first army of diversants (3 spears, 1 archer) was ready and about to be sent, to pillage Egypt and hamper its economy. After Iron Working was discovered, a new surprise struck the French people. Although being the only people in the World able to work with iron, we saw, that we have nothing of this durable metal. Our neighbor, Alex the clueless, had plenty of it. The French were preparing to train a large army of Archers and Spearmen to attack the Empire of Evil, but the Gods decided to end our plague and destroyed the World.

alexman · January 23, 2003, 09:33

That was an impressive job of making the most of what you got, SR.

(Not to mention an impressive display of PaintShop mastery)

Robber Baron · January 23, 2003, 10:11

More, more!
Thanks for the dual account, guys. It's fascinating, to get inside two different heads of an MP game.
I just wish multiplayer PTW were more stable, allowing you to continue.
Still, projects like this thread will be invaluable to us as we try to decode the mysteries of MP.

Arrian · January 23, 2003, 10:33

Cool stuff (great screenies, SR). But I most protest the razing of the town that bore my name, by the FRENCH, no less!

-Arrian

Dominae · January 23, 2003, 11:03

I posted an AAR earlier on the PBEM section, but this is the correct place to do it, so I'm transferring it to here. My AAR is necessarily brief, as I contacted no one and so was just playing "Civ3 Economics" the whole time.

More by chance than by design, the American people were segregated from the rest of the world. With my Scout I learned this rather quickly, as my island was quite small (yet still large enough to be competitive, or so I believe). It turned out to be a mixed blessing that I chose Expansionist: although my Scout only popped 1 hut for a measly 25 gold, I learned very quickly that I could focus on being a uber-builder with no fear of opposition.

I researched The Wheel first because I like doing that in MP, then went Alphabet, Ceremonial Burial, Writing and I was just shy of Map Making when we stopped. I was going for a Republic beeline, but realised that there is not much to build improvement-wise along that vector! This marks a great difference from SP where you can just pick up almost any old tech you want whenever you need it. So I researched Ceremonial Burial in 4 turns to get Temples, Map Making to get Harbors, and I was planning to go Literature before Philosophy and Code of Laws just to ensure I would be ahead technologically.

Lesson 1: Prepare to do your own research in MP play. Plan way ahead because there is no guarantee techs will simply appear through favorable trades (like with the AI).

I've attached a screen from my start location. I'm not sure if any of you are following the Granary debate in the Strategy forum, but this is a great example of a time when a very fast Settler was the better option. I chopped and irrigated the Grassland Game tile, and built a Settler first (no Warrior!). I unfortunately lost 5 Shields in the process, but my subsequent growth was very good. If you're doubtful that a Granary would not have been better, let me say that I actually tested it out by reproducing a map in the scenario. Perhaps I would have not settled the entire island quite as fast this way (being behind my 3-4 turns in the end), but my interim research rate was certainly higher, which was very important here.

Lesson 2: Sometimes early Granaries are not best. Even if they speed up growth down the line, they reduce your early research significantly.

Dominae · January 23, 2003, 11:13

Here's a screen from the last (full) turn we played. Some point-form notes:

1. I've completed a Temple in Morristown and am planning to Palace-jump with the current Settler build in Sorenville.

2. Meierburg is my designated Granary city.

3. There is one Luxury, Furs, on the entire island, and one source is sitting under East Dawson.

4. The placement of my first four cities were based around making maximum use of the irrigated Game, which let me grow rather rapidly. The order of placement of my cities was as follows (see below for screenshot):

Sorenville
Meierburg (awesome site)
Morristown (benefits from irrigated Game, future Palace site)
St.Reynolds (accesses second irrigated Game)
East Dawson (hooks up Furs)
Magaham (again benefits from great improved tiles)
Breitkreutzia
Briggsbury

5. All in all I believe I would have had a nice productive core by the time I would have met the rest of the world. My hope was to get ahead in technology and infrastructure and contact the rest of the world before the fighting on the mainland was over. Given my jump in score, I believe the only potential problem with this plan is if I would have had to build the Great Lighthouse to cross the ocean. In that case the game would have been very tough.

Lesson 3: Being caught alone on an island in MP forces you to perfect your builder play. In general such a setup should allow you to stay in the game until contact is made, due to the lack of nearby opponents.

This was both a fun and boring game for me (for obvious reasons). I hope to bonk some heads on the next one.

Dominae

Dominae · January 23, 2003, 11:24

Wow, Sir Ralph, I've never seen expanding borders pop two Barb huts before. One would have been unlucky; two is just brutal!

Dominae

Catt · January 23, 2003, 11:45

I hope you all will do this with the other PBEM games as well!

Catt

Robber Baron · January 23, 2003, 11:52

Interesting that if Dom had been playing SP (at higher levels) he would be falling "behind" early -- but in an MP context, he was probably well ahead -- at least, compared to Ax and Sir Ralph.

Btw, how'd you end up on an island, Dom, if the setting was pangea?

Dominae · January 23, 2003, 11:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Robber Baron
Btw, how'd you end up on an island, Dom, if the setting was pangea?

Pangea maps are described as having one or two large landmasses. This helps make SP more fun, but is annoying in MP when you actually do want one big island.

Dominae

Bluefrog · January 23, 2003, 12:59

Sometimes pangaea is a bit of a misnomer in Civ3. I've usually seen one huge landmass and a smaller, separate one in the pangaea games I've played.

Harovan · January 23, 2003, 14:41

Quote:

Originally posted by Arrian
Cool stuff (great screenies, SR). But I most protest the razing of the town that bore my name, by the FRENCH, no less!

-Arrian

Theseus · January 23, 2003, 23:34

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman
The plan was to expand, produce an army of War Chariots and Mounted Warriors, change to Monarchy, establish an embassy, and then attack our closest neighbor with our unique units, triggering a Golden Age outside of Despotism.

Jesus, that's a badass plan. I haven't played enough MP... WCs and MWs and lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

jshelr · January 24, 2003, 09:32

Thanks for the directions Dom. I'm having a slow day on the uptake.

This Is The True and Accurate Story of the Tragic End of Rightful Iroquois Domination

I'm going to post this before reading the tall tales of the minor players that are recorded above:

The Iroquois were born, as they justly deserved, in a virtual Garden of Eden. Early settlers had ample access to water supplies and the main problems were not stumbling while crossing the prevalent wheat fields and avoiding the bulls while circling the many cow herds that dominated the lush grasslands. Luxuries were nearby for the population to enjoy. Their backs were to the sea, where maurading neighbors were blocked and invading ships were unlikely to appear for a few millennia yet. Just beyond the initial home valleys were tall mountains bordered by fertile flood plains, raising visions of long-run production powerhouses in the minds of the Iroquois wise men.

After building a few scouts, but by no means enough to satisfy Aeson, the Iroquois settled down to a placid but efficient Rex. Scouts brought back good news that the agreeable Egyptians were located well to the east and appeared likely to be very helpful in the defence of the homeland as well as partners to mutual advantage in the steady advance of knowledge. The scouts, themselves, contributed substantially, first by locating a settler to join our civilization and later by bringing back knowledge gained from wandering tribes of the east.

Even further to the east, the French were sighted and the Iroquois contact suggested few reasons for concern. All was going according to plan.

Trouble broke out between our neighbours as the French learned of the agreement between the Iroquois and the Egyptians to share knowledge. As often happens in human affairs, the French feared the worst and, heroically, staged a pre-emptive strike on our Egyptian neighbours, overcoming odds stacked against them to destroy a critical initial Egyptian city. The war council of the Iroquois could not help but to admire such chutzpah. But the real politic of the situation was that a sweep of Egypt by the rampaging French was not in the Iroquois best interest.

Back at the rex, however, cities were founded so rapidly that spare military units were difficult to produce and the trail to the battlefront was long and barb filled. The Iroquois decided to talk loudly and send a small stick toward the no-man's land between Egypt and France. So, they threatened the laudable French with destruction of their road and mine system if the French were to attack the wounded Egyptians.

The Iroquois had visions of soon being as large as France and Egypt together. A settler was prepared and was proceeding to claim a nearby horse resource, horseback riding already having been learned. There was vigorous debate about triggering a golden age too early. So, hoping to learn the secret of more advanced government organization first, the Iroquois were ready to balance further expansion against the speed with which a 15-unit MW stack could be produced to sweep the crude, warlike civs to the East from the rightful continental homeland of the Iroquois.

After all, we had an historical score to settle with the Americans, and, if we were to rewrite history successfully, we needed the ample resource base to give old Abe what he deserved in coming years.

Such pipe dreams all came a cropper, however, when the great God software decided the end was…………………………………….

Dominae · January 24, 2003, 09:35

Quote:

Originally posted by jshelr
After all, we had an historical score to settle with the Americans, and, if we were to rewrite history successfully, we needed the ample resource base to give old Abe what he deserved in coming years.

Nice to know the lonely Americans were targets before time even began.

Dominae

Harovan · January 24, 2003, 10:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Theseus
Jesus, that's a badass plan. I haven't played enough MP... WCs and MWs and lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

Thank God, it seems at least one can understand my ~~desperate~~ harsh reaction.

jshelr · January 24, 2003, 10:37

To Sir;

'tis said that the only thing more difficult than being completely misunderstood is to be understood completely.

jshelr · January 24, 2003, 13:00

RB wrote, "Interesting that if Dom had been playing SP (at higher levels) he would be falling "behind" early -- but in an MP context, he was probably well ahead -- at least, compared to Ax and Sir Ralph."

There is a real possibility that being on an island will be even harder in MP, to the point that a reasonable person will only play because he promised to.

The reason is that human cooperation in technology has the potential of doubling research speed, making it even tougher than chasing the AI on higher levels from an island. Even when Alexman was under duress in this game, he could always put an expensive tech on 40-turn speed and make a contribution to a joint effort.

It's not been done yet, but there is a chance that another game will see a triangle research relationship take root among neighboring civs. We don't know how these would unwind

at the other end yet, but I would not like to be the one on the outside looking in while a cooperative group gains its tech lead.

So, making an overly long post even longer, I believe most MP games with four players or more will be won by a civ that starts out in cooperation with others. It should be a "what have you done for me lately" kind of relationship. But it is fun to do the diplomacy.

Having experienced exactly no MP games from start to finish, this advice should, perhaps, be treated with a grain of salt at this point.

Dominae · January 24, 2003, 13:05

I too was wondering about my chances in this game. First: how far along were you guys in the tech tree? From your reports I'm thinking up to Horseback Riding and Iron Working, maybe Mysticism, but nothing along the Writing path. It is difficult to say for sure, but I believe that a rapid switch to Republic would have allowed be to at least keep up in tech, in spite of the trading that was going on. As I said above, the very big problem would have been if I had had to build the Great Lighthouse to meet you all. Then you probably would have surpassed me in tech. And perhaps not.

Dominae