Rise And Fall Of America:How the AI punked me

[Triumphus Romanus]

I started a game on the Activision world map. I chose the Americans vs. 8 other civs, very hard dif. level. I immediately built my first city on the initial turn(Wash DC of course). I pumped out a few warriors and then a settler. I sent the settler south with a warrior escort and formed my second city, Jacksonville(appropriately placed in NE Florida). I then met the Mexicans and established a friendly relationship by giving them gold, mainly because North America is not great for a speedy build up, at least if you stay near the coast. I didnt want any fighting this early. A few turns later, Mexico City was captured by Barbarians. Those same Barbarians who had been harassing me since the game started. I immediately sent some Warriors and took Mexico City. Now, my intent was to use Mex. City to churn out some needed units, as it was bigger than my two cities, then give it back to my Mexican friends. Well, I guess someone should have told THEM that. After Barbarian attacks thinned out my Mex. City defenses, the Mexicans took it back. Ok, so I sent a settler out from Jacksonville and settled Denver(in the rockies of course). Well, Denver grew well, but was constantly under attack from Barbarians, and they eventually took it. Several turns later I tried to retake Denver, but now the Hebrews had it, and they were more advanced than me, and I was defeated at the "Battle of Denver".
Well, tail between my legs, I decided to shore up my defenses in Jacksonville and Wash DC, and tough it out for a while then try and take the nearest city, as the North American continent was now full. I eventually had a force of 12 Cavalry and attacked Tampico. Sadly, my second major offensive was also a failure. I retreated with what remained of my force, and as I got close to Jacksonville, it was taken by Mexicans. My ragtag troops then headed to Wash DC to form up with my forces there, while I rethink my master plan. Well, while I had been messing about in the southeast and west, I had failed to modernize my capital defenses. A mere 2 spaces from the capital, my returning troops could only watch as a superior Hebrew force, of mainly tanks, exacted revenge for my assault on Denver. The capital fell, game over.
Apparently, I failed to heed the call to power :-)
...
So, it was actually refreshing to lose to the AI. I think there were 2 factors that played a major role in my loss.
1.)Barbarians constantly harassed all my cities. Fighting them off used up resources I would have normally used to build a large army. But the cretins would not let up. And they managed to take several cities, of mine and other civs. Jacksonville was actually taken once and destroyed, I had to re-settle it.
2.)The Activision world map is small, and North America is very small and congested. Settling on the east coast requires some terraforming of forests to start gardens(crops or whatever).
..
Finally, it may just be me, but I think the AI operates better on a smaller map. I did get the sense that I was being attacked, not just minor skirmishes.
The Hebrews and Mexicans actually seemed to be purposely coming after me. There was one instance where Jacksonville was attacked several turns in a row. Now that is how a human player often has to take a well defended city he wants badly, multiple stacks. I remember every time I hit the end turn button, for about 3-4 turns, the battle screen popped up. I was able to fend them(Mexicans) off, but it was after this that the Barbarians took J'ville the first time. About 3 waves of Mexican Hoplites were defeated by my fortified Samurai, but the Barbarians took advantage of my now weak defense.
One of the reasons I made the jump from Real Time Strategy games to Turn Based Civ Builder types was the scope. Huge maps, world conquest. I have up to now been playing on huge maps, even larger than the standard Gigantic. But, I may have to back it down to Regular, if I want a challenge.
Just curious if any of you have seen a difference from one map size to another.
[This message has been edited by Triumphus Romanus (edited December 29, 2000).]

[colorme]

The enemy had tanks, and you only had a couple of cities? Something is wrong here. Try playing on an easier level

[Triumphus Romanus]

Well, it was most likely the result of my tinkering with various files like strategies.txt and others. I gave the AI a bit too much of a boost. Normally I thump the AI.

[orange]

So what happened between warriors and tanks? And what the hell were the Hebrews doing half way around the world

I hate the world map, I hope someone creates a much larger one and soon.

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[Sebamez]

Hey, i had problems with the size of the world map, too! It's damn too small. I was playing Romans, and on Apenin, I only had enough space for Rome and we all know that there were much more cities in ancient times there. I hope someone makes new, LARGER WORLD MAP, and SOON!.

[Cyrius]

Didn't Activision release another world map? Like, I think it had more players or something? Maybe its bigger? Its on the apolyton site somewhere. I suppose I could go look, but that would require so much effort....

Hey man, the key to wining any civ game is city creep. There is no way to succeded when you have 1/2 the cities of every other civ in the world. You simply cannot make any one city strong enough. Especially in CTP2 where in a single turn a large stack can capture even a well defended city in a single blow, or can sit and bombard it for five turns to soften it up first. The key is to have a front line with many good cities tucked safely behind it.

I once played the incans on that map (on medium) and was very succesfull as I completely took up South America And Mexico. the US was my front line for a long time, and I allied with the Americans very early. It was a cakewalk. I fought the mexicans all the way up to Alaska, where to my dismay the inhabited a single island. Well, since SOL can't bombard anymore (I changed that, of course) and marines are way the heck up the tech scale, I couldn't attack it at all, and just had to sleep a whole bunch of SOL outside it for a long time. How annoying. (course, later I found out SOL's can waltz into costal cities and attack them. Very silly, if you ask me).

[orange]

Occupy all of S.A. and Mexico eh? So basically you had a bunch of jungle and some desert?

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[Cyrius]

Yeah,that kind of sucked. The key was to build on the coasts. In S.A., I built some cities in the Andes mountains (well, duh, this is where the incans lived ), and got them food from the ocean. They were production mongers! In the jungles, I built cities on the amazon and other rivers, which was okay. Generally jungle cities relied soley on ocean for anything decent. Bunch of trade posts though.

Desert did suck. But again, if you build a city on costal territory, it should do okay. Not much production, but thats what labourers are for. And, Deserts teraform pretty easily.

All in all it was way to easy a game. It was boring.

[orange]

ah i see....

well I looked for that larger map and couldn't find it...can you or someone post a link to it?

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[Triumphus Romanus]

I started a second game on the Activision World map, as the Americans. It was pretty challenging for a while. Mexico expands fast, and they owned most of north and south america. Also, the Scottish made their way over and run Canada. Ive pushed the Mexicans off NA, and am working on the Scots now. After that I will push further into SA. Problem is, now that I have tanks, its getting easy. A couple of 12 stacks of tanks and I am running all over them. My Navy is being challenged by both the Mexicans and a few other civs. I am spending a lot of time swatting transports away from my shores. I am looking forward to my eventual invasion of Europe and Africa. The Pheonecians are a huge power there, with control over the majority of europe and africa.
Im playing on very hard, and have passed 2300ad.

[Triumphus Romanus]

Oh, and heres a link to some user made world maps.....thing is though, I cant seem to get them to work

http://ctp2.homestead.com/

[Triumphus Romanus]

Well, ive pushed the Scots and Mexicans off North and South America. Phoenicians must have wiped out the Mexicans completely however, since they had a city or two in Africa. I took out the Scots. Now, the Phoenicians actually have me worried. After getting GlobeSat, I have scouted their territory. They pretty much rule the roost in the rest of the world. Ive seen several 10-12 stacks around various cities. They are also starting to pick at me. They even demanded money to stop pirating a few of my trade routes!!
The Greeks, Assyrians and Russians are hanging around, but the Phoenicians are slowly assimilating them.
Its almost midnite, so im outta here, have to start planning my invasion of Phoenician territory tomorrow.

quote: Ive seen several 10-12 stacks around various cities.

Yeah, you'll have to wade through a lot of stiffs. Not difficult, just time consuming.

The only real threat I've seen from those multiple stacks the AI builds is that after destroying one, your attacking force will be bombarded by neighboring Artillery and Cannon units. Your badly wounded units will be at risk, but other than that...

[Triumphus Romanus]

cdo2001,
your way may be the best way to enjoy the stock world map. Put yourself at a distinct disadvantage.

[cdo2001]

Hi, Pal,

A big advantage of starting on a world map is that u know the exact starting location of each civ after checking who are the enenmies through the score window. With AI's lousy war intelligence, this enables u to carry out a full offensive strategy. i try to test the limits of this strategy by playing japanese at the impossible/top barbarians level.

it takes me about 50 turns to research shipbuilding since japanese starts from a tiny island, reasonably accomodates only one city, without the simpliest ship, japanese can't expand at all. during the research i keep building warriors, etc, with this strategy i never build any wonders or settlers or slavers (since my sci is so much behind, by the time slaver is available, all enemy cities got city walls) i only build sometimes happiness enhancing city improvements only at those borderline happiness cities so that i can keep production, sci and food at the extreme levels.

initially, it appears AI only has one defenders in a city, so with 2-3 warriors attaching each city, i took 3 size 3-4 cities from Thai. After that, archer becomes available, so i build 3 6-stack armies with 3 archers in each army, such army in turn takes 3-4 cities from Persians. My territory expansion slows down by the time i reaches Greek, who uses full 12-stack army to defend each city, the way i defeat such defense is to build 3 12-stack armies, surrounding the city, the first 2 armies will attach the city and by the time the archers are on the front line, i retreat the army (lost 4-5 unites), and the last (3rd) army finishes the job.

Now the time is 40AD, i have been Republic for a few turns now, forgot to mention that with so many cities adn trading goods, once trade is available i give sci a huge jump by producing caravans at fast as possible to utilize all avaliable trade routes.

i am setting research goal to Geometry to build bombard units, since Athans has a nice wonder and only has one land tile connecting to it, which makes my surrounding attack tactics useless with with 6 pikemans and 6 archers.

checking the status score, only native Americans got more armies than i do, and i am already top in econ with the largest number of cities i got (assume), and my sci speed is catching up very close. My territory covers the whole asia.

Hope u enjoy my method.