Japaneses: from the ancient to the modern

[Steve Clark]

If you recall the "First game from a friend" thread, I have this expert game playing friend who has already spent more hours playing Civ3 then I could ever have. Here is his 2nd game...

"I simply love this game. It's one of those "I was thinking about it while at work" kind of games. Actually left work early today to play it. Given my current economic state, that's a hell of a statement.

One addition I really like is that of special units. Now in an Age of Kings type game, special units are negligable because in their politically correct idea of assuming all special units throughout history are more or less equal, they would have me believe that a ragtag band of farmers from the highlands of Scotland are on par with a professional, highly skilled, trained and armed military force like the Roman legions (sorry King James ). Well, maybe in the Scottish highlands they would be, but anywhere else, it'd be a tough fight. Point is, the "special units" in Civ III occur at different times in history, making it a truly strategic decision about which leader you will chose.

I played an entire game last night as the Japanese. I started on the south end of a continent with China to my north and India to the north of them. I ran a somewhat mediocre civilization until about the middle ages when I learned how to create my special unit, the samurai. The samurai could not have come at a better time. With them, I was finally able to tip the scales in my favor and away from the antagonistic Chinese. Without these chivalrous warriors, I might never have become a major player on the world scale.

Seeing the monumental need for India's assistance and their strategic location north of the Chinese (allowing us to surround them), I got friendly with Ghandi early on. I simply gave him several technologies to keep him strong and to generate a friendly atmosphere between our two nations. But I never gave him so many techs that he was on par with me. I always made sure I was one or two ahead, and if he happened to catch up on his own, I would cease stringing him along for several hundred years. It worked. By the time my samurai made their first appearance, I was the most technologically advanced on our isolated continent (we had not yet made contact with the other five civilizations), and India was a close second --- they were my "puppet state" if you will.

Circa 1500. Chinese workers make continual excursions into Japanese territory. Japanese anvoys complain time and again to Mao, who apologizes each time but never withdraws his units. Tokugawa mobilizes a force of several dozen samurai warriors to the northern border between China and Japan. One last warning is issued to the Chinese, who react in typical polite nonaction. Japanese forces cross into Chinese territory and take the cities of Tsingtao (isn't that a beer?) and Peking without suffering a single loss. A Chinese diplomat requests an audience with Tokugawa. The negotiations are brief: Japan grants a peace treaty in exchange for 25 gold per turn, 20 turns, some spices, luxury items, iron and saltpeter. This was a highly one-sided deal.

Years later my power grew immensely based on the added revenue of this agreement, the two captured cities and eventual contact with the five other civilizations. There is no substitute for the immense bargaining power of technology. A nation can become wealthy very quickly if they are willing to sell their secrets to other states, but beware you don't make potential enemies too powerful. In no other game does the old adage, I think made famous by Michael Corleone in Godfather I or II, apply more: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." China had no idea what hit them. Up until the moment of attack, they felt --- rightly so --- that they were the most powerful nation on the continent. I put up with their units in my territory. I threw them the occasional technological or monetary bone when they demanded tribute. I stayed quiet, patient, observant. And in the shadows, behind the scenes, I had brokered a difficult deal with the Indians so that when it came time to attack, Mao had to face two fronts, not one. Had it not been the 16th century, I would've sworn I smelled naplam in the morning.

"You know that smell? That gasoline smell?"

Within two hundred years, the on again off again war that ensued between the Japanese-Indian alliance and China all but annihilated the Sino civilization. They were relegated to two small cities on the western end of the continent and never heard from again. The spoils were split between Tokugawa and Ghandi.

Enter Rome, Greece, Germany, England, Russia. When you make contact with so many new civilizations at once you feel a kind of tension. How will they react to me, will they be friendly, and are they more powerful? Will they use cannons and rifles against my samurai, or do they still spend all their time depecting hunting scenes on cave walls?

I felt a sort of confidence going into all negotiations knowing that while I might not be the most powerful nation in the world (I simply wasn't sure), I had a very friendly and strong India to my north. I made sure, very quickly, to sign a mutual defense pact with Ghandi before dealing with these Europeans. (*I should note here that it was pure chance that lead to a continent of Asian nations and another of European nations. That part of the game is totally random).

Low and behold, no one matched my technological or cultural achievements and suddenly I saw this other, larger continent as a means to become very wealthy, very quickly. Just as I had done with India, I sold my technologies to all five of the new civilizations, making sure no one ever outmatched me. Germany was already close to me, so I dealt VERY carefully with them.

Being the Anglophile that I am, I decided to pick England as my "puppet state" in what I will losely (but not accurately) refer to as Europe. In my last game, playing as Rome, Queen Elizabeth absolutely adored me. She was extremely receptive to all of my diplomatic correspondences and in no time at all became "gracious" (the highest level of affinity one nation can have toward another). But in this game, playing as the Japanese and contacting her from across the ocean MUCH later in the game, I discovered a very different, much more cautious Queen E. Why is this?

Attribute this to what I am slowly beginning to consider excellent AI. Unlike many other games where the AI opponent either doesn't react or reacts much less so to player stimulus, CivIII boasts a dynamic AI which does abide by the AI's default personality, but considers much more when negotiating and chosing friends and enemies. When I played as Caesar, the English felt they had an equal in me, having met me earlier and dealt with my small but growing empire. But when I was Tokugawa, brashly appearing over the horizon in a magnificent warship filled with these strange but powerful troops, they were not as responsive to my overtures of freindship and negotiation.

I will test this more to make sure it was superior AI and not chance, but so far so good.

Anyway, time marched on. I was still smarting from what I deemed a few diplomatic slaps in the face by the English queen. I hadn't had a war in some time and now I was the first to use gunpowder units on the battlefield.

The first thing I did was upgrade all my units at home to make sure my cities were well guarded. Next I contacted my old chum Muhatma. Mutual defense agreement made (you see they expire after 20 turns). I could not muster a similar level of trust from any of the European nations and so had to go it alone. Off went my troops, and the slow methodical destruction of the English civilization ensued.

In this, we illustrate the many faces one can have as a ruler. You can fight the "good fight" which, to some degree, represented my war with China. Or, you can indulge in pure unadulterated Hitlerism and seek war, power and gain just for the sake of your own ego. This new fight in Europe represented, as I imagne so many real wars did in the past, a testing ground for my new weapons.

Well, my arrogance was short lived. I would not roll over the English the way I did the Chinese. I discovered very quickly, after only one English town was captured with considerable Japanese blood, that the best route to take to end this thing would be peaceful negotiations. Having secured one victory, and still their superior, I came out on the winning end of these negotiations, but the world saw, and knew, that I departed from the European continent with my tail between my legs.

Better planning, more technology and a stronger coalition was required if I would ever set foot on English soil again.

And that time came not too far in the future when I discovered my own personal favorite technologies (have been since CivI).... Combustion and Armor.

My many cities began pumping out tanks like gumdrops. A new and much welcomed feature in CivIII is the ability to mobilize for war. This is a state in which all of your cities produce more "shields" enabling you to build military units and structures more quickly, but the stipulation is you can ONLY build military forces, which means if you have a city in dire need of an aqueduct or a cathedral, too bad. You're out of luck until you are in a state of peace, which could be 2 turns or 200 turns, depending on how the war goes. Mobilize for war at your own risk.

This time I did not make the mistake of thinking superior force alone could defeat the English, so even with my many batallions of tanks (I use the word "batallion" for effect, but they are not really a part of CivIII), I let lose the dogs of diplomacy. Once again, India signed a pact with me. I also got Germany to join me, which was important early in the war but toward the end there was a classic power strugle reminiscent of American and Russian efforts to split up Europe after World War II.

No one else in Europe joined me, but in this alliance between Germany, India and Japan we had the three most powerful nations. Little did I know (and I should've checked) that England had an ally in Russia, no slouch at the time, and as the first Japanese tanks rolled into Manchester, trade embargoes are being issued against me left and right from the non-combatants, India is declaring war on England, Russia is declaring war on India, Germany is declaring war on Russia and we had a nice little World War brouhaha going!

Let me sum it up in three words: simply kick ass.

Througout the war, I managed to continue a high level of scientific development. New weapons constantly entered the battlefield: infantry, artillery, bombers, destroyers, cruise missiles, jet fighters, marines, paratroopers.

The logistical problems of such a war, however, meant that despite my now phenominal technological superiority over all nations, including my allies, I could never achieve the wartime gains made by Germany who took one English city after another. The best I could do in most cases was weaken a city to the breaking point, opening the door for Germany to take the spoils. In similar fashion to the last days of World War II, my biggest concern was not whether or not I would win, but whether or not I would face a new and equally dangerous war with my former allies the moment the last English town fell.

Not wanting to even risk it, I began a major pullout from Europe. I had taken a couple English cities, expanded my empire across the ocean, gotten my revenge for Queen Elizabeth's little faux pas 350 years earlier and that was that. Back home to the world of isolationism.

Vini Vidi Vici

I never progressed fast enough or far enough to enter into a space race. The Chieftan level in CivIII ends in 2050 AD, which I don't like because CivI and II gave us until 2100. That SUCKS! But oh well. With my experience in this game I have no earthly right playing on Chieftan level anyway. I'll progress after I get sick of dominating every new game.

Anyway, I made peace with everyone in the end and scored 300 which is ABYSMAL in this game, but far better than the 77 or so I scored as the Romans in Round 1.

I shall return."

[manofthehour]

thanks for the great post. I take it this was a random map. WHo finished with the highest score?

[manofthehour]

thanks for the great post. I take it this was a random map. WHo finished with the highest score?

[CygnusZ]

The mistake was not destroying the "Indian Allies".

Let's face it, great civ's need some room to expand. If you're just stringing the Indian Empire along in terms of technology, think about what could be accomplished if those cities were producing technology for you. Not to mention those cities would increase the amount of armies you could raise without cost and thusly you could coordinate a larger scale attack.

If you want to attack a civilization on another contient, just create your entire army, throw them on ships and take several cities at once. This blitzkreig will have the other country begging for a peace treaty.

Interestingly enough, I played a game with a similar situation, where my French forces were on the Island with the English and Russian forces. England was weak and Russia was strong, but instead I attacked Russia and "forked" English territory in half. This was done so that the English town seperated from their culture would defect into the glorious French empire, while I managed to pick up a few Russian cities (I had another motive for starting the fight with the Russian's though, as they had the only source of saltpeper).

Anyway, I enjoyed reading that story.

[Ralf]

Fun reading! I can hardly wait.

I would be great if one could link these types of "after action reports" directly to the replay-feature. I found below from that release party transcript:

[ACS_MarkG] Jeff, you think it is easy to add a save button to the end-game replay screen?
[Jeff_Morris] A good idea...we're gonna to start work on some really cool replay features shortly...send me an email and I'll add it to the list
[ACS_MarkG] or is there some way to get the logged events in a separate(smaller file)?
[Jeff_Morris] Perhaps...we're planning on logging everything...

What if the replay-files not only was was save/loadable as separate files, but also had optional player-edited comments/stories added to them as well? I think it would be great!

[samsmithnz]

Well done! What a story. Thanks very much.

[Faboba]

Originally posted by Ralf
Fun reading! I can hardly wait.

I would be great if one could link these types of "after action reports" directly to the replay-feature. I found below from that release party transcript:

[ACS_MarkG] Jeff, you think it is easy to add a save button to the end-game replay screen?
[Jeff_Morris] A good idea...we're gonna to start work on some really cool replay features shortly...send me an email and I'll add it to the list
[ACS_MarkG] or is there some way to get the logged events in a separate(smaller file)?
[Jeff_Morris] Perhaps...we're planning on logging everything...

What if the replay-files not only was was save/loadable as separate files, but also had optional player-edited comments/stories added to them as well? I think it would be great!

On civ fanatics they managed to get a replay posted so it must be possible somehow.

[Nikolai]

Great AAR!!! This reminds me about the Viking scribes, they were superb, and I think we will see some like this in the near future! At least I hope...*wink, wink*

[SerapisIV]

Great story, keep 'em coming if your buddy has more Steve

Originally posted by Steve Clark
(*I should note here that it was pure chance that lead to a continent of Asian nations and another of European nations. That part of the game is totally random).

This isn't random. Firaxis said a while ago that civs with the same culture will start closer to each other the different cultures. So the Euro civs will be close while the Asian civs will be close and the New World Civs will be together. Also, Civs of the same culture type are more likely to be friendly to each other then to opposing cultures. Damn cool feature in my mind.

[monkspider]

I love your stories Steve, keep 'em up!!

[cyril25376]

Your Stories were very good, please giv'me more to read
especially when I've to wait for my own copy ...

[MDR]

So the Europe\Asia\Middle East thing involving grouping the cultures is actually a feature. I had been wondering about that. It's a good idea as far as realism goes, but don't you think it'll cut down on replay value?

BTW, that was a good story. I'll probably load up my own ongoing game here in a minute.