Minitourney III - Spoilers

[Harovan]

I ended my game with a domination victory, after taking out America and Russia, reducing Germany to 3 cities and France to 1 at the southern island. I already had landed the first Transport of MAs to finish them off, when domination was triggered. I let England untouched. They were the strongest AI civ in my game.

I could have won the game by conquest, I had enough forces at the other continent and every turn I airlifted 10 units reinforcements (far more than I lost). But, somehow, I got sick of the game. It was not a challenge, going with MAs and MIs after Riflemen and Infantries. Oh well, what concerns this, Vels MT IV surely will be more entertaining.

My end score was 5000+somewhat, IIRC end year was 1788AD.

[dawidge]

Originally posted by Theseus
dawidge, that rocked. I would have never thought of going after France first, at least the way my game played out. I don't recall Joan having any especially great land or resources... what was your logic?

It's a shame I can't post a map, but let me approximate it

US FRFRFR USUSUS FR UKUKUKUK
USUS FRFRFR USUSUS FR UKUKUKUK
USUS FRFRFRFR ru DEDEDEDEDE UK
USUSUS USUSUS DEDEDEDEDE UK
US and DE alternate
down the sides of the panhandle
with one ru city in the middle


I'm sure there was plenty of logic behind it and I can think of several reasons off the top of my head (taken from Sun Tzu and Clausewitz):

1) attack from a position of strength. I wanted to establish a powerbase on the continent before taking on the major powers (America and Germany). While Germany would immediately be drawn into the conflict against me, they were not in a position to strike me immediately, especially after I gave them a closer, weaker target by drawing England into alliance against them.

2) Attack your enemies' weaknesses, not their strengths. If you consider every other civ to be the enemies (after all, they will be eventually), then the weak spots were (in order) Russia, England, and France. Russia and England were not directly accessible, while France was (they did have two coastal mountain sectors, unfortunately for me they were occupied).

3) Divide and conquer. By arranging to pit the two strongest civs (america and Germany) against each other, they would both be weaker when it came to be their time.

4) Take only what you can hold. France was quickly conquerable. This is related to #1. I could capture France's cities and occupy them rather than razing them (I avoid razing whenever possible. Razing and rebuilding costs two pop and 30 (?) shields for the settler. The two population represent tax money down the drain, and lower shield production for approx 20 turns while the pop regrows, while the shields represent attack units not being built. Razing is inefficient in my eyes. I only intentionally razed 1 city during the game (which I noted was a slip of the keyboard, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I did it on purpose because it had a lot of crossover into Giza, which I *needed* to keep for the FP). The terrain favored me in taking France, while America had cities on the distant panhandle which were protected by terrain. This represents a core group of cities which would become loyal, quickly.

5) Keep your populace happy. Deny resources to your enemies. JSB was in Paris. One extra happy person in every city goes a long way to alleviating weariness. I was in Democracy and had no intention of changing.

5a) Luxuries keep the people happy. America had one of each luxury that I didn't have, but I couldn't get some of them because America was trading them to other civs. Since America was already trading some luxuries to me (and was giving me 100 gpt to boot), they would happily trade the extra luxuries to me once they were at war with the people they were currently trading them to.

I'd like to think I did it for all those reasons, but the absolute truth is that my decision was much more visceral and emotional. France had a city on *MY* continent. I'm sure that Sun Tzu and Clausewitz would say something about "do not leave yourself exposed to counterattack" or "secure the homefront", but Amiens was a Kuwaiti thorn in my Iraqi hide. It offended me. I used them (for the contacts and initial medieval tech), abused them (give me grenoble (the colony on the N island, which would be a pain to deliver troops to), or else - refused), and threw them away (by making them the first target).

Does anyone have a CLUE why the other continent could turn out so differently across the various games??!! The only things I can think of are the RNG seed and Great Wonders.

The only real surprise is Olaf's game. Catherine got spanked in everybody else's game, but turned into a real powerhouse for him. I know that in my game, Germany and America had the shield-rich resources to build wonders and capitalize on them. But they just couldn't keep up with my continent-spanning powerbase. Once I took out Egypt, every GW was mine. Before that, I didn't even try building any, because I deduced that the other continent was outstripping me in tech. They were almost a full age ahead. Thanks to making first contact with France, I went from having four medieval techs ( through chivalry and engineering) to tech parity at Metallurgy+Econ+ToG, one tech away from the Industrial age. I was railroading during the 20-turn peace with Egypt.

[BOLD]If Soren is paying attention[/BOLD], the AI needs to be tweaked to try to completely eliminate its opponents to secure loyalty from the captured cities and to try to establish a larger powerbase during the industrial age. The rampant tech trading that occurs during the ancient age tapers off during the medieval age and practically goes away during industrial. This is likely due to the fact that medieval and industrial wonders are much more valuable than ancient ones, but they need to cooperate a bit more, especially at the higher difficulty levels.

[dawidge]

Another thing that disturbs me was that the AI surely saw my 5 undefended transports of MA hovering just outside America's territorial waters. A couple of frigates, privateers, or subs could have (and should have) taken them out. I admit that I was rolling the dice on sending them without escorts, but the AI is incredibly poor at Naval strategy. I seldom bother to build anything but transport-type ships, building offensive navies only when I can get some significant advantage out of it. In mt3, I only built transports. No galleys, caravels, or galleons, and certainly no offensive navy. I'm sure that will have to change for PTW, but once you have airports, there is little point to an offensive navy. Had I been in a position for trans-continental invasion in the medieval age (:nods to txurce) I would have needed a real navy and it would have been galleons defended by frigates.

[Theseus]

Well, I just finished in a remarkably boring way.

Having captured the NW American peninsula with Cavs, I waited for Tanks.

I went on the attack with a fairly massive military, and continued to roll over America, handed Joan her resignation, dropped a horse on Cathy, and shot Bismarck in the head.

Somewhere along here I got MAs.

I didn;t want to waste any more time, so I went after the big dog, Liz (pun intended).

3 turns... MA against Infantry and Riflemen. Fired for effect with Arty and Bombers, but frankly I could have not bothered.

Only interesting events:

* 6 GLs in one turn (used for Factories and Police Stations)
* 30 elite and vet Cavs can still take out a 12+ pop city with Infantry (I figured what the hell...)

MAs are unbelievable.

I did achieve part of one of the AU trials, ending the game with all GWs.

In watching the replay, my obsession with Killer AIs has increased... why the hell didn;t England expand??!! The size and tech leader, good GWs, weak as crap neighbors...

Naval power, of which I had abundance, was pointless. I even threw a couple Privateers out there to get some action... froze one in the South Seas, and no AI even checked it out.

4939 points in 1740AD, domination.

My game sounds remarkably similar to Sir Ralph's. The early game was fun, but the end dragged.

[Jawa Jocky]

The end game on this dragged on way too long. But I'm finally finished.

Domination in 1902 with 4427 points. Usually I would just conquer the starting continent and b-line for SS. It's much quicker thats for certain.

A couple notes on my game being different.

I got behind on tech by fighting too much, but made a powerful empire on my continent.

The USA was wiped out b4 I invaded.

My republic got severe War Weariness and forced me into anarchy during my initial drive. I ended up making peace with Germany, who turned around and started eliminating Russia (panzers are quite powerful). I joined in on the action and made MPP. After we killed Russia I dragged Germany into a war to finish off France. After that I spent 10 turns stocking up MA and then used a massive ROP violation to take out Germany in one turn.

[Jawa Jocky]

oh yeah. England was weak in my game. France and Germany would have split that continent if giving enough time.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by dawidge

...

The only real surprise is Olaf's game. Catherine got spanked in everybody else's game, but turned into a real powerhouse for him.

As I wrote in my post above, Russia was not really a strong civ until the Egypts were gone. OK, they invaded France, nuked Berlin as my anti-German allies and killed the Japs after I had turned them into OCC, but the only thing that made them hard to kill was the rough terrain in their territory. Took a while to pass even with MA, and helped them with defence bonus. What made them look strong on the minimap in my post above, was the fact that they were quickly rebuilding the German land I had razed. These new cities were easy meat when my Russian war started, an could be razed by only 1-2 MA each.

The Americans were slowly coming back from OCC but had no resources, as I had pillaged and block most of it on their continent. They died in 1 turn when I decided it was time.

My final score was 3464, achived in the 1940's. That was my third best score until then, but I seldom finish a long game, as they tend to grow boring. I could had done 100 turns of milking to see how future tech would add to the score, but that would be really lame.

My next game took just 20 minutes, and ended by conquest in 2700 BC! Score 14467. The scoring system was not made for builders, was it?

[Catt]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
After more than half a year of intensive Civ3'ing, I finally have seen Him. I could not believe it first, but it was true. Undoubtly, He was it. The one and only Anti-Tank Spearman!

I still have not seen Him, but I believe I just saw something even more amazing - the Untouchable Rifleman! Alexander's cavalary army (made up of 3 veterans - 12 HPs) had just healed completely after taking Odessa. A pair of Russian riflemen approached Odessa across the plains (10% defense) -- they didn't even have time to fortify before the Greek Cavalry Army descended upon them. The lead rifleman, a healthy veteran (4 HPs) took the initial defense. Despite repeated rushes, Alexander's mighty cavalry army ultimately retreated from the battle, having lost 11 of its 12 HPs - the Untouchable Rifleman remained unscathed - not 1 HP lost!

(BTW, I calculate the odds of a 6-attack unit losing to a 6.6 defense unit 11 times in a row as 0.08%, or less than 1 in every 1000 occurances versus a vet tank losing to a vet spearman in open plains at better than 0.5% or 1 in 200 times . I have a saved game too! )

Catt

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Catt
(BTW, I calculate the odds of a 6-attack unit losing to a 6.6 defense unit 11 times in a row as 0.08%, or less than 1 in every 1000 occurances versus a vet tank losing to a vet spearman in open plains at better than 0.5% or 1 in 200 times .

It was a veteran Modern Armor vs. a regular Spearman. The MA retreated after losing 3 hps. The Spearman lost 1 hp. The city I attacked was size 7..12 (not a metropolis).

But it was not really Him, because a retreat is not considered to be a defeat.

[Catt]

Yes - I wasn't really trying to compare it directly to your opponent's valiant spearman, but, with the mythical "spearman in open plains" we hear so much whining about .

(I just used your post because I remembered it from MTiii and, since the thread was largely dead, didn't feel bad about posting OT -- I was NOT going to start a new thread and invite all the "I HATE THIS GAME'S COMBAT" folks to pile on with tales ).