AU207: Big Planet - Strategy, Spoilers and Comments

[BigDork]

Arrian...

I can't even imagine that number on a standard map. But I'm sure if I had that now I could make short work of my continent and put a dent in the other.

I suspect I'll learn eventually. But I personally enjoy being a builder too. My closest thing to pure warmongering is 302 and that is turning into a fun, fun game.

BigD

[badams52]

Originally posted by Arrian
I was also happy to pull off another "first" for me: the 4x elite* Cavalry army. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Cavaliers (who generated leaders 7-10) were brought together as 20hp of 3-move hell-on-hooves. Muwahahaha!

Always wanted one of those.

BigD: Sounds like loads of fun. War certainly adds much enjoyment in any civ game I play. And of course when you have UP, the enemy rolls over like trained dogs.

[Harovan]

Now that most of you finished it already, I finally started this game, with France (I love France on huge maps!) on Emperor with the PtW AU mod.

Got a kick start, using 2 floodplains and the cattle as food source, went warrior-warrior-warrior-settler-granary and after I had the settler pump ready, I rexed like mad. Had a short skirmish with Babylon to my south, which netted me 2 workers and some money. I succeeded to keep the Zulus and Germans out by blocking the isthmuses.

Later I finished Babylon and attacked the Zulus, to get some more room. Although I didn't conquer so much, as the adjacent AI land is awful (jungle and hills) and I better wait till the AIs cleared this a bit.

I was sneak attacked by the Germans, made an alliance with the Mongols against them, and the Mongols sneak attacked me too. So everyone of us 3 was at war with everyone else. Lovely. The Mongols burned one of my cities, before I could stop their success (they came with a huge SoD). After this, they luckily went more after the Germans than after me. The Germans came with lots of Knights and gave me some problems (and fairly big losses), before I could push them back.

My wars gave me 3 leaders so far, I used them for an army (--> Heroic Epic), Leo's and a well placed FP. I built JS Bach's for good and hope to build Adam Smith's too.

It's 770AD and the Ottomans just sailed over. I leveled the techs of both continents, before the AIs do it (I was lucky to intercept the first galley). Our continent didn't have Navigation yet, since I went for Banking-->Economy instead of Astronomy, for obvious reasons.

I have the tech lead (shared with 2-3 AIs) and am the biggest and most powerful civ (France 1669, Ottomans 1370, Mongols 1212). Fun game so far, although I don't yet know if I have the time to finish it. Huge map games get very slow in the industrial age.

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Well, I just finished my third turn of the war against Mongolia. I knew going into it that it was gonna be a quick war but I wasn't expecting it to go this quick. I guess after facing a massive counter-attack against the Japanese in my last war I was just expecting it in the war. But it really didn't happen.

Turn#2
I grabbed 3 cities on this turn. I got a leader. Yay!!! I used it to relocate my palace up to Berlin. This was also a good turn as far as casualties go. I lost 0 units and the Mongols lost 12 infantry, 1 rifleman, 4 cavalry, and I captured another artillery.

Turn#3
Another great round. I took two more cities. I also got another leader. Two in two turns ain't bad at all. I am saving this one for the UN. Apollo is almost complete already and the dang Koreans beat me to Fission and want more than I'm willing to give to trade for it. I'll get it in 3 turns and then just rush the dang wonder. The Mongols lost 7 infantry and 2 musketmen. I lost two MA.

The screenshot is how my game stands now at the end of the third turn.

#1-15 MA and 2 tanks about to strike at Kazan. I have several ships off the coast bombarding and also jet fighters and bombers located in Ta-tu also striking at the city.

#2-11 MA about to take the Mongols capitol for me. Once Karakorum has fallen I will be in control of the Oracle. Woo-hoo!

#3-19 artillery and 4 MI for defense. I've never really been a fan of bombardment but since the AI is just giving me the stuff left and right I might as well use it. Plus it's coming in quite usefully. Kinda changing my mind on the whole artillery strike before you launch an attack.

#4-10 MA and 1 tank. The tank just produced my leader and is going to get an upgrade. Also several of the tanks were wounded in the taking of the city. However I have a bunch of tanks back in Frankfurt that will be nice and healed and ready to go next turn. They'll be coming to join up with this group to take out New Leipzeig.

#5-5 MA and 3 tanks. These are moving with a support of battleships and destroyers taking the island cities. The cities aren't very well defended and it's not taking long at all.

Basically at the end of every turn I've been sending all my damaged units back to a Frankfurt to a)heal and b)regroup. Then I send them back up to the front where needed healed and ready to go. I usually just let the units heal where ever they are and it kinda gets disorganized pretty quickly. And a more simple war is a lot easier war.

Same as before. Yellow arrow stage 1, blue arrow stage 2, green arrow stage 3. I'm thinking 3 or 4 more turns max. And then it's time to hurt Tokugawa.

BigD

edit:forgot #5. Oops

[BigDork]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Our continent didn't have Navigation yet, since I went for Banking-->Economy instead of Astronomy, for obvious reasons.

Sir Ralph...

Umm...can you enlighten me to those obvious reasons? It's not very obvious to me.

BigD

[badams52]

I'm just guessing, but economy = Smith's = lot's of free 1 gold improvements = improved cash flow.

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Well turn 4 is over and I grabbed a lot more than I was expecting. The Mongols should only have this last turn.

War weariness started to set it. I probably had about 10 or so cities go into civil disorder. But I just bumped up my luxuries to 10% and that should do the trick. It's not like I'm going to be at war much longer.

I managed to take 4 more cities this turn. But it cost me some.
I lost 3 MA. The one that really hurt was an elite that was killed by a redlined infantry. The Mongols lost 12 infantry, 2 musket, 1 pikeman, 2 marines, 1 frigate, and 1 ironclad.

I've got 54 MA right now and more are being produced each turn. After this last turn of war I'm gonna regroup and hit the Japanese hard. My first target, their oil. After that it's just a mop up action.

I haven't decided yet if I approve of the English having a city on my continent. But I have a little while before I have to worry about that.

BigD

[BigDork]

Forgot the screenshot.

BigD

[BigDork]

Originally posted by badams52
I'm just guessing, but economy = Smith's = lot's of free 1 gold improvements = improved cash flow.

Makes sense to me.

BigD

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Well it's pretty much over. They are down to one city on the southern island defended by cavalry. I'm attacking with 4 elite tanks. Hrm, tough call there.

The screenshot shows the biggest set back I had in the war. I had 4 jet fighters, 2 bombers, and 2 MI in the city when it flipped. That was my whole air force!

One thing I noticed from this war was that the Mongols were sending their workers into Japanese territory and then disbanding them. I guess they really didn't want to become part of my slav....I mean foreign work force.

Considering what I was fighting with and against I was surprised at the number of losses I endured. This last turn I lost 3 more MA. One was to a regular musketman. But they lost 2 cavalry, 5 riflemen, 6 infantry, and 2 musketmen. All they have left is a couple of cavalry in their last city.

And now, on to Japan!!!

BigD

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Well I rushed the UN with the leader from my war with the Mongols. I decided that I'd had enough of 207 and decided to call the vote. What was I thinking!!!

So Wang is the winner. Everyone was polite with me. But I guess they just love Wang more.()

So I'll probably go back and play it out later. I'm 1 turn away from Apollo and then I'll just blast off into space. But for now I'm done. It's been a thrilling day of Civ but it's bed time. More later...

BigD

[Harovan]

Originally posted by BigDork
Sir Ralph...

Umm...can you enlighten me to those obvious reasons? It's not very obvious to me.

BigD

Basically what badams52 said.

Originally posted by badams52
I'm just guessing, but economy = Smith's = lot's of free 1 gold improvements = improved cash flow.

It's not only 1 gold improvements. With PtW, Smiths makes free upkeep for Harbors (1), Marketplaces (1), Banks (1), Airports (2), Commercial Docks (2) and Stock Exchanges (3). Together they have 10 gold upkeep, though not every city can have Harbor and Commercial docks. Multiply this with about 30-40 cities of your low and medium corruption core and you see, how obvious the reason is.

[badams52]

Oops, my mistake on the 1g improvements. I was thinking Civ 2 for a second there...forgot it was only the "trade" city improvements.

And obviously Smith's became much more important with PtW.

Origianlly posted by BigDork
War weariness started to set it. I probably had about 10 or so cities go into civil disorder. But I just bumped up my luxuries to 10% and that should do the trick. It's not like I'm going to be at war much longer.

There have been many times I've been at war and had the luxury slider up to 40/50% due to WW. One time my war lasted so long the citizens revolted and I had to switch to monarchy. I tried to switch back into democracy hoping that WW had been reset. It wasn't.

I wish after 1 revolution you could "check out" all forms of govt and see which one will work best a la civ 2.

[Theseus]

I'm reaching the end... doing an AAR is gonna take a while. I also haven;t read everybody else's yet, so bear with me.

Painful on my poor and old but trusty computer... but a LOT of fun!!

[nbarclay]

I'm finished, and since my previous posts were rather sporadic and lacking in screenshots, I'll start over from the top. I'm hoping for an AAR worthy of a huge map.

Egypt sprang forth from the valley of the Nile, lands of flood plains, grasslands, and even a few grazing cattle. Fortune smiled on her people when friendly tribesmen nearby taught us the skill of Pottery in our earliest days, and we immediately set to work on a granary. Doing so left us vulnerable militarily and with little chance to scout our surroundings, but our people valued growth above all else.

We got a bit of a scare in our early years as a group of warriors who called themselves Babylonian wandered around our poorly defended lands. But peace prevailed, and our nation was able to grow large and prosperous. We researched straight toward a form of government we would someday call Monarchy, sacrificing speed of research in favor of the accumulation of massive amounts of gold. In the meantime, since we had never taken the time to learn how to figure out how wheels worked (and since so much nearby terrain could not be crossed by wheels in any case), we started training over thirty fighting units with clubs in the hope that the same skills could later be transferred to swords.

Monarchy came in 510 BC, and with it numerous exchanges of technology. The Zulus, Mongols, and Japanese had knowledge of the making of Maps, which we lacked, but otherwise, we were caught up with the rest of the world. More importantly, we could finally start production of war chariots, a unique innovation unmatched anywhere in the rest of the world.

Expansion continued, but we saw that we would soon reach a point where peaceful expansion proved impossible. That left only one alternative: war. In 230 BC, we were ready.

[nbarclay]

Our War Chariots raced into southern Babylon with a little bit of sword support, while swordsmen converged on the tiny Babylonian towns to the east. In the south, our initial push stalled due to not having enough of our mighty war chariots ready, a mistake we vowed never to repeat. But additional troops assembled, and Babylon's fate was never in serious doubt. In the meantime, warriors were recalled from our last anti-barbarian campaigns to the northwest for upgrade to newer weapons. By 10 BC, Babylon was no more.

[nbarclay]

But conquering Babylon was merely a small first step toward the expansion Germany craved. Egypt was in its Golden Age, building war chariots and horsemen like there was no tomorrow - which, for any who stood against them, would soon be the case.

Egypt's industrious workers had been accompnaying or following closely behind its troops marching up toward the Zulu borders. Jungles in northwestern Egypt near the German border had already been roaded or cleared. If the Zulus and Germans were counting on the area's rugged terrain to protect them from sharing Babylon's fate, they were in for a nasty surprise.

Our queen and her council drew up battle plans for both the east and the west. By that point, our forces were large enough that taking on two opponents at once would pose us with little difficulty.

In the east, the initial punch was with swordsmen, followed up by large forces of war chariots and horsemen. Initially, war chariots operated mostly against German posessions while swordsmen focused on the Germans. Later, war chariots and horsemen joined our surviving swordsmen on the Zulu front.

[Note that the map I drew this battle plan on predates the Zulu war by quite a bit, as evidenced by the fact that Babylonians still exist.]

[nbarclay]

War chariots also made up the bulk of our western strike force in spite of the effect the rugged terrain had on their speed. But enough horsemen and swordsmen were involved to deal with cities war chariots could not get to. The western war was much slower than the one in the east, but no less sure.

[This battle plan uses a postwar map, with the cities that originally belonged to Germany marked with blue circles (except that I forgot to mark Germany's northernmost city). Note that there was some intermixing between Egyptian and German cities before the war.]

[nbarclay]

The war went smoothly, with reinforcements coming in faster than our valiant forces could be killed. By the end of 330 AD, both of our enemies had been forced to pay high prices in technology (among other considerations) for peace. Egypt was still not a world leader in technology, but we had made up most of our deficit from having hoarded gold and neglected research ever since we discovered Monarchy.

[nbarclay]

And here is a drawing of Egypt's empire (or what of it could fit on the canvas) after the war ended. The painter titled it, "What War Chariots Can Do."

[nbarclay]

In 360 AD, a Mongol warrior and a Mongol archer moved next to Fankfurt, a liberated German city that had no troops in range to defend it - at least not without going through the Mongol trespassers. An Egyptian messenger broke all records delivering a message demanding the withdrawal of Mongol units from our territory. The Mongols refused, declaring war instead.

The war began with the destruction of the Mongol forces in and around our territory and the capture of a band of Mongol settlers. Then Egyptian troops headed north and found that although the Mongols had knowledge of how to use pikes, their two southernmost cities were not connected to their core and were still defended by old-fashioned spearmen. Our war chariots needed no special instructions for how to handle the situation.

The fall of those cities took the heart out of the Mongol defenders. We asked Temujin if he was now ready to consider peace, and he agreed.

[nbarclay]

Cleopatra's advisors had long since ruled out Japan and Mongolia as targets for further expansion. Their pikes would have made fighting them more expensive than we preferred. But America was another matter. Egypt's vast army, with over a hundred offensive units, needed to be used somewhere, and America lacked the technology to defend itself.

But in their eagerness to attack America, Cleopatra's generals overlooked something critical. Almost the moment the war with America started, a lone Japanese spear unit escorting a settler found itself next to an undefended city that we had previously "liberated" from the Zulus. They attacked, and we suddenly found ourselves faced by an enemy far more modern than we were equipped to deal with. And as if that were not enough, Japan's newly formed corps of samurai quickly launched them into a golden age.

As Japanese and American forces advanced, we had to hand all but our southernmost American conquest and an outlying western city over to the Mongols or Zulus in order to keep Japanese forces from capturing them and using the cities' roads to speed their advance. Worse we also had to give up a few other pieces of previously conquered territory. On the whole, by the time Japan could be persuaded to agree to peace, we had lost both net territory and about a third of our military.

By the way, it's hard to tell, but the island of yellow between America and Japan in the bottom shot is the city I gave the Mongols; I wasn't about to sign an alliance that would commit me to twenty turns of war, but I was perfectly happy to give the Mongols a city that might lead to conflict. Unfortunately, Japan never took the bait.

[nbarclay]

Here's a shot of our main troop deployment going into the American campaign. The northern force consists of over thirty war chariots and horsemen. The central force consists of another fourteen war chariots and horsemen. (Both of those forces were moved into position under our Right of Passage agreement with Japan, the existence of which made Japan's attack all the more dastardly.) The southeastern force by Detroit includes a swordsman army, five war chariots, and assorted slow-movers. And a force in Leipzig south of New York (and just east of the German city of Nuremberg) has seven war chariots, an archer, and a previously captured catapult. Not shown are another ten or so healthy war chariots by the isolated western American city of Chicago (and a few more are healing from the Mongolian campaign in a city next door).

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Arrian
A couple of turns later, having made peace with Germany, I see Mongolian units coming for me. So I sign an alliance with the Mongols vs. Japan plus a RoP. That next turn, the Mongols violated our RoP and attacked me (and lost a horseman to a pikeman). Filthy jerks.

G*DDAMN, that pisses me off!!

Soren, future reference, given all the rep / attitude penalties that we humans are subject to (no confirmation as of yet that the AI civs get the same), this is just abominable behavior, and should put the given civ, whether AI or human, into an "axis of evil" category for centuries if not millenia.

Grrr.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Catt
In other words, I built them out of vanity and emotional interest - not for any legitimate strategic interest.

Catt = Apolyton's Diogenes

Don't know about the rest of you, but it continues to amaze me that Civ3 has this depth.

Kudos to Firaxis, and compliments to Catt and Dominae and everyone else who explores this side of the game.

(And yes, I will get to AU302, and we'll see how I do)

[nbarclay]

After the fiasco that was the first invasion of America, Egypt decided to focus its efforts on research for a while. Our borders remained thinly guarded, but we felt that in the absence of Japanese forces passing right by an undefended city, the latent power inherent in our size would be enough to deter Tokugawa's aggressive tendancies. Fortunately, we were right.

As the middle ages wore on, we were able to catch up with Japan and Mongolia in technology, but not to gain a decisive lead. We were the first to Military Tradition, but that was the only technology we had that our chief competitors did not.

Our first cavalry action involved recapturing the cities we had been forced to give to the Zulus to protect them from Japanese aggression. Then, once again, we turned our eyes toward America. It was a nation defended by pikes in the dawn of the era of cavalry, and would thus be little challenge to defeat.

Ironically, our battle plan for the second invasion was much the same as in the first: sign a Right of Passage agreement with Japan and preposition large forces of fast-movers. But this time, the outcome was very different.

Below is a copy of the invasion plan drawn by one of our generals.

[nbarclay]

And here's how the war actually went.

[nbarclay]

In 910 AD, Egypt's caravels just missed being the first to establish overseas contact by about two turns. Egypt ended up even with the top civs on both continents in technology, but was only a turn away from being the world's first to discover Magnetism.

[nbarclay]

Once Egypt finished upgrading, healing, and redeploying to bring enough cavalry to bear, we decided to target the Mongols. We had over sixty cavalry at the time, but considered it necessary to keep some of them back on defense on other fronts since we had so few units really designed for defensive roles.

Our initial strike went well, capturing three cities. But then Mongol slow-movers started pouring south. Turn after turn, Egyptian forces decimated their ranks, but still they came. We took a fourth city on a peninsula behind one of the first three, but our cavalry kept injuring themselves killing the Mongol hoardes (wait, weren't those supposed to be mounted? ) and so could not mass in sufficient numbers to press the attack farther. We also faced a culture flip along the way, although we quickly reclaimed the city involved.

Finally, we got together enough offensive power to capture one last Mongol city. With five cities captured,\our forces depleted, and war weariness starting to set in, we decided that it was time for peace - for now.

The war gave us three leaders, moving our palace to the former American city of Houston and securing for us Bach's Cathedral and Newton's University. Those were Egypt's either fifth through seventh or sixth through eighth wonders of the game.

[nbarclay]

After the Second Mongol War, Egypt went through an extended period of peace and prosperity. Egypt quickly pulled out to an industrial tech lead, a lead that only grew as time went on. New technologies were researched every four turns, with large amounts of surplus gold (most of it foreign) going to rush various city improvements. Foreign luxuries kept Egypt's people happy, and the Mystery of the Missing Incense was eventually solved to reveal the existence of a sixteenth race - the Vikings.

Two extremely brief wars kept the military in shape during that period. The first was an assault on America's tiny remnant - Atlanta in the far west beyond Mongol borders and Boston which had flipped before the capital was moved practically next door to it. A right of passage agreement with the Mongols, coupled with workers temporarily assigned to build military railroads through Mongol territory, ensured Atlanta's fall, and Boston was within very easy striking range. We even got a leader from the war, who went on to eventually discover the Theory of Evolution. (We waited until the AIs researched Medicine for us to even start worrying about that part of the tech tree.)