What is the worst hammering you've ever had?

[godot]

I played a game recently on the medium premade world map and got HAMMERED! I got stuck starting on Australia and made three very early attempts at getting a foothold on another continent. Each time I got creamed because, apparently, I didn't kiss the other leaders' *sses enough to avoid getting obliterated. They were eveywhere with elephants and archers and.... It was horrible! I ended up resigning, sigh.

I'd like to hear your horror stories...

[finbar]

Sounds like you reckon Australia is a pile of crap to be escaped at all cost. Join the club.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by finbar
Sounds like you reckon Australia is a pile of crap to be escaped at all cost. Join the club.

LoL. I remember getting put on a south pole that was all glacier. Ouch. . In fact, I don't think it was possible to win. . Of course, in that game, I got Alpha, CoL, CB, Monarchy, BW, Currency, Trade, and HB Riding as starting techs.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

*sigh*

A while ago, not as long as I'd like to pretend, I was playing on the earth map, Civ 2.42 - 7 Civs. Started as the Aztecs and had nobody bothering me except the Germans, who started in South America (a restart, I think).

Now bearing in mind that this was in my 'peaceful expansion' phase, I figured I was all set. Lots of space, nobody bothering me... perfect. Except I kept getting messages that the Carthaginians (the b*st*rds) had started X or Y wonder. Naturally, I had stored up plenty of caravans for just such an emergency, so I still managed to grab the key wonders. The first real signs that I was in trouble were those Carthaginian ships cruising my shores - frigates, when I was still driving around in caravels. Those musketeers on my shores were pretty hard to get rid of, too... never saw _those_ before!

Anyway, to make a long story short, I was unable to eject the Carthaginians from my shores, and managed to lose some key cities (one with Colossus, and HG I believe) through some foolhardy attacks ("but there was only a tiny sliver of red left on his shield - he shoulda gone DOWN"). Before I gave up, I cheated and looked at the world map. Carthage was huge. I'm talking most of Africa, plus Europe, stretching into India and Russia. I don't remember the city count but I recall it being at least 40 - they were well into the 'leftover' city names...

Now, I wish I'd saved that game, just because it would have been satisfying to win it now. Anyway, my best guess is that Carthage managed to wipe out France and Babylon and steal their techs. I can't see them getting that big and that advanced that fast, otherwise.

Why the sigh? The game was on King level

STYOM

[Gatekeeper]

Everyone:

Hmm ... I don't recall ever being wiped completely from the map, but I have gotten into several nuclear wars with AI civilizations. It's really bad when they have nukes and you don't — nor can you defend against them.

God, the planet looked like hell after a few large-scale and multiple exchanges. (I was playing a large Earth map at King and Emperor levels.)

CYBERAmazon

[Chris 62]

The first time I played on Diety, as the Americans, I had just built my second city, and had a unit built in it delivered from my capital, when it hit. Barbarians showed up, wiped New york off the map, and sudenly two Mongol chariots showed up, and wham, America was down the drain. What did I learn from it? That the AI can be a bastard! (But it did make me a better player )

[The Mighty Asterix]

Once I start getting hammered I lose interest and start another game...

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Nuclear war, global warming... Once I built my grand empire on extensive coastal plains, safe behind rough terrain. While I grew and grew, all seemed to go well. Then as the modern era approached, the Germans on the other side of the mountains crushed all their neighbors, then turned hostile on me. After a while the nukes started flying, and the AI never cleans up pollution in time. Global warming hits, and my almost-fertile lands turned to desert and coastal swamp. Cities shrank as half my population starved. It was ugly. Needless to say, my power rating dropped as the corpses piled up. As the cities starved, my engineers were disbanded, so pollution couldn't get cleaned up. I waved the white flag after a while...

[Ecthy]

Hi!

I never got wiped out, I always retired early enough

[Devil's Advocate]

I once lost a game I had just started. I had used my settler to build my capitol, and barbarians came and took over my city before I could stop them. How embarrising.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Mary-Ann
I once lost a game I had just started. I had used my settler to build my capitol, and barbarians came and took over my city before I could stop them. How embarrising.

I never heard of that happening before. That must be a first!

[Captain]

Hi there,

I've never lost a non-scenario Civ 2 game, even on deity (but Civ 1 was a different story) - though admittedly I have failed to achieve complete victory by not conquering the whole world in time or launching late (Not the worst, but the most frustrating was this one nomad game where I missed AC by only 0.5 years!!!) Still, I've always been the most powerful in the end game b/c when I realize there's no way I can win totally, I just start pounding on the most powerful civs - my own civ goes to the crapper but theirs are usually so much worse after the onslaught!

But I've never played a full MP game (so hard to find other players to keep up such a long game), so it's not as impressive when you know I'm only beating the AI.

I have lost a couple of times in civ 1 when I was a total newbie. My "best" hammering story is when I was building this nice peaceful society on a mostly grassland island. My most powerful unit was the knight. I had four of them. I had 8 cities, all between 5 and 8 in size, defended by 2 phalanxes each. I thought I was doing well, tech was coming maybe every 5 or 6 turns. Built a couple of ships and started exploring. Maybe six squares away, I hit trouble. Aztec? (were they in civ 1?) cruisers blow my navy out of the water. A few turns later, mech inf and tanks land on my shores. My best efforts to reclaim my island or even just hold my cities is trashed completely within a few turns.

It seems the conditions for midgame-lategame loss were mostly the same, isolation on an island.

[Dr.Oogkloot]

Probably in a scenario....maybe WW2 with Spain....

[Paul Hanson]

4000 BC: The English found London
3960 BC: German warriors take London. English are wiped out.

Bugger.

[Fistleaf]

I was playing OCC Deity level on small map. The aztecs built the Copernicus and Issac newton wonders because I have no money to rushbuild. Because of that I failed to increase my technological superiority. Then the Vikings turned fundamentalist and swept through the whole map, destroying all the other civilizations. I gave the other civs all the military technologies but it was too late to save them. The Vikings eventually gained Space Flight while I was lagging by one or two techs. Since I have already lost, I built many nukes and launched them on the Viking cities, but several of them had SDIs. After that, the Viking conquered the whole world.

[Blaupanzer]

Mary-Ann, That has happened to all of us at Deity, I suspect. Either barbs or another civ finds us prior to sufficient defense and down we go. Note that one warrior is superior to all barbarian comers if you only have one city. This amazing trick can be very useful if you spot them wandering early. Those early guys can also indicate a nearby civ (that triggered the barbs out of a hut). The AI civ is not limited by the above rule. Their horsemen will eat your poor warrior.

[War4ever]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Mary-Ann, That has happened to all of us at Deity, I suspect. Either barbs or another civ finds us prior to sufficient defense and down we go. Note that one warrior is superior to all barbarian comers if you only have one city. This amazing trick can be very useful if you spot them wandering early. Those early guys can also indicate a nearby civ (that triggered the barbs out of a hut). The AI civ is not limited by the above rule. Their horsemen will eat your poor warrior.

actually any unit in your only city will survive barbs..... just not necessarily the ai

[Father Beast]

I got plastered really good playing on deity+2 one time. I built my city and the Zulus showed up with a bunch of elephants in 2100 BC demanding my entire treasury for a cease fire. I told them to stuff it and down I went...

[East Street Trader]

The worst hammering is the any recent hammering so I'll tell the short tale of the English civ I founded last week on what turned out to be a small island with room for about four perfectionist cities.

London got founded, made a settler which marched across the island on the roads laid down by my second settler and founded York. At this point pirate archers landed next to London. I had 24 gold in the treasury so could not employ the run away, run away ploy. London fell.

My surviving city, York, now faced a succession of barb archers generated by London, its close neighbour on this small island.

It turned out that the rule about a defending unit in your only city being invulnerable to barb attacks holds in this situation so my NONE settlers came into York and saw of assaults until I could build warriors, foresting the city square to help less favoured defenders in the future.

In preparation for getting a second and third city down I built a barracks and then a plalanx. This noble unit then survived a millenia or three of barb archer attacks - sometimes three or four in a turn.

I was able to found two more cities in the hinterland behind York.

But the real trouble was that I was not being offered the option of building a replacement palace. So corruption was killing me. I had to set tax to 50% to avoid the barracks being sold which meant many turns went by without my generating a single beaker. Once I had slowly built up a dozen or so coins I could go in for a bout of research but it was sloooowwww work.

Turned out that building courthouses helped, but progress remained slow.

Had I appreciated just how slow it would be I'd have sold the baracks after building the phalanx.

But I reckoned that retaking London might restore my palace so I made my research goal horseback riding.

I celebrated the birth of Christ by building a mighty army of three horsemen and destroying the dozen or so archers who infested the island (those which had not immolated themselves at the gates of York) then rooting out and putting a summary end to those roystering in London.

Revenge is a dish said best to be eaten cold and true it is that much celebration took place in the land when the brave and victorious horsemen rode through London's liberated streets.

Now came the disappointment. Buckingham Palace had been destroyed and I was still not offered the option of building a new one.

Maybe there is a pre-requisite tech. (Masonry?)

Anyway I contemplated spending another millenia or two researching the sea going techs and doing all that would be needful to achieve the heady heights of Monarchy.

Maybe it would have been an achievement to get that far but, exhausted by the long barbarian wars, I did not have the energy and tamely gave up.

A tale of glorious (if slow) victory over the pirates, therefore. But, had I retired rather than quit on giving up I do not think my civ's achievements would have made much of an impact on the Hall of Fame. I never even met an A1 civ.

One small disappointment is that I have read of some comments which the advisers make in unusual circumstances and thought I might get some such in this game. But, no, just the usual stuff about torches of knowledge sputtering and talents going to waste.

In my current game I started on a huge specials and huts rich continent, confined the neighbour Babylonians to one city, and allowed myself to build both HG and the Collosus in my second city (I usually apply a self denying ordinance to this as it is too powerful). I have about thirty good cities down and am starting to work out the timing for a 50 - 100 AD Republic to be followed by some profitable ship chained foreign trade, a short bout of superironclad conquest and then a cash rich 1000 AD Democracy.

Quite a contrast.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by East Street Trader

Now came the disappointment. Buckingham Palace had been destroyed and I was still not offered the option of building a new one.

Maybe there is a pre-requisite tech. (Masonry?)

Yup... Masonry it is. I hate when that happens... the number of times I used to play Germany on the world map and have the Russians take Berlin...

I assume you were on Deity, EST? Good story. Kudos for being able to admit to it!

STYOM

[Darkknight]

We are gathered here to commemorate and honour our late discible the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

[East Street Trader]

I suppose an answer might have been: to stay at one city; make Masonry the research objective; then rebuild a Palace; only then bother with more cities.

Also I over-estimated the danger from the barb archers. My vet phalanx entrenched in forest terrain was not stretched to beat them off. He would have had a decent shout at surviving without the vet status confered by the barracks and, if he survived, would have become a vet in the course of time anyway.

With better play I could have got to equality with the wait for Jesus challenge (or probably better).

I have thought for some time that all the cheats which are built in to aid the A1 against a succesful human player are matched by corresponding cheats which hold the A1 back when the human player is floundering. Certainly the received wisdom is that the A1 research rate drops if the human player turns his own science rate down. So, next time, I'll try harder to recover.

Don't under-estimate the value of that free Palace before Masonry, though. It is a very valuable asset. Another game I gave up on was one where I got an advanced tribe from a hut before founding. You don't get a Palace then either (actually I think that was a glitch because I have seen only one other reported occasion when this happened).