Babylon and On - Spoilers and Strategy

[jshelr]

Question: how long do you have to hold territory before it counts for a domination win?

Going into the 20th century, Babs had taken America's main island, China, and had a beachhead in India. Everyone stayed well behaved on the nuke front.

I did have a flip in a city that was restarted using Aeson's recycling blitz. That delivered an Indian settler and when the city was size two, with one Indian citizen, it flipped back to India, although it was well behind the front lines.

Most of India on the main land mass was gone by 2015. Going to have to take on Japan, the largest remaining civ, soon.

We've got two large stacks of radar artillery backed up by MAs. Each stack wipes out a city every two turns with few MA casualties. I'm having fun, and it's going to be close on both the histograph and domination. Clock may be ticking too fast.

[Aeson]

You have to hold 66% of the land and coast tiles till the next turn (after the flips have been processed). Chiefpaco has written a great little program called mapstat that will look at a save and tell you how close you are to the domination limit.

[jshelr]

Aeson
Thanks for the help.

[Txurce]

I need some help as to whether I'm encountering a bug, or missing something.

In a nutshell, in 1872, just after America, China and India declare war on Germany, I find myself at war with them as well, even though I didn't declare war, have war declared on me, or have a MPP with anyone. I reloaded and the same thing happened. I've attached the game saved at 1868, so you can look at anything beforehand, but obviously you can just zip ahead.

Pretty weird.

[alexman]

Txurce, the same thing happened to me!
See my earlier post in this thread.
No idea what's going on.

[jshelr]

Is this bug simply not receiving the war declaration pop up? Are you at war on the F4 screen? Does the enemy know they are at war with you?

If you are only not receiving the pop up in a timely manner, it's not so bad as long as you realized you were at war promptly.

BTW, I loved this note from Vulture, "I actually made a big profit by being the middle man in the oil business this way, buy buying oil from A and selling to B rather than letting A trade to B directly." Our business includes looking for arbitrage opportunities in financial markets and now I'll have to drive myself crazy by looking for arb opportunities on the Civ III trading wheel.

[Txurce]

No, I'm at war and they know it, which is too bad, because I was doing good business with the Germans, and they were near the bottom of my list of countries I wanted to attack next. I may just leave them alone with their other antagonists, and try to negotiate a favorable peace asap.

As to what's going on with Alexman and my game: I think Vel is secretly trying a mod out on us!

[vulture]

In the previous installment, I'd captured all of China (aside from one city that the French nabbed before I got there) and had just established my beachhead in India. India had very kindly parked a tank next to one of my cities, and when I wanted to go to war with them I asked them to move it. They declared war, saving me some war weariness. They lost their main cities in rapid succession. One of them flipped back, taking one of my MA armies with it. C'est la vie.

I decided near the start of the game that once I'd achieved tech parity I'd sell off all science improvements. Okay, this hurt my culture and exposed me to some danger of culture flips. On the other hand, it saved me almost 50 gpt in my ten mainland cities. If someone offered me a slightly lower chance of culture flips for 50 gpt I wouldn't take it, since they're pretty easy to work around when you have masses of MA, so I figured that it was worth the slight risk for the extra cash. Only two cities flipped in the entire game, and they were both recaptured the next turn. I also made efforts to reduce the flip by using the 'Recycling Blitz' method, to either build settlers in large cities, or temples in small ones (1-3 pop) that could be starved down to 1 quickly. After conquering China I assumed all my captured cities would be hopelesly corrupt, so there was nothing to gain from them growing. I just wanted them to claim territory, so I starved them to size one (to minimise culture flips), or abandoned and resettled them, and rushed a temple to get the border expansion in 5 turns to claim as much land as possible. So despite having terrible culture, I only suffered two flips (and one of those was in a size 8 city I foolishly decided to keep). I did keep large cities with plenty of wonders in but starved them down as soon as possible.

Once I'd taken the main Indian cities, there were only a few small ones left scattered in what used to be Japan, beyond my immediate reach. Germany owned almost all the rest of that continent (Russia being anceint history by now). Right on cue, Germany demanded Aluminium, and declared war when I refused. Very convenient of the AI to keep declaring war just when I want to fight them. Since I'd just positioned my armies for a German offensive, they lost 4 towns in the first turn. I swept them of the continent pretty rapidly, and just for good measure broke the peace treaty with the Indians to take their last two towns as well. Also captured the two surviving Japanese towns on a small island.

Had to deal with the bug whereby I found myself at war with America (with no decleration) on a fairly regular basis. Judging by the lack of war weariness from this, it wasn't counting as though I started the wars, so it wasn't too bad.

Once the dust settled, Japan and India had gone the way of all flesh, and poor ickle Bismark was down to two cities on a small island (maps coming in a later posting). I'd been persuing a policy of fighting the smaller civs first, but now we were down to four, and I had to take on either of the superpowers, America and France. Since I'd been at war with America for most of the game (stupid bug) and never been at war with France, who were still polite, I decided that America had to go. Plus they had more land area, which meant I could try for a victory without ever having to invade the French.

Incidentally, the war with the Germans (which France was also fighting) featured the first time I've ever seen the AI use marines for an amphibious assault. Annoyingly, it was in a city I was about to take. I parked a stack next to a German city (with only rifleman defence), and just before I could swarm in, the French turn up with the marines and walk straight in off the boat. Grrr.

The American war went very quickly. Having 10 MA armies (4 each), 36 MA, plenty of spare MI and nearly 40 radar artillery (mostly captured) has that kind of effect. Plus enough transports to land the whole lot in two turns. The first landing was at the west end of the American home continent. The second one on the southeast corner, in the mountains. Neither saw any serious mobile defence from the Americans,so we happily chewed out way through their cities at high speed. Eventually made peace leaving them with 3 cities on one island, and one on another small one.

A few turns to brink transports to the necessary locations and to heal up my armies, and then I broke the peace treaty and invaded America and Germany at the same time. Worked a treat. Took the 3-city island in one turn, and trashed the incorrectly spelled Heidelburg. And just when I was about to wipe the last city of both countries off the map:

You have achieved a domination victory.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner. The year was 2033, so I still had plenty of time to play with. Not as hard as it looked to be honest. Another notable first was when I saw the Germans use a helicopter to drop troops next to one of my cities and also pararoopers dropping to the same location.

I noticed that the radar artillery were very useful in the mountainous terrain, where the MA couldn't get straight to the next target. The artillery could get on to a nice hill within range, and the MA would struggly over the difficult terrain to the edge of the town. Next turn, heavy bombardment, followed by MA mopping up. In mountains, the artillery could basically keep up with the MA even when the MA were going at full pelt. Only in the flatter regions were they left behind.

As I said before, I never really saw any defensive stacks come at me, aside from the Chinese one (mentioned in the previous post, which provoked the nuclear war). Possibly the fact that most of the civs were constantly at war with all the other civs (or it seemed like it) wore down their excess units. Or maybe it was the fact that once the nuclear cat was out of the bag, I'd occasionally nuke any large AI cities (but not French ones) just to keep them busy.

It was also interesting to make a mental comparison with fighting wars with a civ2 mentality. In this one, I got nuked massively, got one more city hit later on (and I'm pretty sure that the SDI also stops tactical nukes from subs, 'cos I saw it happen), regularly had my road network near the American coast bombed to hell, lost stealth fighters, shot down in large quantities (they were mostly captured in the first place though), and took heavy casulaties sometimes amongst the MA units (I even lost two MA armies - it's depressing to have an 18 hp army trashed by an MI, and then have a regular MA take out two MI immediately afterwards). If I'd taken even a fraction of that kind of damage in civ2 I'd have thought it a major disaster. Now I've become used to not being able to fight wars that don't cost me a single thing.

Random screenshots coming up in a few hours...

[vulture]

My first picture is a collction of world maps taken from the game replay, at various key (for me) moments. In retrospect, I should apologise to anyone who is red-green colour-blind. The first is after I had taken out China (not interesting for a world map) and had just established my beachhead on the Indo-German continent. I took the nine southern Indian towns before turning my attention to Germany.

Second is the fall of Berlin, which was when I began to realise that I actually had enough time to go for a domination victory. As it happens, I thought I'd need most of the remaingin 45 years - in the end it took 28.

Making peace with Germany (no. 3) only happened because I only had one MA army on the remaining German island, and they had a lot of MI there. Plus war weariness was becoming a bit problematic (all this warmongering was in a democracy, for pollution clearing reasons).

Lastly, victory! (I played one more turn after this just to capture the last American and German cities, so there was only me and France left. France was friendly the whole game).

[vulture]

Next up, the final power histograph and world rankings. There was now way I was going to win a histograph victory - even with America wiped out, I wasn't closing the gap on their score fast enough to overtake them before 2050.

[vulture]

And lastly, a comparison of Babylon from 1570 with Babylon from 2033, mostly to show the rather catastrophic effects of global warming. Welcome to the Babylonian desert. I've just looked back at my radioactive Babylon screenshot from earlier, and frankly it looks rather tame compared to some of the landscapes later in the game. Parts of Germany were just solid pollution over tens of squares. It was really ugly.

Anyway, as you can see, the beautiful virgin Babylonian grassland has become almost entirely desert, Babylon itself is no longer on the coast (although its harbour still works to give an extra food per sea tile used). Production in the mountain-based city (whose name I forget and can't read from the blurred shot) dropped from producing an army in 4 turns to requiring 6 turns, due to the inability to support a large enough population to work all the mountain tiles. It was a real mess.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by vulture
...and trashed the incorrectly spelled Heidelburg.

I saw that a few games back, and wondered whether it was spelled right. I can imagine someone actually living in the city is sure of it . You could of course have renamed it instead of razing it, but that wouldn't be half as rewarding, would it

Great victory, vulture, and great story as well

DeepO

[vulture]

Forgot to mention: not only did I see the AI using the special abilities of marine, helicopters and paratroopers, I also saw the Indians move a stack of artillery and mech inf onto a mountain overlooking one of my recently captured towns and start bombaring it. And when I tried to bypass them through the mountains to the next town, they started bombaring my stack, doing enough damage that it proved to be less trouble to try and take out the stack (which cunningly positioned itself in German territory). AI cruise missile use was a little less intelligent though. A cruise missile against an army? Please; that's not scary at all. And against a full health veteran battleship - that's annoying, but a waste of a missle. If you can't destroy your target, don't launch it.

Still, nice to see the AI making sensible use of the special abilities of its units.

EDIT: Did anyone else know that you can load cruise missiles into transports? I suspect this is a bug of sorts. You can't load them using the (L)oad command when a boat is in port, but when it is in the ocean next to the coast you can move a cruise missile in. Doesn't work with tactical nukes unfortunately.

[jshelr]

I also encountered the war bug everyone mentioned above.

After taking the Chinese Island, the large American Island, and all of the main continental land mass occupied by Japan, India, and Germany, Babylon toiled onward to take the NE islands above the continent and about 2/3 of the large island NE of the Bab homeland. Domination win expected at every turn. My map looked nearly the same as Vultures above, but France was not nuked and had a large pop. I was higher on the histograph, but that was because my game ran to 2050.

“MapStat can compile the map and population information of a CivIII save game. With this information, it displays precisely how many more tiles and city population each Civ needs to trigger a domination victory. Numbers may also be displayed in percentages.”
http://64.246.32.51/~admin1/forums/s...threadid=44644

Population! A haven’t got any #@%&^^$# population. RTFM confirms my fears.

I have not run the program yet, but I must have 2/3 of the land area and the whole thing is closed in by putting rushed temples in all the cities. Vulture, did you keep captured population??

If the MapStat and manual are right, everyone be warned that the recycling blitz eliminates population you may need to win this game.

No cigar.

“You have suffered an embarrassing defeat” pops up. Ham is not looking too good in his team photo.

I don’t care. This was a fun game racing against the clock and against an AI that was not completely outmanned. Maybe I'll reload and nuke France.



Thanks again Vel.

[vulture]

Originally posted by jshelr

?MapStat can compile the map and population information of a CivIII save game. With this information, it displays precisely how many more tiles and city population each Civ needs to trigger a domination victory. Numbers may also be displayed in percentages.?
http://64.246.32.51/~admin1/forums/s...threadid=44644

Population! A haven?t got any #@%&^^$# population. RTFM confirms my fears.

I have not run the program yet, but I must have 2/3 of the land area and the whole thing is closed in by putting rushed temples in all the cities. Vulture, did you keep captured population??

Nope. Cities over size 4 were reclying-blitzed to generate a settler, and the old city was abandoned. Smaller cities were starved to size 1 or so. I did this all the way through Germany, India and America. Once I wiped out the Chinese, I moved my Palace over there and let those cities grow more, but none of them got over size 8 IIRC. I was no. 1 in population once I'd killed China (and once I'd nuked a few large American cities that had started to grow again). Never hit France myself, although I know at one point all the cities on the top 5 list were size 5 or 6 due to mass nukes (including several French ones). P'raps this helped. Never knew there was a population factor to the domination. I'd be surprised to be honest, since I achieved domination with almost exactly the same land area as in MTiii, and I had the whole massive Chinese continent stuffed with big cities then, and a much higher population.

[Catt]

I didn't have the time to play minitourney IV (and had some qualms about playing a game form the midpoint - although I guess with scenarios coming I better get used to it) but it seems like everyone had great fun.

I cetainly really enjoyed (and learned from) reading this spoiler thread even though I didn't play, which is unusual for me -- I have never before really enjoyed reading spoiler threads from tourneys / GOTMs in which I didn't play (except for Zachriel's and Sulla's GOTM recaps). Great job all, and I think I will save the game to play later (since it appears to present a real WW3 challenge).

I am only chiming in to say that I too have experienced the "phantom war" bug. It was some time ago (could have been 1.17f) and I don't have a save, but I certainly remember being surprised to see that I was at war with X -- and then reloading to see that neither I nor he/she declared war; we were simply at a state of war without explanation after having finished the previous turn at peace.

Catt

[jshelr]

Vulture

You are right to question the population requirement. The winning conditions in the electronic info available as you play does not mention population. The manual does and the Map program does. They may be out of date if this requirement was changed.

I finally got XP to let me run the map program. With the amazing new XP I can do things in only an hour that would have taken me 5 minutes tops in windows.

It showed that I was a few tiles short of a full load on domination. I was way short on the population requirement. So, my game is not a test of whether population matters. Lost fair and square.

[Aeson]

I think it would have to be an either/or requirement, probably don't need both population and territory to trigger domination.

[Txurce]

Since I have accepted my unwanted war with Germany and subsequently exterminated them, what are the square-mileage requirements for domination? (Mapstat doesn't run on my Mac.)

[alexman]

1484 tiles is the domination limit for this game.
This includes coastal tiles but not sea tiles.

[jshelr]

I think Turxce want's the land area reading from f11 that applies when you hit domination?

I'm on the road and can't get the info. Vulture should have it, however.

Apparently, you need nearly everything but France according to Vultures screen shot.

[Txurce]

Thanks, guys. That works out to 148400 sq. miles, for those who haven't figured out (as I just did) that one tile equals 100 square miles.

For that matter, one pop equals 10,000 people.

These highly complex calculations are based on extrapolations from starting one city at 4000BC and hitting F11.

[alexman]

By the way, the F11 report includes sea tiles. Domination does not include those. So you have to subtract all the sea tiles from the total given by F11 to get your territory that counts against domination.

Something tells me your next computer will be a PC!

[Txurce]

Thanks, A. There were no sea tiles in my 4000BC city, so the ratio works out, in this case. But I guess your point is that when F11 tells me I have 142k sq. mi., I won't quite have domination within reach yet.

I think Apple will have to go out of business for me to consider switching... although I consider your point ALL the time!

[Harovan]

Just hit the year 1800AD. Babylon is the 7th in the World ranking. India is last, because they were reduced to 1 city by a lot of wars. Scientifically we are about even with America, have a lead of 3 techs before Russia, but are 2 techs (Laser and Stealth) behind of the rest. France, India and Babylon are Democracies, Russia is a Republic, everybody else has Communism.

MPP alliances exist between Japan and Germany, Germany and France, France and India. America is at war with Japan, France and China, everybody else is at peace.

Babylon has mobile forces of 4 MA, 23 Tanks, 16 MI's (+1 in each city: 15 more), 4 Battleships, 4 Transports, 1 Carrier, 4 Nuclear subs, armed with Tactical Nukes. No air force yet. Currently upgrading my tanks to MA's and building 4 ICBMs. My gold reserves are 1000 gold, which I need to keep maximal interests. Still no desire to participate in a war, unless somebody is badly beaten, in which case I would join the winners. A war would not be for my benefit, because I trade for 5 luxuries to keep my people content, and still depend on the export of oil and incense.

Future plans are, to build up till about 1900. At this time, probably, the end of the tech tree is reached. I will sell all libraries and universities then, as the only good they did was to produce my culture. I should be able to support a big army then. This probably will be the time to lit the torch for a WWIII.

Here are the main events, trades and wars.

1570AD	Am: Refining | Incense+WM+13pt+189
	Ja: Steel | Incense+WM+19pt+9
	Ru: Atomic Theory+1pt+17 | Oil
1590AD	Ge: Combustion | Incense+WM+4pt+476
	In: Mass Production | Oil+20pt
	Japan and Germany sign a MPP
1600AD	America declares war on the French
1605AD	Am: Dyes | WM+13pt+9
	Japan and Germany declare war on India
1610AD	Founded Kish at the coast SE of Ur
1615AD	Fr: Motorized Transportation | WM+32pt+147
1620AD	Founded Nippur at the southern tip
	Founded Shuruppak S of Lagash
	Russia and Germany sign an alliance against India
1630AD	Founded Zariqum in the hills in the center
	America and Germany sign an alliance against India
	China and Germany sign an alliance against India
1660AD	France and Germany sign a MPP
	Germany declares war on America
	France declares war on India
	Japan and Germany sign an alliance against America (Wow! What a diplomat Bismarck is!)
1670AD	Am: Flight | Incense+WM+38pt+13
	Ja: Radio | Incense+WM+37pt+12
	Babylon enters the Modern age and gets Rocketry for free.
	Our first 2 Tanks are built
	China and Germany sign an alliance against America
1675AD	Germany demands our TM and 70 gold. We give in. Not ready for a war yet, by far. And no desire to be the target of Bismarcks crazy alliances.
1690AD	In: Fission | Incense+Oil+WM+20pt+123
1700AD	Russia and India sign a peace treaty
1710AD	Ch: Cancelled Furs | Incense
	Ch: Furs | 2pt+243
	Ge: Wines | Incense+1
	Am: Dyes | WM+15pt+15
	America and India sign a peace treaty
1730AD	America and France sign a peace treaty
	France and India sign a peace treaty
	China and America sign a peace treaty
1735AD	In: Ecology | WM+70pt+362
	Ru: Computers | Ecology+WM+195
	Japan and India sign a peace treaty
1745AD	France declares war on India
	France and Russia sign a MPP
1750AD	France declares war on America
1754AD	We sign a RoP with India
1758AD	Fr: Uranium | Incense
1760AD	India and Germany sign a peace treaty
	America and Japan sign a peace treaty
1762AD	Japan and Germany sign a MPP
1766AD	Founded Sippar at the southern tip of the island NE of ours.
	In: Space Flight | Incense+85pt; Denying Gandhi Oil, because he has only 1 city left and is under siege.
	China and India sign a peace treaty (damn!)
1768AD	France and India sign a peace treaty(damn again!)
1770AD	In: 520 | Oil; used to finish the upgrade Inf->MI
	France and Germany sign a MPP
1772AD	Ch: WM+27pt | Incense
1774AD	America and France sign a peace treaty
1776AD	Ru: WM+Sanitation+Amphibious War+Espionage | Iron
	Ch: Furs | WM+298
	Ge: Wines | WM+Incense
	Am: Dyes | WM+17pt+5
1778AD	Ru: Satellites+3 | Oil
1780AD	Japan and Germany sign an alliance against America
1782AD	Babylon is now a nuclear power (first 2 tactical nukes)
1784AD	Ge: Silks | WM+9pt+277
1786AD	Fr: Superconductor | WM+123pt+283
	Ch: Nuclear Power+266 | Superconductor
	Am: Synthetic Fibers | Superconductor+73
	France declares war on America
1790AD	Russia demands Synthetic Fibers. We decline. Nothing happens.
1794AD	America and Germany sign a peace treaty
	Japan demands TM+76 gold. We give in.
1796AD	One of our 3 Oil source depletes. We can't build armor anymore, till the next trade deal ends.
	America and Russia sign a peace treaty
1798AD	We discovered a new source of Uranium. The deal with France thus can be cancelled.
	Fr: Ivory+WM+40 | Incense.
	India and France sign a MPP.

And a minimap:

[vulture]

For domination I had to get to 180,000 square miles, more or less. I don't remember the exact figure (and since you go from being somewhere under the domination limit to possibly being a fair bit over it in one turn, the exact number is hard to come by). 175-180,000 ought to do it.

[Txurce]

That's a lot of square miles, Vulture. I've been the biggest civ since about 1875, but I'm not even half way to the magic number in 1920.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Txurce
That's a lot of square miles, Vulture. I've been the biggest civ since about 1875, but I'm not even half way to the magic number in 1920.

Don't sweat it too much. In 1980 I only had the original island plus China. Not even close to half way. I still got enough land in a shade over 50 years (1980 was pretty much when I started the all out warmongering). From 1920 it's easily do-able I imagine.

[Harovan]

Small intermediate report:

It's 1856AD, and I just finished my first war. I joined and finished the collective beat-up of America, and took the southern part of their island. Currently cleaning their former land, it was awfully polluted, because they did not clean at all during the long war. My strike was short and decisive, took all in all only 3 turns, from a small bridgehead city I had founded on their southern tip.

A few observations:

- The AI attacks with Mech Infantry, although it could attack with Modern Armor. That's bad for it, but good for me. I'm sure that will be tweaked with the next patch.

- Instead of softening up city defenses, the AI uses Stealth Bombers to raze tile improvements. That's pretty lame.

- For some reason, nobody wants to make per-turn trades with me anymore, although I was very careful not to break any treaties. Even when one of my oil sources depleted, I had to suffer and not my trade partners. What's going on here?

I managed to get a GA, killing a Longbowman with a Bowman. Using it to halfway keep up in science (because of the collective per turn trade boycott). There's only 5 techs to go in the tech tree, and the last (Genetics) doesn't even count, because it's lame.

Finally, a minimap.

[Harovan]

geez, DP