Our Impossible Challenge (War Academy)

[The Dark Lord]

As everyone knows by now, we have traded world maps and we now have revealed our entire continent, except for a few minor squares.

(Side note: we know of two other lands: One is near Greece, and Uber Isle of course)

We are less than half the size of most nations.
We have the worst starting position in all the world. I have NEVER seen one worse. We are in a vast jungle in the center of a continent with all but four of the civs.

When we least expect it, Zany Zulus and Angry Asians may drop some ICBMs in our general direction.

In short, we are practically doomed.
We will probably never be number 1. We will likely bite off more than we can chew at some point and find the Anal Aztecs up our throat, or some other nasty nation.
I will not be surprised if we are totally annihilated and lose the game.

There is only one way to make ourselves strong. We need to expand aggressively in every way. Take advantage of every... err...advantage! If Greece and Persia start fighting, get out of their way. See if they will pay for a ROP so they can fight more easily. (Well, they wouldn't need it NOW)

I suspect this Demo game will be the greatest civ challenge any of us has ever had. And unlike a normal civ game, we cannot just 'give up.'

Okay, here comes more general proposals.

We must expand both by war and by...not war. First, we beat up the Avaricious Americans and get the iron in the incense valley. Not to mention the incense! With America out of our way, we immediately start to prepare another army for our next target, probably France. BTW, I am not normally a warmonger. As we prepare for war, we hook up both the incense and the dye. That way, we can support 2 more people in each city. I say we try to fill out the jungle with cities and massive worker gangs in between wars. We are sitting on top of really good land, buried under a horrid jungle. Once we have Democracy and Replacable Parts () we can easily clear it out and have an insta-empire... but that is in the long-term.
We must fight 2 wars. Take America and then smite the Frisky French.
Then we play the AI against each other.
We will have a decent amount of land then, though nothing great.
We will be a buffer state. We will be in between Greece and Persia. As long as we are not fools, we can keep the peace and try to control them. Hem them in. Make them fight over the jungle.
The Great Rift is the most powerful land barrier we can have. With it, we can isolate the four nations on the Great Plains of the Southern Peninsula isolated. The land, IIRC, is very grassland heavy and hill scarce.
This next part is a bit of a stretch...
The nations down there will have only the rare hills and abundant, though far from wonderful, grassland shields to work with for shields. They have little defense. I propose that after the war with France, we make those plains turn red with blood. Use our Knights (or Horseman, if we are still in the Dark Ages) to take those nations out. Those plains can support huge cities. Let us take them.

Ugh, that was horribly incoherent. Try to decipher it. There are 2/3 main parts:
1. The 1st part consists of facts
2. The second is a commentary
3. And the third is a horrible plan, which I will call... Case... Oh, I don't know. It will be shot down anyway.

[Captain]

Originally posted by The Dark Lord
This next part is a bit of a stretch...
The nations down there will have only the rare hills and abundant, though far from wonderful, grassland shields to work with for shields. They have little defense. I propose that after the war with France, we make those plains turn red with blood. Use our Knights (or Horseman, if we are still in the Dark Ages) to take those nations out. Those plains can support huge cities. Let us take them.

have to admit I didn't think of that. I was thinking more walling them off using the Rift to our advantage and dominating the west end of our half of the continent. We then build up and target Greece for a pruning or eradication once we have an offense that's strong enough, probably cavalry (a long way away ). hoplites as as good defense as musketeers, so think of it that way. knights will do also, if we have enough, but we might not be able to spare them.
Aztecs need to be checked but I don't know if we'll ever be strong enough to do it alone. We'll need alliances to beat the Aztecs.

OTOH, we could try what you propose and once we secure a decent spot (France/america) we build up, and then work down towards the lower continent. At that time, we should be bigger than any of our southern neighbours (unless one of them really gets a leg up on the others) so we could pick em off one by one. If we get an FP there, that southern continent might be quite useful. But we might want an FP in the Fragrant Valley to make our northcentreland productive enough to counter any Aztec/Greek/German push. South continent seems easier to take than our neighbours since they have little defensive terrain. But maybe we should deal with threats first, and opportunities later.


We are REALLY going to need alliances to make this one work against the big rivals. Obvious I know, we remember that we also can't sustain a long war so whatever help we get, we'd better hope they're close to the enemy. Iroquois marching to help us vs the Aztecs will be too late. Our advantage is in being prepared and locally outnumbering/outproducing the enemy, hopefully killing a disproportionate amount early on. But we can't allow them breathing room, time to recoup for them means we lose a war of attrition.

[Robber Baron]

Originally posted by The Dark Lord
We are less than half the size of most nations.
We have the worst starting position in all the world. I have NEVER seen one worse. We are in a vast jungle in the center of a continent with all but four of the civs.
....
I suspect this Demo game will be the greatest civ challenge any of us has ever had. And unlike a normal civ game, we cannot just 'give up.
... we play the AI against each other.
We will have a decent amount of land then, though nothing great.
We will be a buffer state. We will be in between Greece and Persia. As long as we are not fools, we can keep the peace and try to control them. Hem them in. Make them fight over the jungle.

I love it! This makes the game sound fascinating! High stakes, not enough power, a tightrope walk until (if we somehow manage to survive) the very end .... !!

Sorry, not a very "War Academy" type post. Ahem. Back to work, people.

[DuckOfFlanders]

I think we will pull trough eventually.A good democracy game rulership can do wonders.

Once ,in an other civIII demo game there was an event later named "the domino wars" ,where the played civ had gotten a decleration of war from every other civ in a few turn's at one point in history. (about 2000bc i think)
Weak and in war 12 enemy's (from wich 9 stronger than the played civ) the future of that nation was at risk.But eventually ,with much heroisity the nation prevailed ,and it became one of the most mythical story's of the demo games.

Afcourse... they played persian's ,and aquired iron in time....
I have always been a suicidal warmonger ,so i say SMASH THEM ,EXTERMINATE THEM ALL THOSE AI SUCKERS!!

[Sheik]

Originally posted by The Dark Lord
We will probably never be number 1. We will likely bite off more than we can chew at some point and find the Anal Aztecs up our throat, or some other nasty nation.
I will not be surprised if we are totally annihilated and lose the game.

There is only one way to make ourselves strong. We need to expand aggressively in every way. Take advantage of every... err...advantage! If Greece and Persia start fighting, get out of their way. See if they will pay for a ROP so they can fight more easily. (Well, they wouldn't need it NOW)

I suspect this Demo game will be the greatest civ challenge any of us has ever had. And unlike a normal civ game, we cannot just 'give up.

Nor should we. We will triumph!

[GoodFella]

Fight our way into the south. I didn't think of that, but I like it. I like it alot . I have to say it is better than my strategy of pumping out as many settlers, spearmen, and temples as possible. The Iriquois are sxcrewed unless they expand quickly into the Northeast, and Babylonia is going to be bottled in between Russia and Rome. Speaking of which, we might want to keep an eye on the two R's. Perhaps are war between Russia and France and would be nice (don't get Rome in on the action though, they have iron which means legions).

And I also have never seen such a horrible starting location.

[GoodFella]

Oh, and islands might not be the best bet. Although there are probably two or three more continents, we could end up running into the ever so friendly Zulus or Japanese. We need to dominate Abananaba (our continent, I liked the name, forgot who thought of it) first.

[Spiffor]

TDL : while your analysis is globally good, I'd like to point to a mistake in it :
It's very likely that people of the other world are far less advanced than us : on our continent, we have 11 Civs working to discover new knowledges every few turns, and nobody is lagging. Assuming the other people share one same continent, they would have only 4 Civs which research, including the not-so-enlightened Zulus.
Plus, they have 3 militaristic out of 4, so it's likely they struggle without winner for ages, at the expense of libraries.
I'm much more worried by our immediate neighbours than the faraway folks.

[Kramerman]

Ah, I had an idea that is concurrent with the dark lord's, but I'll need to post my screen shot to help illustrate what I mean. How do you post pics? The IMG button, which i think i need to use, is all Greek to me.

[Spiffor]

IMG means you give a link. To use it, you must have hosted the picture somewhere on the internet.
To directly attach a file, press the "browse" button before sending your post.
An attached picture must be less than 500 kb, and have 600 pixels width or fewer (it should also be a jpeg, if you want it to be seen immediately)

[BigFurryMonster]

Would it be a good idea to try and contact the Civs on the 'other' continent first? Then, if they're more advanced than us, we might trade for their techs. If they're less advanced, we sell them everything we have at a good price :-)

I think I suggested this on another thread, and it's a REALLY farfetched idea, but here goes.
I say that we pit the French against the Greeks, and ally with the Greeks (for a short time). The primary advantage of this is that it causes both of them to divert their attention towards each other. WE focus all our military effort (which should be a bit larger following the American war) on the eastern front, towards France, and prune them here and there, sue for a few cities, etc... While Greece and France are distracted like that, we could sneak a few settlers to some key locations; namely, the Ivory Coast, Fragrant Valley, and just south of the Great Rift.
Now, as I see it, the outcome of this would probably be the eradication of France. Although in a war against them alone, we would get a peace treaty to exploit them to the fullest (like we will hopefully do with the Americans), I highly doubt the Greeks will be as lenient, and just keep attacking the French until they have no more cities. When this war is over, we could probably have two cities to the south of the Rift, along with a few captured cities from France (though I suspect Greece would have more). Also, we may have one or two cities to the NORTH of Greece, as well, securing our position on the Ivory Coast near all of those resources. This keeps Greece walled in, to an effect, and if we develop our culture enough, we shouldn't have to worry about flipping.
After this war, however, we'd have to focus our attention on getting these outposts connected to the core of the Empire (which at that point should be in America). Over the course of a couple dozen turns, we might be able to get a few more settlers out, found some cities, or have the workers build roads to/from the outposts.
There are probably several problems with this, but keep in mind it's really nothing more than a (very) elaborate guess. Any input from you War Academy folks? Ideas?

[MrWhereItsAt]

With taking the southern section of our continent, we must be wary that cities taken here will be all but useless except as glorified fortresses for the troops to recover in. The only exception to this case is where we save our FP for this area, which means less efficiency in any area we develop between now and a war on the Southern area.

In other words, the southern area may be less of a challenge militarily than other places, but except for resources and captured WoWs, will be utterly useless.

I'm sure someone will step in to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Robber Baron]

Originally posted by Edrix
I think I suggested this on another thread, and it's a REALLY farfetched idea, but here goes.
I say that we pit the French against the Greeks, and ally with the Greeks (for a short time). .... WE focus all our military effort (which should be a bit larger following the American war) on the eastern front, towards France, and prune them here and there, sue for a few cities, etc... Although in a war against them alone, we would get a peace treaty to exploit them to the fullest (like we will hopefully do with the Americans), I highly doubt the Greeks will be as lenient, and just keep attacking the French until they have no more cities.

If we allied with Greece against France, then sued for peace while Greece is still fighting, wouldn't our reputation take a hit?

Originally posted by Robber Baron
If we allied with Greece against France, then sued for peace while Greece is still fighting, wouldn't our reputation take a hit?

That's true. I suppose we could just keep pushing into France until they're gone, but we'd lose out on some benefits... Plus, if we sue for peace and slow down our war effort, Greece would take more from France than WE can handle. We'd just have to be faster than them.

[OPD]

Originally posted by The Dark Lord

We are less than half the size of most nations.
We have the worst starting position in all the world. I have NEVER seen one worse. We are in a vast jungle in the center of a continent with all but four of the civs.

I agree that the situation looks very bad but this is a good thing as now it will be a real challenge for us. One thing we have going for us is that our closest neighbours aren't very strong in the early ages and don't have early UU. If or when we take US and France we will be in a great position. It's worth remembering that although the other civs have more cities they will mostly be 1 pop cities w/o any culture. With the inferior AI millitary stratergy victory is possible.

A good start and easy win would be boring.

Through struggle and Hardship we can achieve greatness.

[Robber Baron]

Originally posted by Edrix


That's true. I suppose we could just keep pushing into France until they're gone, but we'd lose out on some benefits.

We would true. But IMO we need to be scrupulous about preserving our reputation, because looking at this map, our survival hinges on our ability to make alliances, play powers off against each other, secure ROPs to keep balances of power in certain regions close to level ....

[The Dark Lord]

Spiffor: I am quite aware they will probably be less advanced than us...however strange that may seem at the moment! I merely included that sentence for use as a reference to Zulus with Cruise Missiles and to remind us that there IS another world out there.

MWIA: We could always use a leader to do a palace jump... but that, of course, is risky.

[MrWhereItsAt]

True - but we still can only have the Palace in one place at once, and an FP. Either one place or the other would be productive, and we'd be pretty foolish, or looking at some pretty interesting situations if we want to move our palace from what should be our most developed spot to our least developed.

[UnOrthOdOx]

MrWIA, I can see your point, but should we not be looking to move our palace, and therefore not build entirely everything we can on the peninsula? We could see from day one that the palace needed to be moved in the future. We should look at our current homeland as a temporary base of operations, not the future center. With a FP somewhere near Washington, the cities on the peninsula will retain at least SOME value and not be entirely corrupt. A palace jump to the center of the southern portion somewhere down the road would prove to be most beneficial in the long run. It is all a question of timing. We should attempt to retain as much infrastructure as possible when taking those cities to ease the move as well.

[Aggie]

All these plans are very good and I am impressed. Though I think we need to plan carefully to ensure our domination of this part of the continent. We will as all agree take out france. We should do this without help from greece since any cities they get will be cities we won't. The next move should be war with greece, once we get knights, also during this time we expand to cover more area and increase production. This ends when we are stong enough to send our legions of knights to crush the greeks. Remember all, our great strength is than unlike the AI we plan ahead and can concentrate forces to give us local superiority. Then we are secure and safe. Then we can consider other areas of expansion, though that southern idea is brave and bold, but of course we would need a fp their.
Aggie

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
MrWIA, I can see your point, but should we not be looking to move our palace, and therefore not build entirely everything we can on the peninsula? We could see from day one that the palace needed to be moved in the future. We should look at our current homeland as a temporary base of operations, not the future center. With a FP somewhere near Washington, the cities on the peninsula will retain at least SOME value and not be entirely corrupt. A palace jump to the center of the southern portion somewhere down the road would prove to be most beneficial in the long run. It is all a question of timing. We should attempt to retain as much infrastructure as possible when taking those cities to ease the move as well.

I pretty much agree with this. I have stated elsewhere that I think the best thing we can do is push through America (in other words conquer them) and then switch from war production to settler production. To the NW of America there is a valley full of incense, further west of that is a large open grassland where we should plop our settlers before the Greeks can, and then north of the incence valley is a buttload of hills with gold. There is also iron in that area if we need it. We should move to practically 'abandon' our crappy ass starting location. By moving our palace into a more central location, if we chose to expand NW or in any direction really, then it would significantly cut down on corruption

Kman

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by DuckOfFlanders
I think we will pull trough eventually.A good democracy game rulership can do wonders.

Once ,in an other civIII demo game there was an event later named "the domino wars" ,where the played civ had gotten a decleration of war from every other civ in a few turn's at one point in history. (about 2000bc i think)
Weak and in war 12 enemy's (from wich 9 stronger than the played civ) the future of that nation was at risk.But eventually ,with much heroisity the nation prevailed ,and it became one of the most mythical story's of the demo games.

Afcourse... they played persian's ,and aquired iron in time....
I have always been a suicidal warmonger ,so i say SMASH THEM ,EXTERMINATE THEM ALL THOSE AI SUCKERS!!

Traitor. I see you abonded the very Demogame modship you're talking about. We were wondering were you went. CFC is not going to be happy about this.... (j/k!) (just play along...)

And it was 11 other civs, 1 which we didn't find until much later.


'Poly's starting location on the other hand... maybe.

BTW, we DID have the best antiquity UU, which even defeated a few infantryman late in the game! (1 producing a GL). It might be tough with War Chariots....

[wervdon]

This is just my opinion from looking at the world map, but I think we'd be better off if we conquered america, germany, and the aztecs and left the french and other semi-peaceful civs alone until that was accomplished.

If we do it the other way, there is a very real risk of either the germans or aztecs stabbing us in our northern rears after we take america.

Not to mention that would give us a pretty decent core for an empire with only the english and persians east of us, and the greeks/french on the west.

If we go after the peaceful civs and ignore the warlike ones though, the chances are very high we'll be fighting a war on at least 2 fronts at some point before we are ready.

[DAVOUT]

Dont you think that the Greeks could also be a serious nuisance ?

[Kuciwalker]

The point is that they'll be a nuisance to the FRENCH instead of us.

[wervdon]

Its most probable the greeks will be a nuisance, but do you think we'd have alot of luck trying to defeat their hoplites in the ancient era?

[The Dark Lord]

Agh. The Dark Lord thinks that we should not allow the Greeks on to the territory that Lord Banana has promised us. They will only take away from what we need.