AU 105: The Power of Gold: Spoilers

[Killerdaffy]

2430BC: I don't believe it! The "Lucky Bastards" generated a GL in their first fight as Elites!!! But what now? The FP is not yet available, the Pyramids (my usual choice) would trigger an immediate GA and the Colossus I can build without Ramses' help. An army it is, I guess.

2390BC: Forget it, I'm not militaristic and can't even use my chariots if I want to hold off the GA. I built the Colossus, and I'll make Thebes into a Super Science City.

1910BC: Oh ****, the first Legion coming out of Rome. Where did they get iron that quickly?!? (Edit: I totally forgot about the Iron at that point, only rediscovered it later.)

1650BC: Finally captured Rome, made peace for Iron Working immediately afterwards. The Iron in Theben is a nice touch, should there be some coal as well??

190BC: Looks like I'm lucky today: Another Elite fight (my third overall) gives me my second leader BC... Here comes my FP!

150BC: Wow, the Romans made contact with everybody else... I make peace for nearly all contacts. (Edit: Turns out later that they had met the Iroquois, who got the Lighthouse 7 turns before me. They manage to sneak three cities into the jungle)

190AD: Doh!!! Built the Hanging Gardens, not paying attention. (I had changed from the abortive Lighthouse...) Triggered GA, not the worst timing, though, just before Medieval and in Republic.

[Killerdaffy]

540AD: Attack on Greece with about 30 War Chariots and 5 Horseman being converted into Knights. I opted for rolling conversion since I didn't have enough money to do it all at once and didn't want to give the time to Greece to expand any further. The missed Lighthouse hurts - I have three Iroquois cities on my continent and can't even sail back to attack them.

730AD: The knights cut through the Greek troops like a hot sword through butter. Alex is toast, the peace treaty left him three cities, all on the southern island (I got three cities there in the peace treaty). I'm going after Persia now, even though my knights wont like his musketmen. I hope I can cut off his saltpeter before he builds to many of them.

790AD: Those Persians sure had advanced technology - already some musketmen on the scene. But without iron or saltpeter that wont last long. HEHEHE!

[Killerdaffy]

950AD: 3 Leaders in 2 turns. JS Cathedral, Army (Heroic Epic built immediately from pre-build), Smith's Trading Company. The one before went to move my palace to Athens. The others were Colossus and FP. And another one, same turn. I'm running out of wonders to build...

960AD: Ended the Persian Wars with 5!! Leaders (one in reserve) and took all his resources.

1020AD: The Iroquois are about to sneak attack me with a single Longbow. Of course all my troops are off fighting in Persia... Well, if they want war, they can have it.

[Killerdaffy]

1160AD Killed Caesar because my troops were waiting for transport to the big continent. No foreign cities on my continent left.

1285AD: Three wonders in one turn: Ironworks in Theben, Universal Suffrage (by GL) and Newton's. I'm at war with everybody and doing good. War weariness is building up, though, even in Republic.

1295AD: Bye, bye Xerxes - and got another GL in the process. No. 10 so far. Colossus, FP, Palace Jump, JSC, Army, Smith, Magellan??, Army, Universal Suffrage, Army

1340AD: I took most of the second continent, killed the Americans on the way. My landing strategy wasn't really a strategy at all. I just put all my cavalry into galleons and landed them in packs of four all over the place, preferably on hills or mountains. It's not as deadly as a coordinated assoult but my troops were spread out all over two continents after the Persian war and the Iro sneak attack and it would have taken too long to get all of them together. It worked pretty well since there was no real resistance (I captured all remaining saltpeter within the first two turns). Only India was lucky to have two or three cavalries, which was enough to repel two two-galleon attack waves. Otherwise I would have played for conquest.

[Killerdaffy]

1355AD: Killed the Iroquois and took Technochtilan in the same turn. Losses are mounting, though since Montezuma finally discovered Nationalism. I'm researching Electricity and trying for domination victory, since I don't care for taking India with cavalry and tanks would still take quite a while. Also made peace with the Aztechs, since I need some rebuilding and infrastructure before killing them.

1360AD: Domination Victory... Quicker than I thought, actually... 4715 points, not bad, even though conquest would probably have given a bit more.

Analysis: My game was actually quite similar to nbarclay's. I got lucky with the two early leaders but otherwise nothing special.

The GA was unintended but a perfect timing: The resulting 30 war chariots converted to knights totally blew Alexander away and I never went to peace afterwards. The cheap knight pre-built is a HUGE bonus for Egypt in a GA, since nearly every city can build a chariot every turn or two. And once I started rolling and had all saltpeter (except for the Indian one) the game was essentially over. On wonders I lost the Pyramids, Oracle, Lighthouse, Sun Tzu, Copernicus (all captured later) and Shakespear's (because I was too lazy to build it) so that was pretty decent as well.

The game was the most fun af all AU games so far, even though I don't really know what made it so different. Thanks to alexman for his master plan!!

[Theseus]

Well done! You and Nathan have been by far the most aggressive with Knight / Cav warfare... it's really unstoppable if you totally commit. Great GL generation, too.

I agree, this one was much fun.

[Keeper of Hell]

I lost. Basically, I took a little bit (Veii and Rome) of the Romans as soon as I got Knights, then went stagnant. Later, the top-ranked Greeks declared on Rome, took basically all of their territory left over except for Cumae, which I grabbed, and Lugdunum, which was a one-tile island. I managed to get a pretty good tech lead going, got to Motorized Transportation before anyone else had Electronics or Mass Production, but was thwarted by the complete lack of oil. Rome was stuck in the middle ages, so there was no way they were getting any oil. (I checked under Lugdunum- nothing.) One oil was locked up on a one-tile tundra island with a barbarian encampment on top. Something apparently got screwed up, though, because there still should have been at least one sources for every civ. None of the other civs had a spare oil, so I was unable to build Transports in order to take my Marines and grab the island oil. Your standard Catch-22: No extra oil, no way to get oil without a unit that requires (you guessed it) oil. After I fended off pathetic cavalry/infantry assualts by the mediocre Persians and the mighty Greeks, I realized there was no way I was going to get anywhere without oil and quit. *Very* frustrating.

Edit: It occurs to me that I ought to at least mention the GA. Complete accident- I had completed the Oracle towards the beginning, intending to perhaps construct the Hanging Gardens later on and trigger a production frenzy of Knights, but the Iroquois grabbed it before I even had the tech. Then, for a long while, I completely forgot about it, until I constructed Hoover Dam in Thebes and suddenly triggered the GA- at the worst possible time. I was on a complete plateau, no way to expand without Tanks, no real need for increased production, as I only had about 10 cities. It made absolutely no impact on the outcome of the game.

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Theseus
Well done! You and Nathan have been by far the most aggressive with Knight / Cav warfare... it's really unstoppable if you totally commit. Great GL generation, too.

Thanks! Yeah, I got lucky on the GLs, especially compared to e.g. vulture.

This was actually the first time ever that I used large amounts of unit pre-builds - specifically the War Chariots. This strategy would be another reason to play Egypt, since they don't have to hold off from researching Horse Riding to do it. Any civ civ can do it for a horsemen/cavalry conversion, though, by disconnecting their iron (if you don't have too many and don't need it urgently to build something else).

[CorpusScorpius]

I am a long time reader (infrequent poster) but , I decided to play AU 105 OCC (regent) to see if I could come close to Catt's accomplishment . Cleo did win a cultural victory, However my score is an Exceptional display of the need to practice a heck of alot more . I dont recall hitting a golden age & I was unable to build IW due to my iron source petering out before Feudalism . I decided to play the game out to see if I could salvage a victory . Oh yeah , in the late 1960's early 70's, cultural victory was achieved ......drum roll please...... my final score was in the 400's.

[vmxa1]

Well 400 is better than being eliminated, so congrats.
KillerDaffy, thanks for the story, well done.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Keeper of Hell
None of the other civs had a spare oil, so I was unable to build Transports in order to take my Marines and grab the island oil.

You should have used galleons. Granted, you can't fit as many units in each one, but three or four of them could have fit enough marines to do the job (at least eventually). And the galleons could be upgraded to transports for later invasions.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Well done! You and Nathan have been by far the most aggressive with Knight / Cav warfare... it's really unstoppable if you totally commit. Great GL generation, too.

Actually, I was nowhere near totally committed to cavalry production. Basically, what I did, I did with "spare" production when cities didn't have anything better to build. I was actually far enough ahead in tech that I could afford to do that. (The fact that I was playing standard rules instead of using the mod almost certainly helped, but on the other hand, I had nowhere near Killerdaffy's luck with leaders.)

The good part regarding my lack of total commitment to cavalry production was that especially once the Hoover Dam went into operation, my factories gave me an excellent production rate. And believe it or not, at the time my cavalry acheived domination, I was within about 12-15 turns of being able to build tanks! Using my golden age to build banks and universities left me in a position of being able to play builder and warmonger at the same time.

Nathan

P.S. When's the next game?

[Keeper of Hell]

Originally posted by nbarclay


You should have used galleons. Granted, you can't fit as many units in each one, but three or four of them could have fit enough marines to do the job (at least eventually). And the galleons could be upgraded to transports for later invasions.

Nathan

Marines can only do amphibious assaults when they're attacking from Transports (the unit that becomes available with Mass Production and requires oil), or at least that's what it says in the Civilopedia. I never actually checked it myself- can they attack from ship to shore regardless of vessel? On another note, I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times defenders for very few shields) being on the same continent. Greece declared war on me very early and got Rome to sign a military alliance, which completely stunted my growth as I had no chance of making any cities beyond a very small radius of my original core.

Edit: Just tested amphibious assault, and whaddya know, it worked! Galleons away, then. Time to show those Greeks what Egpytian Tanks are made of... oil.

[BillChin]

> I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece
> and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times
> defenders for very few shields) being on the same
> continent.

I used my standard Swordsmen Conquest opening. (Basic outline is to build four cities, bunches of warriors, then hook up iron, upgrade and attack). With the great starting location, a very early granary, a city built on top of the gold hill for extra research, I am able to launch my attack around 1200 B. C.

Rome never had a realistic chance against 10 attacking swordsmen so early (on Emperor level or below). On Deity, they might have withstood the charge.

Greece was a bit harder as they expand large, but they are my third war. Greece declares war on me after I had invaded and crushed Persia. Once Knights come on line, with a Golden Age filling my sails, I upgrade enough units to Knights to crush the Greeks. A knight blitz, if executed well, will win virtually every start on Emperor and below.
- Bill

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Keeper of Hell


On another note, I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times defenders for very few shields) being on the same continent. Greece declared war on me very early and got Rome to sign a military alliance, which completely stunted my growth as I had no chance of making any cities beyond a very small radius of my original core.

Rome: Well, I tried a *really* stupid assault with one archer, after that one failed I just killed all their expeditionary forces that came my way. When I had 3 or 4 archers I attacked Rome, only to be counterattacked by a Legion. I was shocked but it was Caesar's only one and he never recovered from the fall of Rome.

I didn't start doing anything about the Greeks until I had a road all the way through the jungle so my reinforcements could get through. And then it was just a matter of running over them with the ~35 knights that I had after the conversion of my GA produced War Chariots. That kind of ruined his day, I guess He even gave me half of the cities on the southern island in the peace treaty so I didn't have to make a forced landing.

As to "totally committed": Building 30 War Chariots (20 shields) in a GA isn't all that hard and I hardly lost anything vs. the Greeks, so I never really had to replace anything. Same for the cavalry vs. musket/spearmen later. The only time I took serious losses was vs. the Persian muskets. So my infrastructure was quite ok, even late in the game. The technical superiority / resource denial just carried the day.

[nbarclay]

My key to taking out Rome was to hit them with archers before they got a chance to build legions. Without its legions, Rome is no big deal.

I didn't have prebuilds for enough knights to take Greece out, but I did make a dent with them (coupled with longbowmen upgraded from my archers from the Roman wars). Then a while later, cavalry swept in and Greece didn't have a chance.

Nathan

[Catt]

Been away for several days - great games all. It's nice to see so many people playing the AU games - especially all different difficulty levels.

Originally posted by Jawa Jocky
I've never tried OCC, I don't think I have the patience for it. Is there an OCC strategy thread?

I don't know - I've only played 3 or 4 times -- the first time to see what it was like, the next couple of times to get a Civ III fix in a few hours (my previous experience with OCCs) -- AU 105 took six - eight hours of play time, probably due to more frequent warfare involving me and note-taking for the spoiler thread. I had wanted to play the game with the AU Mod and stadard rules to compare, thinking each game would be a 2 - 3 hour commitment, but the 8-hour game precluded me from playing a second time under standard rules.

I gave the totally broke American's a bunch of tech's so they would have knowledge of their saltpeter. My best friends were more than happy to trade that resource to me. (I thought it would be nice since the Greeks keep attacking me). I've never done this to get a resource before, does any have an even better story regarding this strategy?

Great creativity in securing a vital resource! I've done it once or twice, but usually only when the AI civ is a tech or two behind - no better story than yours.

Originally posted by Theseus
Superb GA... gutsy move delaying Hoover.

Wasn't too gutsy - I checked just about every turn to see if others had discovered Electronics. Since I had the IW in my capitol city (almost no waste), a city with a fair number of hills and (of course) iron and coal, I figured Thebes was the most prodcutive city on the map by a wide margin. Even starting a few turns late I should have been able to snatch Hoover from someone else (barring use of an AI leader, in which case I would have been screwed).

Originally posted by Keeper of Hell
I lost. [. . . .] I realized there was no way I was going to get anywhere without oil and quit. *Very* frustrating.

The great thing about AU games is there is no competition - so, as the old saying goes, it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's truly how you play the game.

Don't give up though! Oil is a fickle mistress and will disappear and reappear with some frequency. Struggling through the hard spots is sometimes where you learn something new that you've never considered before. Lack of important strategic resources (and the military means to take them) can teach an awful lot about effective trading and diplomacy.

Originally posted by CorpusScorpius
I decided to play AU 105 OCC (regent) to see if I could come close to Catt's accomplishment . Cleo did win a cultural victory, However my score is an Exceptional display of the need to practice a heck of alot more . I dont recall hitting a golden age & I was unable to build IW due to my iron source petering out before Feudalism . I decided to play the game out to see if I could salvage a victory . Oh yeah , in the late 1960's early 70's, cultural victory was achieved ......drum roll please...... my final score was in the 400's.

Score will always be absolutely pitiful in an OCC game (since territory is so critical to score) - you should totally disregard it in evaluating how you did. My score finished in the low or mid 400's, IIRC.

Very rough break with the iron depletion - mine actually stayed put the entire game.

How many played the standard rules versus the AU Mod? Any sense of whether the mod creates a more formidable AI opponent?

Catt

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Catt
Oil is a fickle mistress...

No kidding... man, did I get lucky.

Couldn't agree more about the 'philosophy' of AU... don't ever get discouraged, as each of these games is suposed to be a mutual learning experience. People are going to try various strategies, and we all get to learn from the many successes and failures.

For instance, I typically play with early aggression; while that was probably the right thing to do here (with sufficient / overwhelming force), I am reminded of the second mini-tourney game (precursor to AU), when doing the same thing as Germany, which *should* have worked, resulted in a These-ass kicking like no other.

Re the AI civs, I did not see anything hugely impressive in my game, although I was impressed by Greece in yours, Catt.

I'm putting my "killer AI civ" thinking hat back on...

[Jawa Jocky]

Originally posted by BillChin
> I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece
> and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times
> defenders for very few shields) being on the same
> continent.


- Bill

On emperor.

I attacked the Romans early with 2 swordmen and sued for peace, really just to make room for myself and get some free techs, workers, and gold. I did this every 20 turns until they were just 2 cities between me and Greece (I also extorted a lot of jungle cities from them). I spent my only leader on a FP in Northern end of the Jungle. I had two cores up and running pretty early except my 2nd core was half in the jungle and not very productive.

My Greece policy was a complete failure. I had to travel to far to attack them at 1st. Once I had a road network everytime I built up an attack army it became outdated, and I was unable to upgrade due to the resource constraits. I had to give America several techs just so they could hook-up their saltpeter and trade it with me. Because Greece was my size and always declaring war on me I never got a chance to take Persia. I used all of my military just to defend myself.

[Keeper of Hell]

Update, in case anyone is eagerly following the epic of the AU loser: After finding out that the Civilopedia was misleading me about the amphib. assualt thing, I set off for the northern island. Three turns after the first boatload of marines arrived, the island was captured and a new city was founded. Unfortunately, the oil dried up about 20 turns later, but by that time it didn't matter, as I captured the Roman one-tile-island city of Lugdunum and secured another source of oil. This was about the time that the world at large entered the Modern Era, down two civs (Aztecs, who got murdered by a coalition of three or four civs and Rome, who I took out by capturing Lugdunum). Immediately, the tech leaders jumped on Fission and Rocketry, but I managed to buy one and trade for another. I built the UN, courtesy of Ramses, then held elections. Inconclusive- Rome abstaining for some reason (thankfully- if they'd come in on the side of the Greeks it would have been game over). In preparation for the next election I destroyed Rome, as I've already detailed, and struck luxury deals with several other civs. Greece and Persia were stubbornly against me, and I didn't consider it worth my resources to try and get Persia on my side (I really doubt Alexander would have voted against himself even if we were really good friends). The next election was another inconclusive, with the Indians (who were Gracious toward me) casting the vote that kept the game from ending in victory for me. In the meantime, I'm building up my army for an assault that ought to either cripple or destroy the Persians. The only issue is that the Greeks have an MPP with them, and it could be inconveinent to try and defend myself against both. I think I'll hold off on my invasion until the next election, and if there's no decision again then I'll strike.

[Keeper of Hell]

Final update: called a UN meeting in 1954, got elected. End score: 942. Not very impressive, I'll admit, but at least I got it done.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Keeper of Hell
On another note, I'd be interested to hear how people dealt with Greece and Rome (two civs with incredibly good Anicent Times defenders for very few shields) being on the same continent.

I took the city of Rome early with a bunch (5 or 6) of veteran swordsmen. This left the Romans without iron and horses and hence without teeth. I finished them off 20 turns later.

I never fought a war with Greece. We were peaceful neighbors for the entire game.

[Ribannah]

I stayed friends with them my entire OCC game on deity.
Victory came in 1525 AD when we built the United Nations and got all the votes except from Persia (America had been destroyed). I could have played on for a cultural or a space race victory, too!

[Harovan]

Respect. I never won an OCC on deity, only on medium levels. In all my deity tries I got killed by sneak attacks in the industrial age, almost everytime by Jerxes.

But the space race, in only one city? Did you have such a big tech lead? How this?

[Theseus]

Interesting that Rome survived, as opposed to Catt's OCC, where Greece (and I guess Catt) showed Caesar a good ol' time.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Ribannah
I stayed friends with them my entire OCC game on deity.

Yowza! I've only ever tried an OCC as high as Monarch - won that one via culture but fell behind in the tech race in the industrial age -- since I had no shot at the UN, I had to hope that the AI that built it wouldn't call a vote. Staying in the tech race long enough to win via spaceship (at deity!) is truly amazing!

Originally posted by Theseus
Interesting that Rome survived, as opposed to Catt's OCC, where Greece (and I guess Catt) showed Caesar a good ol' time.

I used Caesar as my shield - never once attacked the poor guy, but bribed him into war every time Alexander got uppity. My Caesar was perhaps unfairly hampered however - his iron supply depleted really early on, so he couldn't make a swarm of Legionaries and, unless he traded for it with Alexander or Xerxes, probably had very few knights and pikemen.

Catt

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Ribannah
I stayed friends with them my entire OCC game on deity.
Victory came in 1525 AD when we built the United Nations and got all the votes except from Persia (America had been destroyed). I could have played on for a cultural or a space race victory, too!

Congrats!!

How did you keep everybody happy, especially your direct neighbours? And I assume you got the GL?? (Or how else did you keep up the tech race??)

[Ribannah]

Culture and many deals (plus the rare tribute).
And no pacts, of course!
We built the Colossus first, and then the Lighthouse.
GL was done in 590 BC but we didn't get any techs from it as we were ahead and wanted to get to the next wonders asap.

[Harovan]

Wait a moment... You outresearched the AIs with one city on deity in the ancient age, where they use to trade like mad? That's bold, are we talking about the same game here?

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Wait a moment... You outresearched the AIs with one city on deity in the ancient age, where they use to trade like mad? That's bold, are we talking about the same game here?

Quite an achievement!

I have never tried it but, on the other hand, building zero settlers and having zero corruption will make a HUGE difference in the ancient age. And trade you can as well (depending on who got the lighthouse there was probably no contact between the continents until at least Astronomy in this game). Only later becomes the rest of the empire really important in science / money terms.