Research set to AH (8), production to Worker (12).
This is my first RBCiv Adventure, so we’ll see how I do. This one’s at Noble, so I should have a pretty good chance, but we’ll see.
I’ve won my last several games at noble, and one strategy I’ve thought of, but haven’t tried yet is using nukes to win by diplomacy by destroying everyone else’s population. We’ll see if I can actually make it there.
The initial location is a grassland/hill, so there’s no hammer bonus by founding there. One south is a plains/hill, which gives the extra hammer. Another option is one SW, which leaves another forest in place. Of course, there’s also that water visible off to the south (3S, 2W), but I don’t think that’s a coast, it looks like inland lake. Also, it’s a bit too far away to move for the capital, so I won’t consider that spot.
So, after scouting 1 NW, I rejected the spot 1 SW. It looks like there’s a desert off to the SE if we found 1 S, and that gives us an extra hammer for the founding tile. Also, it leaves lots of forests NW for the second city.
I move 1 S to found the city, which means I have to wait one turn to found. The next turn, I move the scout 1N, 1NE, which reveals a cow in the tile we abandoned... So I move back to the original tile.... The next turn, before I found, I move the scout 1NE, 1E which reveals coast and a rice, so I move 1S to make room for my second city...
Finally, in 3880 BC (turn 4), I found Persepolis, which pops a hut for 30 gold:
Research set to AH (8), production to Worker (12).
Scouting reveals we’re at the north part of our continent:
Further west, I find gold, but to use it and the fish, I’ll have to either accept a bunch of ice tiles, or settle on the gold.
Pop a hut for a map. (no picture)
AH comes in, and -- no horses. After seeing the map for "Waiting for Godot", I'm wondering if there are any strategic resources available here. I'm hoping that's not the case, but I better head for bronze working soon. Mining -> Bronze is 20 turns, Wheel -> Pottery (for cottages) is 15, Archery is 6. This is noble, so I’ll be safe from barbs for a bit. I'll head for cottages.
Pop a hut for 5 XP for the scout (which gets me Woodsman II for the extra movement in forests).
Meet Toku:
Worker finishes, start on the camp and a barracks, working an FP to grow in 8
Pop a hut, which gives mining. Nice. That means I just have the 14 on Bronze once I get pottery.
Wheel comes in, start on Pottery so I can build some cottages.
Further scouting reveals Toku has horses, and is on the coast. Not a bad spot -- maybe I should steal it. If only I had horses. Immortals vs. Archers is nice -- str 6 vs. archers.
Camp finishes. Build a road (though once it finishes, I realize that I don’t need it – both it and my capital are on the same river.) Start on a farm on one of the FPs for growth. (Will switch to a cottage on another tile once pottery comes in).
Scouting reveals some unclaimed horses, but they’re really close to Toku:
Meet Monty (no screenshot). Looks like I’m going to have to be really aggressive to survive here -- Monty and Toku. I wonder if this was a setup... one insane isolationist (who will attack for no reason), and one insane warmonger.
Pottery in, start on Bronze and a cottage.
Looks like Monty is on the bottom of the world.
Man, everyone has horses but me...
First cottage finishes, and I realize I never switched to a granary... Change now.
Bronze working comes in, which reveals *one* copper, upper half of the continent, but the other side from me.
I need a settler *now*. Capital just grew to size 3. Start a settler and move the worker in position for a chop. Continue on to Iron working. I’ll get that after the settler is made, but maybe it’s in a better position.
Chop completes, settler down to 6.
Hinduism falls in 2440 BC -- seems a little late, even for Noble. I guess that means that we have no religion-crazy AIs. Also, I can see that the Aztecs have no strategic resources (that I can see at this point -- horses/copper) at their capital. They should be easiest to hit first if they don’t expand soon.
Second chop finishes, settler next turn, iron working in 6. I think I’ve identified the city for my second city. After moving my settler into position, a barb shows up. Man, am I glad that’s an animal...
Iron working in, and there are three -- one near my capitol, one south of my second city, and one south of Monty’s capital. I guess that will give Monty his strategic resource. Toku has nothing but horses... That means no competition for my axemen/swordsmen. Bye, bye Toku
Second worker finishes in capital (first one was sent to improve second city, which is working on a worker as well).
New capital worker starts mine (due in 4), once that (and the road in 2) finishes, I’ll start on Axemen.
Crap. The very turn the barb warriors start showing up, my scout ends it’s move on flat land next to one -- and dies...
Copper is mined, now waiting for the road to connect it to the capital.
Mystisism in, start on Polytheism, iron mined, starting on road (2).
Worker trained in Pasargadae (second city), strating on Axeman. Worker heads up to mine gold.
Iron hooked up, starting Axeman (due in 4).
Worker at capital resumes cottage on FP that was stopped when chopping the settler.
Start research on Priesthood to head for CoL, start cottage on 3rd FP.
Axeman finishes in capital (I finally have an army..) Start on settler for iron denial:
Monty comes offering open borders. I accept for now (Toku is probably the first target).
I pull the axeman from Pasargadae to escort the settler south.
Hmm.. I’m 4 turns from CoL, and 13 from the Oracle... I’ll give the CS slingshot a shot. I wasn’t planning on it, but I could use the cash from failing with the Oracle as well.
I got Confusionism.
I got the Oracle, and switched to Bureaucracy and Slavery in one shot.
I start on Masonry (1) -> Construction (6) for Catapults and Elephants, which I’ll follow with Metal Casting (8) -> Machinery (14) for Macemen.
I’m working on getting barracks and libraries in each city, developing the landscape, and starting on a few axemen before construction comes in for the real stuff.
Now approaching the turn of the century: Toku has only 5 cities (4 on the trade screen + a capital), of which I can see 3. He also doesn’t have open borders with Monty, so I can just start at the top and attack south.
I’ve also got a bit of a stack ready to go, with a few more following (and plan to add macemen during the fight).
Editor's note: As I'm revising this report, I'm realizing I tend to get involved in the fights to much and forget to take enough screenshots -- I'll have to keep that in mind next time.
(We join the fight already in progress...) Two cities down, and a third under siege. The nice thing about attacking with this kind of tech advantage (elephants and catapults vs. archers), is that city raider catapults do rather nicely. It’ll get them promoted to deal with Monty...
The defenses of Kyoto are bombarded in preparation for the coming attack:
Kyoto is down:
Well, I don’t really want to take Toku’s last city -- it’ll be giving the land to Monty. It’s now time to build up and kill Monty.
Must have missed the message: a revolt from Monty to me... One down, one to go. Gotta love cultural....
Whoops, it seems I should have killed Toku. His last city is keeping me from putting mine where I want. I guess I have to wait for that peace treaty to expire to kill it.
Flip over to OR to let me spread Confucism a bit and get some building done.
Turns out Monty’s culture didn’t advance as far as I thought. I guess I’ll keep it and found my other city and tile off the coast. We’ll see if I can out-culture that city of Monty’s
Well, I’m in a culture fight with Monty. I wish that there was a way to better tell how long it will take me to overtake those tiles. Sulla demonistrated a debug tool once that showed the actual culture values per civ per tile. If there was a way to expose that in the UI, that would be nice.
Here’s my continent:
I see three spots to fill in with a city (W, N, NE), but they won’t be profitable until later.
I took off on the power chart just after I attacked Toku.
I’m way up on tech as well (though I haven’t met the other continent yet).
Items of note on demographics: I lead soldiers by ~30%, pop by ~90%, prod by ~60%, and trail in GDP by ~5% -- need to push those cottages more.
A glance at the wonders screen reveals that the Aztecs do have something we want -- The Pyramids.
Here’s what the attack on Monty will look like: the black square in the middle is the Aztec capital. From Satsuma, I have 4 moves to get into range, 5 to get to the point where I don’t need to cross the river on the attack, and 6 to attack from the forest hill. If I come from the north, it’s 5 moves to the forest hill near the capital, and I have forest cover for each move except one, which is covered by a hill. I think I’ll attack from the north in three groups. One big thrust down the middle to take the capital, and two smaller attacks to take the cities nearest my borders already.
Since neither of us has Alphabet yet, I’ll get it soon to check what I should expect to face during the attack.
After spreading the religion around, I went to check it, and realized I hadn’t actually switched, so I did to get the OR bonus. Turns out I was paying the ‘high’ upkeep for OR, and only getting the bonus in my unconverted cities.
Time for war... Switching to Theocracy for the extra 2XP for a total of 6XP with a barracks, ie. two promotions..
Since Alphabet is in, I thought I’d check Monty’s techs... He doesn’t even have CoL yet! I won’t be facing macemen. However, he does have construction, but not Engineering.
This looks good. I don’t actually see any macemen, but if I push though quick, I should be able to prevent any new forces from really causing a problem
Ok, after a number of turns to stage, I’m ready to push the attack. The staging points for the attacks on the three cities are marked, and thanks to common religion, I can see what’s going on.
Left stack:
Middle stack:
Right stack:
WW is getting pretty bad, but I should be able to prevail:
3 down, 3 to go...
Aztecs are dead...
WW is gone:
After shifting back to peacetime civics, I just need to push for liberalism so I can pick up free speech for extra cash from towns, and add Emancipation for faster growth in conquered cities. Priority one: economy. However, I’m at -65 at 40%.... I need to improve it.
I guess I’ll add another city -- it looks like the barbarians placed a perfect one in the ice. Will get both furs and the silver with a border pop.
I just met Washington. Look how behind he is! No CoL and CS! Monty even had CS! Either he was on a continent by himself, or he was on a continent with a lot of wars.
Well, the treasury is going a bit better, but I still need more commerce...
My continent:
The other continent (from the map Washington sold me):
Well, it looks like I’m nearly the backdoor domination (ie. Diplomacy) point. I guess I won’t need many nukes to win this one...
Military power: even after disbanding a bunch of units to cut upkeep costs, I’m killing Washington in power.
Demographics:
Need more cottages!!!
If I was going for fast victory, I’d push onwards to astronomy, sail across, and kill the other continent. However, since I’m going for a nuclear diplomacy victory, I have no need for an invasion force – just enough of an army to discourage an invasion. Eventually, I’ll have to build a sub and some spys to make sure I have eyes on the other continent, but that can wait for a while.
Plan:
I got liberalism, but it appears I didn’t set up to get Astronomy with that…. I guess I’ll take printing press for the extra commerce. With the gold multipliers I have in place, that bonus should be worth an extra 2 gold per village/town.
Ok, I think I have my research path planned out: Replaceable Parts, Rifling, Biology, Railroad, Physics, Communism, Fission, Rocketry.
RP comes in, and I start on a massive lumbermill project.
My infrastructure project is going really well -- my first three cities are out of infrastructure to build...
I’m going to change my research order to go directly for Assembly line to get to factories and coal plants
During the buildup, I used a prophet/merchant to trigger a GA -- I’ll be getting some more in the future.
Well, after assembly line comes in, I re-target Bio, Railroad, Physicas, Communism, Fission, Rocketry.
In 1822, I noticed an odd quirk of the AI’s exploration technique…. The AI only built a single caravel to explore the world, and put it in one ocean, but never built a caravel from a city on the other coast. It’s 1822, and noone has the circumnavigation bonus yet (and I just got Optics).
Astronomy comes in, and Observatories begin construction across the land...
Circumnavigation in 1830AD.. How often do you see that?
Tech picture with Egypt:
Tech picture with America:
Basically, I’m only down two dead-end techs to both, and three other techs to Washington.
As you can see from the power graphs, I’ve recently started to increase my military base -- I’ve run out of stuff to build in my cities...
Time for a civics switch – I’m done with most of the infrastructure, so OR’s cost is a bit high, and I could use the extra happies. Since I finally have astronomy, I figure I might as well get open borders and use the extra routes.
Time to start the Manhattan project..
Since it will take 12 turns to get the Manhattan project finished, and artillery/rocketry only takes 8, I’m slipping Combustion into the build order to allow me to build destroyers to defend myself, and prepare for building subs.
Pentagon is in, more for denial than anything else.
Washington wants Biology – haha, like I want to let you rebuild quickly after I nuke you...
Manhattan in 5, techs will be in place in 3.
Doubt I’ll have enough great people for two more GAs, so I’ll spend the priest on Divine Right -- maybe let me build the spiral minaret for a few more gpt, unfortunately, both SM and Versailles were taken.... Maybe I should have checked....
With the completion of Rocketry, we enter the Modern age.... Only a couple more turns until we get nukes...
We can build nukes...
Nukes under construction...
First nuke is ready...
Well, it looks like Washington is starting his Apollo program...
Looks like I won’t get the statue... (can't find the screenshot -- my spy saw it under construction in America -- Washington I think).
A quick ‘steal plans’, and I have current intelligence on Washington’s part of the other continent.
I’m not sure I get this -- why not build up the population a bit -- take those specialists off for 15 turns and grow by 3-4 sizes.
There’s no danger of Washington launching before I’m ready to attack…. He’d probably not launch before 2050 even if I let him.
Man, Egypt has quite a bit of military in Thebes.
Man, this city doesn’t even have enough food to feed the nice town sitting there..
Well, I have a few nukes…. I guess I’ll wait for a few more...
I don’t think either enemy will have the techs for bomb shelters or SDI yet, so I should expect the nukes to all hit. Since it seems that nukes cut population in half, I should need 3 nukes for cities <=8, 4 for up to 16, and a couple more in reserve just in case.
City sizes to target: 7, 13, 9, 10, 13, 15, 11, 13, 10, 15, 16, 16, 13
ICMBs needed: 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 4, total: 49.
Ok, so I need a few more nukes... With 13 cities, if I’m willing to leave populations at 2-3, I can get by with only 36 nukes... So it looks like I need to build some more...
Also, I noticed that with 220/500 hammers into a nuke, I can buy it with 561 gold, so the 5314 I have in the bank can net me about 5 nukes, and at +367, I’ll be able to by another every 4 turns or so.
Up to 20 nukes..
Nice, I finally got something other than a Merchant and Prophet -- time for a GA to make more nukes..
Well, I’ve built enough nukes to take all the enemy cities down to 2, but I forgot to built he UN to win… so I guess I’ll have to build some more nukes...
7 turns for the UN...
Since the first election is 1 turn after completing the UN, I’ll plan to launch the nukes on the turn that I find out I win the election to secretary general, which should be 8-9 turns from now, which should let me build another 10 nukes.
Finally going for Emancipation – 4-6 unhappy in most of my cities...
UN is in..
Darn, Washington has Bomb Shelters…. I guess I’ll have to leave this city until last...
So, I built the UN in 1932, and in 1934 I still don’t have any elections…..
Finally...
I spent a bit on nukes, but I still have 5k left... maybe next turn...
And I’m the Secretary General, but really could almost win right now – I have 269 of 271 needed...
Given than only one enemy city has bomb shelters, and no-one has SDI, I think 78 nukes should do the trick. If not, I should be able to throw another 20 in the next turn...
Before firing:
Here’s a nuke hitting...
After nuking the other continent with a few missiles...
Whoops...
I didn’t realize that war weariness would be this bad... So much for those 20 extra nukes I was expecting. Noone was working the production tiles. Maybe I should have switched to Police state, and build Rushmore and a few more jails if I was going to do it.
Finally... I get to choose a resolution...
Of course, I choose Diplomatic Victory, which nets me an easy win after all the nukes...
Note than I only had 229 votes in the last screenshot -- the turn before I had 244 votes. WW really hits hard when you nuke everyone else on the planet.
Wow, those nukes counted heavily into my power rating...
Well, I guess this goes to show -- if you actually want to use a number of nukes, you better make sure you’re build Rushmore, are running police state, and have a Jail in every city (though the global theatre city can skip it).
I wouldn’t you know, I forgot to take a picture of where I rank among the leaders of the world...
Short summary: 1940AD Diplomatic Victory (backdoor domination)
Now for the part of my report where I am highly critical of how I played.... Areas I could have improved: