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Because of this Civilization I have lost my only game of Civ IV on the Prince difficulty, damn you Augustus such a weak ass leader! Even on a Archipelago map setup they suck. Every other turn they seem to be mad about something, we fear for our protection, it's too crowded, etc.
Early game was the usual border tensions with Spain, and the Holy Roman empire. Spain was pleased with me while the Holy Roman empire was the default cautious. Then I built a colony to grab some valuable resources on the Spanish home island. That and I could build troops there when I chose to invade the Spanish civilization. After about 12 turns I had about a stack and a half of troops ready to invade. Then I switched civics and I found myself being attacked not only by Spain but from across the sea by the Holy Roman empire as well. Spain had several stacks of melee while the Holy Romans had two stacks of Navy with transports of melee heading straight for my home island. They manged to grab a foothold but by some miracle a small force of Caravels, and later Privateers manged to whittle away at their naval stack while my pitiful force of Siege, and Melee attacked and recaptured the city on my home island.
On Spain's home island the city Barcelona went back and forth between me and Isabella at one point it traded hands every turn for 10 turns in a row. To my count I lost around 5-6 stacks just fighting for that city, and keeping Spanish forces from my three small cities that were now settled on the Island and to my joy were slowly growing. But the tide was turning, I manged to knock Charlemagne off my home island and then destroyed all of his ships he had and eventually had all of his coastal cities blockaded while pillaging fishing boats, and fishing nets. I had Privateers taking 100 gold per turn from the trade routes. Too weak and occupied with Spain I figured on a cease fire, which was agreed upon.
With that I could finally focus on Spain, and the land battles that were causing me to lose units every turn. At one point I decided that when I recaptured the city of Barcelona I would raze it and be done with it. But while moving a stack towards the city I noticed something. A source of Oil had popped up right next to the city, so much for razing the city. I had to capture the city just for that sole resource. With more naval units available I started attacking fishing boats, and Spanish ships wherever I manged to spot them. I figured the war was starting to swing in my favor when Spain started sending Warriors, and Chariots to defend Barcelona and attack me whenever possible. After two failed attempts to take the city and half my stack destroyed, I finally took Barcelona. I asked for a peace treaty shortly after. She accepted.
The whole war lasted 85 turns, during that period I met Wang Kon, Alexander, Saladin, Sitting Bull, Montezuma, Joao II, Ragnar, Fredrick, Louis XIV, and Boudica as usual for money purposes I setup simple trade relations where I could. I also started making my first mistakes of the game, I started to settle on one square islands, two of them in fact not far away that couldn't meet the border of my home island, but far enough and in weak spots to be attacked, and become stagnant after 6 pop and thus offer no production value to my empire at all, and increase costs on my empire all the while needing protection to keep the people happy.
Another thing that set me back was that even though I managed to kick Charlemagne off my home island, and be no worse for wear after fighting both Charlemagne, and Isabella to a literal standstill of sorts. I had little to show for it economically, if anything I was worse off. Charlemagne had valuable resources that I needed for health, as did Isabella. Corn, Crabs, Cows, and Clams. After just fighting both of them the diplomatic relations were FUBAR especially with Spain. I constantly had to renegotiate with Charlemagne just to keep my cities healthy, while harbors, lighthouses, granaries, and aqueducts were being built on my end. On the happiness front I also had to make improvements. Throughout the entire game I had unhappy citizens, and cesspool cities to deal with at random occasions. The only resources I had on my home Island was Dye, Copper, and across a short span of water Horses, Iron, and Fish where my four cities were next to Spain.
Things were in the pits economically and it was obvious that another War was about to start when I changed Legal Civics.
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Civilization has to be one of the hardest games I've ever played. I can't ever win legit even on the easiest difficulty. Props to you for only losing once on Prince!
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Fantastic blog. Reading stuff like this makes we want to play Civ again.
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I was able to win a couple games on prince difficulty but never could quite make it on the next level (monarch?) T_T. i always ended up sacrificing military might to keep up in econ/tech but i'd get screwed in the end. on the higher levels you really have to wheel and deal effectively, otherwise you're screwed lol. never could quite get the hang of that myself
edit: was this vanilla? or BTS? or...the other one i can't remember right now ><?
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This is beyond the Sword, I have always thought it sucks that Firaxis games makes expansions that are stand alone and don't allow you to have both.
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ever played rome: total war?
so proud i finished that recently.
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yeah, i ended up buying warlords (just remembered lol) and BTS cuz i thought warlords was required T_T.
btw, i dont know how interested you are in civ 4 but on civfanatics they have a game of the month forum where they provide a saved game file from the beginning of the first turn (with civ/leader/every option already selected) and everyone dloads the game and plays it out. then at the end they talk about how they did, whether they won, their scores, various cpu leaders' douchebaggery and the like. it adds tons more fun to the experience 
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On August 14 2009 17:29 jonnyp wrote:btw, i dont know how interested you are in civ 4 but on civfanatics they have a game of the month forum where they provide a saved game file from the beginning of the first turn (with civ/leader/every option already selected) and everyone dloads the game and plays it out. then at the end they talk about how they did, whether they won, their scores, various cpu leaders' douchebaggery and the like. it adds tons more fun to the experience
civfanatics is awesome but one should consider not looking too deeply into others strategies. Because in the end you may end up playing out others strats. (just like executing build orders) Making your own strategies is the best!
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Starting at Prince-Monarch levels, you really have to start catering your winning objective and play style to the leader/civilization you are playing. That being said, with Augustus being Industrious/Imperialistic and the Romans having Praetorians/Forum, your gameplan should have involved early land pressure followed by medieval age economic expansion/wonder whoring.
In actuality though, the first mistake even before the game started was choosing this leader/civilization combination for Archipelago. On an archipelago map, any financial leader with colossus would have been dominant; alternatively, one of the water based civilizations (Dutch, Portuguese, Vikings) would have fared well also. If you chose Augustus/Romans because you were dead set on winning with them, then I probably would have chosen a different map set up. Praetorians flourish on land maps with short travel times. If you ended up with this map/civ/leader setup out of randomness, then you faced an uphill battle to start with and should have adjusted your gameplan accordingly.
Specifically for your game, the opportunity window to invade with Praetorians was probably missed because of the island distances and the need to use triremes to transport troops. Praetorians are defunct after other civilizations get longbowmen, so ideally you would have liked to eliminate 1-2 civilizations before anybody even comes close to Feudalism. Given your situation, it might have been smarter to settle for a more mild military campaign with the specific objective of playing out your midgame through your leader's traits. Because you are industrious and have forums, you probably should have used your Praetorians to secure a stone or marble resource and wonder whored. Colossus would have flourished on this map and beelining to Iron Working would have put you one tech away from building it. After securing stone/marble, having your Colossus coastal economy kicking in, and beginning to build a lot of wonders, you could have taken advantage of your imperialistic trait by massively expanding. A nice added touch too is that you would have been able to defend with relative ease having longbowmen /and/ praetorians at your disposal. This strategy probably would have put you on more solid grounds entering the industrial age.
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On August 14 2009 18:08 Napalm wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2009 17:29 jonnyp wrote:btw, i dont know how interested you are in civ 4 but on civfanatics they have a game of the month forum where they provide a saved game file from the beginning of the first turn (with civ/leader/every option already selected) and everyone dloads the game and plays it out. then at the end they talk about how they did, whether they won, their scores, various cpu leaders' douchebaggery and the like. it adds tons more fun to the experience civfanatics is awesome but one should consider not looking too deeply into others strategies. Because in the end you may end up playing out others strats. (just like executing build orders) Making your own strategies is the best!
Well, at sufficiently low level you can do almost anything. As you get higher level, you have to streamline and weed out weaker strategies.
For example, let's say you decide to tech sailing before bronze working and decide to axe rush. The higher the difficulty, the smaller the window to attack before they have a largish army of axemen, and the more time other civilizations have to grab land, so + Show Spoiler +sailing might give him time to tech iron working, maybe even get up a few walls. Then you grab one city losing a third of your army, you suicide the rest of your army on the second city, he uses his AI bonuses outproduce you later on and he hates you
Or you get a nice army of swordsmen/axemen and you decide to tech horseback riding before pottery/writing. + Show Spoiler +You conquer 2 or 3 civilizations, suddenly you realize you're losing gold at 0% science, you fall hopelessly behind and die
That being said, it's not always clear what the best strategy is and you have to think carefully at a meta level.
Build orders don't work the same way; a good player has to be able to adapt. The most efficient advice I can think of is 1) specialize your cities. Don't waste time and hammers building economy multipliers in production cities. 2) Check your diplomacy. It's easy, view the relationships, see who's friends with each and who's not. Pick a side (usually the stronger side)
or figure out a hierachy of friends, and do not trade, do not even open borders with the enemies. 3) Have an efficient early game. A bit more complicated, but research techs to work your special tiles early. Build a worker first (at least 80% of the time), and don't building anything other workers, settlers, military escorts (while growing) until you're finishing up expanding early. And maybe 4) use lots of siege. These are what players are good at and AIs aren't. Players who play with weird handicaps can generally put out wins at moderate difficulty levels by maximizing their advantages in these areas.
And is Augustus weak? He has praetorians. Conquer everything in sight until your economy stalls. For an economy, find a city with a food source or two and tons of grasslands, mass cottages and grow.
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EPT
