Epic Forty-three: Ports Your Goal

[Griselda]

Please post reports in reply to this post. I hope you enjoyed your game!

-Griselda

[Kylearan]

I've been away for two weeks, plus I have a lot other things to do at the moment like organizing a wedding for a close friend, so this report will leave out a lot of details from my Epic 43 game. Sorry about that. Additionally, this will probably count as a shadow game because my paratroopers moved freely around inland - I had understood the rules that way ("Inland prohibition does not apply to scouts, explorers and workers, nor to air power and paratroops"). Yes, I had been aware that this rule doesn't fit to the overall theme very well, but had thought that would be Sirian's concession to us to reduce end-game tedium a bit. Well, always ask before assuming anything, I guess...

On the other hand, my inadvertently used "shortcut" probably didn't change much. My game was legal until paratroopers arrived, and many cities were conquered with tanks/modern armor anyway later on, so I hope this game should still do okay for comparison purposes. Just assume I would have finished a few turns later instead.

Pregame thoughts: I felt a spaceship victory, while being the faster and easer route by far, would take a lot from the variant theme away, so I decided to go the conquest route. That would also mean I could experience the overpoweredness of bombers firsthand; I've never tried them myself before because of the cheeze smell surrounding them...
The variant city placement rules would mean overall shield production would be suboptimal, and we would have less cities with minimal corruption, so a switch to communism later on might be in order.



After moving the scout, I founded Lisbon on the starting spot, and the hut gave me ceremonial burial. What to build in Lisbon was the next question - scouts (how may?), curraghs, warriors, or a granary right away? I did some metagame analysis: Portugal was seafaring, but the complex variant rules about city placement, inland movement and the exception for one spice inland city strongly suggested that this was no archipelago map, but at least continents, maybe pangea even. So we could expect a lot of land to scout, with a lot of huts to explore. If I was right, the seafaring strengths of the additional movement for ships and the reduced chance of sinking in deep water would be less useful or even neutralized, and I should make good use of the expansionist trait to compensate for this. So I decided to build three additional scouts right away to go for more huts, followed by a granary, even if that would mean leaving Lisbon empty in the beginning and exceeding the unit support limit. As it turned out, I was right with my speculations about the map layout, and got an early settler in 3350BC plus some techs and gold out of the huts.

Oporto, the city from the early settler, dedicated itself to supplying garrisons and additional settlers, while the city from my first self-built settler immediately built a temple, then started the pyramids. It looked like I would be able to get a decent number of cities even if restricted to the coast only, and denying it to the AIs was good too.

Research-wise I went for the philosophy-republic gambit (too bad this is so clearly the best early move; takes away other research options you had before philo gave you a free tech). It worked very well, since the AIs avoided researching writing for a very long time - the only problem was when Germany demanded writing in 1700BC and I couldn't afford to give it to them, because them scientific bastards might beat me to philosophy while I has to research code of laws first! So early war I was unprepared for was on me. But by now I know how to defend against AIs while having nearly no troops, so I wasn't afraid. As it turned out, no German units appeared for a long time, because they were also fighting the Spanish - and I was shocked to see that they managed to destroy Spain in 1525BC! Now they owned three Spanish cities; amazing how early aggression had paid off for once for Germany. I had to pay for peace in 1375BC so they wouldn't slow down my expansion.

But the demise of Spain gave me one big advantage theme-wise I guess most other players had not:



When I first saw how close the only spices were to the Spanish capital, I thought the spice city exception from the variant rules had been a red herring. Guess I was wrong. :-) But not only that, that city would also give me horses eventually, which I would have been unable to get otherwise, *and* an additional source of iron! What a city. You also could say it had a gigantic, invisible sign hanging over it, saying "Sneak attack me! Sneak attack me!"! ;-) I garrisoned it heavily to discourage any such notions from the AI.

I've said that Emerita would give me a *second* source of iron. The location of the first source was one of the reason I had been delighted to see Sirian had sponsored an Epic again. Its location was cunningly placed: It was on the coast, sure, but surrounded by marsh and the only way to immediately claim it were spots not on the coast, so the AIs would be allowed to settle there and we not. I realized this in time, though, and sent down a worker accompanied by a spear early to clear one of the marsh tiles and managed to settle there before Germany could.

Pyramids were finished in 410BC, and because I was still busy expanding, building workers and infrastructure with no time to build up a real military, I decided to build a cheeze factory, er, the Statue of Zeus in Oporto in 130AD.

All my lands were finally settled in 300AD. AIs were up gunpowder now, and Germany was frighteningly large!



In 520AD, my spices were finally connected to my main lands. In 890AD, it became interesting again on the diplo front: Germany declared war on Sumeria! Later, England got drawn in against Germany via an MPP, then Persia vs. England (MPP again), then Persia declared on Sumeria, Egypt on Germany (alliance), and I calmly stayed out of this mess. Germany, due to its size, gained a lot of ground during the war, and I began to gift key techs like replacable parts to England to help them. Egypt left the game in 1395AD, shortly after the other nations had made peace again.

I decided to revolt to communism in 1415AD. I had just gotten flight, the tech I needed to deal with Germany, and expected to acquire more far-away cities soon. The revolt might have been a mistake, as research slowed down a bit and the new cities were unable to contribute much to the late war anyway, but on the other hand I might have choked on unit support cost later on otherwise. I even managed to exceed unit support limit in communism, which I hadn't managed to do before.

So while I started to build my first bombers, Germany demanded maps and money in 1475AD. That was a bit earlier than planned, but okay: I refused, and war was upon me. My growing bomber forces did their work.



Emerita, the central spice city, made for a nice spot for my bombers to disconnect all kinds of German luxuries and resources. My forces conquered German cities clockwise along the coast, and just when I reached a Persian city which was in the way, Persia landed a cavalry on my island! Nice I thought, a sneak attack. So I demanded they should leave...and X-man said "yes, sure, I'll do this next turn!" But luckily they declared inbetween turns anyway.

In 1575AD, a lucky German bomber that came through my fighter defense managed to destroy the airport at Emerita, argh! I missed cash-rushing at that point; I had to wait four turns to build a new one to reconnect my precious spices.

Advanced Flight came in in 1595AD, and finally I was able to build paratroopers to deal with inland cities. And just when I thought, well, a paratrooper army would be nice, I got a leader on the first elite attack of one of my tanks. :D

Another first time for me:



Berlin was the first city that my bombers failed to clear on the first turn of bombardment. But when I razed it next turn, I scored a personal record of acquiring 29 slaves.

Another thing I noticed was just how bad flak units are. I bombarded several cities which had a flak in them, and I lost only very, very few bombers against them. Looks like a worthless unit to me: Only useful in large quantities, but then not worth the shields.

I completed SETI in 1720AD and finally sparked off my golden age. Can you believe it, I had kept a carrack on lookout for any ship to attack all the time, and *never* encountered a single German ship, and only once a Persian one (loading off the cavalry for the sneak attack) which then moved away immediately! Maybe I should have built a privateer as bait, but that idea came to me only after the game was over.

I declared war on England on the same turn. I had to build an airfield guarded by modern paratroopers to extend bomber range, and in 1768AD, it was over: I had conquered the big fish.



Thanks Sirian for an interesting game! The variant rules led to an oddly shaped empire, which had essentially been one long frontier. But in the end, it hadn't been too hard. As I did in many games before, I probably lingered for too long; I probably could have attacked earlier. I'm curious to see how other games went, especially because I suspect I got very lucky with getting the spice/horse city and only had to import rubber later on for some time.

-Kylearan

[Sir Bugsy]

I have a full report coming. For the record, I had a Domination loss in 1844.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Domination loss? Ouch! :o I don't think I've ever read a report of a regular game that ended with the player losing by domination, so I'm really eager to read your report. I'm really curious about who was the dominating civ in your game...

-Kylearan

[Kodi]

Wow, you had a pretty interesting game there, Kylearan. I gave up early in the game, because I found it especially difficult to complete
It'll be interesting to read some other wins/failures, so I can learn some strategies and all. Can't wait till the next Epic to come out ;-)

[microbe]

I posted the report at CFC to make it easier for myself.

My report

[microbe]

Interesting game and very nicely played.

I also got a free settler, plus a free village very close to home. I also settled the spice city very early on.

My game is very different in that I was almost constantly involved in wars, alliances and MPP. Sumeria was leading for a while but it wasn't too formidable. In yours Germany grew quite big.

EDIT: just saw Justus' partial report. Am I the only one that blocked CB at the beginning?

[Justus_II]

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to complete this game. I had high hopes when it was released, even with the extended deadline, but after starting it up, I was away for 3 weeks, and when I returned, I got caught up in too many other things and never found the time to sit down and finish it. I had been looking forward to some extensive use of naval and air warfare, but never got past 250AD. Anyway, here's my partial report, I had some early fun, and quickly became addicted to the Spices, to the point I lost sight of the big picture for a while. :P But it was fun, and thanks again to Sirian for sponsoring it. I promise to be more focused for the next one!

My Partial Report

[kryszcztov]

I have just finished my game, but I'm surprised to see so few completed games. :o Anyway I now have to write a (not so long) report with pictures. For the record, I launched a spaceship in 1786AD, and my game looks very different to Kylerean's one for example (don't expect too much action :laugh: ).

[kryszcztov]

I've just finished writing my report for that nice game. It can be found here, at the CDZ website. I hope my game isn't that boring to read, because I chose the "easy way out". :P See you for the next Epic !