Posts: 18
Threads: 8
Joined: Jun 2006
Pre-game analysis:
The goal of the game is of course to win. Now this adventure is on Noble difficulty, so it should be quite an easy task, so I decided that it should be either Conquest or Domination, as Time victory would be too boring.
The problem with this variant is that you canât raze cities, so if you go to war and start conquering rivals in a fast pace, you are bound to go bankrupt quite fast. And once your economy starts tumbling, you will pretty fast find yourself way back in technology research and your rivals will have too advanced units as a defence.
So my plan was to make early expansion to grab sites for 5-6 cities, research pottery for early cottage spam on those nice floodplains and BW and IW to locate resources for early war. Masonry was also of high priority, as I wanted to get Pyramids for representation. After all Louis is industrious, which means +50% in wonder production and we had stone close to the starting position. After building a solid core and hopefully having a nice tech lead, I should start my quest for world dominance and declare war.
I also made a choice not to go for an early religion, as I didnât want to have a state religion, as it only would make fellow civs on the map angry with me. I had a plan to declare war on a chosen civ on a chosen time, not to get declared on by somebody who doesnât like my religious beliefs. Free religion is the path for the French conquerors; this will by no means be a crusade. Louis being creative solves the cultural problem of not having a state religion and once we get to drama, there are half price theatres waiting, to help with happiness.
I consider Louis UU, the musketeers, quite weak. I donât like musketmen at all and the only benefit of musketeers is that they have double movement. Musketmen are totally useless, as you can get chemistry for grenadiers or rifling for riflemen real fast. And musketeers come quite late for the first aggressions, so I will try to fight the first war with macemen and catapults.
As I will be at war for most of the game, it is also crucial to focus on diplomacy to get the rival civs fight each other. If the AIâs are left alone and they start a building feast, I will be so far behind after one war that recovery will be very tough. Also having the AIâs in bad relations wonât trigger any âYou declared war on our closest friendâ type of negative diplomacy points.
Actual game:
I settle on the starting position. Thereâs corn and stone within the fat-cross, as well as five floodplains and four hills. Looks like as very solid position for my strategy. I start researching Mining â Masonry â Pottery â BW. Copper is located within city radius, which makes Paris an even stronger capital.
In 2160 BC I found Orleans SW of Paris on the desert hill to grab the very important ivory and the wines. Ivory is of course important as I can construct war elephants, but it also helps with happiness, as Iâm not going to have any religion within my French border for any time soon. Also the location was a perfect match in the dot map and my neighbour in west, Mansa Musa, seems to be closer than Saladin to the east.
In 1480 BC I found Lyons south of Paris, on the floodplains west of the peak. Now this is the third city I found and all three have so many floodplains that with cottage spam I will for sure have a massive lead in GNP. Despite being so strong on GNP, all three have decent production, so I âm not going to be too weak in that sense either. Lyons has three hills and copper and Orleans two hills and ivory. After researching IW I pop iron in Orleans, which makes things even better.
In 925 BC I build the Pyramids in Paris and that I think was pretty fast. Right on target, captain, but I forgot to switch to representation. In 850 when the Oracle was build somewhere, I remembered it. Now that is quite typical for me. Have a great plan and execution, but not to harvest the fruit of itâ¦..ARGH!
In 625 BC I found Rheims south of Lyons, on the coast next to the pigs and in 600 BC Tours, also on the coast, south of Orleans to get fish. With all those floodplains, healthiness is becoming a bit of a problem.
The war horns go of for the first time in 375, when trigger happy Alexander attacks Isabella. Now thatâs good news, but I have to wonder what ticks him of. He has no religion and this early land grab is not over, and yet he is the one to declare!?
The final city to my core France is founded in 250 BC. Itâs called Marseilles and its location is east of Paris and it grabs the cows and two gold recourses. It will also secure wheat and sheep for health purposes within time, but those are outside of the city radius.
Quite some time goes by, when Iâm only building infrastructure and city improvements and of course some wonders. I thought that the Pyramids would be the most important one and then I would just start warmongering, but as I had a tech lead and some decent production and Louis after all id industrious, why not go wonder happy. Just for the fun and also for denial purposes. So I build the Hanging Gardens, the Colossus, the Great Lighthouse, the Great Library and the Sistine Chapel.
Now it was already 1000 AD and my strategy was to conquer and I had not shed a single drop of blood, except for some barbarian, but those we donât get any points for. I was going for liberalism to have an even stronger tech lead and I was lacking machinery for those macemen I was planning to go to war with, but I had ivory and thus war elephants, and together with catapults they can be pretty effective.
So I gathered a stack of three war elephants, five cats and some axes and swords, and in 1030 AD the French conquerors are on their first task of the mission to rule the world. Saladin was the obvious candidate, as he lived next door and was much weaker than my neighbour to the west, Mansa Musa. The next turn I capture Baghdad, and in 1370 AD and six captured cities altogether, Arabia ainât no more. One down and hopefully many more to go.
I planned to go west next because of two reasons. First of all city distance from the capital makes the maintenance cost go up quite fast and secondly Mansa Musa was getting quite strong, so I would have wanted to eliminate him as a potential threat. But just before I finished of Saladin, the nutcase Alexander declares on me!!!??? Iâm a bit confused. Iâm -1 in diplomatic points with him, mainly because I refused to help him with his warfare against Isabella, and he is last in power and way back in tech, whereas Iâm leading in both by miles and still he chooses to declare on me! And all of a sudden he is pleased with Isabella, just because he converted to her religion. Diplomacy can be tricky at times!
Anyway, this incident changed the strategy in my game quite a bit, as nobody declares on mighty France unpunished. Alexander had to die and with some help from Hatshepsut he goes down in 1745. There was an era of peace in between, as I chose Nationalism as my free tech from liberalism, and had to build the Taj Mahal at some point. And I donât like being at war at the same time with a Golden Age, so I had to take a brake in my conquest and after taking two cities from Alexander I sign for peace in 1500 AD and the Taj Mahal completes the next turn. After the Golden Age ends in 1580 I immediately declare on Alex again. And in 1745 I earn my third point. Third because Catherine has been so kind to gift me my second point in 1720 by killing England.
In 1770 AD I complete the Pentagon and this makes it again that much easier to go for the next target. And in 1785 a start my second Golden Age, this time with the help of two great people.
One problem with not being able to raze cities, is that cultural pressure from other cities nearby will often make the newly captured city to flip back, especially this late in a game. I often use a great artist or raze the border cities, if I want to stop expanding in a certain direction. In this game I planned to go for Mansa Musa, just west of my capital, but once again I had to keep rolling the war clockwise to the next territory, as Kublai Khans cultural pressure made Delphi, one of the cities acquired from Alex, flip in 1808.
So in 1814 the war horns go of again and this time France is attacking with City Raider III infantry and artillery against mostly riflemen and other outdated Mongolian troops. Also industrialism was coming in, in just a couple of turns and tanks can be quite nasty pieces of machinery for rifles to chew. In 1864 AD I have captured 13 Mongolian cities, including the recaptured Delphi and Kublai Khan is down. Also in the mean while Julius Caesar has been defeated by Mansa Musa and I have a total of 5 points so far.
About the same time that I went too war against Kublai Khan, Catherine declared on Isabella. Catherine had been doing quite a nice job with her Cossacks, and just needed a little help from the mighty France to finish of Isabella. In 1880 when my troops barely had healed from the previous war, of we went again and I declared on Isabella. Spain also happened to be geographically between Russia and former Mongolia, so it was of course quite convenient to pick Isabella as the next victim. I barely had time to move my troops outside Madrid, when Catherine already had captured everything else of Spain and softened up the defenders in Madrid quite a bit, so it was almost just marching in to the city. In 1884 Spain had fallen and I was up to 6 points.
Isabella was already getting quite strong, as she had already captured what used to be known as England and Spain. She also was furious with me, so I thought it was just a matter of time before she would attack me. And as I already in the beginning stated, I prefer to be the one declaring, not the one being declared at. She was also again next up geographically in my clockwise moving conquest.
I had a stack of tanks and marines ready waiting on a couple of galleons guarded by destroyers outside the Russian NW border and my veteran units in Mongolia and Spain also were ready for some action, so I declared on Catherine in 1892. I started shipping in troops in the middle of Russia and captured a city there, then started airlifting troops in every turn from my core France. I also had some bombers coming in a couple of turns in to the war and started using the âSirian doctrineâ Iâve been reading about in many reports from earlier events, i.e. bombarding down city defence and softening up the defenders and thus making it easier for the land troops to capture the cities. Also my numerous suicide artillery units were a bit too much for the Cossack stacks that Catherine was sending as counter attacks.
In the middle of the war Catherine got SAM Infantry, but that just slowed my troops a bit down. The bloodbath was inevitable. In 1932 I captured the last Russian city and the seventh point was earned.
In 1935 the game ends as France steps over the domination threshold.
At the end I had 52 cities of which six are of French origin. I had build 20 world wonders and had 73 mechanized infantry, 23 tanks, 25 modern armour and 34 workers. I had finished of 90 riflemen 53 catapults and 38 cossacks just to name few. France was 54,26 % of land area and 55,8 % of world population.
And as a recap, 7 points for number of rival civilizations eliminated.
So in conclusion, what I got from this game was something I always thought could be fun. Being tech leader, while at the same time go wonder crazy and being at war with somebody constantly, was great fun.
