Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

 
Game Report: Epic 4 - Rome v The Barbarians (3/6)

 
Turtle

And this is where I probably make my biggest mistake. You can make any number of mistakes with Civ IV ...

Well, I made the big one - strategic. I had a very good start, knew lots about my land, knew my enemy, had the killer unit (Praetorian) and the killer trait (organized) but I firstly went into builder mode for about 30 turns trying to improve my economy and then I turtled big time. Why? Well, my only excuse is that it got a little bit difficult (ok, so I have no excuse) - the barbs showed up with horse archers (a unit that could challenge my Praetorians). And so I build forts along my boundaries and selected anti-horse promotions for my troops. I also had each fort protected by two units for extra protection. Naturally, this took a while and all those troops really slowed my economy down. The main drain wasn't city maintenance, it was unit support.

I slowly teched Calendar (gold from spices), Monarchy (winaries) and currency (had to tech something). While this was going on (1200 years), I stagnated. I can see it now looking back but at the time, I was busy dealing with the hordes of barbarians coming against me. What does every Civ post dealing with Barbs say is the best way of dealing with these guys? Put out fog busters. I did put out fog busters in my little alcove (South), found a barb city there and removed it, but I didn't put out fog busters anywhere else - I clucked, to scared to lose those units.

So - what happened, the barbs out teched me. Yes, the barbs out teched me and turned up with Maceman against my Praetorian. That really hurt. Here is my military situation in 1172AD ...

Lets just check in with Jr ...

Then in 1310AD ...

And in 1328AD ...

Well, that helped with the teching as I finally knew some more advanced civs and got the beaker bonus. They wouldn't trade anything with me, wouldn't swap world maps, nothing. Ok, open borders but whoop-d-whoop. Qin Shi Huang demanded my map "Give us what we want or prepared to be distroyed" (1607 AD), Gandhi gave us Compass (1766 AD) and I purchased Gandhi's map for about 600 gps (ouch). I also tried to sweeten our relationships with Qin.

You will notice two AIs concealed behind a very un-naturally (or is it unlucky) looking mountain range (more about them later).


[Note: picture from much later in the game]

You will also notice that I have the main land all to myself (all mine to expand into - if I can) but all the Barbs here are mine too. I had noticed that the Barbs come in waves. First it was a huge wave of warriors, then a lull before a wave of warriors and archers. Another lull, then a wave of warriors, archers and axes. Lull, horse archers. Lull, macemen. Lull, lull, lull. This last lull lasted a while and I started to get really concerned that barbarian tanks would roll over the hill. I finally stuck my head out to find where the barbs had gone.

On no, some really bad news ... no more Jr ... I don't know exeactly how or when this happened due to the quick defense option but I am assuming that he was got by a horse archer coming down a road. He had good visability (2 tiles) and was set on 'watch'.

A brief moment of rememberance for 5500 year old Jr ... ... ...

Back to the waveless Barbs. It seems that my grace period of not having to deal with the Deity level AIs was over. Both India and China had arrived on my continent and were fog busting. They were also removing Barb cities ...

As you can see from the above (bottom right city of Uzbek is mine), I was also (finally) out capturing Barb cities. Obviously this is something that I should have been doing 1600 years ago. Well, better late than never.

This gives me a chance to try an option that I had always wanted to try - stack attack. Ok, it doesn't really mean stack attack, it just means that one click will cause all the selected units to attack one at a time per normal. I changed my options, selected all my cats and pow ... massive colateral damage done to the Barb riflemen. I even had some cats that withdrew!

Next in line were the Praetorian, select all, click on city ... and I have another Barb city.

Ok, now the question is how to win. The Barbs aren't a problem but I have a severe investation of AIs on my continent. And they have modern armer and Mech Infantry while I basically have swordsman. They both like each other so I don't see them going to war to try for the domination victory. This game could go on for ever and I mean ever. I might just retire at this stage and call it a possible missed opportunity. I posted as much on the RB forum.

2 Week later in RL: I was chastized for my cop-out by Zalson on the RB forum ... ok, maybe encouraged to soldier on is better terminology. I have spent a few weeks thinking of any ways I can win this. The only way that I can think of is to go on a big land grab now (al la Civ 3) and put down as many cities as I can (before the AIs take the space), then tech, tech, and more tech until (!) I am at the same level as the AIs. Then take them out. Obviously it would be nice if I can get them warring but keep them below the Domination level. Hmmn - who knows. I'll try it and see.