***SPOILER*** grahamiam vs. bed_head7

[bed_head7]

Okay, I don't really know what I am doing here, as this is my first PBEM and my first spoiler, so any comments or critiques would be welcome. The game is currently at turn 110, but I switched to a different computer halfway through, as the old one stopped functioning more or less, so I don't have any early pics to share, unfortunately.

First things first. Map here was made by Rik, and it is a peculiar archipelago that we have wound up with. grahamiam and I disallowed MAs against the humans, ship chaining, and the other standard exploits.

Anyways, I decided that with a small island which could only be escaped via galleys, it was important to get to Map Making as soon as possible. I opted to really cram the island with cities to work as many tiles as possible and get to Philosophy before grahamiam. As it turns out, it wasn't too much of a race, as he got hit by disease twice early on, and he opted to only settle one other city on the island as opposed to three. With harbor prebuilds in all my cities, I took Map Making as my free tech, and started settling like mad. London was on a six turn size 7-8 galley/settler cycle, and the other cities were switching off as well. All of the galleys were to try to catch up with grahamiam who sent out more early curraghs and beat me in getting contacts and uncovering the map.

After learning Philo and taking Map Making, I headed for CoL and then Republic. On the way to Republic, the Dutch got it though, and due to the fact that most of the world didn't know each other, I was able to trade for all remaining AA techs (Monarchy, Currency, Construction, The Republic) and get into the MA. grahamiam had a literature monopoly though, so he was able to trade his way into the MA without a problem. He then recieved Engineering as his free tech, and here, something peculiar happened. Spain seems to have somehow gotten Engineering as well, and they then researched Feudalism extraordinarily quickly. Then Portugal suddenly had these techs, and researched Invention in a very short time. Well, no matter. I headed for Monotheism and then Theology, and was able to trade to parity without a problem. Currently, I am holding an Education monopoly and am headed for Astronomy, with the promise to give grahamiam Education for Gunpowder once he gets it.

In the last thirty turns, I was twice attacked. First, Carthage dropped off a couple of warriors near one of the islands just outside the main one. Luckily it was small with only a harbor, but I didn't even notice the drop off, and then I had terrible luck recapturing it. But Carthage with four cities was no match for my production, and I was able to go and take his only city on another island and one of his main island cities, which had the Hanging Gardens. I just hope it doesn't flip. I was planning on finishing them off, but then the Iroquois decided to "sneak attack" me. So I made peace with Carthage and I am hoping that the cities I captured don't flip.

That is about where I am right now. I took back the city the Iroquois took, and now I have a small force which plans to island hop and take some land off the Iroquois' hands. I am mostly building infra in my core, as I would like to be able to get to Magnetism and MT before anyone else. grahamiam is in his GA at the moment, and I am still outresearching him as far as I know. At the very least, I haven't lost much ground.

Okay, so first, here is my core.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/2005740193_bedgrah110a_core.jpg
154.83 KB

The lands recently taken from Carthage.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057401938_bedgrah110a_carthage.jpg
117.73 KB

And the current situation against the Iroquois, where for some reason a galley is defending. I would have taken the city this turn, if my MedInf. hadn't lost to a horse (flatland there, by the way).

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057402039_bedgrah110a_iroquois.jpg
79.8 KB

Just to get an idea of how much land we all have, the minimap. Note that the city at the southern portion of my zone actually belongs to Carthage, and the easternmost city in Carthage's zone belongs to me. Mine claimed silks, and will be rushing a harbor the turn before I learn Astronomy (which is due in 7 turns).

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057402110_bedgrah110a_minimap.jpg
9.23 KB

Here is the reason I am most optimistic about this game: the power graph. Also note the score on the right. I have been gaining ground steadily on the Iroquois and putting a little more between grahamiam and myself.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057402317_bedgrah110a_power.jpg
102.25 KB

I think with the GA boost for grahamiam, I have been knocked to third place by grahamiam in a couple places, and in the rest I would imagine the Iroquois lead for the time being, though we are almost dead even in pop and territory. Overall though it looks good, and after I do a little more damage to the Iroquois and grahamiam's golden age is over, I think I will be first in all areas that matter.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057402350_bedgrah110a_f11.jpg
21.1 KB

Well, I hope things are as good for me as made them sound. I don't think I am being too overly optimistic about the fact that as long as I don't make any major mistakes, my chances for winning this one in some fashion are pretty good. Certainly much better than I imagined when I started this game. I expected to get whomped, and now I feel that I have a slight advantage, considering that late MA is where England starts to really shine. I just hope that grahamiam doesn't have any tricks up his sleeve.

[bed_head7]

Well, I may have figured out why I was able to stay ahead a bit in research despite grahamiam's golden age. I am guessing he was focusing on military production to take me out before I can capitalize on my technological advantage. I should have known it was coming, but I still have some hope left.

It is now turn 117, and peace was made with the Iroquois three turns ago. I took three of their cities, all with little value, but I figured there wasn't anything wrong with weakening the AI a bit. The peace was prompted by the sighting of a couple of Byzantine ships headed my way by a little lookout curragh I have strategically placed (the pic is of its current spot, not when it saw the dromons, but you can take my word for it).

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/2005754226_bedgrah117a_curragh.jpg
75.88KB

So, I started sending most of my small military back to the homelands to deter to some degree the attack I am expecting. On the current turn, I found out that the invasion is worse than I realized.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057542322_bedgrah117a_dromons.jpg
119.92KB

The small stack of mine at the top is three galleys, three MedInf., and three trebs. I moved those galleys before moving the other empty galley that spotted the Dromons, so they are within range. Hopefully grahamiam doesn't notice them, because if he sinks those three galleys, I will be in a great deal of trouble. If all the dromons are loaded, grahamiam will be able to do a ton of damage before I can stop him, as my core has been doing infra for awhile. If I lose the three galleys though, he might be able to do some serious damage to the core. Luckily, I did learn Astronomy this last turn, so at least I will be able to use caravels from now on which should mean slightly safer shipping. I am torn between turning off research to rush/upgrade or going full steam ahead for my UU which is three techs away, which would take probably 30 turns assuming my research capacity isn't hurt too greatly.

Needless to say, I am very eager to play the next turn, and I wish grahamiam had stuck around for ten minutes after sending, because I recieved the save at 5:49 and sent it back at 5:57.

[bed_head7]

No attack last turn, but the ships have moved farther into my lands. He might be heading straight for the core to try to finish it off quickly. Perhaps he thinks I don't have enough defense to take care of what he has got. Perhaps he is right.

[bed_head7]

Well, I just conceded. Amazing how quickly this happened after my first spoiler. He landed 12 units, I think it was, a mix of knights and MI, right outside my capital. I had a nice little network of ships so that all parts of my empire could get defense if need be. There were 8 MI and 10-12 trebs able to attack his force, but obviously 8 can't beat 12, so I conceded. Will post some pictures, or maybe just later tonight. I am rather disappointed at the moment though, and I just wanted to give grahamiam some more details in case he is still awake and wanted to check out my spoiler.

[bed_head7]

Well, not too much more in depth. Here is the Byzantine force.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/2005757183_bedgrah121a_byzantines.jpg
156.55KB

And about half of mine.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/bed_head7/20057571929_bedgrah121a_english.jpg
108.16KB

Unsurprisingly, I decided to concede. Those four cities made up probably a third of my production power and about half of my economy. I went into this thinking that I wouldn't concede so easily as some others seem to when things go sour. I would go down until my last. But the hurt was just too much in this case.

While I built a technically stronger empire, I played this game much as if grahamiam was an AI. I on occasion did treat him with the respect he was due, but for the most part I played stupidly. Mainly, the size of the army defending my core was much too small. I even thought about changing it on a few occasions, but that wasn't really what I wanted to do (I am a builder at heart) so I would generally content myself to switch a build over to military and keep everything else on infra. I had even been expecting something from grahamiam for awhile, as he was losing ground to me and had the advantage while the dromon was master of the seas. But it got to the point that I figured it was too late for anything to be coming. I don't really know why. So as I think I said previously, I just got to the point where I was racing for Magnetism and Military Tradition, instead of acting on my own feeling that there had to be something coming from grahamiam.

Well, the last few posts have pretty thoroughly proven me to be an overconfident arrogant fool. But, at least I learned something. Well, maybe not. How about, this loss hasn't taken away from my enthusiasm? I will gladly play a rematch against grahamiam, as our turns went very quickly. In under 2 1/2 months, we played 120 turns, and 2-3 weeks of those, I couldn't even play because of computer problems.

I must admit though, I understand how Moonsinger quit PBEMs after realizing that eventually someone's beautiful empire would have to be torn to shreds. I wasn't looking forward to attacking grahamiam (though I was greatly looking forward to sending out a huge fleet of full health MoW protecting an equal number of galleys loaded to the top brim with a mixture of cannons, cavalry and musketmen - that is my favorite part of any warmongering game) and as the last screenshot shows, I was still building a university in London since it only had a couple of turns left and switching to anything else would have meant lots of lost shields, which I couldn't stomach.

I am thinking that I have some more thoughts to add, but akots just sent a save, so I will post this and perhaps finish it off later.

[akots]

Interesting, my understanding of the pelago PBEM games on high difficulty (DemiGod and up) from local spoilers is that AIs are better be left alone except when they have critical resources. And human players pretty much focus on defense and hammering each other later in the game or earlier like it is here. Expansion overseas eats up too much to be able to adequately defend homeland and maintain naval superiority apparently. But I've never player such a game and Byzantines are superpower in this case since they control seas till Frigates/MoW pretty much completely. Apparently, Grahamiam though "now or never" and spared a decent chunk of military for this assault.

But leaving core cities undefended... This begs for it.

[bed_head7]

As I said, they weren't strictly undefended. I had a fair number of units moving around in ships nearby. It just wasn't enough to deal with all of those knights.

As for strategy overall, what you said was definitely the way to go on this one. I have no idea why I couldn't drop the wars with Carthage and the Iroquois after I got the cities back from them. Even though I realized they served no purpose. Again, it was a case of not treating grahamiam with the respect he was due. But I never really had a chance for naval superiority at this point in the game. It was simply the defend the homeland that was slightly lacking.

[grahamiam]

good game bedhead. if you just had some sort of defense, you could have easily won this as you were killing me in research. however, i figured, after Chivalry, what was the point in continuing research? therefore, I got my capitol up to 35spt during the GA and 2 other cities to 20-24 spt. I was then able to make a large amount of Knights (MDI's before chivarly as half my GA was without chivalry) and dromons.

imho, this map was painful, especially with the early disease. I felt I was playing catch-up all game, and if it went 20 turns longer, there was no way I could win it. My aim for the invasion was just to raze a core town or 2, then trim back your outer territories so you'd be blind to reinforcements. Looks like I caught you completely be suprise.

btw, here's the invasion force on it's way (and I though for sure you saw all those dromons :) )

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/grahamiam/2005760157_310BC-BH-GRAM.jpg

[bed_head7]

Oh my. I only saw two of those dromons. Now I feel really stupid. Once you made it to my little area of the map, I saw all of them, of course (I posted that above), but I didn't know what was coming until it was more or less too late. I did cash rush a few more units, but I only had a couple of barracks and I can't stomach regulars, even though that would have saved me in this situation.

[Rik Meleet]

quote:I will gladly play a rematch against grahamiam, as our turns went very quickly. In under 2 1/2 months, we played 120 turns, and 2-3 weeks of those, I couldn't even play because of computer problems.I could make a -less complicated- map if you want.
Unless you've had enough of my maps ....

[bed_head7]

Well, I am not sure if grahamiam was interested in a rematch, nor am I sure even if I want to play grahamiam again if he is on the fence about it. There are plenty of other people around here who would be fun to play.

I really liked this map. I would like to try something similar in the future, though the design would probably be less extreme in some cases. But I would certainly be happy to play another map of yours in the future.

[grahamiam]

I will pass on a rematch for now. I'm in sorta of a dilemma, as I know I need a civ break before Civ4 or I will completely burnout (I've already dropped GoTM and most SG's). I think, for now, I'll just cruise along with the pbem games I have atm and maybe pick up another SG after the 2 I'm in finish. I think I need to try out something completely different from Civ type games. Perhaps I'll finally get around to buying HalfLife2?....

[bed_head7]

grahamiam, I just realized while looking through the map making thread for this game why there was all of that funny business with tech, first with Carthage and then Spain and Portugal. The SoZ gave two techs! I forgot, and I am guessing you did as well. I went and investigated all of the cities until I found the SoZ or ran out of cities, and it looks like the Dutch were the only ones who did not build it, and strangely they were the tech leader along with me. We know Carthage took Math and Construction, Spain took Engineering and Republic, I am guessing, and Portugal apparently used some intelligence (no, really) and got Feudalism, traded for Engineering, and took Invention. What the Iroquois and Vikings did I do not know. I am thinking the Iroquois got it earliest and took some low level unnoticeable techs that we both assumed the other gave them. And the Vikings were so far back we weren't even paying attention.

And why buy HalfLife2? What is HalfLife2?

[akots]

Go get Rome Total War. We then can play a SG here or in totalwar.org forum.