View Full Version : ** SPOILER ** PBEM versus Obormot ** SPOILER **
Not for Obormot!
This is spoiler thread for a 1x1 no-AI game on tiny map, Emperor level. Map made by Rik. I play Rome and Obormot plays Egypt. We play with a wide choke point between our home areas.
Obormot is a very formidable Russian GOTM champion and played in many SGs but this is apparently his first PBEM. So, I hope that experience might help me survive although I firmly expect to lose this one. The word "Obormot" in Russian means "blockhead".
I have no game plan yet, this is the start. Rik is usually rather generous with food and there is even a luxury in the vicinity. I started on a cow tile and moved to the north-west to get to a more central Palace location:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200631221148_akvsobstart.JPG
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Judging from the way of the land, the choke is supposed to be slightly to the north-east, hopefully not very far. The first warrior is going right in there. Research to Pottery and then Writing/Philo. Will try to win the Philo, should be no big deal. And will pick CoL. I think I will go for Republic in this game. But more scouting is required to make a firm decision.
We just hit turn 38. Obormot was playing it "Wacken-Gozpel style" without granaries and building settlers out of small cities. I though went traditional way with granary in Rome and proper 4-turn settler factory. I also made it through the choke almost non-stop and after some hide-and-seek games with Egyptian warrior ended up in suburbs of Thebes:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006316214410_akvsob38a.JPG
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Obormot also has only 2 warriors (one guarding and another exploring through the choke), so he might want to attack my warrior which is now on a hill.
This is picture of my core, already at 3 cities. Veii is building barracks but can switch to archer in case of dare need if his warrior shows up and I lose with my only defender.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006316214426_akvsob38b.JPG
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I'm first in everything so far except military service and family size (since I have granary). Since our militaries are average (2 warriors each) apparently he has 4 workers (!!!). That is a lot of workers, I'm not sure he needs that many right away.
Research plan is obscure at the moment. It seems that Obormot got Bronze Working and may be he did not get the Wheel yet, I'm not sure 100%. I have Writing and Wheel ready in 2 turns. Then might hit Philo and take MapMaking. Then Bronze and Iron for Legions. Don't think that it is possible to avoid early GA. I think then I will stop research for some time letting Obormot do the hard work. Meanwhile will build barracks everywhere and warrior for upgrades. Must do this without slowing down expansion.
If he overexpands with more cities building settlers and workers, that might spell a doom for him. This would be a rush-or-die game imho. I plan to hit him both from choke and from sea with galleys/legions. He can counter that with early chariot rush through choke and that would be a very powerful move. Alas, his cities are small and would take some time to grow and barracks are expensive for him. Or he can dig in and try to defend his vast empire. I think I can try to start active actions around turn 85 or may be 90. May be slightly later. That is if RNG does not play weird games with our warriors close to each other's capital. Then, one of us might die very early.
That really looks evil. He has quite bad chance killing your warrior on a hill. He'll be forced to immediately get a military unit from Thebes (archer would be best if he has wc). If he loses against your warrior game is already over.
He have seen me coming. Indeed, our warriors already danced a few times around the place on the other side of the lake. So, might be, since he probably (90%; I cannot estimate my science output exactly due to some weird rounding) has bronze working, he is prebuilding for a spear which will be ready this turn or next turn. Besides, he can always use a whip or join a worker to accelerate the build. No real danger imho. Besides, he also has a warrior coming in my general direction, scheduled to arrive in about 4 or 5 turns near Rome or Antium and I might be forced to crack a whip there as well to get an archer going.
Due to larger city size, I though have an advantage of being able to slow growth in Rome and switch build to archer. He does not have this advantage due to smaller city size.
Rik Meleet
17-03-2006, 09:47
What is his city size ??
I thought that about 25 tiles should be enough distance between your cities for some defense. Wasn't it ?
Thebes was size 3 at that time.
I killed one warrior which he exposed and he moved in with another and killed my wondering warrior near Thebes. That was extremely risky of him. Apparently, he is the "lucky" guy in this game. But that was an unacceptable level of risk imho.
As for me, I try to never count on good RNG in similar cases. As of turn 41, his warrior came on a hill near Rome. I have 2 warriors and an archer waiting. That should be enough or so I hope. I can try to rush another archer next turn if it is not enough. [crazyeye]
The game has ended, Obormot resigned on turn 83. I'll update the spoiler shortly.
quote:
We just hit turn 38. Obormot was playing it "Wacken-Gozpel style" without granaries and building settlers out of small cities. I though went traditional way with granary in Rome and proper 4-turn settler factory.
Actually i built a settler and then a granary, this is slightly better then a granry first (in terms of expansion) when there is so much food at the start. It also decreases the risk of floodplains, i lost 2 pop to disease very early in the game and we were still pretty much even in population all the time, but didiease hit your lone city you would have been in trouble. I also built a second worker early. I built a granary in one of my 2 cities, the other built settlers without a granary because it didn't have many high production tiles and i decided it won't pay off since i didn't plan to expand that much. I also didn't chop the deer forset for the same reason. My town was that small because of disease that hit me taking 2 pop at 3000BC.
quote:
I killed one warrior which he exposed and he moved in with another and killed my wondering warrior near Thebes. That was extremely risky of him. Apparently, he is the "lucky" guy in this game. But that was an unacceptable level of risk imho.
I didn't want to slow down too much because of your warrior. I decided that 2 warriors against 1 warrior is reasonable risk, besides that ir is not frustrating for me too loose the game early, but it is frustrating to slow down a lot in the beginning.
I would play a rematch if Akots agrees.
I know i didn't play this game very well, but i promise to put up a better fight next time now that i know what playing against people is like [ninja]. And i'll also plan and calculate everything carefully squessing out every shield, every beaker and of course every loaf of bread [evil].
Now for the spoiler update and what I was thinking about this game. Not much, really. It were mostly the exercise in micromanagement. As one can see from the city placement pattern, it were obvious that I was counting on a mad chariot rush from Egypt. So, I have decided to play purely defensively. Since I knew that Egypt is not expanding much, I could have roughly estimated the force to knock at my door at about 30-35 war chariots. Some more would have been on the way and estimated time of arrival would be turns 75-80. I also had to consider that it were possible for Egypt to advance with a smaller force at any time starting from turn 65 because an archer which was guarding the choke point had been killed by a chariot. So, I was unable just to quietly build warriors and accumulate cash for upgrades and I had to upgrade constantly. So, I was disconnecting and connecting iron every 2 turns. Since I was making about 30 gpt running at minimal 10-20% science, this allowed me to upgrade a legion every other turn. Still, it was also obvious that I was outproduced because of Egyptian golden age. However, due to this connect-disconnect trick, I had the average military to Egypt at the end of turn but in the beginning of the turn, my military was weak. This helped me to estimate the number of war chariots more accurately to be around 25-30 if arriving on around turn 80 and these calculations were approximately true.
Here are the pics of my city layout with minimap and power graph and Demographics table at turn 82.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/20064562434_akvsob82a.JPG
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The defense consisted of 3 cities including Antium, Neapolis, and Hispalis. Neapolis was built on a hill and Hispalis was founded recently on ivory plains. Both Neapolis and Antium built barracks and walls. It seemed that I could not upgrade many warriors, so I had to use warriors for defense. Choice here is evident for warriors and not to spearmen because 2 warriors are better than a single spearman as long as I was able to afford the numbers. Warrior fortified in a city on a hill with barracks has about 60%-70% probability winning against a veteran war chariot. Since I also had barracks, these warriors would heal in the interturn and I would be able to attack the retreated chariots with them to wrap up the battle. However, there was a problem with this. I did not know where the chariots would hit. They could have gone either to Antium or Neapolis of Hispalis. I would be OK to part with Hispalis but would hate to lose Neapolis or Antium. Still that was a part of the plan and was acceptable in the end.
So, I have positioned most of the troops in Rome or Veii leaving some defenders in Neapolis and Antium and a single legion (just to scare off the chariots) in Hispalis. From Rome troops were able to move to Antium and Neapolis and from Veii, they were able to move either to Hispalis or Neapolis on the same turn. Also, there is no way to target Hispalis and Neapolis simultaneously for an attack. I have roughly calculated the number of defenders I needed and it was essentially impossible for Egypt to take either Antium of Neapolis.
By the time the chariots have been accumulated, I was able to outproduce Egypt and was not afraid of reinforcements since I was able to also reinforce both Antium and Neapolis. Even if one of the cities would fall, I would have been able to move reinforcements from Antium to Rome (if Neapolis falls) or from Neapolis to Rome (if Antium falls). It seemed to me that Obormot had a feeling of this and he really hesitated to attack with war chariots for a long time, going around in circles for 4 or 5 turns around the area looking for a good spot to attack. He also apparently noticed that militaries are getting almost similar in strength and that the longer time passes, my military is getting stronger. So, he had little choice but to attack because retreating would slower down my expansion up north but I had some room to the south as well to expand. Since I had more workers and was somewhat ahead in land improvement, that would be almost a sure loss. Also, his research were apparently also very slow due to rather large military upkeep costs. So, the decision to attack was the right one, but it yielded no result because Antium stood up and the chariots did not even reach the end of the warrior stack. This means that Egyptian military was essentially obliterated and the game was basically over. At all stages here, I was not risking much really.
Regarding the micromanagement front and dispute of granary first compared to settler first. It all comes to city management and tile sharing. As you can see, Rome normally had +5 fpt, so she was a perfect 4-turn settler or 2-turn worker factory. All other cities were building barracks first and then went to military production. They all were allowed to grow and never produced a worker or a settler. When Rome was a settler factory, it used a bit of shields still leaving this or that tile for surrounding cities. These tiles were heavily switched each turn to finish builds of units in these surrounding cities. When Rome was a worker factory, this basically left on the shields in the surrounding tiles for use with other cities. This had left fewer tiles to improve early in the game and allowed me to keep in pace with an industrious Egypt. While building granary in another city, there would be higher requirement for shields because of corruption and hence that city needed more tiles constantly to function. It is a minor problem on a standard size map at low difficulty level (GOTM setup) but is a rather important problem on a tiny map at Emperor and even more so at Demigod levels. Also, I have picked a commercial civ which further decreased losses due to corruption. In general, imho, granary in capital allows higher flexibility if expansion possibilities are limited and you have to catch up with an industrious civ. This also allows for not so extremely tight city placement and may be growth to size 7 of the cities on freshwater. Yes, I know what calculator and spreadsheet tells but this is not applicable dogmatically to any situation and has to be adjusted to map peculiarities and strategic demands on the current situation.
Sorry for the late update, I could have written this up sooner if the site was not down. Thanks again to Obormot for a blazing speed game and for Rik for a nice map!
Here are the power and Demographics graphs.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/20064562456_akvsob82b.JPG
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http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/20064562511_akvsob82c.JPG
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quote:Originally posted by Obormot
I would play a rematch ...
Ok, why not. Lets think about the setup and what map to play.
I usually like to try different settings each time, but since it is a rematch i would like to try the same tiny pangaea, no AI, wide choke map. But this time you choose your civ first and then i'll choose mine :D
quote:
While building granary in another city, there would be higher requirement for shields because of corruption and hence that city needed more tiles constantly to function. It is a minor problem on a standard size map at low difficulty level (GOTM setup) but is a rather important problem on a tiny map at Emperor and even more so at Demigod levels.
Not when the second city is at distance=2, i lost only one shield and that was compensated by the immidiate access to the deer forest that my capital didn't have. I knew that corruption on tiny maps must be awfull and placed it as close as possible.
quote:Originally posted by Obormot
... But this time you choose your civ first and then i'll choose mine
We can play the same civ if you want. Also, if different, is it agricultural or not?
quote:Originally posted by Obormot
Not when the second city is at distance=2, i lost only one shield and that was compensated by the immidiate access to the deer forest that my capital didn't have. I knew that corruption on tiny maps must be awfull and placed it as close as possible.
This does not help your case. You don't get enough breathing room here with your city setup. To know how much breathing room for cities is needed, you have to know approximately how long the game would last and how big the cities would be able to grow. This is not a guess, it can be assumed more or less reliably in general.
It is quite possible to have a core of two cities, not just one capital. Then, the outer ring might resemble not a ring exactly but an ellipse around these 2 cities. First one can be capital and second can build forbidden palace. They work tiles on different sides from each other and share only few tiles which they have overlapping. But to be productive, this build of the core has to have the ellipse filled with cities completely. Otherwise, you don't get enough tiles to work again of course depending on the food resources on the map. You might have the time to build that many cities (12 to 15 is quite possible) or you might not have time depending on how the war turns out. I've had a similar 2-city core setup in the game against OPD and it was a very risky move. IMHO, it is exceptionally risky on a pangea map.
quote:
We can play the same civ if you want. Also, if different, is it agricultural or not?
Both is OK. If you choose a non-agri civ i'll take a non-agri one too.
quote:
This does not help your case. You don't get enough breathing room here with your city setup. To know how much breathing room for cities is needed, you have to know approximately how long the game would last and how big the cities would be able to grow. This is not a guess, it can be assumed more or less reliably in general.
It is quite possible to have a core of two cities, not just one capital. Then, the outer ring might resemble not a ring exactly but an ellipse around these 2 cities. First one can be capital and second can build forbidden palace. They work tiles on different sides from each other and share only few tiles which they have overlapping. But to be productive, this build of the core has to have the ellipse filled with cities completely. Otherwise, you don't get enough tiles to work again of course depending on the food resources on the map. You might have the time to build that many cities (12 to 15 is quite possible) or you might not have time depending on how the war turns out. I've had a similar 2-city core setup in the game against OPD and it was a very risky move. IMHO, it is exceptionally risky on a pangea map.
Well, i know all this of course. Every competition civ game is essentially choosing between long-term benefit and short term benefit. But in a GOTM game i can tell almost certainly the date at which i'll win after i explore a bit and know how the map looks like, so i can almost always make a correct decision. In a game against a human opponent i can't tell anything, maybe because i just don't have enough experience with such kind of games, but also because a human opponent is unpredictable unlike an AI.
As for this particular case i didn't want to build an elliptic core and of course i didn't want to build an FP in Memphis because even without any experience in such games i understand that it won't pay off. I didn't want to build cities far away either because of corruption on tiny maps, even though i knew i would get fewer tiles. I packed my cities so tightly because my guess was that optimal balance between long-term and short-term would be having 5-7 cities at size 7 (7 is a nice borderline number because after size 7 granary size doubles) using the best tiles (both in terms of base tile yield and corruption) around capital and that is what i went for. This plan changed after launching the GA.
Ok, let's try to go for a later UU this time and make it Chivalry-based. It would be interesting to see how the wars go without early uber-UUs. I can take India then. If you prefer still early UU, I can take Egypt.
War elephants are extremely powerfull and indians start with alphabet. I can't think of a knight UU civ that can match them. So if you take india i either take india too or an agr civ. It would also be intersting to switch sides and play another Egypt vs Rome game :D
Ok, it seems fine. So, India against India or Egypt (me) against Rome (you) it is. There is no reason to play both games, just select one which you prefer, I'm fine either way.
OK, lets play the indian one :)
Fine, India against India it is. Now, there is a need for a mapmaker. Any takers out there?
grahamiam
24-04-2006, 05:46
quote:Originally posted by akots
Fine, India against India it is. Now, there is a need for a mapmaker. Any takers out there?
Sorry, thought I'd have it done today but I don't. Will try to get it done Monday or Wednesday.
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