View Full Version : Rematch against Obormot ***SPOILER***
Grahamiam made the map [goodjob]. These are the settings: no AI, locked war, worldsize is 60x60, no barbarians and huts, Emperor, single landmass with a choke. We both play as India. SoZ changed to Small wonder, so we can both have it.
We'll see how it goes. For now, there are no plans since I have no idea how Obormot plans to play this. Researching Pottery and irrigating flood plains. Here is the start:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006429163426_2akvsobt4.JPG
51.28KB
My capital had been struck by disease on turn 30 and I lost 2 citizens. I have granary in place and have +5 fpt but little good it does to me since I'm two citizens behind Obormot. Unless he will get disease as well or does someting otherwise not so optimal, the game might be over very soon.
socralynnek
15-06-2006, 11:51
I would beat that map creator who made that disease possible ;)
You are right, against a player like Obormot, it will be very hard to overcome s.t. like that.
I guess, even a slinghsot is not possible then...
Short update on turn 42.
The game is definitely somewhat broken. I've met Obormot:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200662251030_akvsobt42a.JPG
58.67KB
But I don't see him neither on F4 nor on F8 screens and I certainly cannot tell if I'm at war with him. Here is the F8 screen:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200662251128_akvsobt42b.JPG
54.27KB
Don't know if this can be corrected but it is not supposed to be this way definitely.
I wrote to Obormot asking whether it should be continued.
grahamiam
22-06-2006, 05:50
shit, that's not the way it was when it was play tested :(
quote:Originally posted by grahamiam
shit, that's not the way it was when it was play tested :(
it might be due to the fact that we are both listed as India. While one of us could have been India, the other should have been Russia with UU as War Elephant and Commercial + Religious trait. Somehow, we are both listed as India. But in this case, Russia is the civ that should have been edited. That might be a wrong guess however. While during playtesting something was OK and in game it is wrong, I have no idea what can be different in this case. I assume Obormot is using Enlgish version of C3C and not Russian.
grahamiam
22-06-2006, 13:55
No, I gave one Russia and the other India. I then edited Russia to have the same UU and traits (and removed the Cossack UU). Maybe try playing one more turn to see if it straightens itself out. When I playtested, I ran the workers towards one another and you were indeed at war. I cannot remember what F11 looked like on the 1st turn of contact.
Never mind, it was a minor glitch. When Obormot sent the next turn, everything was OK. I can see him on F4 and we are at war. Sorry for the hassle here.
grahamiam
22-06-2006, 22:05
no hassle at all :) it does seem weird, but good to hear that it seems ok. What kind of havok do you have planned with that warrior?
He already whipped something in Bombay and moved the worker inside the city. So, not sure if I can do much there with my lonely warrior except may be pillage that irrigated wheat. I'd be more than happy to raze Bombay to compensate partially for loss of my citizens due to disease. But if he whipped a spear there, there is a little chance I can do anything. It does not seem like he might have Bronze working though. I'm not sure he already has Philo here, need to run tech calculator later on because we did not have contact up before this turn and hence I did not know him and cannot see much of the research cost decrease.
The game looks already lost to me at this point. However, you never know what is going to happen.
grahamiam
23-06-2006, 03:15
well, I came back against bedhead when hit with disease, so there is a chance :)
quote:Originally posted by grahamiam
well, I came back against bedhead when hit with disease, so there is a chance :)
Indeed, there is always a chance. Turn came in and Obormot abandoned Bombay. [evil] It might be, he had whipped a worker there, so no real loss of population for him except that one citizen used for whipping and of course 30 shields for the settler.
The starting area is very poor on shields, so every shield counts.
Update on turn 67. Don't know what is going on on the other side but recently Obormot started to fall behind and rather dramatically. I'm not sure what he is doing there. He won the philo race. So, to compensate for this, I decided to grow first and then research CoL and Republic. Just to make sure while I grow I can research first level techs in about 4 turns. This way, even if he discovers Republic first, I will only lose some cash but not so much because he would have to spend the very same 4 turns researching these techs.
Growth goes rather well except that the map is very poor on shields because it has a lot of flood plains. The capital cannot run 4-turn settler factory but can run a 5-turn factory with 5th turn running a scientists which help research a little bit. I'm stronger in military (have more MP warriors) and have about 60-70% population which leaves 30-40% to Obormot only. I also suspect I have a couple more cities and am in the process of hooking up available luxuries (ivory, incense, and gems).
Here is Demographics:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006712123147_vsob2-t67a.JPG
81.1 KB
And this is layout of the core. The plan is to grow population as much as possible and build second line of cities a bit farther away allowing those cities which are on the flood plains to work some productive tiles in the radius. These cities should be very big and powerful with considerable shields and not so high corruption. Also need to hook up horses and discover Iron working. But for now researching Republic.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006712123511_vsob2-t67b.JPG
61.28 KB
bed_head7
12-07-2006, 22:42
quote:Originally posted by grahamiam
well, I came back against bedhead when hit with disease, so there is a chance :)
I somehow missed this comment before. Well, I don't think Obormot and I are quite in the same class of player, so that leads me to the conclusion that you are screwed, akots. Perhaps you can prove me wrong, but it seems RNG has already decided the winner when one player loses multiple population points early.
Well, not now. Now it seems that I've got 2/3 of the total population and Obormot has about 1/3 which basically turns the game around totally. I'm really puzzled as to what is going on and am very tempted to ask. It can be he's just growing more slowly and not settling on flood plain with additional cities. However I suspect he ignored Pottery all together while pursuing Philo on his way to Republic and he might be building settlers out of the flood plain cities which takes forever since there are not enough shields.
bed_head7
13-07-2006, 07:01
Oops, when I read that I saw you as having 1/3 and Obormot with 2/3. I see now I got that backwards.
Update on turn 85. Just growing some muscle. I've revolted to Republic which I did one turn earlier than Obormot. Still had no time and desire to figure out whether he picked indeed CoL as a free tech when he beat me to Philo. I'm breeding the Russian Indian tribe like a bunch of crazy rabbits. The people do eat well mostly because of a number of flood plains. Moscow, for example, can grow in 1 turn and can be set to have +10 fpt in Republic and the settler there is to be cash-rushed. I'm now researching low tier techs while trying to save some cash and am thinking about researching Literature or trying to finish the game without it. Might be still I'll go for it just to be on the safe side but only after all required rechs and not before since there is not much time to build libraries.
Here is Demographics. I'm at about 57% population and firmly leading in power.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/20068942639_vsob2-t85a.JPG
22.06KB
And here is the picture of the core with multitude of workers. Now, while I'm trying to settle the second ring of cities, the core will be switched to full growth mode and will start working on barracks and horsemen/swords. Mostly horsemen apparently.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006894337_vsob2-t85b.JPG
204.35KB
I'm not sure about what is going on on the other side. It seems there were some growth delay with Indian Indians. I hope this can be transformed into some useful advantage for me.
Update for turn 101. The game is just developing. We are both in the builder phase mostly producing settlers and workers. It seems that Obormot had not been able to catch up with population for some reason and he might be slightly behind in research. At least I'm up Mapmaking and Math on him. This is not very important except if I can grab a wonder or two because of this since if I go too far away from Obormot, he would be able to get too many techs at a discounted price and I certainly don't want this. Of course, I would like to have Pyramids, SoZ and probably MoM since there are only 3 luxuries close to the core and capital can grow only to size 9 or may be 10 and I would like it to be size 12 as early as possible. Also, it would be nice to have FP early on and I'm already building it, might be some 14-15 turns away.
Here is a pic of the Russian India:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200692052334_vsob2-t100a.JPG
144.38KB
Moscow would be a nice city with lots of commerce working 3 mountains (iron and gems) for rather many shields. Getting to size 9 or 10 might be critical but size 12 is not critical, it can be still OK. That is why I'm thinking of either continuing to build Pyramids there or build SoZ and not go for MoM. Rostov building FP will be the heart of the second core. The city build plan is giving ample of space for the core cities to grow and the rest would be ICS'ed. However, the core would be pretty large since it is a commercial civ and with FP lots of cities can be fairly productive. I might even build some courthouses there with forest chops or just cash-rush them. It would be nice to grow really big and powerful and only then decide the game by military means.
Here is a nice F8 screen and I'm oscillating between 57-61% of population. Of course, Obormot would eventually catch up so I'm building lots of workers to prevent this and increase the productivity. It might be difficult for him to catch up before Middle Ages and Elephants since both are only about 20 turns away and I would try to time my GA with intial attack or even trigger it with wonders to build up stronger attack force.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200692053050_vsob2-t100b.JPG
36.59KB
F11 also looks nice so far:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/20069205337_vsob2-t100c.JPG
78.05KB
And even my pathetic military is stronger than his, so while I'm producing a few units, he is still fully in the expansion phase probably cash-rushing settlers. While this is a good idea, it might be that if I am able to assemble a decent force rather soon, he won't have time to build up the army to counter that.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200692053456_vsob2-t100d.JPG
98.03KB
On the other hand, I can start going into infra really hard and wait for his invasion without actually risking anything. Either way seems to be fine mostly of the population lead and I'm a bit relaxed about the outcome of this game. I'm thinking of trying to wrap it up as soon as there is any opening for me to invade and there are enough troops. We are rather far away from each other but not too far, it is still a Pangea map. It can be decided with Elephants or might have to wait for cavalry and probably would not last to riflemen.
It might also been, I'm deeply mistaken and am badly unerestimating the cunning opponent which is probably the case. Anyhow, about 20 turns from now it will be more clear of what is actually going on here.
grahamiam
20-09-2006, 14:21
Remember, SoZ is a small wonder, so you can go for both SoZ and MoM
Rik Meleet
20-09-2006, 15:52
I can hardly wait for the next update.
Looks like a perfect-symmetry map.
killercane
20-09-2006, 17:06
Is the only crossing for the entire continent to the south on that land bridge?
Apparently, you can cross on both sides, so it is a narrow belt in the south around the map. I'm not sure on this though but there was an Obormot's warrior spotted in the south-eastern tundra while we did not pass by the south-western spearman guarding the left branch of the passage.
Time for an update. We are on turn 137 and future looks bright. The game is developing but it plays somewhat similar to a continents map, not like real Pangea. It might be a long game after all. I've built Pyramids on around turn 110-115 and this had greatly helped to ensure my lead.
First thing first, F3 guy. At some time point, probably around turn 115 or something like that, Obormot stopped building military and my force became gradually stronger than his. Apparently he was preparing some kind of naval attack since he landed a couple of swords from galley in my south-west but they (swords and galley) were promptly killed. I'm still building horsemen because there might be a possibility to decide game with cavalry or may be even Elephants but the latter is quite unlikely.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006111031746_2akvsob136a.JPG
98.25 KB
Then, F11 demographics and the effect of Pyramids is evident. Also, city placement pattern played a significant role which will be discussed later.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200611103190_2akvsob136b.JPG
80.46 KB
Obormot had been behind in techs for the whole end of Ancient Age and early in the Middle Ages. I made a sort of tech trap for him by researching Feudalism and then Engineering and then Invention. My capital is running Leo's prebuild which is still rather far away. I tried to speed it up by building Colossus and triggering GA with wonders but there is no productive coastal city on this map. I still have a Colossus prebuild but the city which has it makes only 8 shields per turn, so Colossus is about 15 turns away. I thought that Obormot in desperation might go for Chivalry and hence research both Monotheism and Chivalry for me and I might get a good discount on these techs. Indeed, he just discovered Mono and my research costs dropped so I'm making about 160gpt in cash while still being able to research Mono in 4 turns. Apparently, I would get a nice discount with Chivalry as well. He could have made my task more difficult by not researching those techs and just following my tech path.
Also, at around turn 120-125, his capital had been growing in size while before it was size 7. Apparently he has joined workers to speed up his Leo's prebuild there. He is wasting quite some cash there on luxury slider because his other cities are smaller than mine and I'm running luxury slider at 20%. But Leo's is a valuable thing to have for this kind of game, so there will be the race but I have a good chance to win it. I've abandoned the idea of building Statue of Zeus (small wonder) because Metallurgy is just a few turns away.
Anyhow, this is the F7 screen:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/2006111032843_2akvsob136c.JPG
67.14 KB
And F8 also looks good. I'm ahead by about 10% in population and about 25% in land area.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200611103301_2akvsob136d.JPG
33.51 KB
Here is my core. About half of the cities have markets and libraries while others are building those. most of the core cities are at sizes 10-12 already and are quite productive. Moscow makes 20 spt while Novgorod is at 15 spt pumping out 2-turn pikemen. Rostov is the center of the Eastern Empire with Forbidden Palace and all cities at distance up to 8 are productive with some courthouses already built. I need an aqueduct in Vladivostok and may be Orenburg since some food from surrounding flood plains may get wasted otherwise. All area beyond that would be ICS'ed and these cities will make workers. I have a big plan for forestry operations already scheduled to begin in something like 20 turns from now which would greatly speed up the growth by producing about 20 more settlers in a rathe short period of time without having to spend any cash. Just need enough workers to be able to plant forest, chop it, and rebuild improvement (usually irrigation) in a signle turn.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200611103365_2akvsob136e.JPG
153 KB
Obormot's core has obviously more cities since he caught up to 46-48% of population rather easily. However, many of these cities are forever stuck at size 6 and have very few shields. I'm not sure what was his plan here but it might be he decided to make it a short game and that he would be able to kill me with his Elephants. Hopefully, this would not happen. So, he is losing a lot of land to corruption and a lot of cash for unit support. This gives a chain reaction in inability to afford enough workers and his growth thus is slowed down while mine is not much disturbed. Neglecting military is extremely dangerous and he started to block coastal tiles around his core with units to prevent unloading of my galley (which is running empty scouting his shoreline). On the other hand, I would very wellcome any attempt for naval landing from his side in about 15 turns and will try to block may be only hills or may be leave hills as well.
This is pcture of his core as far as the game shows it to me.
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/akots/200611103417_2akvsob136f.JPG
66.21 KB
My lead seems quite small but it is a steady advantage and I can keep it without any major risk of having not enough military or cities or luxuries or falling behind in techs. IMHO, the lead would grow over time even bigger as long as I don't screw up with critical wonders (Leo's in the first place) and would be able to defend myself. As I've said previously, there might be also an opening for an attack. IMHO, even if I lose the Leo's race, the advantage in land and population would allow me to keep afloat rather well. I can get Sun Tsu's which is not that bad as well in this setup. It would be interesting to see how this game will develop and when it will actually be decided. I'm not in a hurry and we can probably play up until bombers or nukes.
Short update for turn 153. I've beaten Obormot for Leo's on one or may be two turns and he had to settle down to Sun Tsu's in Dehli. I've upgraded almost all units but so did he and our militaries are average. Apparently, unit costs still hurt him badly so he revolted to Feudalism [confused] . Also, he have not built a single Library and I'm not sure how he is going to do research without extra trade in Republic. Still mounting a military assault on him would be risky and I'm not planning on doing it before railroads and instead is focussing on building up a bunch of trebuchets for defense which I would then have an opportunity to upgrade to cannons. I aso have Colossus built on the next turn and my Golden Age would hopefully start. Will be building Copernicus and universities all over the Empire. IMHO, I can afford that as long as I have enough arty and our militaries are average in size and there is no sign of naval invasion from Obormot.
Well, Obormot stopped playing from around mid December, I asked him to continue but he resigned instead. Since he has no spoiler, it is hard to say what was the actual reasoning behind his strategy. Hopefully, he can come and comment on the game here sometimes later.
Sorry for not posting a spoiler, this game didn't go well for me right from the start, so I didn't feal like writing about it. I also lost interested in c3c somewhere in the middle of playing, and started playing sloppy (sorry again that I didn't put up a proper fight).
Loosing that city early was quite frustrating for me (no, I didn't have time to whip any defense there, the population decreased because I just produced a worker). Perhaps I should have merged that worker into the city and whipped a warrior, but I would have still lost a pop point and it didn't even guarantee me that I'll save the city). I also founded another city in a suboptimal location, just because your warrior was in the floodplains region and I didn't want to risk. I didn't expect the map to have two landbridges and didn't have adequate defenses on the side your warrior came from.
I beelined to philosophy skipping pottery, I don't think building a granary was so much better then building settlers here, since there usn't enough shields at the start for a 4-turn SF. Anyway this was a mistake, but for a different reason: in a 1 vs 1 civ3 game, it is better to get the cheap techs while your research is low, and if the other player goes for an early philo slingshot, you'll catch up by researching CoL and Republic with a discount. The research boost from Republic won't help to get those cheaps techs faster then in 4 turns, so the player who researches them earlier gets the tech lead. And once the tech lead is lost, there is absolutely no hope to catch up, ever, because it is so easy to have constant 4 turns per tech in such a game.
Once I realised that I decided that I'll need to attack you sooner or later. (As akots said, this game was like a game on continents). I decided that the best way to get a big enough army here was to poprush it in feudalism (that was the reason, I never had problems with unit costs). I also built Sun Tzu's for that reason, to get free barracks in my 100 corrupt cities, so that I won't have to rush them. I never planned building Leo's, because I expected that you'll beat me to it (I thought you'll have it timed to discovering invention, so I'll have no chance at all). I used ICS placement and irrigated everything (except a small core area). I followed you up to military tradition (now the discount helped me) and then switched to feudalism for poprushing. The plan was to build as many pikemen and cavalry as I could before you discover rails and then drop them somewhere on your island hoping they can do some damage. I don't think my chances were high though.
quote:Originally posted by Obormot
... in a 1 vs 1 civ3 game, it is better to get the cheap techs while your research is low, and if the other player goes for an early philo slingshot, you'll catch up by researching CoL and Republic with a discount. The research boost from Republic won't help to get those cheaps techs faster then in 4 turns, so the player who researches them earlier gets the tech lead. And once the tech lead is lost, there is absolutely no hope to catch up, ever, because it is so easy to have constant 4 turns per tech in such a game. ...
This is a double-edged sword however. Surrendering a tech lead at some point in the game might be a good idea because this would allow to save substantial amount of cash which can be used to rush units or upgrade them and to rush settlers and some critical buildings as well. Most cash-consuming is actually unit upgrades and for this, Leo's is a great help. Just need to bear the cost of cheap military for some time (mostly spearmen, some pikemen, horde of horsemen, a few galleys here and there and many-many catapults/trebuchets. So, in general, Leo's might be often times a critical wonder on this kind of map. Whereas STAW might be not that critical since a multitude of workers are needed and corrupt towns are better off running specialists (for more cash) and building workers.
Actually, later in the game cash plays even bigger role because of espionage missions if the game could be continued to that point. So, it is rather redundant conclusion but still Republic rules the world of Civ3.
As far as pop-rushing goes, it is really hard to pop-rush expensive units after gunpowder/chivalry (musketmen/knights or elephants) even with considerable population sacrifice. Whereas partial cash-rushing is a good option and the core cities can easily produce lots of units of their own while medium-corrupt cities can still significantly contribute for the military in this case.
I was not talking about surrendering tech lead. You get Republic later, but you get to MA sooner.
I did use corrupt cities for wokrers and specialists while in Republic to build up my core by worker merging and to keep 4-turn research pace. I switched to Feudalism shortly before Mil. Trad. to try an all or nothing rush while you still didn't get rails.
I considered using Espionage to catch up, but I was 7 turns behind you in research, and getting Espionage meant loosing 8 more turns. I would have had to steal 4 techs from you to catch up. I think that was hopeless.
Poprushing expensive units can be done in several stages, its not a big deal. In the long term You are limited with happiness, but as I said my plan was an all or nothing attack (I had no other choice, I think).
About getting Republic first and then getting to MA second, that is wrong imho. Usually, whoever gets Republic first gets to MA sooner or at the same time. While one player is researching Republic, the other one is researching the lower tier techs and the first player then gets a discount on these techs. While this discount is cheaper in general than one for the more expensive CoL and Republic techs, it sums up pretty nicely and gives the required amount of cash for considerable upgrades, for example, of warriors into swords. Again, this is the double-edged sword or so to speak.
Whipping in corrupt cities had been tried a few times here and there iirc. The point is that if you work a specialist there and produce worker and don't have Pyramids, it is far better than to whip. The cash from specialist(s) can be used for upgrades (especially with Leo's) and workers are always needed because there is a lot of land for expansion in this map we had. Also what complicated things on this map is a rather large distance between us and for a really surprize attack one also has to rush a considerable navy. While this is a viable option, the other can just simply block all coastal tiles to force an attack through the landbridge. And this route is really defendable especially with large artillery stack (cannons). I think I've already built about a dozen trebuchets and was going to build about 30 more before Cavalry and those could have been instantly upgraded of course. If your goal was indeed Cavalry, my goal was to get to the upper techs on the Middle Ages tree and I was rather content with having musketeers for defense. Metallurgy was always an option but only after enough trebuchets would have been built and only after you would have researched that so that I was able to get a discount on this tech.
Another wrong assumption is about Espoinage. It is quite easy to steal techs and even with one or two failed attemtps, it is still very much worth the price. IIRC, I've stolen 3 techs (or 4) from bedhead and grahamiam in our games, and even made a pretty good profit with it and managed to snatch Hoover's in both games.
And finally, poprushing is not a viable option in this kind of games as well as all-or-nothing attack. All-or-nothing attack requires considerable advantage in forces and would never work again a strong human opponent. Defense rules this game and wild rush can succeed only against a reckless opponent who made mistakes or by chance or surprize imho or rather very early in the game with an advantage of a powerful UU like it were in our first game where you really had a chance with War Chariots or in a game against OPD with a huge stack of impi/horsemen. But it is much more likely to fail than succeed. However, small surgical strikes might be very annoying indeed and while this was not possible on this map, that would leave any early rush or Middle AGe war out of the options. As I've already said it earlier, most logically, this game would have continued up to bombers and nukes. In this setup, I had a very distinct advantage in overall city placement and infrastructure and would have a considerable tech lead. Such a tech lead is useful because it can be used to ensure building of Hoover and research of Espionage thus luring the oppponent into tech lead himself and then stealing even more techs this gaining more cash and ultimately building more units and infra to gain decisive advantage early in the Modern Age.
And all this because Pottery is not a first tech to learn? No, but it does contribute somewhat. I'm still thinking that your city placement and general game plan was wrong here.
vBulletin® v3.7.3, Copyright ©2000-2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.