Teaching Matrix Civ3: Succession game

[Matrix]

"Ketsen met de Korte Keu"?

[ProPain]

Beam, I used that strategy also (only way to reach 5 cities) and I think the benefits outweigh the loss of captive workers by far.

I love your city names!

It's time to decide if we want conquest or domination vic. FOr domination we need to build some temples/libs or fill gaps with skimmed settlers. It's clear what's needed for a conquest vic.

I don't mind which one it's gonna be.

[Beam]

PP, it's game over. I missed the post about discussing domination or conquest (a 9.6 kbit/s connection does not really encourage frequent browsing) but I could have reached conquest easily in my 10 turns. Abandon Celt / Carth cities to stay under 66%, meantime rush a couple of transports and visit the 3 remaining islands. No brainer.

Always at war is next!

Thanks for appreciating the city names, although they seem to confuse Matrix. On the next get together I will explain some of the inner secrets of Ketsen met de Korte Keu

[Matrix]

I'm well aware what KmdKK means. I just thought it was a funny one to mention extra.

(Being of CDJA doesn't mean I'm naive. )

[ProPain]

quote:Originally posted by Beam

PP, it's game over.

Congrats to all of us!!!

Could you please post some screenies of the final turn, so we can al see how you them.

[Beam]

Please post the screenies you wanna see, can prepare 'm tonight, post tomorrow.

Eagerly waiting for Tarlies report

[Banzai]

The mighty Celts annihilated in just 8 turns!
Awesome play guys!
It was a great honor to play with you!
I would love to play another (always war) game with you, but I doubt you want to wait till 12 june when I get back from holiday..

Till next time,
Banzai!

[Matrix]

[u]What I've learned</u>
1. Build the first cities close together. I always figured building them far away meant getting more land, but with more cities you can also more more new settlers and expand further even faster.

2. Don't defend every city with a defensive unit. First of all, offense is the best defense. Secondly, the cities in the back don't need defense; in fact, they can lure the AI so that you can attack them the enemy while they are moving to an unreachable city.

3. Be more aggressive. I would've build infrastructure much earlier than we actually did now. Instead, we were able to crush the Japanese, which I wouldn't have dared before. Culture isn't that effective after all.

4. Build armies. I used to think it was a waste of production and it was better to have more units. But that might've changed with Conquests.

5. Rebuild captured cities, and get closer by doing so. Though I find this a way of cheating. Perhaps one shouldn't be able to build a city in someone else's land, or even one square next to it (which will also make resource snatching impossible).

There's only one thing I missed. I am playing an emperor game now, which is going quite well by the way, but I feared the Aztecs were going to attack me, because they were coming in with a huge pile of swordmen. Apparently they were only heading for a barbarian camp at the other side of my empire and once that was destroyed they simply headed back. This happened while I was still expanding. Wasn't there a danger of the Japanese or the Vikings to invade us? Sometimes they do that without warning. How can you tell? When do you have to be careful?

Also, I have always noticed that signing Right of Passage agreements makes relationships much better, also when you need to put in some extra money or ask for extra money. We didn't do so. I didn't bother to ask before, but why not?

All in all, thanks for the lesson! I enjoyed it! (Except for the end, I never like to finish a game I basicly already won.)

And Beam, could you please post the savegame right before the end? For the archives (and the result in the HoF).

[ProPain]

Matrix,

1. absolutely right. When you consider that it will take you halve the game to be able to grow a city past size 12, you can imagine building a cities spread out using their whole 21 tiles radius is effectively wasting 21-12-1(city itself)=8 tiles for a long time.

This is even worse when you never finish a 'won' game. Then chances are you never even build hospitals.

2. Couldnt have said it better myself

3. Again, absolutely right. In the land grab phase it's better to expand as much as possible, more cities is more resources. After that it's important to think what goal you're working to. If you plan to conquer a neighbour, build rax and units. Other infra can be built later.

4. Spot on again, this was an eye opener for me too. Armies in C3C are extremely powerfull, the extra movement and fast healing are incredible.

5. Yes, this is regarded as an exploit by some. I normally dont use this very much because I hate building settler in my beautifull productive cities. It's a powerfull technique but it's not necessary to win however, we didnt use it on the japs, viks and americans and won those wars also. We would have killed the celts without it too, our technical superiority ensured that.
Razing immediately and rebuilding on the same spot (not pushing the borders) is very effective also, you dont have to worry about culture flipping.

When to fear an attack?
Not always easy to tell, but some clues can sometimes be seen.
- When unit move in a straight line through your territoty passsing by 1st city: usually they're aiming for barbs, AI normally attacks frontline cities, except when undefended cities are in 2nd line.
- When you doubt if they aim for your city or barb camp, try and block the unit (with workers, scouts, warriors)in such a way that it only can move towards a barb camp. If it moves back, lingers and not towrds the camp: They're after you not the barbs.
- AI are immensily attrracked by undefended front line cities, if your army is weak compared to them, they might come for you.
- Trading helps to maintain friendlier relations, but is no garantuee.

There's always a chance the AI come after you, but it's fairly small in my experience. Same for our game, there was always a chance, but not a big one.

RoP
AI love RoP and they do improve relations a lot. I rarely use em because they have some drawbacks I personally dislike:
- AI tend to clog your road network once a RoP is on place. This becomes worse when they are at war with your neighbour. This severely hampers your own movement.
- Once you managed to secure your own landmass (on continents and archipelago maps) a RoP takes away your 1st strike option. On many occasions I've seen the AI land a few units on my continent while an RoP was in place. When noone else is around and no barbs are to be seen (usually barbs are out of the picture by the time you rule your continent) they are clearly after you, but you can't force them to declare war on your turn and finish em with an RoP in place.
- I like to use RoP as a tool to shift balance in wars between my neighbours. When you dont have RoP's with anybody you an use them to give an advantage to one of your neighbours when they are at war.When you give one party ROP and other not, the one with ROP will have much more flexiblity in your terrain and usually kill a lot more units fro the other AI as they can attack and retreat beyond reach.


I really liked the game, bring on the AW game!

[Col.Tarleton]

You Bastards!You bunch of jumped up,never come down,dyed in the wool Bastards!The game plan or,rather my game plan,was for you lot to soften up the Irish and the Hero of the Chinese Nation (and all round good guy) to make the coup de grace.
I've got your number,you all want a statue in Tienamin Square.Over my dead body!You forget who is head of the Home Replacement Army.Not only will you not get a statue,you better not set foot in mainland China,ever again.If you do,expect a hostile reception,to whit,necktie parties.

Seriously,though,Folks,an excellent Game,well played everyone.
This was my 1st attempt at an S.G.I really enjoyed it and learned some lessons as I'm sure we all did.
See you all in the AW thread.