CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Thirteen

Not sure if you saw in one of those screenshots, but I had started to build Explorers. As some of you may know, I will build a couple of those as pillage units even in a normal game. In this game, where pillaging entire nations was in the game plan, they seemed indispensible. The all-terrain-as-roads, even in enemy territory, means these guys are very mobile. You can even give them a defensive escort and the two of them can pillage one tile every turn. Explorer advances two tiles, pillages and can retreat one tile, while the defender moves one tile to meet up. You can hide several explorers behind a single infantry unit, which if not attacked, means an invincible pillaging machine. More on this in a bit.

When my alliance with Egypt vs England expired, Egypt had taken five of the eight English core cities, all but their three best cities. England also had one colony on the big isle. Egypt was not really suffering culturally, and although I would be happy to see England disappear, I did not want to see that just yet. It was time to turn the tables. So... I declared war on Cleopatra. I decided to buy some friends, and have them bully her around, rough her up a bit for me.

My third flip was unexpected but welcome: the only core city of any opponent I would flip this whole game.

Note that I am still using muskets, while just a couple turns short of having replaceable parts. I need Nationalism to get Espionage, but I decided to let that wait and beeline for rep parts, infantry, artillery, and double speed workers, and also go ahead and get hospitals and Hoover Dam. I had had time to build factory and coal plant in Madras, which now had mondo shields. I bought in to Free Artistry when the AI's got it, and stole Shakespeare's from under their noses via factory in Delhi, the second and final wonder to be built in my capital. Bombay was also done with wonders: it had the Gardens, Sistine and Newton. Madras, with all its hills and its wines and one mountain, built Smith, as you may recall, and now after factory and coal plant, built Suffrage, ToE and Hoover in consecutive order. This delayed Hoover a little, but I did build Battlefield Medicine in Delhi and the timing just didn't work out to allow a prebuild on Hoover anywhere. Not my best coordination effort, but I had plenty of margin for error at this point.

Hammurabi started smoking that nasty weed just before 1200AD and launched his second sneak attack, fourth from the AI on me this game. What stupidity! More on that later.

Since the war was on, I follow through on my plan to settle in AI territory. I settled the gap between Ur and Paris, with the pressure divided between two civs, I was in safer shape there. The more dangerous spot was in between Uruk and powerhouse Ninevah, with all the pressure from the Babs. I knew I'd have to park a LOT of units there. I also unleashed my infantry and explorer combination and raged across Babylon burning everything in sight. My first leader popped in 1230AD:

One more thing to keep in mind: for domination, you need not only territory but population. I was going to leave no room for doubt on the population end, getting these hospitals going now and boosting my core up to size 20 and beyond. Yes, beyond. Some of those flood plains cities could really crank the population.

I used him to make a cavalry army, which won a fight easily. I started the Epic.

By 1260AD, my forces had completed defoliated Babylon, end to end. You can see the one tile that remains to pillage at the start of next turn, northwest of Babylon city. You can also see my two aggressive settlements.

I knew these guys would begin to starve, as France had starved, and that they would begin to sell off their buildings under the strain. They were, now, effectively done for. Rifles and longbows is all they could ever build now. It will be interesting to see how that changes in the X-pack with those new, less effective infantry that require no rubber to train. That's down the road, though.

When Babylon consented to give up that tiny island they stole so long ago, in exchange for twenty turns of peace, I agreed, and they began what they could of a recovery.

Meanwhile, Cleo was getting ganged on the other continent. First her gains were lost (and Coventry got razed by the Zulus), then she started losing her core. When they burned Thebes to the ground, the great wall with it, it left a major gap in the interior of Egypt and I moved with all haste to send two settler pairs (infantry guards) over there at my best pace. Cleo's end came a couple of turns later.

You can see Indus peeking out from under that message box. I vow one day, that city SHALL be mine again. I swear it!

The same year, there was an opportunity to make peace with England. They had refounded the razed Coventry in the desert just west of London. It was a brand new city, no food in the box, no culture, no nothing, and Lizzie would give it up even though our war had been entirely phony. I said, Sure! I'll take a free city and a toehold on that continent in exchange for twenty turns of peace with England. I rushed a temple and started sending infantry and other troops via ironclad-escorted galleons. My two settler pairs were also still en route.

Joanie, with coal and iron at Indus, is making a grand recovery. She's got rails happening and her cities back to size 12. You can see in the shot of Cleo's demise that I'm researching the Corporation? Yep. I nabbed Nationalism @last-civ once the AI's had spread it around, then researched Espionage, and now I'm building the Intelligence Agency in Karachi (of all cities... but hey, it had a power plant, and why not build it on the very border of France?)

So what does the AI do? Joanie sneak-attacks me AGAIN, this time attacking in the deep south to try to nab one of the cities down there pressuring her silk outpost. That's five sneak attacks this game, every single one of them made against-- wait. No, not yet. I'll tell you in a bit. :)

Well my pillage machine is ready to go, my explorers stacked and waiting, plenty of available infantry escorts. After cleansing the whole of France in about eight turns, and starving them in under a dozen, I take a peek inside my former city, Indus, for the low low cost of only 16g, it being down to size 1 now. All the buildings are gone, nothing there but the granary provided by the Pyramids. No culture growing, and a memory of only 288 culture, meaning there hasn't been any culture produced here since the second war, or else she only ever built a temple here, nothing else, and has just recently had to sell it. Her cities all start dropping off, and quickly, as I cut their supplies and trade routes with all due haste.

Also note the two shields per tile. Um... that's an unimproved bg tile. Joanie must be mobilized. If anyone ever doubted that the AI's will mobilize, here's proof. I have better proof coming later, as well. Her population decline was sped up by some drafting, too.

So my intelligence agency was finally completed. I tried my hand at a little propaganda on that last remaining tiny island, owned by France, and got nothing. No response. It was size 2 at the time, so I only tried a couple of times. Then it fell to size 1 in 1370AD and I really went after it. A few tries led to this result:

The eastern French towns of Rheims (which never did flip to me culturally, heh), Marseilles, and Indus, came next, all reduced to size 1 by way of pillaging and/or starvation blockades. Here's a look inside my town of Indus, complete with its 24 units of cultural memory from BC times, when I finally got it back:

Note that the town is connected via road? I had learned my lesson already, that if I left a city unconnected, I'd get a free rifleman. If I connected it, it would be a free infantry. After some initial shaky luck on the first propaganda, I had a string of low-cost successes in here, including two in a row once. That kind of luck was not going to hold. I'd say overall it took between six and seven attempts per success. Price was based solely on city population size, or so it appeared. Costs would go up a little, or down a little, but only by pennies, and perhaps in relation to the city population, which fluctuates slightly depending on the food stored in the box. As far as I can tell, city culture, improvements, wonders, garrison, none of that matters. Only city size matters, and this could be a huge loophole in the game for multiplayer -- or if not a loophole, certainly a strategy to watch out for. Democracies are immune to propaganda, but other governments are not, and if you can wipe out massive garrisons that station themselves in a size 1 city by mistake, by blitzing a thousand or two of gold at enough prop attempts to flip the city... that could be a game buster, or at least a force to be reckoned with. We'll see how that plays out, but certainly it seems odd that propaganda is unaffected by little if anything besides population, with the various government modifiers in play on the success odds.

I had even managed to flip two cities on the same turn once, using propaganda, so that confirmed that unlike planting spies, which you can only to succeed at on your first attempt each turn, with propaganda, it didn't matter. If you have the cash, you can play the game. And seeing that size 1 cities cost HALF to attempt than size 2, it seemed clear to me that I wanted to starve the targets down as far as possible: preferably to size 1, or perhaps to size 2 in cases where I could not run a full blockade on ALL the target city's tiles. No larger than size 2, though, no matter what. Even size 1 cost about 1000g per city on average, seven attempts at ~130g apiece. Sometimes less, sure, but... sometimes even twenty tries was not enough, and the cash could go quickly. More than once I was tempted to spend below the 1000g limit and eat into my interest income temporarily, usually though not always to little avail. Call it "Slot Machine Syndrome": the belief that you've already spent your money on the system's inbuilt bad luck, just pull the lever one more time, you're due for a hit. Due for a hit, due for a hit. The spending was addictive, and sometimes frustratingly ineffective for turns at a stretch. And yet... as unreliable as it was per attempt, overall it was working. France was disappearing.

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