CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Forty-Seven

I was able to poach half a dozen sites in former Egypt, where the AIs razed rather than capture. This includes grabbing a site where I obtained my own coal and two sources of dyes. Here you see how things have shaken out.

Seventy workers... And I changed my government to Democracy, because my unit maintenance bill under Republic was too high to sustain without using the units to do some warring, and I was still focused on watching the AI.

I had used some of my obsolete units to pillage roads and improvements in between where India captured cities. This probably didn't slow them down much, but what the heck.

Compare to captured German lands where I had been unable to pillage:

Here's a look at the dogpiling effects of the way the alliance purchases affect the destiny of the game.

First up, the Celts.

In the 4-way dogpile on Celts, Egypt captured half a dozen cities and Germany captured three cities inside the yellow circle. Germany got caught with its pants down (and its army away from home) and was easily beaten by Persia, with Korea taking the three former Celtic cities from them, plus some cities in the south over at Germany's mountainous region, as shown below:

Persia did the heavy lifting in the 3-way dogpile on Germany, with Incans grabbing a piece. The Incans also got to mop up the Celts after they made peace with Korea and Egypt.

This is a nasty side effect of bilateral-only diplomacy: With the AI refusing to talk for a while, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get out from under a dogpile. The most recents dogs to jump on the pile won't talk to you, and they will buy in yet more dogs to jump on you. There are always dogs piling on. If the early ones quit, the late arrivals score most of the booty.

In rare cases, though, the runaway AI, tech leader and military superpower, can roll up an opponent single-handedly, as happened to poor Carthage:

Reading other player's reports, many things become clear. In Microbe's game, for instance, he made war over and over, throughout, and he signed up AIs to join him, forming a new dogpile in each instance. This slowed the tech pace compared to Sulla and Kylearan's games, where they had less war going on. Especially Sulla's game.

We also see that dice rolls, pure luck, can have an impact, and so can early tech trading on the part of the player. It doesn't take much to tip things one way or another, but once tipped over, the dominoes will begin to fall in predictable ways. For instance, once two AIs are at war, they WILL buy in allies and most of the rest of the AIs are going to jump in. If one of the initial two parties is cash poor at that point, they are finished. They MUST be able to buy allies or the dogpile will go against them. As soon as a second AI is lined up against somebody, THAT AI will also be able to buy, worsening the odds. Rare is the situation that sees 2v2 or 3v3. Yet even then, when we saw that happen in my game, something hardwired like the AI's thirst to attack cities with weaker defenders will doom some of the AIs, but not others.

The net result is often that the rich get richer. India bought in Korea vs Egypt and that was the end of Egypt's offense, because Korea pulled their puppet strings. India bought in Persia vs Carthage and pulled Carthage's puppet strings by ensuring that any Carthaginian offensives would occur against Persia, not India (India had stronger defenders). Carthage then collapsed like a punctured balloon yet left ALL the spoils to India because Persia's war with Germany chained them to targetting spear-defended German cities, on the other side of the world, while India scored ALL of the Carthage prize.

So now we are coming to the largest and most enlightening AI war...

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