Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

What? That report was too quick? Where did I settle, what was my starting tech, where is my dot map? Surely something worthy of a picture happened?

Ok, fair enough - here is some additional details ...

I settled in place, started a worker and selected Agriculture as my tech. My dot mapping was relatively complete at that stage.

How can I say my dot map was relatively complete? Well ... what was the one killer strategy in Civ III ... infinite city sprawl. How did they try and stop that in Civ4 ... each additional city raises your expenses and stifles your tech rate. You have to take care of your economy or you stagnate and suffer.

Yes, expenses - the bane of every expansion happy civ. Expenses, expenses, expenses. What a minute ... expenses? In this game? Right! Who cares ... I have 5,000,000 gold coins that I have to burn. So ... ICS it is. My job is to pack in as many cities as I can. Each city will be 3 tiles away from its neighbour.

As it turned out, I accepted some AI city placements after I worked out that I couldn't get an additional city in anyway. I also let some of the horizontal lines of cities slight left and right (no pure grid for me) as the land map let me squeeze in 1 more city if I did that.

By games end, I had 97 cities.

Two Barb Cities

See those two Barb cities? Those two cities popped out a surprising number of Barb workers. At one stage, I saw 3 barb workers on a single tile. Tokugawa captured the Eastern city and 2 Barb workers decided they didn't want to be Japanese so they started to run to the Western Barb city ... right through my lands. Thanks - 2 free workers.

A Merchant that Walks on Water?

Tokugawa (Japan) popped a Great Merchant and sent him somewhere to my West for a trade mission. How did he do that? We don't have open borders, we are not at war and that GMerchant is strolling through my land like he was invited. I am sure that my Great Merchants cannot do that.

Justinian I Locked Out

I mentioned that Ramesses II (Egypt) subjugated himself to Justinian I (Byzantium) - the above picture shows the cultural borders at that time. Egypt was almost dead and Byzantine couldn't send troops against me (locked out by Japan).

Justine army movements and destruction

Here is the situation when it came time to declare on Justinian I (Byzantium). I had spent enough EPs against him to be able to see his main military units. They were in Aryan. Note that this picture was taken earlier than the turn I declared on him - I am only showing it to highlight the tactical unit movements during the first two turns of the war.

I moved in my stack of Cannons, Cuirassier & Muskets to Tile A, capturing a worker. During his turn, Justinian I leaves 7 units (Longbows and Maces) to defend Aryan and moves 37 units (Cataphracts, Crossbows, Longbow, Horsearchers, Trebs, etc) to Tile B.

The stack I moved was my whole stack. I didn't leave much behind as defense. This could go very bad for Awdaghost. Right - what to do?

Nine (9) Cuirassier peel off the stack and hit Aryan. They go 7-2 in killing the defenders and razing that city. That removes the Byzantine culture defending Justinian I's stack. Nine (9) cannons hit the stack resulting in 2 loses, 4 withdrawals (escapes) and 3 'victories' (defenders cannot die to siege). Then it is time for the Muskets, 27 of them, all victorious. Another 10 units (including a chariot!) clean up the other 10 units. Thirty Seven (37) Byzantine units killed for the loss of 2 cannons. If you include the city defenders, 44 units killed for the loss of 4 units. My power ratio to Byzantine went from 1.8 up to 2.8 just because of this battle - that means I killed off 35% of his power ... a greater percentage of his units as some power is population, tech, etc.

How about those expenses?

Finance Reports - T112

Finance Reports - T128

Finance Reports - T146

Finance Reports - T180

(Click for other Finance Reports)

Hmm - not looking too flash. In cricket terminology ...

Target: 5,000,000
Current: 15,958
Remaining Turns: 320
Average Burn Rate: 88 per turn
Current Burn Rate: 487 per turn
Required Burn Rate: 15,575 per turn

Still some work to be done.