Aztec Pride

The Settings are the same as for my previous game (025-Boars-Head); and as such, I will not repeat the particulars here.

Suffice to say, the Map is Random, the Difficulty is Monarch, and I am playing with the BAT MOD Leaderhead Expansion Pack, including the Modern Era Expansion.

Beyond that, look at all that Food... perfect for Whipping... anything the God Emperor Topiltzin may desire.

I plan on Building plenty of Shiny things and Founding my fair share of Religions (reloading as appropriate to insure I get the first one or don't waste my time going for it). But War is, also, important. And I should be able to do both, as after building a Sacrificial Altar (and with all that Food), I should be able to Whip something every 15 Turns or so. And if those Whips are attended to properly, I should receive plenty of Hammers and Gold in Overflow.

Well, as much as I liked all that Food. I did not have enough Hammers.

More importantly, I shared a rather small Island with another Civilization. I am the Green in the upper left-hand corner. Australia is the Blue below on the same Island, while Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia is the Pinkish Civilization to the West.

That would have been OK if my gambit to Rush Australia with Jaguar Warriors had panned out. But it did not. By the time I got to his Capitol, he had three Archers in place all with Double Garrison Promotions. Ouch!

And of course, I could have played it out. But I don't feel like playing catch-up while two other Civilizations get huge (or at least, much larger) landmasses to themselves and I'm essentially reduced to Island Hopping just to get my Second City.

Besides, failing an early Rush is like failing at any other Early Strategy. I would have been better off getting a Religion or a Wonder. And instead, I was left with a stack of 6 Jaguar Warriors (well, 5 after losing one), which were not going to do me much good for some time to come.

So in other words, I'm starting over... just like I usually do.

Only this time, I am starting the Roll from scratch and not continuing on from a Seed.

I did a slight bit of exploring, having decided against this roll. And then (after moving a bit and revealing more of the Map), I decided I liked it. I believe there is Coast just to the North and the East, so just beyond the Gold. I, also, recall Stone by the Gold. None of that really matters, as I'm pretty sure I'm going to Settle in place. But what it does mean is that I can plop a Second City very close in and feed off of all those Floodplains... or not. I'll decide that after I explore a little bit more.

Also, rather than needing to Research Fishing right away, the start is wide open... or wider open.

I find Beachhead Cities like the one above (appropriately named Hiro Crush) to be extremely useful.

Hirohito granted Open Borders. So, I landed a Settler and a Worker, along with a few Troops (three Longbows and three Muskets) and proceeded to Settle this Hill City.

A dozen Turns later, Hirohito Declared War, as he was isolated, had been looking for an Enemy for the last thousand years, and our close borders pushed him over the top.

From that point on, Hirohito crashed wave after way of units into my Fortified Hill City.

Now, I should have upgraded those Longbows to Muskets and those Muskets to Rifles. But I did not. And the price of this was loosing three Units. But for those three Units, I got 2+ Great Generals... and some wickedly promoted Units... at the cost of zero War Weariness, as this City was under my Cultural Control.


I probably should mention that I had built The Great Wall, which grants Double Great General Points for all Combat within one's Cultural Borders.

So, I was making out out like a bandit.


As I write this, it is 100+ Turns after Founding Hiro Crush. I've Captured three Cities. I have 111 War Weariness. The fighting has earned me 3½ Great Generals. And I believe it is only a matter of time before Hirohito Capitulates.

In short, I am a big fan of Beachhead Cities. But then, I feel like I must have mentioned this along the way once or twice before.

I won't say that Technology is the only consideration when Declaring War or choosing Allies. But it's pretty important.

In the above screenshot of the Technology Screen, Hirohito (Japan, second from top) is clearly behind the times. It leads to easy pickings.

Churchill (England, third from top) decided to Attack Charles (Spain, bottom). And although Churchill had the Technology lead (towards Rifling, I guess Charles was ahead in everything else, odd how I only considered Rifling important), during the War Charles concentrated on Military Technologies; and so, had the better units at the end of the festivities.

Below is another screenshot of the Technology Screen 50 Turns later. Hirohito hasn't Researched a single new Military Technology, while Spanish Units include Riflemen and Grenadiers and English Units do not.

Hirohito is the one to attack, if you ask me. Currently (mid-game as I write), I am busy eating him whole (as opposed to Accepting Capitulation), which will give me an entire Continent when I am done... the second biggest Continent in the game. It's a big prize.

If I wanted to Accept Hirohito's Capitulation, I could turn around and feed him all the Technologies he's currently missing and turn him into a Military Powerhouse.

But in this game, no one is in a position to Accept his Capitulation in lieu of me. And even if they did, it would make little difference: Japan would still be destroyed and I'd only (temporarily) lose a few of my Newly Captured Japanese Cities to whoever I was now at War, you know, prior to taking them back.

Ironically, for the next 100 Turns or so, I will be building up the Japanese Cities, Building Infrastructure. So, the Early Colonial Period (or whatever you want to call it) will be a sort of Cultural Renaissance for Japan.

Having given into his incessant demands the entire game (having handed over Technologies and Declared Endless Wars at his behest), Churchill liked me. We were good Friends. And we even had a Defensive Pact.

But I was about to Declare War on Christian the Last. And I was afraid Churchill would take the opportunity to back-stab me by Declaring War.

So, I Begged 100 Gold...

And Churchill gave it to me!

And that's a big deal, because for me, it was not about the Gold, which is just the icing on the cake, but the 10 Turn Peace Treaty that goes along with any gift.

I am not an expert on the mechanics (and a lot of what I've said about Whipping on this site is wrong, so you have been warned), but this is what I've been able to piece together about Begging. In other words, rather than a Guide, let's call the discussion that follows a Working Understanding.

Begging

• Diplomatic Modifiers
• If Friendly or Pleased, there is no Diplomatic effect from making a request.
• At Cautious or Annoyed, the request will yield a -1 Arrogant Request Modifier...
  • Except from Gandhi.
• Not Too Often
• There is a 5% Chance per Turn, your Trading Partner will forget about the gift.
• At which point, one can ask for another gift.
• If the appropriate amount of time has not passed, any future gift is denied...
  • And presumably, the clock resets to zero.
• ???
• Along with the Time Decay Value, there is a Gift Value Check.
• So, ask for too much (or too soon) and the gift is denied.
• Friends
• This mechanic is a benefit of Friendly or Pleased.
• At Cautious or Annoyed, I'm thinking there is some sort of Power Value Comparison that comes into play...
  • Along with (the possibility?) of a negative Diplomatic Modifier.

Bottom line, at Friendly or Pleased, there is no reason not to Beg every 20-30 Turns.

I'm going to keep this in mind when folks start plotting for War... and as a way of making Alliances pay-off earlier in the game.

The Graph looks good. So I am going to assume the crappy output last time around was due to a corrupted logfile.

The Combat shown above excludes the last turn, when I lost my Capitol and threw in the towel.

Until that point, I Won 429 out of 460 Engagements.

On the final turn, I lost 73 Units, bringing the new ratio to 445 Wins out of 548 Engagements.

Loosing sucks!

But worse than that, I'd read the Unit Totals of my Attacker incorrectly. And as such, I was not worried in the least. I'd thought Churchill had maybe 25 Units to bear. But in truth, it was closer to 100 Units.

Thus in the above graph, I do not include the Final Turn, because if I do, it drowns out the rest of the Game. Suffice to say, Churchill won fair and square. I got obliterated in that Final Attack.

Commentary

I can't say that I played particularly badly. Churchill started on a Peninsula that split the Largest Continent in two. There were three of us on one side of the Peninsula and nobody on the other. So, Churchill got half of the Biggest Continent all to himself by the luck of the draw. And that allowed him to dominate.

Even better (for Churchill, anyway), the Civilizations on the other Continents were not Techers. Japan started with the same amount of land as Churchill. But he didn't Tech. And so, he was the first Enemy Civilization I took over. Those first 2-3 Great Generals are from Hirohito slamming his Samurai, Horse Archers, and other Anarchistic Units against a handful of Hill Fortified Longbows, Muskets, and later Rifles.

In other words, Churchill might have done even better had rolled Hirohito's Starting Position... or Hirohito might have won had he known how to Tech... and as such, was somebody else entirely.

Begging

{This is pretty much a repeat of the previous section on Begging; and so, may comfortably be skipped by any who have had their fill of that particular subject.}

Worried that Churchill would Attack the moment I Declared War on Christian the Last of Netherlands, I begged 100 Gold off of him. This was the first time I've ever Begged anything off another Civilization. And it would appear in previous games I have left money on the table.

If a Civilization is Friendly or Pleased they've got a decent chance of honouring a reasonable request every 25 Turns or so. Of course, I haven't got the slightest idea what a reasonable request is. But even if it's just a few Gold, well then, that's a few Gold that I didn't have before.

As stated above (but as you may have noticed, I am a repetitive guy, so I am sure this is not the last time I will be mentioning this particular Game Mechanic), whether the Boon is granted or not, the same Civilization will not help again for 20-30 Turns. I think it's a 5% Chance per Turn that the toggle gets reset... a fact which doesn't matter if one asks for too much.

Finally (continuing on with the reiteration), one can ask Enemies for Gold, Techs, or whatever, but there is a -1 Diplomatic hit for doing so. But Friends (or those Pleased) do not take offence either way.


Yeah, I'm not going to delete that double up on the Mechanics of Begging.

Once written, always written.