700AD     Alexander and Caesar

As the title suggests, the stage was set for a clash between two of the greatest generals of the ancient world, Alexander against Caesar. My struggle against Rome was to become the most dramatic fight of this game. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

In 710AD I had a horrendous turn of luck and lost the attacking force that I had planned to send after Veii to more of those maddening Roman legions. Fortunately to balance this out, I captured Bombay from India in the north. With my strike against Veii blunted, I turn my offensive forces to the south and went after the coastal city of Antium. I should mention I had retaken Hispalis sometime in the past; unfortunately I didn't write down the date so I don't know exactly when. Antium was defended by a single spear for some unknown reason and thus fell to me with no losses in 740AD. I snapped another civ-wide shot in 750AD, this one finally showing almost all of my main continent:

Yep, that's my civ at this point in the game. As usual, my backline cities were working on city improvements while the frontline cities (with all available improvements already built) trained military. I've also started training worker at this point in my useless jungle-infested cities to remove those huge stretches of the stuff. Note also the reclaimed Hispalis, sans-army of Hoplites. I've also almost finished constructing the Forbidden Palace manually in New York; my goal was to rush it with a leader or I would have started it earlier, but since none were showing up I had to build it the slow way. I should get some scenario points for that! Just kidding. Note that research is on again, and would remain on for the rest of the game. I had come to the conclusion that I would never get another tech from the Great Library, and decided that it would serve me better to push ahead on tech and gain access to things like knights, banks, and universities. Of course at this point I couldn't manage better than 40% research on science due to having to maintain a 20% luxury rate in my large cities. Even with all this territory, I only have 2 luxuries. Naturally I couldn't trade for any luxuries either, so happiness was a major problem throughout the early portion of the game. If this had been Emperor difficulty with only 1 content citizen per city, it could have gotten a bit ugly at time. Fortunately though this was only Monarch.

Continuing with the chronicle, I finished my Forbidden Palace in New York in 770AD and got a significant production/commerce boost from it. Perhaps Macedon and New York were not 100% ideal locations for the two centers of my territory, but they were functional enough to get low corruption from the majority of cities you see in this screenshot. In 810AD I had a freakish random number generator (RNG) run of luck - in my favor! A Roman army of three legions at full strength died attacking a veteran hoplite that was fortified on a hill. Ha ha ha! The luck factor in this game is so messed up at times. The death of this army that had irritated me greatly for the last 10 turns opened the way to an assault on Veii (the "6" city in the picture above) in 820AD, which left one elite legion alive with 1hp. Arrggghhh! I even attacked with two veteran hoplites trying to take the last hp off, to no avail. (1 vs 4.5 defense tried 8 times is likely to succeed). Veii continued to hold out against my best efforts, and so I began laboriously constructing a road to it from Hispalis to speed my next invasion.

Meanwhile, a galley of mine exploring the sea tiles to the west of Antium saw more sea tiles further out, so I decided to suicide him and see what I could find. The result was a successful suicide trip and contact with China in 820AD:

I got Mao's world map and declared WAR on his sorry civ. And it was a sorry civilization, as the Chinese only had some 10 cities and were way behind in tech; they had only just gotten MapMaking. Their world map revealed that France was close by as well, so I sent the same galley over to where France was on the map to make contact with Joanie. They would have no way to reach me until they discovered Astronomy (aeons away for them) so I wasn't exactly worried. I contacted France in 850AD, got their world map as well, and declared WAR once again. My F4 screen was now almost full with 6 opponents; I had better kill off some of them to make room for the civs still out there! :)

In 860AD I captured Bangalore and pushed India down to their final city on the starting continent, which was of course their capital Delhi. I knew by this time that they had two cities on an island to the north, which would be a pain to reach but I resolved to get nonetheless. Meanwhile battle continued in the south as my newly-discovered knights bloodied themselves in the taking of Veii in 890AD. Veii was a critical location to have as it gave me control over the hilly region that stood between Macedon and Rome. With control over Veii, my roads over those hills were secure and I could easily send reinforcements deep into the heart of Roman territory. 890AD also saw the capture of Delhi and the evacuation of Gandhi from the main continent. He was pushed back to his island fortress, which would take some time to round up enough forces and galleys to attack. I snapped a picture of the victorious north in 900AD, finally showing the northern coast of my continent:

India's remaining island peeks out from under the fog in the northeast. I didn't know how big it was, but it couldn't be too large if they only had two cities on it. Gandhi was bottled up well and good at this point. I've boxed in three groups of workers to highlight their actions. These were my "jungle-clearing" groups, which would eventually be added to by another two stacks of workers. For essentially the rest of the game they hacked out productive grassland tiles from that mass of jungle up there in and around my Forbidden Palace spot. You can see I've squeezed in Knossos to avoid wasting a ton of tiles in that region and have a settler/hoplite pair northeast of New York to put in another city on the river. Argos was founded on the site of an auto-razed Indian city. Finally, you might also be amused by the slow tech pace of the game. Engineering in 900AD?! My God that's slow! I know it's not 1.21f anymore, but still... The Monarch AI civs are pitifully slow compared to the Deity ones, and Always War just cripples their tech progression. Just absolutely cripples it. Like I said, Rome didn't build a single cultural building the entire game. Not one. I certainly wasn't worried about flips in this game!

There next followed a series of turns in which no progress was made against my foes. I was gatherine forces for a naval assault on India while in the south I sent an attack against Rome where the number generator screwed me, sending a number of knights to their death and forcing the others to retreat back to Veii for healing. Things began picking up in the years just before the new millenium though, as I captured Lahore from India in 980AD, pushing them back to their final city. The detested Eternal City of Rome finally fell to my forces in 990AD, prompting a wild celebration across Greece (ok, not really but it's fun to imagine that it did). Caesar retreated to Pompeii, and was now reduced to 5 cities. Unfortunately, as I was to find out, Caesar still had a lot of fight left in him... Perhaps the best event in this series of rapid victories was reached in 1020AD, when I sent my knights over the mountains in the south and seized Atlanta from the weak and withered hands of Abe, prompting this message:

This image has been lost.

That's two down, nine to go. :) 1040AD was a turn of both triumph and tribulation for me. On the one hand, I finally got my much-desired 5th leader, from an elite knight defending, no less!

Sun Tzu's was dialed up for the next turn, a move that would save me quite a bit of cash as well as allowing for much faster healing in recently captured cities. On the other hand, in trying to take Cumae I had just about the worst series of combat rolls ever in my Civ3 career. Cumae was a size 6 city (on a hill, admittedly) with 2 hoplites and a spear inside it. Admittedly a tough nut to crack, but 11 knights should do the job, right? Well apparently not. This battle was highlighted by the losing of 17 consecutive rounds of combat. Yep, SEVENTEEN rounds of combat, in a case of 4 attack versus 6 defense. My calculator says that there is a .017% chance of that happening, or about 1 in 5000. Don't ever try to tell me that the RNG isn't streaky at times. Needless to say, I killed 0 defenders and lost 8 knights, with the other 3 fortunately retreating. My shattered forces limped back to Rome to regroup and figure out what happened. I think the commander of that group of knights committed hari-kari or something like that to make up for the shame of such a crippling defeat.

Of course there was more than just bad news to report. Although Caesar was fighting like a rapid animal with his back up against the wall, I was happy to report that my long struggle in the north came to and end in 1070AD as a small detachment of forces captured Karachi and liberated it from the Indians. With nowhere to retreat to, Gandhi was forced to surrender up to me:

And another face disappeared from the F4 leaderhead screen, much to my pleasure. The next turn it was back to more random combat luck weirdness, as 7 knights died trying to kill a single legion in Pompeii. By this time, I was frustrated to the point of yelling profanities at my monitor in the hopes that it would motivate my knights to a better performance, prompting strange glances from the other people I live with. Yelling at an imaginary Caesar is not the best way to convince people of your sanity, after all. :) And yet, despite all this, when I mounted my third assault on Pompeii in 1090AD, the first knight killed the defending legion and walked right into the city. I was flabbergasted - why didn't you do that earlier you @&#$!

A new chapted in the game opened up the next turn in 1100AD, as a Persian galley sailed by my continent and made contact. Persia had built the Lighthouse ages ago, well before I ever had even a remote shot at it. I was able to get his world map, showing cities on two major islands as well as junk colonies on two tundra filled islands. Then I declared WAR as required by the rules, of course. By an amazing coincidence, my original suicide galley that had gone exploring to the west and then north of China and France happened to reach the Egyptians on the same turn and made contact also in 1100AD! Both Persia and Egypt were behind in tech, if not quite so far back as China and France. Persia was the only civ that could reach me due to their Lighthouse wonder, which I resolved to take from them as soon as possible.

With Pompeii in my hands, I had reduced Rome to 3 cities. Cumae was the source of my earlier great misfortune, and it guarded the route to Pisae - Rome's city build ON an iron resource in the very corner of the continent furthest away from me. Cumae also blocked the route to Ravenna, the new location of Rome's capital since it was his largest city remaining (with no culture anywhere the palace just jumped to Caesar's biggest city). Cumae had to go. A massive attack on the hated city in 1120AD saw average combat luck, which meant that I won an overwhelming victory. This opened the way to the equally detested source of Rome's iron, and Pisae fell easily in 1140AD. No more legions would ever be produced, and since Rome was nowhere close to Feudalism to get pikes (which he couldn't build anyway without iron) it was all over for him. I reshuffled my knights and went after Ravenna. The sweetest message of all appeared in 1170AD:

This image has been lost.

Fledgling may describe the Roman's cultural level, but by no means the fight they put up against me. Hail, Caesar. He was a worthy foe, but in the long run my great advantage in resources slowly wore his civ into the ground. Nonetheless, I was more than glad to remove my greatest foe from the game.

So, umm, England was the only civ remaining of the ones starting on my continent. Lizzie had 3 cities crammed into a mountainous and icy starting position. Some of the people here at RBCiv might have won the game from her starting position, but the AI certainly couldn't. I went about the mercy killing as quickly as I could to get it over with. London captured in 1190AD (the fastest I could get my units there), Nottingham in 1200AD, and York in 1220AD. And with that, England was DEAD:

I now had full control of my starting continent in 1220AD. The capture of London in 1190AD had finally given me a third luxury, allowing me to run 10% luxury tax instead of 20%. It was the end of an era for my game, as now the focus shifted to amphibious operations designed to get my knights onto other continents and take as many cities as possible. Symbolically, I killed my first Persian units this turn as well, two horsemen that a galley dropped off next to Karachi. 1220AD is not particularly fast, and I expect a number of players to beat that date in the reports, especially if they went after Rome first and killed them before they researched Iron Working. Difficult, but possible. Regardless, the beginning of the game was done and it was time to embark upon the high seas for greater adventures.

The one thing to look at here on the table is the massive increases in my losses due to slugging it out with Rome. I lost more units in the course of this struggle than at any other time in the game. Of course Rome took horrendously high losses as well; good thing neither of us had representative governments. I also added in the newly contacted civs, though as of 1200AD I had yet to kill any of their units.