I see I've had three downloads... have the changes worked out ok, or did I forget to upload a file or two?

Do you like the additions.

Sorry to bump this, but the EMA forum's been a tad quiet.

I've a few days holiday coming up and hope to do some pedia entries.

Man, needy aren't you? ;)

I'll be going through each one of the major religious civs with an eye to playing with the new additions. Linkies here for easy access.

First up: Italian States

Settings: Monarch-Epic

For the Catholics, their new religious building and unit comes with Monastic orders. This is nice for me, because MO is along the same tech path as Classical Heritage. Which we also need in order to reach Jurisprudence, a requisite for the Crusaders. So, let's get started.

My strategy for Italy is pretty straightforward, Expand into northern Italy, focus on getting a GP ASAP, then use Missionaries to keep your economy afloat while expanding as rapidly as possible. Also, the tech path we're going towards lends itself well to a Specialist Economy. Thus, we'll be farming like crazy.

The first tech is, obviously Monotheism. We settle Venice and use a Missionary to spread Catholicism.

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The other Missionary and both Warriors are sent out to explore the map. I have it mostly memorized, but I still like to see the land. After Monotheism, Iron Tools to give us Axemen for an early offense against Germany. I like taking Aachen because it gives access to Furs and Salt, both extremely helpful for an SE. Whip a church in Rome and keep both Rome and Venice building Granaries. Note that Granaries are much more powerful on Epic than Normal speed. It is not wise to put them off.

After Iron Tools, we tech Stone Working, Animal Breeding, Coinage and Lordship, in that order, before beelining to Classical Heritage. This is my standard teching package, which will divert into Trapping Techniques after Aachen falls.

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Now, to focus on expansion. We need 2 cities and a road to Aachen ASAP if we want to take down Germany before they get too many units. Genoa and Bern are founded before long.

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Both start building workers, while Rome and Venice are building defensive units. Note, we use the second missionary on Bern, not Genoa since she can trade with Rome via the coast. We help the Military buildup along with the construction of Armories in Rome and Venice. Then, we get our first GP in 700AD.

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I should have had him 10 turns sooner, but I forgot to reset the Priest specialist in Rome after a whip. Of course we constructed St. Peter's Basllica, and I was able to increase the research slider back to 100%. I turned off the specialist in Rome for now, since I'd rather the population point working a mine. We need more Missionaries and Settlers! Speaking of expansion, I was finally set to war with Germany.

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Yeah, a small stack, but I was about to whip 4 more out with 1 being produced in Rome before then. The second wave would go north through the Alps toward Worms. After Worms fell, Germany lost their only Iron resource, making take capture of Aachen much less expensive. 20 turns and 9 fewer axemen later, I owned Aachen and it's wonderful resources. Even the Pope needs a pimp fur jacket.[pimp]

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With peace, we began the focus on filling the rest of Italy and spreading Catholicism far and wide. After whipping a couple settlers, Rome started on a Marketplace to give our shrine a nice bonus. Aachen came with a Monastery pre-built, so we built us some Missionaries there. Before we knew it, Theology was discovered. And I made my first civics change.

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So, here's a good break point. Sadly, I've lost Sicily and Sardinia to the infidels, but that should change soon enough. However, our eyes are set on a different prize for now:

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All warriors? :eek: They're begging for a Holy Crusade. Save attached for your gaming pleasure.

This looks like it should be interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

I'll hopefully finish another set of turns tonight. I want to get to Jurisprudence ASAP only because it's boring when you know exactly what you're going to do next ;). I also want to get to Canute soon. Axemen are usually unbeatable in early wars, so I can see a Viking invasion of the entire Baltic and Atlantic, hopefully marching to Rome for it's shriney goodness.

Any suggestions militarily? I have about 6 Axemen I can scrounge together, and whip 4 more out of Rome and Venice ASAP. 10 Axemen could probably tear through Hungary. I'd also whip a galley, move my existing one to the other side of Italy and send 6 axemen after the capital and 4 after the cities on the Adriatic. Or, I could ship them to Constantinople and take that shrine. With my half cost missionaries, it wouldn't e long before the cash rolls in.

The only problem is that my infra structure is non-existent. The only good thing going for me is that I have Churches and Granaries in nearly every city. Whipping the marketplace in Rome is almost better than whipping 2 more axemen, and Venice needs some more :) buildings, like a Winery and Minstrel Stage to work all those tasty mines. Same goes for Bern and Aachen, since they have 5 and 6 resources to work in their BFCs.

I decided that yes, taking Hungary was worth it. It was just too convenient after I saw this:

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I could take out their only source of iron and prevent upgrades/new units from appearing on the second turn of war. Needless to say, my 10 Axemen I scrounged up tore through Hungary. After 15 turns, our only losses were a road and an Iron Mine that the Hungarian warriors bravely razed. Their valiant efforts will be forgotten. We finally lost an axeman taking the city of Eger, but I think that's a fair trade for an entire Empire.

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Not only will this new empire feed our economy, but it will give us land access to Byzantine and later Arabia for our crusades. Hungary was able to sneak a city onto Sardinia, so we sued for peace and left them to their schemes to return home some day.

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Courts and Mints were built everywhere. I was trying to wring out every last bit of gold I could to keep my tech pace towards Monastic Orders high. Then, we picked up the single most valuable tech in the game.

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Why valuable you ask? This is why.

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I forgot to take a pic of trading Theology for Trade Routes with St. Stephen

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And, I made a much needed civics swap.

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I gave up whipping for a bit, because whipping means low worked tiles, and I need lots of population to get MO and Jurisprudence finished. Anyway, mints and Courts and Missionaries were still being churned out. The deficit slowly rose, and we only had to mug the AI for money once. Unfortunately, our sudden increase in score and power made us a prime target for war requests. Ugh. Since Worms had finished a Mint and Smithy, I set it to work pumping out Archers for defense.

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Finally finished Monastic Orders...and I forgot to take a pic of it. Anyway, jumped to one of my favorite Civics and set out on the 38 turn slog towards Jurisprudence, which Monastic Order cut to 21 turns. We traded to Ashot for Siege Warfare and, again, I forgot to take a pic. Siege Warfare will help with XP and the Mangonels will help preserve our nicely upgraded Axemen from the Hungary campaign.

We kept powering through the turns, eventually raising the science slider up to 60%. Then our next GP appeared.

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I sent him to Vienna to settle as a Super Specialist. And finally:

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Mmm, gallows. I love them. Happiness is never much of a problem for me, usually I have health issues, and the -25% maintenance is always welcome. I decided to stop here. I'm starting to get a bit tired, and I want to play the highlight of this demo as best as I can. So until tomorrow kids.

A few things to ponder on.

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I'm almost dead set on Philosophy. As if the free tech wasn't enough, it also allows for construction of the Lateen Palace. With the addition of another Catholic building, that wonder is now 25% more profitable. There's no reason that I can see to avoid picking up this tech.

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Theodora's power line is comforting. Alp must really be working her over. I figure we'll finish off Theodora, then use Constantinople as a staging/rally point for our Turkish invasion. Hopefully the +75% vs. city our Crusaders receive will blast through Theodora's defenses.

Can't wait to see how the crusaders work with a real player (namely, not me... I'm pretty pathetic).

Ha ha, yea, me too. It's hard to balance playing the mod and making the mod sometimes, and I bet a lot of you are signifigantly better than me.

Ha ha, yea, me too. It's hard to balance playing the mod and making the mod sometimes, and I bet a lot of you are signifigantly better than me.

Ohh please.:) I can't make it through a game without cheating alittle.;)

Ha ha, yea, me too. It's hard to balance playing the mod and making the mod sometimes, and I bet a lot of you are signifigantly better than me.

We should have an EMA Multiplayer day. How about tomorrow? ^_^

You should keep this up, I'd like to see your Crusade into the Middle East.;)

Unfortunately, that didn't happen this round and might not in the future either. I'm working on the next post now.

I had to make a tough decision at the beginning of the round, after studying the power graph, relations graph and the list of cities in the trade screen, it became apparent that there was no Byzantine. With Alp on the move, I had to decide to either take on the second strongest military in the game, or divert my attack to softer targets.

So, in 900AD, the HRE was born and set out to reunite the western empire (Yes, I know it should be Imperator. I changed it a few turns later). To that end, I made a civics change.

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As you can see, I chose philosophy for my next tech. Heraldry and it's exp giving civics and engineering and it's exp giving building were both tempting choices, but I decided that I would race with Poland for the free scientist. With Poland's discovery of Classical Heritage, the shine on that tech had worn off. So I used it to snatch up any techs that I could.

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I ended up declaring war on Theodora to keep Alp happy with me. The last thing I needed was a sneak attack from the east since all my military will be on the western front. However, I made sure have some decent garrisons just in case. No reason to leave border cities with <3 units (That's less than 3, not a heart you nerds). Also, I went to war with Hungary for Open Borders with Russia. That was just too many cities without Catholicism for my liking.

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Also, research was tanked to 0% in order to get cash for upgrades to our nicely promoted axemen. Unfortunately, the GS would only pop us half of Trans-Continental trade. Some quick math showed that an Academy in Aachen would give us >25 beakers a turn (base of 50 beakers and growing) which would outpace the +2700 beakers from lightbulbing quickly enough. Engineering was chosen as the next tech.

With a decent force together, we pounced on Germany before they finished off Pilgrimage and got those nasty Krezzug Ritters.

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We also got the Lateran Palace started in Bern. It wasn't the highest production city, but Venice was building the Heroic Epic to pump out units and later a navy for a hopefully sea invasion of Arabia and/or Egypt. Soon enough, Germany was no more.

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Or so I thought. I checked the WB and saw that they still had a city in NW Russia/Finland. Since that was way to far to capture, I declared peace. After my units healed and I had some Archers in place, France's number was up. Of course, I couldn't just let them get away without giving up their techs, could I?

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After Engineering was finished, I started in on Trans-continental Trade. The gems by Eger...er, I mean if a Gems resource shows up in our borders, it would be nice. ;) Also, Fairs would help since we have Saffron. I didn't think we'd get the Merchant, but we can always hope.

I accidentally closed the client instead of minimizing it, so the results of the French war will have to wait until I get the desire to replay the game. Which may be days because that's my least favorite thing in the world to do. Here's a preview of what does happen.

RED GROUP

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BLUE GROUP

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BATTLE PLAN

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Nice, in your opnion since your playing the game, are crusaders overpowered?

How did the new units shape up... are there too many allowed, or not enough. In my autoplay games, they tended to be about 1/4 or the available units of that type. That is, of foot knight type units, a quarter would be crusaders, for example.

AIautoplay may differ from a real players experience, however.

When I go back to war with France *sigh* I'll redo everything I did on odds and whatnot. Basically, the extra +50% is the perfect value. Odds for regular foot knights, with CR I, will go from roughly 27% to 52% for Crusaders. And for CR II foot knights, it goes from 35% to 66% for crusaders. This is against Macemen in the city with no cultural defenses. All other units I faced, even Chevaliers, were a joke. Odds went from 85% for foot knights to 100% for crusaders. I haven't faced any composite archers yet, but I expect a result similar to the Macemen odds.

However, I don't think there are enough of them. 8 units is enough for 1 stack. Most of the time, I like to play with 2 or 3 stacks. Anyway, the Crusaders became a Macemen buster. I usually just sacrificed them to clean out the units with high defense, then mopped up the rest with Macemen and Foot Knights.

EDIT: I'm just happy that I saved before the war. If I had to go back to the pre-war buildup, I would have quit and moved on to the Vikings.

ok, since they are in limited quantities they arnt overpowered, but do you have any opinions of ghazi warriors or berserkers? and also, any ideas for orthodox religious units. it appears craig and myself think it should be either a heavy or light cavalry replacement. but im thinking that orthodoxy should get the crusaders also.

Heh, way to glaze over the OP.

I'll be going through each one of the major religious civs with an eye to playing with the new additions.

I finished the game last night. Would you guys like a rundown of the last 125 turns or would you rather I start on the Vikings?

I'm anxious for the Vikings... a quick synopsis of how the Crusaders worked and what you think of their balance would be nice.

Excellent game report, by the way... if I were a better player, I'd try my hand at one as well... but as it is, I'd embarrass myself:)

Quick synopsis then:

-Killed France
-Declared on Spain and nearly lost France to their 38 Horse Archers and Knights.
-After killing Spain, declared on the Moors and finished them off, giving me several wonders and an empire that I felt didn't need to expand further.
-Started on the Hansa league win.
-Ran out of time and won a Time victory.

I'm not even going to bother with a Vikings demo game. The Berserkers are completely useless as is.

-Can't control the spread of Paganism.
-Oppressively expensive buildings for an early game unit. I'd rather build a Keep + Armory.
-By the time you can even build your first Berserker, you can have 8+, 4XP Axemen units done.
-They can't defend or bombard defenses
-They have no bonus versus Spears or Archery units

All in all, conventional Axes are better, and a quick run to Pilgrimage will replace the Berserkers entirely. Giving them a bonus to Archers and Spearmen and an extra movement point will make them worthwhile. The lack of bombardment is really killer, since it takes a whole stack of units to drop defenses in a timely manner.

The only upside wasn't from the Berserkers at all. The early +2 commerce from the halls really helps out, and I can see why teh Vikings were so much stronger than usual in my Italy game.

Are you going to try Ghazi warriors? I tried them as egypt on small map but got my high midival but kicked by dark aged arminians on nakharars.(i thought cavalry didnt get defense bonuses) try ghazi warriors for the historical realism as turkey, they were primarily raider until after 1071 (Manzikert) Kudos if you know what Manziket is.

Thanks for the input on the Berserkers. A couple of things to note that may not show up in the info screen for the unit...

-they start with the charge promotion
-they do not cost military support

But judging by your comments, they definetely need a rethink.

-lower building cost for Berserker Hall
-no prerequisite building needed
-adjustment to Str, perhaps... I hesitate to add Seige just because it doesn't seem to be the type of thing a Berserker would do... Maybe city attack promotions??

Anyhow, I'm not a unit expert so someone who's better at that sort of thing can likely come up with a better mix of promotions and str to reflect the unit properly.

Manzikert is likely very familiar to most of the learned persons in this particular thread... give us something hard :)

Try Dara, Tricameron, or Taginae.

And now I go to Google... :)

Got 'em... although Dara was Daraa. Didn't realize Belisarius did much against the Persians... just heard of him in relation to retaking portions of the West.

There's a alternate history series by David Drake and Eric Flint that you may have an interest in... it features Belisarius and Narses is also in it.

Anyhow, hijacked this thread long enough... await the next report.

Manzikert is likely very familiar to most of the learned persons in this particular thread... give us something hard :)
Okay, how about something you won't find on Google?:p

Battle of Anazarbe (Anazarbus) year 1107; who fought against who and who was victorious?

Battle of Marash year 1135; same question

Battle of Mamistra about 1145; same question



Hint: The same country won all three of these battles.;)

I'm going to guess Armenia vrs the Turks... but that's just because of the source of the question... no time for Google (I'm at work), but are you certain it's not there? I'll google later out of curiousity, though, but if it's not there I'll have to ask you for some info on those battles.

Im only good ivolving either franks, or byzantines. sorry. but ill try.

I'm pretty certain the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia is involved... the place names seem to be part of that Kingdom. I'm having some trouble determining opponents... I think likely the Turks, but google doesn't give solid info tying the dates to battles very well in this case, so it could also be against the Byzantines or even the Crusaders, although I think the later to be less likely. I'm even leaning a towards the Byzantines rather than the Turks as an Armenian leader was imprisoned by Byzantium about that time (as a rebel prince, I believe).

Here's my best guess, then... and google is sketchy on the fine points, so it's only a guess based on slim research...

Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia vrs the Byzantines with the Armenian side the victors (I judge them victorious based on the fact that they were a going concern as a kingdom will after the time of these battles).

I'm pretty certain the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia is involved... the place names seem to be part of that Kingdom. I'm having some trouble determining opponents... I think likely the Turks, but google doesn't give solid info tying the dates to battles very well in this case, so it could also be against the Byzantines or even the Crusaders, although I think the later to be less likely. I'm even leaning a towards the Byzantines rather than the Turks as an Armenian leader was imprisoned by Byzantium about that time (as a rebel prince, I believe).

Here's my best guess, then... and google is sketchy on the fine points, so it's only a guess based on slim research...

Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia vrs the Byzantines with the Armenian side the victors (I judge them victorious based on the fact that they were a going concern as a kingdom will after the time of these battles).
Very good deduction.:goodjob:

Battle of Anazarbus: From 1102-1103 onwards, Toros I assisted the crusaders to neutralize the attacks of Byzantine at Edessa and Antiochia. Later he allied with Prince Tancrède of Antiochia and began himself to fight against Byzantium, conquering the important city of Anazarba. (info from Armenica.org I believe)

Battle of Marash: The hatred and the hostility of the Turks towards New Armenia was bought with the gold that the Byzantine court paid to the Turks, since the gaze of Byzantine still was fixed on Cilicia and even the Antiochia duchy. The brother of Levon I, Stephan, in 1135 took the city of Marash which was in Turkish hands.

Battle of Mamistra: Emperor Manuel (1143-1180), of the Comnenos dynasty, then sent an army of 12,000 men, under the leadership of Andronikos Comnenos, against the Armenians and, with the help of some of the Armenian noble families who were at war with the Rouben-Bagratouni family, was able to drive back Toros II and his forces. Toros took position in the strong fortress of Mamistra and was surrounded of the Byzantine forces. As it was a surprise attack, and the Armenians had not had the opportunity to gather necessary provisions for a siege, their situation was critical. The Armenian forces left the fortress at night and engaged with the Byzantine army which was several times stronger then them. A harsh battle began, which ended in a glorious Armenian victory. Several of the enemy officers were captured and were later exchanged for a large ransom.

When Emperor Manuel was informed of the defeat, he convinced sultan Massoud, the lord of Konya, to attack New Armenia, but Toros twice fought back the enemy forces. Then Massoud allied himself with Renauld de Chatillon, the prince of Antiochia, who was quarrelling with Toros over the fortress of Gastin in the Amanus Mountains, and asked that Antiochia declare war on New Armenia. Nonetheless, change of sides also ended with an Armenian victory near the Gulf of Eskanderun.

The battle of Mamistra was by fa the most major of them. You know, this make me want to do an Armenian campaign and post about it.:)

Why are you making my thread boring? Jeez.

I know this is very off-topic, but I'm sorry I haven't done anything with the mod this week, although I said I would. My Civ4 CD was kind of misplaced, and I didn't obtain a replacement from a friend until yesterday, and I've been gone all of today and I will be gone all of Sunday, Monday, and possibly Tuesday. I would like to get out a new version by next Friday though, with all of the neccesary bugs fixed, and maybe a new scenario.

This mod is a volenteer effort. Take your own time, because the amount of effort you put into this is amazing. Quality, not Quantity.

*bump*

Sorry, no exposition here. The Islam unit is largely useless as well. It's meant to be a defender, and it works well to stop those pesky knights from running over your stacks. However, compared to the strength of the Crusader, the unit is a joke.