ALC Game #9: Incas/Huayna Capac

CR3 Trebs are a force. I now find that to be the bulk of my middle game army. X-bows and pikes to protect them. Horse archers to pillage. And a few maces with mixed promotions, a few CR3 maces still necessary, for the grenadier upgrade. Just wanted to weigh in a little on the off topic discussion.

As for the game at hand,

quote: There we go, two shrines. Nice for a financial leader, no?

I'm not certain how this relates directly to the benefit of being a financial leader. The shrine produces gold but does it affect tiles (as in all tiles producing 2 commerce now produce 3)? What am I missing here?

I agree that the island is a waste of time. If you settle it, Napoleon might pick a fight and take it. Regardless, it's not worth it either way.

I vote no to the pillaging stacks. You're not going to get deep enough into his territory anyway, which is vast. Now, if Hatty could actually make a contribution in this war, say putting a dent in heliopolis and thermopylae, you might be able to sneak some horses up by that NW iron. But I wouldn't count on that and thus you can't completely deprive him of iron. You can cut off the ivory, which is good, and the horses won't matter if you mass pikes.

I also wouldn't gift any cities to Hatty. She's too far behind to ever get much out of it besides having to retake the city, which will probably be in short order. I'd say you've still got a bit of Monty in you. After reading the Frederick and Alex ALC's and being caught up in this one, I've begun reading the old ones for kicks. It seems to me that once you got the taste for constant warfare, you've become an addict. It is the most fun part of the game. If only you could make the AI beg.

Good luck on the war with Alex, it looks to be an uphill battle. Pace yourself and don't bite off more than you can chew. Given what he's done to Hatty, I don't think he'll rest easy if you start capturing and/or razing cities.

Don't neglect your navy. Surround your island with sufficient defense making all of your troops available for intercontinental warfare. Get those frigates going and stir up trouble diplomatically on the other continent.

One more thing. I haven't downloaded a save and probably should. However, I wouldn't completely neglect the lib/uni/obs/oxford path. One of your cities should always be working towards oxford. Get those uni's built one at a time if need be. It's slow but I think it's better to get a little more tech over the long haul instead of rushing all the uni's once the war is over. Besides, it looks like it will be a three tier war with alex. He's got a big empire.

Whew. Long post.

johnny_rico said:

CR3 Trebs are a force. I now find that to be the bulk of my middle game army.

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Me too. I basically wind up using City Raider macemen just for mop-up duty after the trebuchets have damaged everyone sufficiently and/or killed all the non-melee units. When faced with a choice between an 8 strength unit with collateral damage and retreat vs. an 8 strength unit without, it's hard to rationalize using macemen for much except defense and open field combat. I wouldn't use them at all except for the upgrade potential.

quote: There we go, two shrines. Nice for a financial leader, no?

I'm not certain how this relates directly to the benefit of being a financial leader.

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It doesn't. There's an indirect benefit in that if you're pursuing a strategy that relates to your "Financial-ness", getting more gold from any source synergizes with that. Otherwise two shrines is just nice because it's nice, not because Huayna is Financial.

Dr Elmer Jiggle said:

Me too. I basically wind up using City Raider macemen just for mop-up duty after the trebuchets have damaged everyone sufficiently and/or killed all the non-melee units. When faced with a choice between an 8 strength unit with collateral damage and retreat vs. an 8 strength unit without, it's hard to rationalize using macemen for much except defense and open field combat. I wouldn't use them at all except for the upgrade potential.

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I've got a little more to say about this. It is nice the developers came up with a siege unit between catapults and cannons. In fact, in games pre warlords, I would mass so many macemen that I would rarely need to build rifles and gren's, just upgrade the army that I had. Those upgrades would usually keep me going until infantry and later marines were available. Thus, I'm wondering if the treb wasn't added because gren's and rifles weren't really being built. With the treb, I find myself needing to build more gren's and rifles because I usually run with less macemen and lots more siege. However, the treb seems a little overpowered. This is most certainly better talked about in a different thread. Not only are we off topic but our game hoster doesn't even have Warlords. Apologies.

Otherwise two shrines is just nice because it's nice, not because Huayna is Financial.

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True that.

Have you considered wiping Hatty out first? Easier target and gives you a solid base in the northern continent. Take out Alex a bit later once you've got engineering and are heading towards gunpowder units.

He already has Engineering and is building a few pikemen to keep the elephants away.

I agree with the strategy suggested by johnny_rico. The short form of that is:

Keep a strong Navy.
Pillaging Alex is a waste of effort, you need to take his cities and resources.
Take Elephantine and then Memphis (Alex loses his ivory)
Maybe make peace for 10 turns and regroup
Then take his other cities in 1 or 2 more stages as new technologies make it easier.

but if you take out Hatty first, then you have to defend her cities against Alex. i think Sisiutil can take a city or two of Alex's to use as a base (and even take the ivory away as johnny_rico suggests). then as he turns east to Hatty, any leftover armies can take her out without worrying about counter-attacks. i don't think she'll amass a huge army anytime soon, but Alex will only get stronger.

If the ultimate plan is to go for a diplo win, he probably doesn't need to take out Hatty at all. With trade and mutual military struggle bonuses, she'll probably give him her vote for the UN.

Round 8: to 1550 AD
Part One: The Phony War

During the first few turns of this round, I preoccupied myself with preparations to invade the northern continent with Alexander as my target. Alexander and I were still officially at war, but neither of us had done much beyond a couple of hesitant naval skirmishes.

First off, I took some advice regarding research. I agreed with several of you that I could probably trade to get Guilds, so I changed my research to something that would be more valuable in the upcoming war:



Yes, Gunpowder and Chemistry for Frigates and Grenadiers, and maybe a Musketman or two along the way.

I also sent a Caravel to scout out Alexander's territory:



Elephantine looked like low-hanging fruit, and his other coastal cities weren't much better defended. However, Alexander was very high on the power chart, and he has iron, horses, and elephants, so I deduced, as several of you have, that he had several mounted units, but was hiding them inland somewhere. This hazy but unsettling intelligence (or lack thereof) affected my decision-making later on, as you'll see.

Meanwhile, I kept building units in the queues in my cities. When I finally felt that if I waited any longer, the "oldest" units awaiting completion in the queues would start losing hammer, I changed to the war civics, opened the floodgates, cried "Havoc"! and let slip the dogs of war:



Only 1 turn--heh. In most of my off-line games, I play Epic speed, where this would be a 2 or, more likely, 3-turn revolution.

I also got confirmation as to why I was tops in score:



Population does count for a lot in those rankings after all. And aim to get bigger, very soon, and very quickly.

Frederick had made nice with Napoleon on the other continent in the meantime. To try to reduce complications, I decided to do the same:



This was a bargain. A couple of turns earlier, he wanted 125 gold for the peace treaty! I sank two of his snoopy little Caravels with my Galleons and he lowered his price.

Meanwhile, I did send a pillaging stack over to Greece, consisting of a Maceman, a Pikeman, and a Horse Archer with Flanking I and Sentry. I mainly wanted to distract Alex and keep his forces out of Elephantine, and to scout as much as I could. I also did a little pillaging to cover costs and to make sure I had Alexander's attention:



And eventually, Guilds came up for grabs. Frederick was too greedy, insisting on Education in return for it. Cyrus was much more reasonable:



There, that oughtta help maintain the balance of power on the other continent for a while.

Back in my own neck of the woods, I finally felt ready to start my invasion, confident that I had enough troops to first capture Elephantine, then to defend it, and enough Galleons (5) to ferry them over in two waves. Since some of you requested some more detail regarding my city attacks, I've decided to split this round into several posts to describe the battle for Elephantine in more detail.

To be continued...

what about part 2 i need my ALC, i NEED it

Round 8: to 1550 AD
Part 2: The Capture of Elephantine

This wasn't exactly an epic battle against overwhelming odds. Alexander had Elephantine defended with only two Longbowmen, and the city's cultural defense was 50%. I, on the other hand, had around 25 units to throw at the city, including my beloved set of four Catapults with Barrage I and Accuracy I promotions, who could remove that pesky cultural defense in one bombardment.

The first step was, of course, to unload the first wave of units from the Galleons. The forested tile 1E of the city provided a good defensive tile from which to launch the attack. Besides the 4 Accuracy Cats, the first wave mainly consisted of my best units for city attack: 2 Catapults with City Raider I and Barrage I, 4 Macemen with CRII, and a few defensive units: A Combat II Horse Archer, a City Garrison II Longbowman (who would be the initial city defender), two Combat II/Formation Pikemen, and a Spearman with Medic I.

The 4 Accuracy cats got the party started, of course:



With the cultural defenses gone, it was the turn of the City Raider Catapults to do the initial suicide attack:



I tend to think of the suicide cats as being the "forlorn hope". That name was given to the first men assigned to go through an open breach in a city's or fort's walls. They were, of course, likely to be cut down to a man by the defenders, but somebody had to go through first. If you survived the forlorn hope, you were guaranteed a promotion.

I lost both Catapults but their objective had been achieved: the defenders were sufficiently softened up. My CRII Macemen now had odds in the high nineties, exactly where I want them.



The first Longbow fell, and now I started thinking about easy promotions thanks to the one remaining and much weaker defender. I decided that the Horse Archer could use a promotion to justify the expense of upgrading him to a Knight, so he got the nod:



With those odds, he managed to squeak out 2 XPs for Combat III, and captured the city in the process:



Not too shabby: 119 gold and a clear cultural path to the other continent. Unless you have open borders with me, or we're at war, you can't go through the Straight of Inca. (Nappy, that means you.) Let's have a look inside the city:



You know, this is a darn good city--nearly "capital quality" if you will. 2 really good food tiles (lucrative too, and even better since the lighthouse survived), horses, grassland, and mines. And with the surviving forge, this will be a production powerhouse, the clams guaranteeing that those hammer-heavy tiles can be worked. It could nearly churn out enough units to help conquer the rest of the continent all on its own!

Too bad I pillaged the clams' fishing boats a long, long time ago. I got Lonely Mountain to work on a Workboat immediately.

The next job was to reinforce the city's defenses. Thus, the Galleons made their second delivery which mainly consisted of more defensive units, especially more Pikemen. Yes, I was expecting a lot of mounted units to come calling.



And I wasn't disappointed, as you'll see in the next post.

To be continued...

Round 8: to 1550 AD
Part 3: the Defense of Elephantine

Civilization Rule of Acquisition #8: When you take a city, make sure you can keep it.

Though I was tempted to load up the Galleons and charge off to take another city, leaving Elephantine nominally defended, I knew I couldn't afford to do that. Alexander is capable of being quite dangerous. We were all in agreement that the boyish Macedonian typically loves to mass troops. In this game, we could see he certainly had the resources to do so.

Therefore, I couldn't leave my new acquisition poorly defended. Far from it; in my past experiences with Alexander, he usually throws everything at one key focal point in a make-or-break battle. I had the feeling that the entire war with Greece was about to be decided on this single foothold I had just gained on the northern continent.

It took only two turns for the Hellenistic Welcoming Committee to rear their ugly heads:



Yikes. A half-dozen Elephants, 2 HAs, 2 Cats, and on the other hill, a Sword, another HA and a Catapult. But I think Alexander's big tactical error is sticking out like a thumb that I'm going to make VERY sore VERY soon.

Civilization Rule of Acquisition #14: When your park yourself in defensive terrain, make sure you bring along at least one unit that can take advantage of it.

Alex, Alex, Alex... that +50% defense bonus from the forest doesn't work for mounted units or seige engines!

I hate sitting back in a city and nervously absorbing attacks from the AI's units. Especially since you can't choose your defender; the computer does it for you. I always want to have the initiative. This is why I build fewer and fewer Archery units every game, and why I always try to bring along a Catapult with Combat and Barrage promotions:



I used two of those to soften the stack for subsequent attacks.

You know, once my cities started churning out all those units I'd been building up in their queues, I realized how many Pikemen I'd built and kind of wondered if I'd gone overboard. When I faced this stack, I realized that in this particular game, no amount of Pikemen was going to be too many:



Once the strongest units fell, those that had taken the most collateral damage were left. Once again, I started thinking promotions, and let a couple of unlikely candidates take out the weaklings for exactly that purpose:





A few Maces earned City Raider III this way, and the Longbow got City Garrison II.

I wiped out both stacks. COMPLETELY. But Alexander still wasn't done! He showed up on the next round with two more stacks. I now had several injured units trying to heal in my new city. So I did what I had to do--I weakened the attackers using the Catapults I'd been hoping to use against Memphis:





Civilization Rule of Acquisition #29: Never get emotionally attached to a siege unit.

I was able, as a result, to take out most of each stack or easily absorb their weak attacks on the next turn.

And then, out of the blue, I got a delightful surprise. I had been watching Macchu Picchu each turn as it got closer to producing its next Great Person. Of course I fully expected another Great Scientist; with Academies built in my two best commerce cities (the capital and MP), I thought I'd settle the GS in Macchu Picchu.

Guess what I got instead:



Well, don't that beat all! I'm usually sorely disappointed when I get a Great Artist. This time, however, I was more than happy to seen Ling Lun show up. I sent him to Elephantine immediately, and on that very turn...



CULTURE BOMB!

The biggest benefit was not ending the revolt early; that was nice, but as you saw, it only had 2 turns to go. Nor was the main benefit not having to worry about Greek or Egyptian cultural pressure for some time; Elephantine was far enough away from either Alex's or Hatty's cities to retain most of its tiles, especially its crucial ones.

No, the big benefit was that now, if Alexander (or, later, Hatty) attack my crucial foothold city on the northern continent, the troops will have to slowly wade through several tiles of MY cultural territory, making them easy pickings for my Catapults, Pikemen, and other units. Those stacks I managed to take out practically appeared out of nowhere; after this, Alex only sent the occassional unit at Elephantine, and I saw it coming a country mile away.

In addition, war weariness was starting to mount up at home. If you kill an enemy unit within your own territory, though, you get no WW, since it's seen as defensive. Speaking of which, I had a little more cleanup to do:



I am reasonably confident that in taking out all those stacks Alexander sent at Elephantine, I effectively broke his military's back. Oh, he's not dead yet, of course, not by a long shot, but I'd be very surprised, going forward, if he manages to mount anything like that counter-attack again.

To be continued...

Round 8: to 1550 AD
Part 4: The Pause that Refreshes

A few turns after Elephantine fell and was ably defended, I finished researching Economics. Frederick had beaten me to Banking, but I had beaten him to Education and had refused to trade it to him or anyone else. Thus...



It didn't take long to decide what to do with the GM. I sent a Galleon and a Frigate to Lonely Mountain and loaded Hanno aboard. I think I'll send him to Berlin, unless anyone has a better suggestion.

Meanwhile, Alexander's counter-attacks had dried up, so I felt confident enough to go after the next Greek city on my wish list:



Taking Memphis would deprive Alexander of his supply of Elephants and give me ivory for an extra happy. Notice how I hugged the mountain range to reduce the risk of the stack getting attacked in all that open terrain.

I followed the same pattern as with Elephantine: eliminate the cultural defense with the Accuracy Cats, soften the defenders by sacrificing Catapults (although one survived by withdrawing--always a pleasant surprise), and let the City Raiders do the rest:



I then sat back and thought about what to do. Several of you had suggested taking a few turns to regroup at this point. I hesitated mainly because I had managed to get war weariness to abate somewhat. It seems Frederick had suddenly obtained an extra source of silver which I traded from him for gold. With several of my largest cities possessing forges, that precious metal provided a much-needed + 2 happy that made me happy as well.

But Hanno was nearing German territory, and my cities needed some turns to complete civilian builds. By finishing forges, gaining access to the ivory, and building some stay-at-home units to leverage Hereditary Rule, I could handle the war weariness that would result when hostilities resumed. I might even be able to research or trade for Nationhood and switch to its civic.

Besides, Alexander had a tech I wanted, and getting it from him meant I didn't have to trade anything to my competitors... er... friends on the other continent:



I also got him to cough up that 7 GPT for some cows. I mean, what the heck?

I played a couple more turns to let things settle down, and then grabbed some state-of-the-world screenies.

Here's how relations look:



Once I finish Alexander, I am planning on going after Hatty. Why is it that my next victims always love me? Stockholm Syndrome? What?

Here's how things stand tech-wise:



Once again, I have decided to leave behind the dead-end tech Divine Right. I haven't built the Forbidden Palace yet--it will get built somewhere in the middle of the northern continent, possibly in Memphis, so the need for Versailles is low, and Cyrus already complete the Spiral Minaret. The only worrisome tech I don't have is Nationhood, mainly because I can't tell if Cyrus has researched beyond it. It would really tick me off if he goes and switches to Emancipation on me sometime soon.

Here are the trade agreements I have:



Trust me, I'm getting the best deals available. On the Resources screen, everyone has 0 GPT to trade. Well, except Napoleon, but I've decided not to trade with the little bugger. He hates me anyway, and I don't want a -1 "You have traded with our worst enemies!" from Frederick. And Hatty and Washington are just poor, okay?

Here's how the power graph looks:



I love that. You can see my sudden, inexorable rise as my queued-up units began to appear, and then Alexander's dips as I took Elephantine and especially his stacks. He's still no lightweight (unlike moribund Hatty and Washington), however, so I'd best watch my step. And I'll have to keep building a strong navy to ensure I can give Napoleon a proper welcome if he gets belligerent once he obtains Galleons.

And maps! Everything's better with maps. My continent:



Soon-to-be-my-other-continent :



And the other other continent:



The light square at upper left is my trade mission, headed to either Berlin or Frankfurt.

And here ends the round! Phew!

In the next round, I expect to resume hostilities again with Alexander in a final showdown. With the funds from my trade mission, I will likely upgrade some of my City Raider III Macemen to Grenadiers to speed things up a little.

However, my economy could be doing better. Granted, it took a hit to get the war machine going, and the rising war weariness didn't help. I think I should avoid using the whip during peacetime and save the unhappiness rounds for war, so I can remove huge swaths of conscientious objectors and other trouble-makers. Heh.

I should switch to Free Market soon, I know... should I also change my other civics, Vassalage and Theocracy? I'm not spiritual, I don't want to overdo the civics changes.

I also have a long shopping list of improvements that are needed: universities, banks... some cities are still lacking libraries. Shameful. I think I should also shift to working the best food tiles, just so I have population to whip away. I also think I still don't have enough Workers, though I am keeping up with improving the tiles that are worked. But I need more tiles improved so I have more options to switch some cities' emphasis.

In any case, the northern cities' input will help... once I get them properly developed. Sigh... I try to be an enlightened despot, really I do... sometimes the whip just cracks itself! Honest!

Comments and suggestions are always appreciated!

Here are a couple of additional discussion points.

First off, a war plan.



This may be overly ambitious, but I was thinking of applying the Syrian Doctrine to Corinth and Delphi--that is, capturing them by way of direct amphibious assault from ship. Meanwhile a 2nd land-based stack would head west and attack the inland cities. I'd build a 3rd stack back home and eventually use it to finish off the last two eastern Greek cities. These units would then finish off poor Hatty in no time flat.

I also don't like some of the city locations. Good resources are going to waste. I'm thinking of razing several cities, and founding a good many more. To wit:



Existing cities I'd keep are in yellow, proposed new cities are in cyan, and doomed cities I'm thinking of razing have dreadful red X's of doom over them.

None of the new cities are spectacular, but almost all have at least one good food resource. F, G, and H are in much better spots than the cities they replace, IMHO; A nabs the fish and crabs, which are a shame to waste. D and E are decent arctic fishing villages (I could move D west to get the deer, leaving E both fish tiles). I could even put another fishing village east of Thebes if I want.

B and C are the two I expect debate over, as Thermopylae is a big city which works those two wine tiles, B has a lot of tundra, and C has no good food resource.

This would give me 15 cities on this continent to go with my 11 existing ones on my original landmass. Athens looks like it should be the Ironworks city. The Fobidden Palace should probably go in Heliopolis, which will otherwise be a commerce city, as will Corinth, Thebes, and F.

Whaddya think?

What an amazing turnset. Love the naval invasion and the beating of Alexander (take that you dumbo, that one is for ruining my game with the perfect start with 3 food resources and 2 gold in my capital). I am never much of a fan of naval invasions but after seeing this one I have to change my mind propably.

Memphis and elephantine are 2 damn nice sites. 8 resources with 2 cities is a hiuge boost to your economy. I think economy wise you are not doing that bad. +16 gpt at 40% when you just went to war isn't that bad, is it? You could sell a backwards tech to frederick since he has 430 gold to spare. This could boost your research by a lot and it could boost your relationship bonus with him.

From the looks of it, if you get to the UN-building with Alex and Hatty gone and you keep the diplomacy up like this then a diplomatic victory is in the bag. I would say clean up the island and beeline to mass media and get some WW like broadway, rock 'n roll and hollywood to bribe your allies even a little more.

Damn, you have added another post. You are mighty busy aren't you. About the attacking plan. I forgot about the naval reinforcement you could bring and I do think that it is a very solid plan. Main force going in by land and getting the 2 coastal cities with the reinforcements. I would say wait 10 turns and go.

Great turnset. Loved the way you handled the stack, exactly what I would do. I don't think I would bother with razing too many city's since you are closing in on mass media and population is needed, more then excellent city's. On that point I would reconsider slashing Hatty. Sure easy target, but is it needed? If you are sure she will vote for you and if she has some friends on the other continent you will get negative modifiers for attacking her. It might be peanuts, but I have had dilpogames where every point counted. Normally I thought a AI votes for you if it's positive against you and more positve then against the runner up. However I noticed although I had much better modifiers some AI still voted against the runner up. Made me wanna invade them.. hehe.

Anyway, reconsider killing Hatty after finishing Alex. Attack plan looks fine, but I would thinking over the East fieldwar. Those city's are next to HAtty so will also be under siege. If you make a fast movement towards the north, seperating his Empire, you can get a hand on his Iron. Maybe it will be even more easier.

Interesting to see the differences in our games, esp. the development of the AI's.

As for your City-replacement Dotmap, I think that moving "B" 1SW to catch the wines would be favorable. Since its a fresh-city this late in the game, I don't think you'll have to worry about the "wasted tiles" of the coast, and the wines will be an easy commerce boost to help you pay for stuff.

City "H" should be settled 1W of the proposed location. You gain 1 grassland for the price of 4 ocean tiles, and that grassland can easily produce 4 commerce once cottaged. It's minor, but a indisputable improvement. The only overlap is with Elephantine, and being a mountain it's just fine.

Good work on destroying the stacks. I'm afraid that I myself would have suffered from emotional attachment to my elite "Defense-buster" corps. Your cold, heartless-er, warm and fuzzy ambition is to be rewarded. I admit that I was at first surprised that you accepted peace with Alex, but I suppose it's best to take time to consolidate your gains and wind-down the war-weariness. Besides, it's not like you'll get a "You declared war on our friend!" penalty if you attack him again. I mean, it's Alex.

voek said:

On that point I would reconsider slashing Hatty. Sure easy target, but is it needed? If you are sure she will vote for you and if she has some friends on the other continent you will get negative modifiers for attacking her. It might be peanuts, but I have had dilpogames where every point counted.

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This is pretty much what I was getting at before the most recent turnset. Hatty's already friendly with you (admittedly HR is helping with that at the moment), which means that unless you do something to seriously tick her off, her diplo vote's in the bag. If she's not already at war with him, bribe her into joining the final push against Alex to help cement relations further. I know you're itching to warmonger after that isolated start, but if you're thinking diplo win and she's likely to vote for you, killing her seems a little unnecessary. It's always nice to pick up those wins with as many AIs voting you in as possible, rather than having most of the population and just needing one more ally.

On the other hand, if you're leaning towards domination or space instead at this point, by all means take her out.

As far as the battle plan against Alex goes, the route looks fine, but I'd be inclined to land my units rather than use the Sirian doctrine. He's got no real counter to your Grenadiers so your stacks would be safe to attack on the following turn once the cats have stripped his cultural defense away.

Nicely done Sisutil, you followed my suggestions exactly and carried them out expertly Elephantine and Memphis are prize cities indeed.

One little thing I would have done differently is to use the GA on Memphis rather than Elephantine. Neither city is under any serious cultural pressure but having a large cultural area in Memphis will make our movement easier and Alex's harder and Memphis is where any future counter attacks are more likely.

Notice also that the GA has given Elephantine 60% instant cultural defence, which is better than the 50% Alex had from his walls Again that 60%defence would be better in Memphis.

Hatty could be helped if you sold her Civil Service for her 130 gold, and that would let you raise the research rate for a turn or two. You could gift her horses too, so she could resist Alex. Mounted troops will not cause you problems when you conquer her.

You are clearly on track for an impressive first win for the ALC on Monarch.

Nicely played, indeed.
This game is won, you just need to find out which way.

Diplo are kinda unfulfilling, aren't they? I try to go for it mostly when I'm the underdog, and there is a huge, but little-loved CIV in the game. You can then beeline & rush to build the UN, and score a win out of the blue.

In this game you are #1 on tech & power (meaning land area). Your empire is big and about to get bigger. So I would like to see other kind of win than boring diplo.

Space race should be in the box too, you might not even need to finish Alex for that.

Since these are all leader CHALLENGE I again urge you to go for domination or conquest. Think of the real incan empire. Thriving, dominating the americas for many years. Then being utterly destroyed by a small force from oversees. Well now its PAYPACK. Those very nations are on the other continent, and you have got to stop them. They will not fall over if you send out some stupid space ship, they will not be destroyed by some lucky vote in the UN. Only devastating war can satiate the Incan bloodlust.

Just my opinion, if you wanna grab the win & move on fast that is another way to play it. But the discussions and tactics about this kind of cross-continent invasion might be fun.

The invasion will most likely be with industrial-age units.

I also want to find out viewpoints about which target you want to attack first. Weak America to build a base? Strong but low-tech France? Or do you need to hit the techers/builders before they make some silly launch?

My plan for domination would be finish off Alex completely, then prepare for oversees invasion. Let Hatty be, easy kill without transportation time whenever you want. Decide target on other continent, scout him out good, and then hit him with overwhelming force, taking 3 cities in as many amphibious assaults (from ships) to wipe out cultural borders in an area.

Thoughts?

Thomas G. said:

Diplo are kinda unfulfilling, aren't they?

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If done well they're quite fulfilling. Just take a look at aelf's diplo wins on Emperor. And they're not always easy to achieve. In my Warlords game with Rome I beelined to Physics and Biology (and I do mean beelined) and I could get to building the UN in no time. The problem is, my only "friend" is Gandhi, who is in second place on population. I could bribe him to start a war against Alex and the French - I think - and make him lose some cities, but that wouldn't be much of a diplo win, would it now? I should have thought of the situation before and sided with the others, but it didn't occur to me at the time. A 1650ish diplo win would have been fulfilling, that's for sure.

~~~~~~

As for the game on hand, Sisiutil really managed to do a great job against those stacks. I think this game was the moment of glory for pikemen! I'm still not using them very much, though in Warlords I should start to, as trebuchets are made available by the same tech and those are some really awesome city attackers.