RBTS2 - Defense!

Round 5: Natives are Restless

We seem to be doing about as well as possible so far. A city every round, and only a single lost unit to date. About the only thing that we seem to have missed was replacing our Hill Fighter defending in the jungle with a Jungle Fighter. Ah well, probably too late now... not a huge difference in the end. I'm happy with the number of longbowmen so far; let's not invest any more money into them, and concentrate on getting more advanced upgrades. I also might want to grab another Hill Fighter to stick on that red dot hill that Ruff indentified. A couple Guerilla promotions, and we'd have another strong showing there.

First things first. I place a city on the red dot tile, using up 500g. (Pays for itself in two and a half rounds.) I definitely want a trebuchet, so that costs us 160g. A Hill Fighter for that red dot hill tile eats up another 60g (relatively cheap at this point). I have 340 gold left, so I spend 200g on researching Catapult tech, leaving 140 in the bank for next round. Obviously I can't buy any catapults yet (they also cost 160g just like the trebs), but Zeviz will have the option for next round. Here is the disposition of our forces at the start of my round:



Notice that there are already two huts in view before I even start playing! Nice luck there. (There are 5 huts that appear on the map each round, so this way I know that there are at most 3 more out there to find). Let's get started!

97g from the first hut, 55g from the second. Woohoo, that's almost enough for a catapult right there! A third hut is spotted in the northeast, excellent! That only yields 45g, but still better than nothing.

It took a bunch of turns, but I finally got our treb into forward position where our scout lies on the eastern hill. This is why range 6 bombardment units rule:



Hehe, just look at that range! Now, what we need is a spy unit to sit out there even further east, completely safe from attack and able to extend our field of fire to a greater distance. Spying is a pretty expensive tech, but it'll be worth it down the road, believe me...

Each longbowman does 46% damage per shot, leaving the incoming savages crippled. I could kill them off with the other longbow, but I'd actually rather leave them alive and almost dead. Free experience for our warriors in the jungle - why not take it? Incidentally, the trebs do the exact same amount of damage as the longbows (46% against these guys). I expect that the cats will do a greater amount, of course with the tradeoff of less range.

Hmm... interesting. The first savage chose to go after our new Hill Fighter on red dot hill tile rather than go for the jungle warriors. If they ALL do the same thing, I may have to vacate that tile (we'd rather make a stand in the jungle than on the hill, after all). Let's wait and see.

Here they come!



Our three bowmen and single treb are really going to town, dropping every foe into the yellow or even the red before they even reach our melee units. Meanwhile, the scout unit has slipped behind the enemy lines and finds another hut in the tundra - score! 49 gold. And then I find the final hut right behind that one for a final 78g gold. All five huts (324 gold) - jackpot!

In terms of the fighting, SOME of the units are attacking our Hill Fighter, while others are moving past him for the jungle warriors. Now that's what we want to see! Something tells me that this new Hill dude is going to be more than worth the 60g I paid for him.

The pathfinding for the AI units seems to have shifted slightly. They are actually ignoring our two jungle units and moving between them. I correct this by moving our jungle Hill Fighter one tile east; let's see if that does the trick. It does! (Everyone: keep an eye on how the AI moves each turn! Constant, small adjustments will probably be necessary.)

Anyway, we never came close to losing any units, and the round was quite routine. Here are our forces finishing off the pitiful remnants of the AI savages:



0.3 health for each unit, and two free XP for whoever they happen to attack. They both attacked our Hill Fighter and died immediately afterwards.

We have 1464g in the bank currently, enough to purchase another city at 600g and then have plenty left over for more goodies. I'd suggest getting another Jungle Warrior at a cheap 60g and using him to plug another jungle tile in the north. I'm never exactly sure just which tiles the AI units are going to choose to walk over... so better to be safe than sorry. We can also afford our first catapult, and think about getting ready to purchase new techs like Spying (600g), Cannons (treb upgrade, 1200g) and Rocket Carts (cat upgrade, also 1200g). I think we should avoid the Musketman line of techs entirely; they seem to be a mixed compromise between melee and artillery units. Better just to get Maces (20 strength! best melee units, we'll want some eventually) and the two ranged unit lines.

Zeviz is right about where the AI attacks: not a single unit has moved through the southern half of the map so far that I've seen. We really can concentrate on just defending that narrow alley in the north. (I'd still keep the scouts on patrol down there though, just in case!) I leave things in Zeviz's more than capable hands.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/SG/RBTS2/RBTS2-AD-3275.zip

Sullla
Zeviz <<< UP NOW
scooter <<< on deck
sunrise089 (skipped)
Ruff_Hi

Nice round ... all 5 huts ... way to go Sullla! I also noticed that the AIs select a slightly different path through the jungle ... might be a good idea to cut the first wave down to 1 very badly injured unit and let him show us the path then kill him off with our fighters.

Sullla said:

In terms of the fighting, SOME of the units are attacking our Hill Fighter, while others are moving past him for the jungle warriors. Now that's what we want to see! Something tells me that this new Hill dude is going to be more than worth the 60g I paid for him.

Click to expand...

Ok, I'll bite. I'm not going to quibble the 60g because that is peanuts. However, putting a unit on this hill seems to be an easy way of getting him killed. I just seeded that hill to the AI because when ever they went up the hill, they came straight down again and then smash into our forest units.

Re the spy unit - is she totally invisible to the AIs so it is save to have her out in the thick of things calling in directions for the trebs? I thought putting a scout out there might be slightly cheaper. However, you will have to move the scout around until you find the path that the AI units are NOT taking.

Oh - is it possible to upgrade units in this game? Do they need to be moved back to a city or into our territory?

Wow! You guys are awesome! This is neat how you're trying one of the very different things from Beyond The Sword... I'm a fan of you guys. (No, seriously, I've read all of sulla's Civ 4 stuff twice.) This is also insanely fun to read... You guys rule!

Ruff, my thinking with the Hill Fighter was to try and absorb some of the damage from incoming units before they reached our Jungle units - a front line or first level of defense, if you will. If we saw a stack incoming that was clearly not something he could handle, then he could easily be moved out of the way onto one of the tiles with our bombardment units. Believe me, I'm well aware of the fact that the defensive bonuses up there aren't as good as in the jungles. If this sounds like a silly idea, feel free to move him elsewhere, or use him as a super-scout in hilly terrain.

Cutting down the health of the early units and then watching where they move is definitely the way to go - probably THE key strategy for this scenario, along with the deployment of the bombard units. I couldn't possibly agree more with Ruff on that. (And it's pretty much what I was doing in my round! )

I'm pretty sure that the spy unit is invisible to the AI and cannot be attacked. It's a very pricey unit, so it would be rather worthless if that weren't the case. I thought about putting a scout out there in the east myself, but I can't see how we would be able to keep one alive for long; one missed guess on the AI pathfinding and it would instantly be dead, and then where would we be? After all, each round the incoming units seems to take slightly different paths... but maybe we could find a safe spot with a scout. I dunno. Anyone want to play around with some kamikaze scout parties?

I don't think units can be upgraded in this scenario, although I admit I've never actually tried to do so. I wouldn't be surprised either way, as Defense! seems to have a lot of bugs in it.

Thanks also for the comments from ckool5000 and our other lurkers - it's always nice to know someone is reading.

Here is something to think about ... I would put the spy at the red dot (expect this unit to 'see' the red shaded squares) and a scout at blue dot (ditto re 'seeing'). Red dot is nice and save, out of the way. Blue dot needs some careful attention.



Also, Sullla - this SG is sort of turning into a Civ4 Defense Mod walk through. I couldn't find any others on the web ... so ... any chance that you could edit your first post with links to the reports on the various rounds?

On the hill fighter, isn't there a Guerilla 3 promotion, which would make that spot almost as good a defending position as the jungle, the only exception being the 50% base defense in the jungle, and the 25% base on the hill, but any unit to absorb more attacks is a good thing.

Also, I think getting a spy is worth it, even for that one section alone, because of the strength of trebuchets. Their full range would allow them to hit most units twice before they even get to the ledge, IMO making them better than catapults. If we can make it work with a scout, great, but I'm not convinced it would work every round because of slight changed in pathfinding, and if it just happens to not work on that suicide round I keep hearing about, we could be done...

I completely agree on not actually killing any units with our siege weapons, just weaken them to get easy experience.

Very nice rounds.

That scouting effort is netting more gold than a city. I'll try to keep it up on my round. I also like the positioning of units. One thing I am curious about is whether the trebuchet has to be on a hill to get its full range. I guess I'll buy a Cat and experiment with unit and scout positioning.

I will spend the money on next city and a catapult and will save the rest for research. I really want to get the more advanced ranged units into play in the next couple of rounds.

I have the save file and will play in the next couple of hours.

PS If we can afford two cities, I'll do that instead, and reshuffle some defenders. I'll see what things are like when I open the save.

Thanks to amazing scouting by Sulla, Ruff, and Scooter, we have enough cash to buy two cities and a catapult. So this is what I am going to do. It sounds like the last round went very smoothly, so we can afford the heavy investment into economy.

Here is the situation at the start of round 6:


The 7th city is positioned closely to our defense line, so we could withdraw to protect it if AI decides to change its pathfinding.

I will keep one of the scouts back for fogbusting to make sure no enemies decide to take a detour towards our undefended cities.

Our scout runs into an enemy right away, but is able to defend himself in the forest.


Just when I decide to make an aggressive move, the enemies decide to take a completely different route:


That southern charger is unlikely to go east of our position, so I am going to have to shift the rear jungle warrior towards the new city, because there is hight chance of the charger heading there. I am also going to pull back the hill scout to see which way the charger will turn.


The charger seems to be heading straight for the capital, bypassing both cities, but I am bringing back a warrior just in case. I am also shifting back a couple of ranged units to cover that path.


This is something completely new. The northern charger attacked highlighted archer, while the southern one turned in a completely unexpected direction. I am frantically shifting units west to try and catch the chargers who are heading towards unknown new target.


They attacked forest warrior protecting the new city and the hill warrior. I am considering shifting back our jungle warriors to protect the cities. At least my backwards-facing ranged units can now hit the enemies incoming along the southern edge of that ledge. Image shack is getting tired of my pictures, and I need to pay more attention to units (only 2 huts found so far), so I'll have to end the turn-by-turn screenshots.

Another charger goes into the spot where western bowman used to stand, so I shift the jungle-promoted hill fighter there, killing the already-wounded charger with a bowman. Our scout in eastern tundra also finds the third hut. (Hut income so far: 47, 22, 84)

The moment I removed that warrior from northern jungle tile, three chargers entered that spot. I don't know where they'll go, so I'll pull back and try to block their expected path towards our cities.

All three chargers went through the spot into which I've moved the warrior, so that threat was neutralized. Here is the final disposition of our troops:


Southern bowman and catapult help defend the new city. The north-western one defends the northern jungle, while the north-eastern one and the trebuchet do their old duty.

Just before the last round I found the fourth hut with 70somthing gold, making the hut total about 220$.

We now have 1636$, which is enough to buy Rocket Carts technology, but probably not the unit itself. Instead, I would recommend buying another city and investing into several warriors for garrisons, as well as a couple extra scouts. (With one scout spotting for trebuchet and another spotting for southern defenders, we have only two left for hut duty, and they've found only 4 out of 5 huts last round.) For the warriors, we need hill warrior for the capital and cheapest useless ones (tundra, forest, etc.) for the other places. We don't need to garrison all cities, but Corinth, Thebes, and the one we can found 3 steps south of Thebes are all good candidates. None of our units were damaged this round, except the unlucky scout. So the only danger right now comes from enemies bypassing our defenses to head for unprotected cities.

For research, I highly recommend going up catapult and trebuchet branches. In later rounds, there will be dozens of enemies, so trebuchet's longer range will add flexibility, but not extra shots. (Even catapults will have plenty of targets to chose from.) So I personally would prioritize the catapult branch of the tree.

EDIT: I almost forgot a couple more observations:

1. The ranged damage appears to be unaffected by number of ranged units stacked together. We might want to do a couple more experiments to confirm this.

2. When placing the last city along back row, we might want to place it in the southern-most spot, to eliminate a couple possible hut locations, making our scouting a little faster.

Got it for tomorrow.

Good job holding it together despite the change in paths, I figured that would have to come eventually. I think we need more jungle warriors for the southern patch of jungle, as well as another one in the north. Building another city seems obvious, but do we tech or crank out units this round? I'm leaning towards several warriors as priority this round, then if there's room left over for a tech, then great, but surviving is more important. Also, what does everyone think on the spying tech's value? Do we just live dangerously with scouts or expensively with spies? I'm leaning towards a spy or two since in the later round, those scouts will get toasted quickly, basically killing any value in building trebuchets... So what I'm saying is, one city and a minimum of two more jungle warriors is a must for this next round (your thoughts?), but what do we do from there? When I get a chance to look at the save, I'll check on how much money we'd have left, since I can't check it out now.

Also, as for Zevis two points
1. Right, that's what I remember as well, so we should be okay with this, which further supports our longterm strategy of eventually spamming ranged units.
2. That was where I was going to place the city too, any objections?

Dang it - AIs changed paths on us. Looking at the Northern route ...



... units come in on the red line (also from the South but joining the red line) and have in the past branched North (brown line) - the branch seems to differ for each round so cut the first wave down to 1 injured unit and watch which way it goes. It seems that we should expect some units to now follow orange line. I think that we should move Sullla's hill fighter to the blue dot.

On the Southern route ...



... it looked like the charger was coming off the hill ... I'm assuming that it marched along the hills ... is that correct? Which route did it take when it came down into the jungle (orange or brown)? I think a well placed jungle fighter there would help.

Re cities - how much do cities cost now? 800gold? 900 gold? A new city would take 4 turns to pay for itself ... suggest we stop building cities and get some techs. What are the options ...

• spy tech (600 gold)
• Rider tech (800)
• Cannon tech (1201)
• Musket tech (1201)
• Rocket tech (1201)
• Mace tech (needs Rider tech) (1201)

A rider is str 15 and covers 3 tiles (first costs 250 gold). A mace is str 20 and covers 2. A spy costs 1440(!!). We have 7 cities (1400 gold per turn). I think we should pickup some tech ... spy and a few ranged units would be my suggestion for this round.

Zeviz, that looks like a really good turnset. I never even thought about purchasing TWO cities on any of my rounds (although I didn't have the money to do so either!) Juggling our units and keeping them all alive as the AIs switched paths was some very fine work indeed.

Clearly we have to put some effort into defending the southern route as well as the northern one now. I would guess that the new cities we added caused some of the units (the southern ones, at least) to divert down to the south of where our defenses were set up. For the moment, I think the cheapest and best solution would be to purchase two Jungle warriors and station them on the two forward-most jungle tiles in the south. That will cover both the orange and brown paths Ruff highlighted in the previous post. Based on where we observe the AI to be moving, we can then decide where to place bombard units in that region. I also concur that we should pick up an extra scout of two, on the cheap. One of these next couple rounds is the one with invisible enemies, so we need to have all the areas we're defending covered with at least one scout at all times.

Cities now cost 800g, and require 4 rounds to make back the investment. Since there are 14 rounds remaining, they are still worth the money. We'll want to decide as a team how many total cities we want to build, then continue building one city each round until we reach that point. (We definitely do NOT want to go a couple rounds without building a city, then add another one! That would be most inefficient.) I think 10 cities (which we could reach before the beginning of round 9) would be a nice round number, giving us 2000g as a base amount each turn. As far as the current city placement goes, I like the spot 3 tiles south of Thebes best. The western location would give us greater sight range down in the south, true, but I'm afraid it might divert some AI units through the desert path in the extreme south. We're not ready to defend there quite yet.

Which techs to pursue next? It really depends on the priority we attach to getting our hands on a spy unit. Either we research Spying and build a spy, or head down one of the cat/treb trees next. If it turns out that we need to make a significant investment in defending this new southern route, then the latter (going for new bombard units) is probably the better way to go.

Good luck scooter!

EDIT: I have also gone back and edited the origial post with links to each turnset, as per Ruff's request.

I think we need to pause and discuss the long-term strategy for a moment, before we make expensive investments like spies or macemen. Here are the things we should consider:

1. It’s incredibly dangerous to leave our cities empty. It doesn’t matter how much defensive bonuses those jungle fighters get, if our entire empire can be destroyed by a single charger who gets past our lines.

2. During a private game I’ve lost a total of 3 warriors defending only in the cities for the first 11 rounds. To me that sounds like a less serious risk than losing a city because AI changed its pathfinding and went around our super-promoted super-defenders.

3. It doesn’t matter whether you can see the enemies as long as the only thing they can do is suicide against your well-defended cities. (In a private game I did perfectly fine without armies of scouts and spies, just letting invisible enemies suicide against my defenders.)

4. All our melee units will become obsolete at round 12. So ranged techs like Rocket Carts are a much better investment in the long run.

We have more than enough defenders now, so I personally would just focus on the economy, making sure all front-line cities, and the capital have at least one warrior in them. We can do that, and place last 3 cities in the next two rounds, putting us in good economic shape for the rest of the game. (If we save some cash next round, we can place two more cities in the following round.)

PS Don’t move the eastern hill fighter from his hill. He has absorbed more than a third of enemy attacks last round.

PPS Consider the costs of different strategies for defending our new city:

Strategy 1: 2 Jungle warriors in the south. A hill warrior in the north. A warrior in the city itself in case AI decides to take a different route again. Total: 4 warriors.

Strategy 2: 2 warriors in the city itself. Total: 2 warriors.

The 2 defenders in northern jungle and the hill fighter I’ve mentioned before are already absorbing about 3/4 of enemy units. So at this point trying to plug remaining gaps in our defense will be more expensive than just sticking a warrior in each front line city. (And 2 warriors into cities under attack.)

And one more thing: We don’t need more advanced scouting for our trebuchet, because it already has a target every round, and will get even more targets as numbers of enemies increase. It doesn’t help to see enemies coming from a mile away if you can’t do anything about them because of the enemies that are already nearby.

I am enjoying the lurk here. A nice change from the 'regular' CIV games. It is indeed a sort of walkthrough. Now if only I owned a copy of BTS....

Still watching... Still thinking you guys are awesome.

Turn complete.

Ok, I decided to go with the tile 3 squares south of Thebes, I thought about in the far south, but the thought of all these units changing paths makes me a bit nervous, so this felt like the safest play. That left me with 836 gold. I bought three jungle warriors, two for the south, one for the north (we do only have one up there). This left me with 596 gold. I bought one catapult, leaving 356 gold in addition to whatever huts I get for the next person, since I didn't get any techs this round. I could've only trained one jungle warrior if I bought any techs, and that wasn't enough to make me feel safe, so I'll put off the techs until next round.

Ok, so I start the round, and am greeted by this title:



So I've hit the invisible round... just what I was hoping for... on the bright side there's less units, and I should have enough scouts to be fine.

All the units in the south seem to cut back north again. Maybe last round was a fluke:



Either way, hitting them when they pass here which works just as well. With the amount of ranged units that we have now, we could easily kill all the units without ever using warriors, but I'm letting them slip through for sake of experience.

For some reason this round, all but one of the units attacked my hill warrior (the only one attacked my fresh jungle warrior in the north). I don't know what causes these kind of things in the unit pathfinding, but it does intrigue me...

Ok, there wasn't much to see, as weakening every unit that went by with a ranged unit and letting them suicide into my hill warrior doesn't exactly make for an exciting story, so I finished it with no casualties, and that leaves us with 2240 gold, plenty enough to get a tech. Here's a picture so you see, 1600 was from cities, and the rest was from leftovers and huts:



Ah, almost forgot about the huts, I got five, and it seems the RNG was somewhat nice to me, no low rolls:



A city now costs us 900, so we could build a city and research a tech, which
wouldn't let us build anymore units (unless we research the 600 gold spying or the 800 gold riders), but because I built so many (after how easy this round was I think too many) I think we're okay for now. The extra jungle warriors in the south seemed to be a waste, since they completely avoided the south the entire round. My theory on that is that because they were three-movement, their pathfinding was somewhat altered, but obviously that's just a shot in the dark. I was still able to hit them with my catapult and bowman down there though, and that's something we should keep in mind.

For the next several rounds I would lean towards emphasizing research, as we have lots of units out there now. I think our next tech should definitely be for the rocket carts, as playing that round made me notice that the extra 2 or 3 range on the trebuchet is a fairly trivial matter, especially since it'll cost to go the spy route. The Riders tech isn't really all that exciting or drawing, since we really don't need to be attacking enemies with melee units ever.

Anyone who says Defense is a horrible scenario really needs to try it, I'm having a ton of fun with this one!

Roster

Sullla
Zeviz
scooter
sunrise089 (skipped)
Ruff_Hi

That means that I am up ... now all I need is a save!!!

So - what do you think of the spy tech and one of the 1201 range unit techs. I swear that a spy will help.

Hey Ruff, what if we built a city for 900g, and another city for 1000g? That would get us to 10 cities, where we could probably stop for good. With 7 rounds done currently, we would still have 12 more rounds to go after your round, netting a cool 2000g/round for 24,000g total. Now THAT'S an economy!

I'd suggest a hardcore tech push after that, but it makes the most sense to get ALL our cities down first as fast as possible, THEN invest it in teching upwards. Right?

Agree that a save file would be nice to have.

Whoops, here's the save.

The thought of building two cities is an interesting one. If we're going to build two more for sure, it makes complete sense to do it now, because that get's us an extra 200 gold next round. After that, it doesn't seem like the cities would be paying for themselves anymore. So I'm in favor of founding two cities, that seems to make the most sense.

scooter said:

The thought of building two cities is an interesting one. If we're going to build two more for sure, it makes complete sense to do it now, because that get's us an extra 200 gold next round. After that, it doesn't seem like the cities would be paying for themselves anymore.

Click to expand...

Well, there are no cities after that. 10 is the maximum.

ruff_hi said:

So - what do you think of the spy tech and one of the 1201 range unit techs. I swear that a spy will help.

Click to expand...

Wasn't it you who suggestetd fining safe spots for scouts ? They are there !

Mindcheater said:

Well, there are no cities after that. 10 is the maximum.

Click to expand...

I was wondering about that, I was looking for a good place for the last two cities, and wasn't sure why the city placement grid disappeared after I placed two.