What Next? (K-mod, Dynamic Difficulty, Giant Earth Map, Perma-War, No Human-AI Diplo)

Settings:

K-mod, Giant Earth Map

(Mali, Ethiopia, India, Japs, Chinese, Khmer, Mongol, Byzantium, Maya, Incan, Natives, Aztecs, Persia, Viking, HRE, Romans, Arabs)

Dynamic Difficulty: With World-Builder, everyone starts at permanent war with one another, EXCEPT the Americans who start at permanent PEACE with one another (I didn't want them to be a non-factor in the game). Once I (the Byzantines) conquer Europe, the 4 East Asian nations will stop fighting and ally one another. The Persians will ally with the Arabs and the two African nations, making it a war of the continents (America vs Europe vs Africa/Middle East vs Asia- the Indians get conquered as usual).

Everyone starts with all techs up to Middle Ages (WB-ed in). The AI starts with 3 settlers, 3 workers, and 3 warriors. The human starts with 3 settlers, 8 workers, 6 warriors, and two scouts (you need it). No barbs.

Current situation:

Relative tech parity with the leading AI. All of Europe and Turkey is mine, along with half of Russia. Currently researching steel. Already have rifling. Incans and Mayans are going for Democracy and Corporations.

I have something like 80-90 Cataphracts stationed at the various borders, along with recently built 80-90 rifles, defending against massive AI invasions from Africa and Asia. The current centers of conflict are in Kazakhstan (border with Mongolia), the Himalayan pass from India into Afghanistan, and the hills of Eastern Turkey. The Incans, Native Americans, and Mayans are doing doom drops (several fleets of 6-8 galleons packed with units) on Spain and England, having razed 3 of my smaller cities, but otherwise being repelled.

The Aztecs have conquered Japan.

In the Med, I'm slowly losing the trireme naval war against Mansa Musa, which is a big deal because the f-ing AI blockades everything, meaning your Med cities starve. Steel and Ironclads will change that though.

My question is: what next? The American races are starting to tech really fast (steel in 12-15 turns at Marathon). If I go on the offensive with rifles and cannons, there are two things to consider:

1. Where do I attack?

If I attack the Middle East and the Persians, I will also have to fight the vast African hordes coming from the South. Currently these hordes are dying in the hills of Turkey, but I will take much more losses if I go on the offensive. Furthermore, it will upset the balance of power between the Persians and the Asian Alliance.

India is an obvious choice given its large reservoirs of luxury resources and rice, but India is currently a giant battlefield between the Asian Alliance and the Persian/African alliance.

Attacking Mongolia is militarily the easiest, but strategically pointless.

Attacking North America is impossible due to massive AI galleon fleets, their tech parity, and a lack of Astronomy (I have the Colossus).

Finally: war weariness. Since this is perma-war, any war weariness points I get will stay forever. I do have the Pyramids though.

Screenshots below. For the first screenshot, look at the world map at the bottom right for the world situation. Second screenshot and third screenshot is the tech and political situation. Final screenshot is military.

Keep in mind that: The Americans are all allied. The Africans and Persia are allied. The Asians are all allied. Civics are State Property, Representation, Nationalism, Org Religion, and Caste (switching between that and slavery). Pacal's going for Emancipation and Democracy.

Thoughts? What would you do in this situation? (This is K-mod Deity). Should I get Military Tradition or Constitution/Dem (go for Statue of Liberty?) next? Or none of the above? (by the way, I refuse to use corps on Giant Earth Maps- breaks the game both literally and figuratively).

After Steel you have 3 choices.

Constitution --)> Democracy --)> Corporation --)> Assembly Line ...

Astronomy --)> Physics --)> Artillery --)> Rocketry --)> Electricity --)> Fission

Railroad --)> Combustion --)> Astronomy --)> Physics --)> Flight

If you could even win it Statue of Liberty would be powerful but I presume you don't have much use for Espionage. Also at some point you're probably going to want Theocracy and Police State so how long would it take for the beakers and hammers from Democracy to pay off? Factories will be a huge boost though still less than usual without Mining Inc. You can assume you'll be against AI MG at some point so Infantry + Cannons won't be enough; you'll have a lot more teching to do.

Nukes would end the game the quickest and you'd get to Airships, Artillery & SAM Infantry in the meantime. 6 expensive techs and you could turn off research for good. Kinda a cheesy way out and based on the raging battles you've been fighting I doubt you'd wanna end it this way.

I would favour going for Flight; it's fun and Airports and an unopposed air force would probably be enough to conquer the world. You get production & movement from railroads and then MG + Rifles combined are dominant defenders until someone gets to Artillery/Tanks. Oil navy you can pre bombard the coastal cites while you leapfrog units around the coastlines.

Presuming the Flight path I would probably take out Mali first even if you have to just raze their cities. You can ferry troops across at Gibraltar and once you've got the Mediterranean sealed up it's one less thing to worry about. Then go for NA starting with Sitting Bull. Let Africa & Mid East make the classic blunder of fighting a land war in Asia.

Actually, espionage is very useful both to see what the AI is teching and to see where their armies are massing and in what quantities. See picture below. EDIT: Given the size of the map, you need the extra intel to know where to station your units in advance.

Another storm is brewing in the East. They've already sacked one of the buffer cities though now we finally have enough reinforcements after the Ethiopian and Malian armies of pikes and elephants were crushed in the hills of Anatolia by newly built rifles.

After a while you feel like Gondor in the Lord of the Rings. Your armies may be experienced and powerful, having slaughtered 10 foes for every loss. But the enemies are endless....

Pacal is going for Democracy in 8 turns. Probably won't be able to get Statue of Liberty, especially since latest GP spawn was a prophet and not an engineer.

Probably going for artillery. Need the mass siege, and no easy counter. Bombers will probably get countered by mass AI fighters given the nature of K-mod (though I could be wrong-will the AI mass fighters if you get lots of bombers in K-mod?). No fission though. I want the world in good shape when I conquer it. What's the point of ruling over a radioactive wasteland?

what is your war weariness like?

Zero.

I'm on 70-80 cities and I've been fighting entirely defensive after conquering Europe with cataphracts and more recently rifles. Simply put: after combining the Asians in one giant alliance, and the Africans with the Persians, I've never had the option of going on the offensive without totally wrecking my econ. The only reason I'm not facing vast Khmerian armies of War Elephants spilling through the Khyber pass (Afghanistan) is because they've been focused on grinding down the Persians.

Once I go on the offensive, I have to switch to Police State and keep it there. This will hurt my tech rate (most of it comes from Representation), so it's not an easy choice. To keep things in perspective, I'm generating something like 60 research beakers per turn from MILITARY ADVISERS. My Heroic Epic city has an university to take advantage of them.

By the way, the Great Wall is a wonder I seriously regret in not getting (despite the no barbs). The bonus to more Great Generals is important.

Also: When should I start the non-stop Golden Ages? With the exception of the Taj Golden Age, I haven't made a single GA yet. I've got 3 Great Merchants waiting on the side.

I like to first max the pop in my National Epic city and have a full food bar which I use to starve maximum specialists out during the Golden Age. When the majority of your Levee's are finished and you have big fat cities working all their tiles would probably be good timing for the first one. Use the GA to build units in Police State till they are 1 turn from completion, then afterwards switch to Vassalage/Theocracy and finish them.

Normally you'd be sitting pretty with 3 Great Merchants for trade missions and founding corps but it kinda sucks here because you need to use different types of great people to start the GAs. Like your second one can't be Merchant-Merchant, it has to be Merchant + something else. I think your best bet great people wise is to aim for Scientists and partial bulb up the Astro-Physics line.

I dunno how much you're devoting to espionage but research vision on every team seems a little overkill. You can tell when they've researched something by checking F4 once a turn and if you've got the patience to play this type of game you can probably handle that. : P

One of the quirks of the map is near-infinite food. Think of the fish that swims in our oceans. This map realistically shows this. Pretty much every coastal city can start with a minimum of 2-3 fishes and every non-coastal city starts with at least two food resources (pigs and wheat in my case). The issue is not food, but happiness. This is why India is so important. It has soooo many different happiness/health resources that does not exist in Europe.

Of course to take it, I have to beat the Khmerian AND the African/Persian hordes AND hold it against all comers.

Also, two other restrictions I forgot to mention: the AI can win a cultural or space victory. The human player cannot.

The espionage production is a result of auto-assignment due to a large number of very necessary courthouses. Getting rid of this would require a lot more city management then I care to spend. Besides, spies produce 4 science, so it's not bad. Furthermore since I'm going to eventually have to invade EVERYONE, having a little bit of espionage points on everyone is not a bad idea.

So... the Incans are teching assembly line in 17 turns. They still need railroad and some other basic techs, but they're about 100-200 turns away from getting rocketry. Since this is K-mod, they might just beeline for a space victory....

Which raises an interesting question: if the AI builds the Apollo program, and you capture that city and raze it, does that mean the AI has to rebuild the Apollo program before it can build more spaceship parts? The issue is whether I want to plan for mass invasion across the Atlantic (against 2 AIs at near tech parity and 2 other AIs one era behind), or instead build a specialized force designed to punch across the map to the Incans/Mayans and raze some of their cities.

Finally, on the Eurasian continent, militarily the solution is simple: take the Suez, and put 40-60 rifles/machine guns/infantry on it, bottling up the Africans. Then wipe out the Persians. Finally, fight the Khmer and their Asian vassals in a giant mano a mano.

(In the end I chose to go for Assembly Line. I need the hammers from factories along with Mt. Rushmore before I can go on the offensive. Got a Great Engineer too (off 24% odds, so Statue of Liberty too).

The major strategic problems:

1. War weariness (it's permanent war). Given the giant nature of the map, and the massive numbers of units involved, the moment I go on the offensive I'm forced into Police State. Unless I also happen to have jails in all my cities AND Mt. Rushmore, my economy will quickly go down the drain.

2. Taking territory is easy (I could, for example draft 100 more rifles, and make 100-200 cannons and kill the Persians and/or the Mongols without too much difficulty). Holding it and preventing massive unhappiness and econ crash is another matter. Besides, what's the point of invading Mongolia? A domination victory requires 50% of the planet. With Europe and half of Russia, I control 13%.

3. The greatest threat is across the sea. The Incans and the Mayans are teching the fastest. Spending too much time on Asia or Africa means they win a space victory. The human player is not allowed to win space or culture.

4. Fighting the AI at sea is VERY different from fighting them on land. On land, you can easily get 8 to 1 exchange ratios against the AI. At sea, the exchange ratios are much smaller.

5. Dynamic difficulty. The moment I control 25% of the earth's landmass, the rest of the AIs will automatically ally to stop the domination threat. That's the threshold I set. (Makes sense historically too, if you think about it).

EDIT: Oh yeah, a final point. While you can use any means to conquer the world, a victory only counts as a victory if people would still want to live on the planet after you conquer it. For example, if you turn half the world into a radioactive wasteland, and global warming is turning the rest of the world into swamps/deserts, this "victory" doesn't really count as a victory. The goal is not to win at all costs. The goal is to win for the purpose of ruling a reasonably habitable world afterwards.

It seems like invading India would be a mistake. If your enemies are fighting there why would you want to get in the middle and stop that? Are all land units from Africa coming your way? If not then blocking up the Suez only puts less pressure on Asia who'd have more units to attack you with.

Where's the oil? If you get to Combustion/Flight first and deny North American oil you'll have a much improved naval kill ratio. Once they get oil and upgrade their fleets... uh-oh. You could try to snag a one tile island city in the Carribean to use as a base and staging ground while you ferry over troops. There are probably happiness/health resources in Brazil too. I vote defend EU and capture the Americas. Please post more pictures and writeups as you play this, I'm having fun following along. : )

The oil is in Texas, i.e. Aztec land.... There might also be some in Alaska, South America, or Canada. I forgot.

Next post will be more pics.

Pictures:

[I did cheat a little to save a city or two from the American attacks (oops, the Atlantic is a dangerous place and your fleet ran into a storm and sank- click delete button on enemy fleet ), but every time I cheated, I gave all the AIs a free tech. Which is part of the reason for our current troubles.]

It looks like the Mayans are going for a culture victory. The Incans are most likely gunning for space. But yes, now that I think more about it, I agree. The Americas. Must. Be. Destroyed.

(The point of taking India is for the resources- silks, sugar, and rice. But yes, it might be too hammer-intensive).

The Persians are slowly losing to the Khmer by the way. All of India is now Khmer territory.

Khmer is approximately three-quarters of an era behind. Yaqob and Mansa Musa are half-an-era behind. Incans and Mayans are near parity. Everyone else is one or more eras behind.

Ignore the 163 turns left thing. I forgot to turn off time victory. I can later WB it out.

EDIT: Oh shi- the Mayans. Maybe I should pay attention to the Victory screen more often. It's taking them an awfully long time to research Railroad....

EDIT 2: Fuc-. Ok. This makes our strategy very simple. Get transports. Invade Mexico. In the meantime: non-stop Golden Age, and get factories and power up ASAP. Any estimate on how much time I have?

EDIT 3: Use the Great Engineer on Statue of Liberty or Pentagon? If I don't use it on the Statue, I probably won't get it. I am pretty much guaranteed to get Pentagon though.

Here is the global situation in the major conflict points:

[see pictures below]

The spices, sugar, rice, and banana of India are literally 15 hexes away [I have spices from Afghanistan, which is why it's important to me]. It's on my doorstep. Lightly defended too by 1-2 LBs on average. I've got hordes of Cataphracts, Cannons, and Rifles not too far away on the border with Mongolia. Unfortunately India is Khmer territory and the Khmer armies are somewhere nearby crushing the Persians. Taking those cities is easy. Holding it is a separate problem. Also, the Mongols have a huge army of knights stationed in a city near my buffer cities in the East.

None of this is a problem by itself. I can easily beat the Khmer in India, the Mongols, the Persians , and hold off the Africans simultaneously with my tech lead, army size, and human tactical ingenuity. But at what cost?

Why don't you just attack the Mongols troops while they are in their city so you can use city raider and collateral against their Knights? Not to keep it but just a raid to eliminate the threat.

Also it seems odd that you have killed almost 300 Knights and another 100 Elephants but have built no Pikemen. I guess you've been fighting in the field using Cataphracts but that's an inefficient proposition. I wonder if it is possible to build a line of forts and mountains to completely seal off Turkey and Georgia? Then all the AI's would have to march all the way around the Caspian Sea to get to you and you're safe behind your defensive line.

107 fishing boats! You weren't kidding about corps being overpowered. I think that you could have leveraged Imperial a little more and fit more cities into your land to take advantage of all that food. No need for a size 30 city in Greece when you could have split it into two size 15 cities like the AI did at Rome.

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I was thinking what the ideal setup would be like for a game like this. In Europe I think the leader of choice would be Napoleon for Char + Org. Organized would be the best economic trait and charismatic is the best militarily hands down. Salons under Rep would be decent and the Musketeers would be ok but for a real kicker use Napoleon of the Holy Roman Empire. Starting up in France/Germany would probably have the best land too. You could cottage 1 city that eventually gets Oxford for the super science city.

Tech wise I agree that without corps Communism is the key tech but I disagree with how you got there. Even with the Byzantines I would aim to Lib Astronomy and get Observatories up early as opposed to holding onto the Colossus. This also allows you to set up some overseas colonies for trade routes; imagine the effect of an easy to defend 1 tile island city in Hawaii. Then once you get to Chemistry & Steel you can run a pillaging economy with Privateers. Next go for Biology since you're running a S.E. and have a monster city ready for the National Park.

Must have wonders for any civ would be Oracle, Mausoleum, Taj Mahal, Kremlin and probably Pyramids. Fantastic but not required would be Stonehenge, Great Lighthouse, Hanging Gardens, Colossus, Notre Dame and Versailles. Sistine Chapel and Statue of Zeus would be good to deny from the AI. As a spiritual civ you could have tried Apolistic Palace, Sankore and Minaret for Temples and Cathedrals.

70-80% of the knights and elephants died to rifles. A lot of it was in two MASSIVE African armies, that I delayed in Anatolia with defensive fortified LBs and Cataphracts, until I got up enough rifles to massacre them . The remainder mostly died to Cataphracts with 4-5 promotions along with the formation promotion.

Furthermore, there's the "worker bait." Leave 2 undefended workers 3 spaces away from a pack of knights. The AI knights rush in without support (oooo free workers they think). The formation-promoted Cataphracts pounce on them at 90-95% odds. There's very few pikes because Cataphracts do the job just fine. They're also much more mobile meaning they can cover several trouble spots at once. Think of what the real-life Mongols did with their cavalry (feint, ambush, and withdraw). That's what those Catas are to me.

That Mongol city with the 50-80 knights HAD already been razed earlier. Then the Mongols rebuilt it and sent another army there. Then a Korean stack appeared and razed one of my buffer cities there while most of my Catas were pulled away to defend the much more important Eastern Anatolia from two giant African armies (this was 4-6 turns before rifling). Only now do I have the confidence (and the rifles) to go on a razing offensive again. Offensive = casualties, and Cataphracts are one of the best defenders pre-rifling (protect them with LBs, which counter pikes and elephants, and AI stacks don't even bother attacking large stacks of defensive Cataphracts).

EDIT: One final interesting thing about defensive Cataphracts: when the K-mod AI sees them, they don't bring along their siege.

Holy Mackerel! 75 cities with just Europe and Anatolia. Gosh, GEM mod is far bigger than I thought. It's insane!

The problem is that there isn't an "unrestricted leader" option. It's still a scenario, meaning that you can't change the leaders on the civ screen. Cha Org would be very nice. I agree. I'd still be the Byzantines though. The Rauthas is awesome, but Catas are just too good on a map like this. (Another option is the Aztecs. Their UB on a map like this....)

And yes, I probably should have gotten more cities, but the K-mod "number of city maintenance cost" doesn't stop at 8. It goes all the way to 24, I think. I put a Globe Theatre in that size 30 city for drafting.

Finally, overseas colonies need to be defended. It would also take a long time to move a galleon there due to the fact that I don't control the Suez or the Panama Canal. Astronomy just to take the Falklands is mostly pointless.

And yes, I have most of those Wonders. I'd rate GLH as an "absolutely required wonder" given the amount of coast that Europe has. The Great Wall would have been fantastic for more GGs (only 8-9 turns too, with stone). And I could have grabbed the Sistine, but I was like, "what am I going to use this for? I'd rather build the Great Library, which will give me science, which I really need at this point due to maintenance costs." Sigh. (Guess what, the Mayans got it. Now I have to cross an ocean and kill them).

The problem is that there isn't an "unrestricted leader" option. It's still a scenario, meaning that you can't change the leaders on the civ screen.

Click to expand...

Technically, you can change a scenario while editing the worldbuilder save in the public maps folder via notepad.
You just add unrestriced leader as a gameoption manually. Unless I miss something because I never played GEM mod (because my computer won't simply handle it).

@ Tachxywon

Yes. Dynamic difficulty and K-mod makes it challenging. You get the best land ever. And a lot of it too. But the AIs get those benefits as well and with K-mod they do a better job of using it.

GEM is awesome. The biggest issue is steam-rolling and too-easy-to manipulate AI with diplomacy (and the game gets boring). K-mod, perma-war, and dynamic difficulty solves those issues. With this, the game is about big giant strategic concepts and massive conflicts involving gigantic armies, instead of micro-ing workers and manipulating the AI.

EDIT: I probably will do so at some point. But it feels better to be Justinian of the Byzantines than something like Justinian of the Aztecs. Historically it just makes more sense.

Considering how out-numbered I'd be (all of the Americas are allied), I don't have the stomach for a full-scale invasion of the Americas just yet.

Hence: razing expedition. Marines and transports with destroyers. Goal: raze as many Mayan and Incan coastal cities as possible. Time to pay them back for what they did in England.

Hehe "worker bait" seems like pretty ruthless AI manipulation to me but I guess that one doesn't count. : P
It's actually probably something that Karadoc should fix so the AI doesn't do it.

Good luck with your plans, let us know how it turns out!