The Immortal Alphabet Game #18 - Haile Selassie (OCC)

Welcome to The Immortal Alphabetical Game Series

Map #18 a.k.a Turtle Time!



In this edition of the Immortal Alphabetical Game Series, you will exercise your abilities at defense!



Map type and settings:

Tweaks:

Achievements:

Starting location:

Tips (Read at your own risk):

All early wonders are however attainable (if you adjust your tech path in consequence) and this even if you are fighting in multiple early wars.
The challenge of the map lies more in the early game. If you want a challenge for the late game, I suggest you to try to wipe out the map (DomV).

I know I am late, but your post gave me an idea to make the late game more interesting.
I added this achievement in the original post.

G. Turtle bite
Get 1pt per civilization you wipe out
Get 2pt if you also wipe out all CSes

Although OCC games are usually quick, I don't think many have reached the late game yet.
I know someone almost cleared the map in an old Inca OCC game.

At first I thought that offensive achievements would go against the "spirit" of a turtle game, then I saw this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBSFeJ1WLv4

DanQuayle said:

If you want a challenge for the late game, I suggest you to try to wipe out the map (DomV).

Click to expand...

DanQuayle said:

I added this achievement in the original post.

G. Turtle bite
Get 1pt per civilization you wipe out

Click to expand...

Challenge accepted

Turtle Bite - LOL. T130

T234 Domination

Very good starting dirt. Early scouting revealed the theme of the opponents, but I noticed something really strange - almost no wonders being built. WTF? Is this a part of the tweak or just a result of the opponents all being of that particular theme? Anyway, their loss was my gain and I picked up just about every Wonder worth building. From the start, I used a 3 scout start to harass the Eastern neighbour and make sure he never got started. I built a mixture of Wonders and Warriors and quietly beelined Navigation. Oxford was used to get it really early, and then I used the Frigates to take the Eastern and Southern capitals while Longswordsmen and Trebuchets minced through the cities I couldn't reach. Originally I wanted to insta-raze ALL AI cities, but got a little bored and impatient towards the end. Still, once the whole Eastern half of the map was gone and the Wonders became kinda pointless to build, I just spammed Mehals/GWI, sent the Frigates around the E end of the globe and smashed the Westernmost AI. The by-then-very-promoted melee units then converged on the last capital, and the plan was to get to Electronics and then Biology to help with Battleships, but I didn't even need it in the end. True, I could have stuck to the original challenge and cleared all of 's cities, but I just got an itchy trigger finger and captured it.

Full Tradition, Full Patronage, Commerce Opener, Exploration 3, Autocracy to Clausewitz and Honor 3

In OCC, are there any options upon capture? Do capitals get insta-razed? Can you liberate cities?

Good job on (nearly) clearing the map consentient!
I usually don't like playing my own maps (since I have so much previous map knowledge), but your game makes me want to sweep the continent too!

I didn't make any particular tweak to make AIs avoid building wonders (I wouldn't even know how anyhow and I am not sure it is doable without modding). I think the cause is a mixture of the natural AI biases and the fact that AIs are unlikely to go Tradition on that map. It is one of the reason I chose this map since it makes the Unusual World Wonders achievement easier to complete.

Nigel_Tufnel2 said:

In OCC, are there any options upon capture? Do capitals get insta-razed? Can you liberate cities?

Click to expand...

Everything gets insta-razed. You can't even Liberate CS, which I found out the hard way in this map. For sure, if someone attempted just to raze all 7 capitals, this map could be done in very short order. (Crossbow rush, probably)

Never played domination before on OCC and I just found some peculiar feature (bug?).
If you capture a city with a melee naval unit, the city will be inta-razed (normal), but your melee naval unit will stay stuck on the ground where the city formerly was. The melee unit will then spawn back to your capital the next turn. This can be extremely annoying especially with a low unit supply cap. I will see if I can avoid it with a melee naval unit with logistics.

Start location is obviously amazing. I couldn't pass up desert folklore, so just 1 point for religion.

5/5 points for defense buildings/heroic epic

6 pts for Great Wall, Himeji Castle, Brandenburg Gate

Getting DOWed: 2 pts for Attila in Ancient era
1.5 pt for Shaka in the Renaissance
1 pt for Genghis in the Industrial

3 pts for war with Attila, Shaka and Genghis at the same time

I don't know exactly how many units were killed in my territory, but it was definitely at least 10 - 2 pts

7 pts for wiping out all other civs

I went Stele then worker to quickly get my religion and granary/wheat up and running. Attila DOWed me around turn 40 or so, and I had to pump out a few archers --> composite bows to hold him off. However he never managed to seriously threaten me, just pillage a few tiles.

My usual strategy for OCC involves spending hammers that would otherwise be used on settlers on building ToA, Hanging Gardens, and in this case also Petra. From that point I simply tried to maintain a decent military to avoid being a weak target while I maximized my population and science. I didn't do much until the Industrial era, when I started building up my infantry/artillery force that would conquer the world. OCC also means you can't use aircraft to attack, so you have to rely on melee units + artillery, with AA guns for opposing planes.

I had all the city-states allied, so I rammed my ideology (Freedom) and religion through the World Congress. This pissed off my neighbors enough that I ended up fighting Attila, Genghis and Shaka at the same time. I mainly kept a small defensive force to my west holding off the Mongols while my main troops wiped out Atilla. After the Huns were defeated, the main force went south to destroy Assyria, who were the largest empire in the game, having absorbed the Songhai quite early on. I produced enough units that I was able to take half of Mongolia and then proceeded southwest into Zulu territory. Despite being heavily outnumbered, my troops were technologically superior to my opponents and it was never very difficult. Once I got rocket artillery things got absurdly easy.

Usually my domination games involve aircraft. In this case I had to rely on infantry, tanks and artillery. It gave me a much better appreciation for tanks. The mobility and movement after attacking mean you can pillage to keep at full health nearly all the time, which makes up for the lack of the cover promotion that infantry use against city bombards. In future domination games I might try to use more landship/tank units since I saw how strong they were in this game.

I proceeded northwest towards Mongol-occupied former Greek territory for the finish as you can see in the screenshot.

As was previously noted, you cannot liberate captured CS, which is annoying. It did mean that I took more extraordinary actions to try to prevent my CS allies from getting captured. In normal games I would likely just let them fall and then liberate them, since the ally bonuses are not dependent on the CS being a good city (with the exception of the patronage policy that is dependent on their science).

Not having to deal with happiness or enemies recapturing cities from you actually makes domination a lot easier. I don't think it is easier than a regular domination game but it didn't seem much harder. With a less ridiculously good capital site I am sure it would be a lot harder - Petra site, 3 wheat and 5 sea resources is nuts.

DanQuayle said:

Never played domination before on OCC and I just found some peculiar feature (bug?).
If you capture a city with a melee naval unit, the city will be inta-razed (normal), but your melee naval unit will stay stuck on the ground where the city formerly was. The melee unit will then spawn back to your capital the next turn. This can be extremely annoying especially with a low unit supply cap. I will see if I can avoid it with a melee naval unit with logistics.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, I forgot to mention this in my write-up. Since it is quite obviously a bug, I used IGE to put my Caravels back where they were supposed to be, saved, and reloaded. Otherwise, I would be waiting 15-20 turns for absolutely no reason. It's dumb enough that units with ranged attacks are too petrified to walk into demolished cities, let alone that those that do would teleport several hundred miles.

A naval melee unit with logistics sadly does not fix the bug. I resorted to use a swimming cavalry with my navy in my game, but it does slow things down.

Additional miscellaneous observations:
Himeji Castle also offers a free castle (but does nothing if you also have Alhambra)
The free Drill I promotion from Alhambra does not stack with the free Drill I promotion from Mehal sefari (ie Mehal sefari still start with Drill I and not Drill II)
Great works from captured cities insta-razed are moved to your capital if you have free slots available.

Wow this was kinda fun for a while. It was nice building some wonders and having runaway religion.

But shaka started taking over. At the end he had 62 cities. How the heck can you have 62 cities and still have happiness and science? After having him fight everyone else he finally came after me. It was ugly....

I know someone has seen an AI with 100+ cities in a an old DCL, but 62 seems a lot for immortal.
Did you build all the defensive wonders as suggested in the achievements? If you have the tech lead (with units with a higher CS), a hold might possible even if the AI has that many cities.
However, I must say I have never been placed in such a situation in any of my games.

If you have autocracy polcies, you could have lots of happiness per city, and lots of science comes from the specialists.

Thanks for fun map!

Achievements:


Techs and build order:
As part of defensive (or counterattacking) roleplay I went after achievement wonders one by one, so tech route was determined by that.
Was too cautious with an advice to generate early GE and built Stonehenge and ToA primarily for that.
With crazy starting dirt and low unit limit in an OCC had an insane amount of wonders for a domination game:
Alhambra - Big Ben - Brandenburg Gate - Globe Theatre - Great Wall - Hanging Gardens - Himeji Castle - LToP - Machu Picchu (kind of - why not, if there's nothing better to build?) - Mausoleum of Halicarnass - Notre Dame - Oracle - Red Fort - Stonehenge - ToA

Social policies:
Full Tradition - full Honor - full Rationalism - Commerce opener and mercenary army.
I only reached ideologies at the turn I won the game.

Religion:
Goddess of Protection - Tithe - Swords into Plowshares - Religious Community - Defender of Faith

Game plan and highlights:
Peaceful start, focusing on early game wonders, became friends with Mongols, hoping for somebody to attack our stronghold to get those achievement points.

Finally, Attila declared at t100+, proclaiming himself our first target.
In the meanwhile at the other end of the world Assyria was demolishing Songhai.

After wiping Attila, I was not yet sure which VC to pursue and decided to liberate some of the city-states captured by Mongolia: surprise-surprise, they get instarazed as well

Since at that moment army started to look solid with some Tercios (to-be-Mehal Sefaries) given by city-states, decided to continue focusing on land warfare. Adding navy might have been more efficient, but I enjoyed my slow and unstoppable land army march.

Mongols, Greece and Zulus fell one by one and in the meanwhile the army grew enough to split it for a final simultaneous assault on Aztecs and Assyria. Some screenshots attached.

End-game army
7 artilleries
4 cavalries
7 XBs (yeah, running back to capital for an upgrade would take too long) and 1 gatling
6 mehal sefaries