How would you play this Sid level island capture?

Pictures and saves are in the end.

I am playing Byzantines on the Sid level. I have excellent starting location alone in a big island. I receive SGL on writing and I am able to build both the library and the lighthouse. With these I am able to get the tech lead. I later gift the library away with plans to recapture it later.

I research up to Gunpowder. I have no saltpeter, so I must capture it from the Inca. I am able to buy some saltpeter from the Mongols (who will soon lose it to the Aztecs) and upgrade my pikemen to muskets.

The Inca have 2 iron, 2 horses and 1 saltpeter. Because the other iron is not coastal, I reason I must remove their horses before they research Chivalry. The second horse is under Macchu Picchu.

On turn 240, I land on a mountain next to Macchu Picchu with 30+ musketmen. At this moment I am expecting to face 50+ attackers, but I soon find out the actual number is closer to 200. I have no artillery, because all my resources have been used to build musketmen. As none of my attackers can damage the defenders of Macchu Picchu, I choose to starve it from size 11 to 5.

The AI will not attack a fortified 4/4 musketman on mountain, which I use to my advantage. If I leave all veterans unfortified, there are actually enough swordsmen to rip my stack to the shreds in a few turns. I must shuffle between fortified/not fortified, so that I can lure out all the swordsmen in Macchu Picchu.

On turn 258, I have razed Macchu Picchu and I found a beachhead on its place. I did a mistake here by not building a settler to bring with me. After razing Macchu Picchu I found it alsolutely necessary to have barracks on the island, so I built a settler and shipped it, which delayed me at least 5 turns.

On turn 272, the flow of attackers begins to trickle and I begin taking the other cities starting from the south. At this point, the Inca have maybe 100-120 units left, most of which are pikemen.

In total, it takes me 58 turns to defeat the Inca.

How would you shave 20-30 turns off that? With my current speed, I will never reach the domination limit before 2000 AD.

The biggest problem most likely lies at the 32 turns which I spent from first landing (turn 240) and beginning my offensive in the other parts of the island (turn 272). But it still took me 26 more turns to capture or raze the rest of the cities on the island.

I chose to keep all cities that were in "correct" places (6 cities in total), and most of these flipped back at some point, faster than what I could starve them. Should I instead raze everything, hoping this will keep all attackers going towards my beachhead?

Should I attack the other cities as soon as my army has pillaged the roads, as I could load my troops safely back into the ships if I can raze a city in a couple of turns?

How would you acquire this saltpeter, if there is no hill near it? If I place my beachhead on top of it, I would lose the 50% defensive bonus, which would most likely be a grave mistake.

Should the first landing be on a hill, rather than on a mountain, so that I would be able to bring trebuchets?

After Inca, I am planning to assault the Zulu. How would you do that, and in what place would you land? They don't have resources on their own, just one iron. But they trade horses and saltpeter, I fear they will have cavalry soon, if not riflemen.

If you simply raze cities you risk AI rebuilding them and having them up to relevant economic output soon again. If you keep cities you risk losing them and a lot of units and may it be just due to a cultural flip. There is a third way. Donate taken cities to a third party. This AI will likely suffer horrible corruption and is of little worry for you in general. Once the Inka are taken out completely you would need to retake their cities from this third party at a much greater ease than conquering the Inka in the first place.

Armies were always my way to defeat sid level islands. Often someone found me fairly early and made demands. I refuse and they DOW. I do not make peace until I manage a leader for an army.

Now I can go on attack as the army can cover my stacks. You must bring a settler to an island invasion. Pick a point, if possible that lets you be on a hill to found the town. Make a wall first, then a rax.

This is due to the fact that the wall is not usable, till build. The rax will count for IBT battles as it will be done, prior to the battle during the ibt. Sid island nations will have large numbers of units as they build structures quickly and then have noting else to build.

vmxa said:

Armies were always my way to defeat sid level islands. Often someone found me fairly early and made demands. I refuse and they DOW. I do not make peace until I manage a leader for an army.

Now I can go on attack as the army can cover my stacks. You must bring a settler to an island invasion. Pick a point, if possible that lets you be on a hill to found the town. Make a wall first, then a rax.

This is due to the fact that the wall is not usable, till build. The rax will count for IBT battles as it will be done, prior to the battle during the ibt. Sid island nations will have large numbers of units as they build structures quickly and then have noting else to build.

Click to expand...

What is the best way to land your army with galleys and without RoP?

If you land your defenders, your army and your settler on a hill, the following turn when you can load your army, you are also able to found your city. So in terms of defense, the situation is the same as if you would have brought no army at all. I find the most critical turns are the first two which you have to defend at 50% bonus (on a hill), because walls have not yet been built.

Another method would be to land the defenders on a mountain, load the army there and ship the defenders back. This way you could use the army to pillage everything around your desired beachhead location, while your defenders are at home healing. This would make the defense easier, but it would also add more turns to the war.

Have the 4000BC save??

I think I got the drill. I won by 2011 AD, which is better than not winning at all

You really need a beachhead with heaps of artillery. Even a stack of archers can kill a stack of riflemen if given enough turns. So at first you should bombard all approaching troops to 3/4 to make sure not too many will attack at the time. Once you get artillery and can make sure they have to walk through two mountains before your beachhead, this gets really easy. Soon you will have all their attackers walking between you and the nearest city with barracks. You can then send dromons and cavalry armies (as they heal in the enemy territory) along the coastline and raze everything, leaving just enough towns that there will not be gaps for the other AIs to settle.

After killing the Zulus I had 80 cities irrigated and railroaded, on Communism, so I could send my armies to pillage everyone and kill their research completely. Then the game was all about bombers; get the AI out of their towns, choose a stack of 10 units with no flak and bomb it until they die.

I think my biggest restraint is building too slowly and choosing maps with too slow tech pace. I have been experimenting with wet warm maps and the tech pace is much faster there. But on high difficulty levels one AI will zoom ahead in the tech pace, rendering my Great Library useless. On Emperor, every AI will have tech parity and I am able to keep up even playing 1CC.

I attached the 4000 BC save. It's the one with two wheat. I also attached a Deity map with similar settings, if you wanna practice with that. It is very winnable, you can get the library and the lighthouse even without SGL.

The 1410 A.D map from the OP in web-browseable format.

Google Maps didn't map Civ3, so I did.