The plan right from the start for this DCL was domination, due to the unique crossbow unit. Settled in place, mainly to keep the possibility of a Navy open, although I never ended up building one. Nobody was close enough to warrant an Honor start, so I went Liberty/Commerce instead. The one and only wonder that I built was the Oracle, to get the Liberty finisher, which was used on GE for National College. Early worker steals from Askia and William. I did not see a really good 3rd expansion spot, so I switched to building units & a long road toward Gao.
I used Jerusalem as target practice for my initial archer army, which netted a Great General. After meeting Askia, I decided to go for a Composite rush, upgraded later to XBows, due to his Mandekalu cavalry. I have faced swarms of these units in the past, and they are very unhealthy for bowmen of all sorts, so the goal was to eliminate Askia before he acquired the unique unit, if possible. This plan worked, he was eliminated on Turn 83. Although he did field a group of Pikemen, I did manage to avoid the Mandekalu menace.
Next up, William or Ghandi? In a way, Ghandi chose for me, when he built the Great Wall around Delhi, with large enough culture borders to cause serious issues for composites. Unexpectedly, William put up a pretty good fight, especially with his capital in such an awkward location. He also had far more units than expected, and there was no city “close enough” to his capital to conquer/convert into a base of operations. I made a couple of attempts with Composites and worker baiting, but I was forced to back off until hitting machinery, when the glorious Chu-ko-nu upgrade began (Turn 100). Afterwards, Amsterdam fell pretty quickly.
My Tech path was Philosophy -> Machinery -> Education -> Artillery. I annexed both Gao and Amsterdam, to be used as Guild cities. During the Amsterdam assault, I started building a second army to deal with Ghandi’s great wall. Although my main army was slowed down a bit by an incomplete road south to Stockholm, it managed to capture both Stockholm and Persopolis in rapid succession.
Second army had built up enough, so I attacked and captured Ghandi’s nearest expansion, and was about to attack Delhi, when I noticed France’s military might was climbing at an alarming rate. I am still not 100% sure whether this was a strategic mistake or not, but I made the decision to merge both armies together at this point, especially after seeing more than a few Musketeers, and after observing just how flat the terrain around Paris was.
In retrospect, I think merging the armies was a mistake. Despite the flat terrain, too many of these units that I moved away from Delhi ended up being reserve units instead of active shooters, and this delay allowed Delhi’s defenses to become very formidable. Also, I should have switched my tech path to Navigation instead of Artillery as part of this decision process, so that I could assault Delhi by sea, and bypass the Great Wall. Unfortunately, I did not.
I nearly broke my clicking finger shooting Musketeers, but Paris was finally captured Turn 166. Commerce finished and my happiness skyrocketed. All of my puppets ate up the happiness pretty quick
, but it was a nice boost at exactly the right time.
The siege on Delhi went on and on, waves and waves of Frigates and Muskets kept appearing, and the siege of Delhi turned into a nightmare, in part because it just came too late for XBows. Any attempt to get close to Delhi meant that any unit, other than a Musket, was vaporized in a single turn. Cannons…vaporized… knights…vaporized. Ghandi had both Frigates and Muskets for defense, and he was using them quite well. The only ranged XBows that I had were required to push through the ridiculous terrain approaching Onondaga from the West. Frigates would have taken Delhi quicker, but after using Oxford on dynamite, artillery took out Delhi in short order, on Turn 189.
Although Hiawatha had a decent-sized fleet of Frigates, terrible terrain to assault, supporting fire from densely packed cities, and waves of Muskets, I citadel bombed my way through, and at some point around Turn 185, Hiawatha army just simply collapsed. I was sort of surprised to break through so completely, and walked into an empty ghost town around Onondoga. I half expected a new wave of units to reveal themselves and kill my irreplaceable, heavily promoted Chu-ko-nus in the process. Fortunately, that did not happen. After dealing with Delhi for so many turns, I was disappointed in Hiawatha’s defense. For whatever reason, he seemed to have no idea how to use his Frigates defensively, whereas Ghandi used them perfectly.
Commerce allowed me to fund a number of AI wars, so I think it was the correct choice for this map. The only AIs I could not wedge apart diplomatically were Ghandi and Hiawatha. It was sort of striking just how low the AI tech rate was in my play-though, so far off the norm due to constant warfare, that some of the turn times on wonders seemed more like Immortal than Deity. Leaning Tower not built by Turn 166? I have never seen this before on Deity. I was expecting that Artillery and Cavalry would be required to combat riflemen somewhere around Turn 170, which was part of the reason I went straight for Dynamite instead of Navigation, but I did not see the AI produce a single rifleman, cavalry unit, or lancer.
Chu-ko-nu are awesome units. They seemed a little less squishy than expected, but without range, their effectiveness seems to taper off when the AI reaches muskets, and city defenses reached the forties. Perhaps teching to Gatling guns would have been a good choice, but it certainly would have cost a lot of gold to upgarde the XBows.