The Deity Challenge Line-up #23 - Huns' invasion

consentient said:

Yeah, I have no idea why. It's almost guaranteed that you end up with a continent to yourself before you meet the other. Maybe people only want to play Huns on Pangaea?

I really can't wait to see your play through Peddro, but please use some software to boost the gain of your mic. Otherwise I can't hear you

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plan is to clear, continent, tech to combustion, swim the landships to the other continent (possibly a CS ) and finish with them .. But I seriously doubt I'll beat your time on this map ..

Well I gave it many attempts but none of them were remotely good. I'm less terrible now so I might give it another spin

I think I missed this one completely.

Reason I never finished it is I found it to be incredibly tedious moving all those units after a while so it ceased to be fun by the time I clearly had my continent under control. The idea of actually going after the other continent was just...no. No. If a game isn't fun I'm not going to keep playing it because that's the point of a game.

Another failure. Apparently a Deity AI can build units at a rate of fifty million per turn, and my 10 HAs got overrun like a chump. Not even an LP would help much because whoever would play it would by some miracle face absolutely no opposition and would be like here that's how you do it. The Ram is seriously the most overrated glass cannon piece of crap in the entire game

Words cannot express how frustrated I am

@stormtrooper412 - hun uberness is pretty simple to apply ..I might not be the best qualified person to show how - but I'll do my best .. Could do a first ~70 turn example without sound/commentary for you (cannot record LP for a few days) just to get you over the frustration (it isn't that hard) ..

And yes AI spam spearmen at the rate of 1+ per turn but that doesn't help vs huns ..

Feel free and I encourage you to play on this very map. I find it absolutely impossible.

What's likely is that you won't see nearly as many AI units and you'll roll them over like nothing

continent clear T106 - there where quite a few AI units but I know deity AIs can do worse .. After continent clear your gpt jumps about 100 gpt the turn you make contact with the other continent selling luxuries and strategics .. Since all remaining capitals are coastal (and my tech rate is not so great - to take down the map before AIs get flight) battleship remains best oxford option .. Combustion could also work if there were inland capitals - logistic suicidal destroyers for sea/coastal cities and landships for the inland expeditions (not needed on this map) .. So battleships it is, especially since you kind of need flight as autocracy anyway when there's a chance for Prora ..

the video will take about 24h to upload -> no sound and was interrupted a lot but it should show what the horse archers can do..
video link

I started this map, and conquered the continent pretty fast. This map is clearly fit for early conquering. The turns after that were a disaster: my entire economy was based on the honor finisher so my gold supply eventually drained causing me to lose a lot of science, and I was barely managing happiness since I made some bad decisions about which cities to keep and which to raze. In the end I ended up razing a city with Pyramids because I could not afford to keep it.

Fortunately things picked up once someone met me and founded the WC. New trading partners, I could steal tech again and get my happiness up, and luckily no other civ ran away on the other continent I was able to catch up.

Because of the honor opener I felt compelled to get a Domination victory, but I built my fleet of frigates too late. The plan was to take the capital of a weaker civ, and by that time research battleships and upgrade them. By the time my fleet arrived to the other continent, there were already 2 major powers, and there was no cheap capital to get, and the frigates became outdated to even take a city. I either had to come back and upgrade them to 4 range battleships, either disband and rebuild a fleet of battleships. I abandoned at that time. I think I might be able to pull a gunboat diplomacy diplomatic win, but that is really boring.

Awesome, the video should be a godsend. I pushed another attempt in:

video is up ..

Was lucky Ethiopia didn't get city damage Parthenon this time around, religion of defence vs cities. Otherwise would've lost ~1 unit, been forced to use logistic, range attacks .. But I was getting there anyway by the time the last city fell .. Took long to get him out since I didn't go full throttle HA (built shrine(god king and then religion ) & water mill before )

The rams are kind of useless unless they're gifted from ruins -> that is why beeline horseman riding ..

peddroelm said:

city damage Parthenon

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Interesting concept!

I still find your videos very useful. I watch some of them repeatedly, trying to work out what is going on.

BTW, on my system, F2 and F3 keys bring up city summaries and unit summaries. It saves having to have the city window open all the time -- but you probably know that. I've been watching some of the old videos (where people complain about the city window!)

Wow, peddro that was sublime. After much thinking I concluded that

however

I also noticed that


Lastly,

My sentiment is that without Range and Logistics, the HAs are fairly useless but at least we agree that the Battering Ram is more than just useless, its usefulness for me spans to maybe 20 initial turns after which it's pretty much a paper thin Spearman and its city attack bonus doesn't really help its case because it either needs to cap on the same turn it's in range or get one shot killed by whatever that's garrisoned inside + a nearby defender.

Reloading until the circumstances work in my favour is definitely the least desirable way to play this stupid map. I applaud everyone who got lucky with this by having neighbors conveniently wait their turn to declare war, I'm done

stormtrooper412 said:

Reloading until the circumstances work in my favor is definitely the least desirable way to play this stupid map. I applaud everyone who got lucky with this by having neighbors conveniently wait their turn to declare war, I'm done

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It is between Ethiopia and Washington .. Your army at this stage isn't going to be far from the capital .. Washington is not crazy - either he builds army at your border before the DOW - which gives you time to build, bring units back to defend - or, even more likely, after you kill Ethiopia - so don't commit all troops to roman war - keep some in reserve for the inevitable Washington DOW .. You'll have a few GGs by then (which IMO are better spent getting more luxuries for happiness or strategics for trade with the other continent - but an emergency citadel could save a desperate situation)

Walls would be great but the map is poor and my tech path goes around masonry and bronze working anyway ..

Once you have 4-5 HAs and roads it should be very unlikely even deity AIs can break you ..His DOW would be a welcome chance to train more logistics vs units without the risk of going under city attack fire ..

came at me with all he has while I was attacking

rather than waiting for me to finish, forcing me to pull back. By the time he gave up, all I had left were 4 HAs and now 90 turns have passed and I see everyone's settlers left, right and center so it was reload for the umpteenth bazillion time

stormtrooper412 said:

My sentiment is that without Range and Logistics, the HAs are fairly useless but at least we agree that the Battering Ram is more than just useless, its usefulness for me spans to maybe 20 initial turns after which it's pretty much a paper thin Spearman and its city attack bonus doesn't really help its case because it either needs to cap on the same turn it's in range or get one shot killed by whatever that's garrisoned inside + a nearby defender.

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I think logistics is enough, before that they're not much more useful than regular CB. After that, you can generally hit and run until the turn of capture, on which each can give two shots.

The Ram is useful in the sense that you need some sort of melee unit to capture. Before you get horsemen, at least it has cover by default (and should quickly have cover II) and it has a decent attack against the city, which can just make the difference. Of course, you would generally need two if they can be one-shot, but two rams is still quite cheap, and they can arrive a little later than the HA's since they would normally use a round or two to kill defenders / lower city health. And if the AI shoots another unit, two rams can actually capture a city with a decent amount of health left.

Sorry but there's absolutely nothing that can match any of the terrible attempts I made. 5 HAs is not enough to even put a dent in a Legion fortified on a hill, but in turn they easily oneshot a HA. The only thing I haven't tried was taking out America first and then try to push the eastern pair but like I said, I'm done with this map for a good while, because reloading until I get lucky is a pointless waste of time

stormtrooper412 said:

My sentiment is that without Range and Logistics, the HAs are fairly useless but at least we agree that the Battering Ram is more than just useless, its usefulness for me spans to maybe 20 initial turns after which it's pretty much a paper thin Spearman and its city attack bonus doesn't really help its case because it either needs to cap on the same turn it's in range or get one shot killed by whatever that's garrisoned inside + a nearby defender.

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I don't know what to say. I'm sorry you struggled with the map, but these are the two most powerful early units in the game and they work really well together.

HAs are mobile Archers. They are totally not useless. They move a couple of squares and take a shot. That's awesome. Did you build nothing but HAs once they were available? What turn did you have your first trio?

It's possible that on your game you ran into a lot tougher AI units than some of the rest of us, but I don't know how you can criticise these units.

Maybe we'll get them on the ICL and on Pangaea, and you will see that they are quicker and easier than Keshiks. Maybe everyone went Tradition and built Walls cuz they heard you were coming?

Better luck next time, buddy.

I really disagree that rams are bad units and anyone who says so is IMO doing it wrong. 3 or 4 of them will take out any city in 1-3 turns and most likely all of them will survive the encounter IF the HAs have done their job in the defender-killing phase prior to the city-attack phase.

However, in many cases researching Bronze Working slows down teching towards medieval through mathematics and philosophy. Taking BW just to get rams and barracks when it is not at all neccessary to succeed is a big dissuader. On top of this, as Huns your GPT is usually horrendously negative if you are doing the whole early domination thing right AND you are so worried about being able to support so many units (due to not building settlers and founding other cities) that you often don't have enough room to build anything but HAs. The versatility and mobility of HAs in conjunction with these other factors therefore tends to have players building a lot of HAs and very few/no rams.

If the creators wanted rams to be used they should have put them in Mathematics where IMO they belong, as it would replace the catapult properly and synergise nicely with courthouses, plus it would allow Huns to build spears in the period that warriors can no longer cut it but you haven't got around to getting iron working yet.