The story of Hannibal's jumbos

Hannibal of the Khmer and his Amphibious Ballista Elephants - Part 1

Welcome ladies and gentlemen, misses and mississippis to the 3rd thread futuring
strategies and tactics from one of the game's masters, Attacko himself.

As a short disclaimer:
I decided to post in the stories thread as this will be more of a game-report as actual strategy discussion.
However, you are invited to state your opinion and discuss the ongoing game.
And keep also in mind (I have to remind myself from time to time) that we are still playing a game for fun
and don't have to take everything 100% serious.

Gooblah and Stewie are focusing on attacko's guides in general http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=299255
while Soirana the brave tries the infamous tundra-archer rush while backing up the strategy with an
escape galley should he fail http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=299585

Here, we will focus on a tactic that is "underrated" by many players, sea-invasions by amphibious war elephants.
This tactic could be viewed as a consequent development of the "sirian doctrin".

The original post "Elephant Rush Tactical Guide" can be found here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276366
and we will try to follow master attackos advice.

Should we fail, it is by no means a prove that the tactic is flawed, because we may misinterpret the guide
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7460021&postcount=46

To improve the strategy further, we decided to play Hannibal of the Khmer, because as Bleys correctly points out
"if Amphib War Elephants are good, Amphib Ballista Elephants must be GODLY!"
(and of course, charismatic should help getting the 3 needed promotions while financial should help with the
construction beeline and to finance the jumbos).


So to start with, here is our (attacko's) framework:
"The theory is threefold. The army should consist of
1. spies to lower city defense to zero
2. Strong navy with good trireme or caravel support
3. Amphibeous Marine War Elephants." http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276366


And my opening post in Gooblah's thread:

Belisar said:

Funny idea, lets give this one a go.

This is the story of Hannibal of the Khmer, whose amphibious Ballista elephants (full credit to Bleys)
will rule the world (well, at least they will try...)

Settings:
Small map with 2 additional civs
Fractal for interesting coast-line (*hopes for many coastal cities*)
emperor level
unrestricted leaders

The first part was boring anyway, had to discard some bad starts like this one:

Spoiler :

Well, no jumbos

But finally, got this one:



Irrigated corn and the riverside elli, plain elli would be better to settle on top of it,
hopefully additional stuff in the fog.
So settle in place and reveal another riverside elli and pigs , looking good.



Starting techs of Khmer are very suiting to the theme, as one can improve the jumbos from the beginning.
Start with a worker and research the food-techs first, will even get the discount on AH.

Our scout gets to work and finds a friend and the two manage to do a good job exploring the neighbourhood.
After agri was in we started on BW to chop out a quick settler.
We find copper close to the south but also Darius:



Will be a race for the copper site.


This is were we ended the first round, no amphibious jumbos yet but they will come soon.
Their first target may very well be Mao who is on the other side of the gulf.



We will show no mercy.

Click to expand...

Amphibious Ballista Elephants - PART 2

We whiped our settler to get the important copper/fish/corn site.
Did we beat Darius to it in 2750BC?



Well, barely! one or two turns, that was really tight.

Our 2 scouts did a good job exploring and found some normal leaders (Mao of China, Ghandi of India)
and some not-so normal leaders, Churchil of Mayas and this guy, he leads our civilization)



Before there was an elephant rush, the barbaric people had to fight at foot and since Darius is near
and we got our copper we start massing an early army.
Even the great attacko himself seems not to have invented this basic stuff...
"One of the best pieces of advice ever written on the forums was by an unknown who suggested to a new player when asked about how to play this game, build a bunch of axe. "
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6859278&postcount=1

Now, the construction beeline is fairly clear, but we also need alpha and EPs for our spies
since according to Attacko catapults are slow and for wimps.
That gave me the idea that we had to do something with our overflow hammers from our chops and whips,
so in 1900BC:



The great spy should pay off nicely once we need all those EPs and we can safely rush Darius while
our cities are secure from Barbs.

In 1725BC we are somewhat ready to do releave borderline-tensions the right way.



One more axe, then its field day.
Wish us luck, but to quote Attacko: "The good player is always lucky"

to be continued...

What happened, did they drown?