So, Bam. After competing in Beyond Sid, do ya feel like playin' a game like that again any time soon???
I think I may take a vacation from Civ 3 for awhile.
Bamspeedy, what would you say was the key to your victory? Keeping the AI isolated? Their habit of building vast numbers of units and allowing them to become obsolete? Or your tactic of combining vast numbers of defensive units with equally vast artillery power? That's not a strategy I have ever thought of before, but it seems almost godlike in its power if your game is anything to go by.
Keeping the AI isolated did play a major factor. Stopping them from trading luxuries with one another helps out ALOT, especially in regards to tech pace.
Artillery was also a major factor. The AI never has been able to compete against massive bombardment. There is an article in the War Academy (and the strategy articles forum) about using artillery on offense. I think it was written by Moonsinger.
I probably didn't need so many defensive units and could have built some offensive units in those stacks, but you never know how big of a SOD they will send at you on a level like this, and you don't want your cavs and knights defending against a SOD of 100+ units. Normally you want many more artillery than you have units, but on a level like this, you frequently would have too few units (there are units bombarded to 1-hp, but you just don't have any healthy units to attack with to finish them off).
Quick question though, do you think this game might actually have been (even ) more difficult if the AI wouldn't have been on a cost factor 1? Let's say on 3. ( because for example it would have had less chance of building obsolete units in the ancient era)
The number of ancient units they have around wouldn't affect things a whole lot in terms of combat, because even better units would not survive against massive bombardment, and they still wouldn't take down my SOD of defense/artillery. But, it would have slowed me down a bit, so I probably wouldn't have enough time to win before time expires. However, if they didn't have so many units, they could have probably done better in science because they wouldn't pay so much for unit support (and being forced to turn down science funding). I should have given them 200 free units/city to make it a real challenge.
If I played this game with Conquests instead of PTW, there are some things that would have made it harder, and some that would make it easier. I would use the Dutch. With suicide curraghs, I wouldn't need the Great Library. The Dutch UU is just as good, or better for this style of play (building massive defense units). Conquests doubles the max # of units allowed in the game, so that certainly would have given me problems. I might not have been able to land at all on some of those continents.