COTM 12 quick game - spoiler thread

This is the spoiler thread for the COTM 12 quick game. To view and participate you must have finished the quick game.

In addition to discussing the game and posting game logs, I would also like comments and feedback, so we can improve what needs improving.

So, how did you tackle the iron situation? Did the broken supply lines in the beginning slow you down? Did you take any alternate routes to victory?

Well, this was a really quick game .
Took about 1/2 an hour.
A little bit more challenge would be nice, this was really extremely easy and also not much room for tactical variation.
Just a slaughter and hope for good RNG, so that it works fast.

Started with triggering the GA on the archer at Besancon.
Took out a loan from Russia, made an embassy with Ottomans and allied them against France.
Next turn I will also ally Russia, just to not have to deal with backstabbing.
Changed library builds to horsemen.
Moved the warrior out of Merw to attract the Barbs and also shipped the spear from Balkh.
The available forces close in on Tours.

The rest is just moving units as fast as possible into France and attack.
Take Tours in 130, Orleans in 190. In the same year a city by the iron is settled. Paris fell in 210.
Iron is hooked up in 230 and some horses get upgraded by a rushed barracks in Orleans.
Avignon and Lyons captured in 230 also.
Rheims in 250.
Chartres and Marseilles in 260. These were the only ones seeing action from the units build with the now hooked iron.
And that's it. France has still a city near Korea, but the trditional french country is ours.
Probably wasn't even worth the effort to hook the iron. Two spears and two archers (in Tours) was the maximum defense encountered.

To echo Klarius, the iron wasn't really needed. I "won" in 270. Rushing the Ansar builds probably wouldve shaved off a turn; instead, I rushed a few spears to protect my roading crew to the iron. The iron was hooked up for only a few turns, and the French were pathetic so it was not fruitful to do so.

One of my Ansars attacking the first city was completely killed (what the?). Other than that, the RNG treated me well, and gave me a leader taking Paris. He formed an ansar army, which moved south to take the city below Paris on the next turn. My remaining ansars went west, and the slow moving units went south to the gem city, including a few rushed reg archers for what they were worth. The last two cities were taken on turn 9 (270).

I triggered GA near Besancon, changed production to horsemen. Sent settler towards iron.
Made a mistake by not rushing barracks in French territory. Waited with my horsmen outside to be upgraded since I thought they were a little more dangerous. This costed me a few turns, but nevertheless victory in 290 AD.
Was fun but not very challenging.

Ronald

Theoden – I enjoyed this quick game, I hope you do more. I too found it to be fairly easy, but that’s OK. The challenge to me was seeing how quickly I could achieve the goal. I like having a set goal. This took me about an hour to play which was perfect. I did not have many dealings with the other CIV’s. No trading, no other wars, I didn’t even bring them into the war with France. I’ll be curious if others did, and how that affected the date of reaching the goal.

It took me a while to really get started. I did not play this originally as the COTM, so I had to get a feel for what was going on in my empire. Lot's of units! I have never played a game with so many workers during the early middle ages. Once I got the key roads in place, I ended up automating the rest of the worker duties. When the game started I changed production to military units as there were a lot undefended cities and of course to build up the invasion force. I decided to move a settler up towards the iron near Korea, and claim that source. I lost the first 2 settlers (pretty embarrassing) to barbarians. I had to spend a few turns getting units up there to defeat the barbs. I finally built the iron city in 280. I also agree with one of the other posts that iron was not necessary, horsemen would have been enough. Without an iron source of their own, France only had spearmen & archers to defend them themselves.

After the first French city was taken, I made the mistake of waiting for all of my units to heal, before heading to the next target. This ended up being a mistake as France didn’t have many units in each city for defense. I probably needed only 3-4 Ansar Warriors per city. By the way, I did like the UU. I have never played as the Arabs before, but found the movement bonus to be quite useful for mobilizing in French Lands. Here’s a quick timeline:

130 – Take Tours, enter Golden Age
250 – Take Orleans
270 – Take Avignon
280 – Take Lyons
300 – Take Marseilles
330 – Take Rheims
340 – Take Paris, almost take Chartes (they had just 1 Longbowmen left defending)
350 – Take Chartes

Looking back it really took a while to go from Tours to Orleans. The AI was throwing a lot of units at me in the beginning (mostly archers, I think). I also expected much more resistance once I got to each city.

I look forward to the next quick game. A similar time commitment for the next game, maybe up to 2-3 hours would be OK. Perhaps make use of the time limit feature for scenarios? Locked alliances? I like playing as the Vikings with Berserkers. Maybe some type of archipelago map?

Finished in 340 AD. Workers mainly switched to shields, joined some cities, and a big stack went for iron. Builds switched to barracks and horse everywhere.

Allied with Ottomans, mainly so that France wouldn't get invention and/or gunpowder from them, gave them something like 12g/t because of the massive surplus.

Didn't do that well with RNG (Ansar loses to archer w/o doing any damage?!?) but nothing terrible. No leader.

I think it's important to have a somewhat broader goal and/or initiative. In particular, for ties there should be some secondary targets that serve as tiebreaker. It'd be good to prevent or limit deals or moves that are bad in a long-term fashion but work for the short-term. Maybe factor in current economy (gold and gpt), number of resources/luxuries, and population. Could get pretty complicated, but makes some tradeoffs when deciding what to build and how to approach the overall game.

Interesting none-the-less, and reinforced what I already know about my game (way too conservative -- hey I sympathize with the poor troops being thrown out as cannon fodder ).

Like everyone else, I popped the GA straight off by killing the archer in the northwest, then fed a stream of troops through Tours. I turned to horses when my ansars were all built, and although I hooked up the Korean iron, I didn't bother upgrading any of the horses that were already at the front. I brought the Ottomans into the war in 110ad, and the Russians in 130ad. Russia didn't even try to join in, but the Ottomans had a small force of maces moving through the French tundra; they may have softened up some defenses for me, but didn't actually capture anything. In fact, France took Konya from the Ottomans; I laid seige for some time, and eventually took it for myself.

I finished in 310ad, with France reduced to Rouen, the town north of Korea. The lines of attack went like this...



Seeing it laid out this way, I realise that I could have saved two or three turns by heading from Orleans directly to Paris. I chose to detour south to Avignon because I could land outside the town in just one move, but I should have started the long push west first, and had later reserve troops capture Avignon. Maybe the Ottoman maces could have even taken it by themselves.

I didn't get any leaders, but then I didn't have many elites either. The ansars weren't retreating very well, and I lost a couple on the offensive and a couple on defense - in the last couple of turns, France reached Invention, and their longbows were doing nasty things on the counterattack. The best RNG gag in this little game was a regular French longbow fighting out of Konya, who managed to kill a veteran pike fortified in the mountains, without taking any damage. Of course, I avenged myself with a nearby ansar on the next turn.