Sticks N Stones will break your bones

A lot of newer players post games asking why they are failing in their attempts to wage successful wars. And 90% of the time the answer is; "Not enough siege weapons". This game will be played to highlight the power of siege weapons in war. I got the idea from another thread I started regarding beelining for Engineering as a potential strategy.
I will be using Sitting Bull as the leader. Marathon speed/Fractal/Huge map/Low sealevel with brokering off.
This is not meant to be a guide on general game play but rather to emphasize the power of siege weapons.
There will be no early rushes. If attacked i will defend and if possible take some cities from the attacker. Once ngineering is aquired the army will be comprised of Trebs/LB's/X-bows and pikes. The idea is to show that with proper use, siege units can be used to weaken defenders to the point where you can take the city with just about any unit you have. Below is the starting position. I moved the warrior already and he exposed the clams to the NW. I am in favor of settling 1NW on the coast. This gives loads of food, a couple hills and a nice mix of grassland and plains. Plus whatever is under the fog of war.
Tech path will be mining and then maybe BW for whipping chopping and Puppy Privates.

Nice, but what difficulty is this?

No Catapults/Archers?

2 irrigated corn and if 1 NW a seafood, and you already have the techs to improve them all!!!

How are you going to use this capitol? In place it might be a good bureaucracy site, but it's hard to find such top notch GP farms, too. Maybe move the palace down the river after NW?

Kwibuss said:

Nice, but what difficulty is this?

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Monarch...

I'm guessing your settling 1NW right?

1 NW is the right bet...I would make this a GP farm IF a good commerce city can become your capital.

Wouldn't 1NW be one of those WE/SSE capitals? It could be used to fund the cottages in the rest of your empire, if nothing else.

I prefer landlocked capitals so I would settle in place. NW gets the clam but has 4 coast tiles and less river, might also miss out on heretofore unrevealed resources.

The computer knows best - settle the blue circle. It's really only 3 "useless" coastal tiles, IMHO the better trade and health more than compensate for the lost land tiles. Also with huge and low sea level there will soon be *many* cities, so switching out of expensive Bureaucracy early might be wise (Vassalage / Nationhood or Free Speech depending on war plans and tech path) and thus lowering the relevance of a super-duper long term capital, but I'm not sure about the effects of maintenance scaling due to world size (I only play standard maps).

Gonna follow this with interest, hoping to learn a thing or two

@Gliese, why do you prefer a landlocked capital?

I would advocate settling in place, the spot you are given is usually one of the best on the map, with only two resources in your bfc visible atm i would put money on you finding horses, copper or iron there in the not too distant future. The amount of times i've moved my settler only to find out later that i just miss out on, or have settled on one of those three resources has taught me to ALWAYS settle in place.

NoDot said:

Wouldn't 1NW be one of those WE/SSE capitals? It could be used to fund the cottages in the rest of your empire, if nothing else.

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It wouldn't be the best, because it's coastal with 4 no-hammers tiles and only 3 hills. The forests will run out soon, there is no stone or marble, and Sitting Bull is not industrious.

DanF5771 said:

The computer knows best

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Do the blue circles know what's in the fog?

I settled 1NW. Long term I lose 3 tiles but with the clams and added health from a harbor i can work the clams, 2 corn and a big ole pile of workshops. Also I can pump out settlers/workers fast to claim a lot of land peacefully. Though from the screen shot below you can see, choice city spots are not in abundance. Tundra to the south and a big patch of desert to the west. Also the lack of rivers is troublesome. I think I should build another warrior when the worker is done to explore the NE. The reason i stopped play so early is that I popped Myst from a hut. The Henge is tempting. But as I also plan to make a grab for the oracle that is a lot of Priest points. don't get me wrong. i like Great Priests, but I want a GE or maybe 2 for bulbing machinery and/or engineering. With BW I can easily defend vs barbs with DogDudes. As well as use the whip with all the food. I went worker first vs wb first in order to get the worker out to mine hills before they grow over with trees. My questions are as follows:
After BW should I go wheel pottery for the prereq or AH-> pottery. As it appears now i do not have a need for AH. Until i settled south for the pigs. I also do not need the wheel to connect resources because Dogs are resourceless.

sinergistic said:

@Gliese, why do you prefer a landlocked capital?

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Because sea tiles suck in the long term unless they have a resource whereas start-spot land tiles always are useful.

It also takes longer to develop with sea resources compared to getting a worker to improve land-based food. I like to get my first expansion quickly and with coastal starts it's more often delayed though in this case it makes sense to ignore the clams for later and just farm the corn and get BW quickly.

While trebs + xbows/pikes works fine, for a really pointed argument, I would go with catapults + archers.

kazapp said:

While trebs + xbows/pikes works fine, for a really pointed argument, I would go with catapults + archers.

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Also, never upgrade above archers. Trebuchets and archers, Cannons and archers, artillery and archers, mobile artillery and archers...

Trouble with archers only is that seige only reduces units to a fixed percentage of defenders strength, 20% for artillery I think, so a defending infantry would still be str4 (+ promotions) regardless of bombardment.

pigswill said:

Trouble with archers only is that seige only reduces units to a fixed percentage of defenders strength, 20% for artillery I think, so a defending infantry would still be str4 (+ promotions) regardless of bombardment.

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I realise that, and I was joking.

On the other hand it would add to the challenge. Only archers + seige before gunpowder, only muskets + seige after gunpowder.