deity aw 4: the three musketeers

so there we go... ...there will be another deity aw game.

...

but since they tend to be soooooo time-consuming we will this time play this as a mini-sg or something similar to it, no idea what it will be and with which leader and civ it will be in the end.

this thread is for discussing our settings, the map and the overall setup. maybe we will play the game out later in the same thread or move into the sg-compartment, depends on how we decide to play it...

...

the three musketeers:

dirk
obsolete
snaaty

...

against:

lots of evil ai´s...

@OP:
I've been lurking with interest the previous one (and the final part of the #2 also): not that I understood too much of it, but I've been reading everything, I downloaded all the saves and appreciated the fact that you deity guys shared the moves and decisions you made, step by step, with us immortals... ehm... I mean common mortals.
Ehm... so I'm signing up as lurker on this one too! I'm looking forward for the beginning!
And good luck on defeating all those nasty deity AIs!

Look forward to this!

Also for a moment I thought you are going to play the french.

I might shadow this when done with LeftAdjoint's game and if my EQ guildies don't need me, as an honorable 4th musketeer...never tried it could be fun

Well this is rather interesting, when I was FINALLY willing to go with a financial leader, Snaaty now wants philo. And of course when ever I went SittingBull for Phil/Pro Snaaty always wanted something financial/charismatic instead.

Seems we can never agree, but since I'm guessing Dirk want's to go Philo too this game, then so be it.

Whatever the case, I guess we won't be doing the old Philo-->Henge-->Shrine trick this game, huh Snaat?

Grrr, did a quick test of Lincoln of Mali. I feel Churchil would be far more stronger...

obsolete said:

Whatever the case, I guess we won't be doing the old Philo-->Henge-->Shrine trick this game, huh Snaat?

Click to expand...

Why? Did you guys build a shrine in the other AW games?

With Philo it's possible to bulb your way to muskets relatively quick, not that muskets are great, but early enough should give you some breathing room.

@AZ
Use muskets on offense? I ask cuz longbows look better on defense imo.

Muskets are a bit better than longbows but very expensive in comparison can be drafted though. It's rifles you really want.Defending the block city is not the hardest parts if you reach longbows in time. Some AI troops will pass through or try to choke you by camping in woods these are very annoying. I used cats and phants/knights in AW3 to kill those troops with minimal losses but before those can be troops can do lots of damage.

Hardest part is switching from defense to offense.

Why? Did you guys build a shrine in the other AW games?

Click to expand...

Snaaty's always a fanatic over early religion issues.

As for Muskets, it's the one unit I NEVER build. It's been broken since release and still is. The LB comes much sooner, comes with First Strike, plus two very large City + Hill bonuses. Best of all, they are very cheap, and you can even ugpgrade regular bows.

Why would anyone want Muskets in this spot I have no idea, unless they have a fetish for letting some of Monte's pinch promoted units to get even more of a combat advantage. I can't say I remember the AI much coming at you with cover promotions.

obs ... how would youthen change muskets to be worthwhile?

Muskets can be of some use in cases like this, they have no disadvantages if you get them before knights. Unlike longbows you can push a little offense with them.

Maybe SB of the ottomans would be a good AW leader / civ combo assuming you could get enough breathing room to do some good bulbing. If you avoid both pottery and fishing you can bulb lib -> nat and bulb gunpowder.

One of the biggest problem with longbows is their inability to clear off annoying AI troops that do nothing but harass your workers or cover good tiles.

obsolete said:

Grrr, did a quick test of Lincoln of Mali. I feel Churchil would be far more stronger...

Click to expand...

From my AW experience, I am forced to agree. Churchill is probably the best leader for AW due to the traits and the more defensive nature of AW games.

obsolete said:

As for Muskets, it's the one unit I NEVER build. It's been broken since release and still is. The LB comes much sooner, comes with First Strike, plus two very large City + Hill bonuses. Best of all, they are very cheap, and you can even ugpgrade regular bows.

Why would anyone want Muskets in this spot I have no idea, unless they have a fetish for letting some of Monte's pinch promoted units to get even more of a combat advantage. I can't say I remember the AI much coming at you with cover promotions.

Click to expand...

Well, muskets are surely better for attack than LB's, but in the essential, you are more than right. Muskets are normally only worth the shot if you have some free boost ( say, Pro promos or the drill I +II of oromos ) and if you can draft. But I think this was intended ... if not they would had made a str 10 musket that, in spite of being still iffy on city defense compared with LB and in pinch vs knights in open field, it would fare far better than the current version... most likely some pseudo-historical reason ( early muskets were really iffy in RL and they had to be covered by pikes and x-bows ) is the culprit :/

some interesting ideas we already have accumulated here...

...

i would propose the following easy rules for this challange (making it possible for the community / any players to join the game whenever they feel like):

1. i will propose 5 leaders for this challange (after consulting with dirk & obs)
2. i will propose 5 civs for this challange (")
3. we decide on the 5 strongest leader + civ combos and vote a winner (")
4. i will role 5 starts for the winner and we vote again
5. we play 3 early turnsets: 1-40, 41-70, 71-90. All 3 of us play these turnsets and after that we vote the save we will keep on playing. Everybody is invited to play these turnsets as long as you follow this rule: no cheating, no reloading. Feel free to pick any save you like for continuing when you feel your first (or second) turnset wasnt played good enough. all saves that were played according to the rules mentioned above up to t90 will be included for voting (best save doesnt have to be from "the 3 musketeers").
6. after t90, we will play in turnsets fo 15 turns up to 1 AD. then we go on with turnsets of 10 turns up to 1000 AD, then we will see.
7. all turnsets after t90 are played in SG style by "the 3 musketeers"
8. everybody is invited again to play these turnsets in parallel with us. if you think your turnset is better then what we did, feel free to put it up to voting again. we will then vote if we continue with our save or switch to yours.
9. have fun

...

dont expect this to launch anytime soon. it will take at least 2-3 weeks more untill we will reach a point where we will post any starting saves, so be patient

...

any ideas/opinions about the concept i proposed above are apreciated. lots might be improved, so now it´s up to you to tear it apart

@AZ,your last point is certainly valid. Lb's are terrible on offense. In AW2 and AW3 this problem was mitigated to some extend by phants. But most AI stacks have some pike in it, in that case either promoted knights or muskets are best after weakening the stack with cats. You tend to have guilds before GP though since you'll beeline there in AW. It's one of the best tech to get, Knights, caste/workshops and grocers.

As for leaders Lincoln of Mali looks like a strong leader. Missing protective will be compensated by quicker promo's. I don't like to give up on skirmishers just now. What was wrong with him exactly obs? Churchill of mali==super units, have nothing against him as well. However philo could give an interesting twist.

I wonder if people would look at muskets better if they were able to have CR promotions.

That is for me the real killer of muskets...you're basically forced into defense.

I only like Oromo's and Janis, which can operate very succesfully.

sorry for continuing with off topic ;-)

This seems like a good format Snaaty. I like the idea of shadow (teams, AZ-Mylene-? for instance would look strong). It'll take some time to launch for sure. I'd like to finish AW3 first and report in some detail about that game. And in 4 weeks i'll go on Holiday for 2 weeks. We can discuss settings and maybe play T1-? before but i feel the real game will begin after. or you will have to alternate with obs for those 2 weeks.

I'll definitely be lurking in this AW thread like I was for the first three. I may try to shadow but AW 3 had a great start with an easy block and I still died 500 AD.

Missing protective will be compensated by quicker promo's. I don't like to give up on skirmishers just now. What was wrong with him exactly obs?

Click to expand...

Do some tests, the free drill + cg promotion on a 4-base unit is worth quite a large amount. Even early in the game we will be fighting while outnumbered very early. The charismatic just takes too long to pay off here, and many of the low promoted level units will simply die by attacks.

9-out-of-10 times we get over-run early, it will be with charismatic instead of protective (my future theory anyway). It makes a big difference in the early game. Granted, I am well aware of many charismatic exploits, but charismatic is very ...... gambity. If we were doing immortal here... then ok I'd be willing to gamble it up.

You and Snaaty will have to do better on convincing me here... even if we could assume 100% our first warrior will get to Woody III early, etc.

6. after t90, we will play in turnsets fo 15 turns up to 1 AD.

Click to expand...

I think this should even be reduced to 10-turns. I noticed in the past that when players have more than that, they get a little lazy and start to rush through their sets. Also, when you only have 10 turns, people far far more motivated to try and maximize every hammer possible out of every city and do the max they can within that alloted time-set. This also applies to small empires as well as large.