Always War Mansa

Sorry for the too tough challenge in the last map. New attempt, new leader, new map, hopefully a better and more balanced experience for all

Step up, our loveable tech trading whore:







The start. Strong, but hopefully not too strong. If that is possible in Always War



Like last time I made two small changes:

Apart from a very quick glance at the mini map in WB, I haven't seen much, because I want to play this map myself, and it's always more fun if you play it blind. I hope the AIs aren't super boosted with golds, gems, marble and stone, but there are no guarantees.


The settings are:

• Fractal. 6 opponents. Always War. No Huts. No Events. No Vassal States.

The opponents are hand picked. Some strong, some not so strong, but hopefully a good balance.

The files:
I've made Scenario files from Noble to Immortal. Deity is unplayable in Always War. There is also a file at Immortal level, where the barbs have the correct starting techs.

If you choose one of the others and play it via "Play a Scenario", the AIs will get the correct starting techs and units, but the barbs will not. So please zoom in, enter World Builder, choose "Barbarians" in the drop down list, and select the relevant technologies for the level you are playing at.
Noble: No changes needed.
Monarch: Archery
Emperor: Archery, Hunting
Immortal: (not needed if you use the Immortal file, but...) Archery, Hunting and Agriculture.


Good luck honourable ladies and gentlemen

May the Force RNG be with you.

Great, I played Mansa like 4y ago and I love him but it's a disadvantage to play him in the HoF because one may not take any leader twice, so it's not allowed to play Mansa and take him as an opponent in the same game. Skirmishers are definitely great for getting used to AW, maybe it's even possible to rush a neighbouring civ with them?

The start is definitely not too strong, it's an AH-resource so not as good as a Farm-resource 1 Gold definitely is ok if this game is really harder than normal Deity. I'm thinking about settling 1NW because of how the river flows, it seems that there are a lot of river-tiles unlockable with settling 1NW or 1W. Even 2W might be good. There's a Plains-Hill below the fog as far as I can see it, maybe a 2nd gold? I think settling on the Gold is not a good move even with it being a 3 2 centre tile, but not settling on the Plains-Hill for some more FP-Cottages seems intuitively attractive imo. , especially with Mansa being FIN, and should the capital get attacked in an AW game then one usually probably has already lost the game? (No idea if the last is correct, I only saw you setting up a specific hills-city somewhere and then the AIs blindly attacking that city again and again. )

Beginning to play right now, wish me luck .

[EDIT]

Some thought based on the start. It's a good one, and Mansa start with useful techs: Mining and the Wheel. Agriculture would be nice for a short way to AH, but it is what it is, and the Wheel means no lost worker turns no matter what else should turn up.

4FPs, so only 1. At least 8 tiles are riverside green+, so can be cottaged to give us some early game commerce, on top of the gold, which also happens to be riverside. The river isn't connected to the capital though, so won't be auto connected.

More forests would be nice, but 5 isn't too bad either. 100 pre-Math (and we may well need to chop it all down before Math). There should be plenty of hammers in PH start, gold, hill-pig, two green hills, plus another hill, that looks like a PH (?).

Early techs have to be Agri->AH really. Hard to see anything else. My experience so far indicates we want the Great Wall, so in that case it should be good to go Masonry after Agri-AH, and before BW. Stone or Marble nearby would be nice, giving even more value to early Masonry, but we may not be that lucky.

After Masonry, I suppose it's a call between BW and Pottery. I'm tempted to go with Pottery to start working on those FP cottages, but slavery is never a bad idea either, and then we can start chopping those trees too, for instance into settlers.

Unlike in normal games, we need Archery at some point here, perhaps unless we go with BW and find copper in a reachable spot. Hunting->Archery gives us access to superboosted Archers however, and those we definitely want. The only issue is how quickly to grab them.

Really hope it's possible to get a Woodie2 here, so he can snag some workers from whoever may be close. It's like a super charged Vampiric Touch or something, stealing power from your enemy(ies) and transferring it to yourself

Since we start with a warrior, it may be possible to steal an early worker too. Though without the chance to make a surprise DOW (DOWs are made automatically when we find the AIs, or they find us), it's more difficult to steal workers without Woodie2 guys.

The worker will be out in 12 turns. We could start farming a FP, but maybe it would be better to start mining the gold instead? Then jump over to the pig once AH is online. 7 turns for +1 is mighty expensive in workerturns.

With non-IND opponents, how deep can we go with the Oracle? Or will the AIs still get it early? Gold for commerce should at least give us a fair chance, even after GW. Without being PHI, it takes 50 turns for a clean GW-Spy to pop btw. But that chap is really nice for stealing some early techs. The AIs won't have started building mountainloads of EPs either so early, so we get a big discount (because we have accumulated a LOT more EPs than them).

Look forward to starting this game, and hope I won't be as badly pwned as in the Charlie mad game.

Armchair expert territory here, but GW+Oracle something good would be very nice, then GSpy infiltration, and steal some techs.

Edit: Warrior move. I like to move him to hills if possible, so we have two choices here. Onto pig to check out what is south, or east to see what is in that direction.

I gotta say, I'm awfully tempted to make this my first AW attempted. I'm not a person who tends to build a ton of units at all so it should be a good learning experience for how to not get creamed by the AI. I still have that Emperor game to continue though, so idk.

@ Pangaea:

BW is definitely a way better choice than Pottery . I love FP-Cottages too, especially when being FIN, but you got Gold and you want the GW + you maybe want to find Copper to settle the 2nd city there and skip Archery . Cottages can wait, Pasture the Pigs, Mine the Gold, 1 Farm, Settler at size 3, then maybe 2nd Settler directly afterwars is what I'm thinking. Maybe this question won't even play a role, because 2 Settlers + the GW will take so long that we'll have BW + Pottery, I just am very sure that BW first is the right choice because of the very high possible strengths one can gain and 3 cities and then the GW, not sure I'll risk that or if I don't stay at 2 cities and even chop the GW out to get it 100%.

2nd: Definitely go Farm before mining the Gold. You can mine the Gold when the Settler builds and growing the city is enormously important, I just learned that when playing the current Incan-Gauntlet, the greatest Gauntlet of all times ^^ . Without growing one can conquer the 1st civ earlier, 2nd also but somewhere between the 2nd and the 3rd the growth overtakes staying small and working tiles and then the city is stronger and bigger.

Regarding GW and Oracle + something good: I'd definitely not mix the Oracle-points with the GW, go 2 cities then GW then 3rd city + Oracle + chop it out, if missing it, no problem, better than to get a Great Prophet instead of a Great Spy first. Best pick imo. would be CoL because of the Religion and the Courthouses + also Caste (Mansa is SPI, you can run Caste the whole time, pre-produce units and then whip everything in a short 5T phase of Slavery and then switch back) . With having Skirmishers I don't see any need for IW or anything other expensive, not sure but I think that if I don't get CoL then missing Oracle is a small loss anyhow and then I'll research CoL instead, I really want that Religion, OR + Theo + Pacifism are large gains. Maybe try to generate a Prophet in the Oracle city if succeeding and bulb Theo with him, maybe research Theo manually, definitely Maths and I'd like to try out Catapults as mixed in defenders.

@ Drakon136:

You can probably learn a lot in with following this game, but mostly about things that not necessarily will make you strong in a standard game. Learning how to play an EE effectively is very valuable imo. as it's the most efficient economy available so espionage helps in the really harsh games when the AIs are strong and when you'd not be able to get at least 1/3 of their GNP (that's the necessary minimum when being a very good tech-trader imo. ) .

Decided to not play this one, because it looks too easy after reaching turn 50 or so.
Spoiler reasons would be somewhat pointless, noone would know when to read them
Let's just say Mansa landed in paradise, without real pressure and pressure is why i play AW. Sorry!

Gurni said:

Decided to not play this one, because it looks too easy after reaching turn 50 or so.
Spoiler reasons would be somewhat pointless, noone would know when to read them
Let's just say Mansa landed in paradise, without real pressure and pressure is why i play AW. Sorry!

Click to expand...

On which difficulty did you play? I found there was some pressure by the AI, I got attacked by a stack of 6 units in T78 after 1 additional unit had been camping near that city too. I would have easily have had enough units to defend against that if I had had all my units in one place, but with 3 cities? After 3 early Warrior losses against Scouts or Barb-Warriors? I agree, that the map is quite good but I wasn't able to explore enough already to call it wonderland.

My game until 700 BC:

Sera

Gurni said:

Sera

Spoiler :

On Immortal. Mehmed can be easily blocked with few Skirmishers sitting in the forest tile that he cannot pass, and later with mathematics and a fort...he is shut out.

Click to expand...

@ Gurni

BornInCantaloup said:

How come the starting save has 120 views ??? Who are the click maniacs ?

Click to expand...

I downloaded it 100 times because I wanted to play AW^100 .

Gurni said:

Decided to not play this one, because it looks too easy after reaching turn 50 or so.
Spoiler reasons would be somewhat pointless, noone would know when to read them
Let's just say Mansa landed in paradise, without real pressure and pressure is why i play AW. Sorry!

Click to expand...

Haven't started playing this yet and haven't read any spoilers, because I was honest when I said I only took a very small glimpse at the minimap and close surroundings, because it's more fun to play maps as blindly as you can. But this is disappointing to read I hope it won't be an "easy ride". The fun part about AW is to have your back thoroughly up against the wall, somehow surviving, and then later on beginning to expand over the map and kill off giant stacks and eventually AIs. I know this start is good, but I hope(d) it wasn't overly good.

Given comments above on the starting comments, maybe I ought to re-evaluate farming a FP. +1 for a 7-turns investment seems like a lot to me, but naturally it depends on what else the guy can do, and maybe mining the gold should come a little later.

BornInCantaloup said:

If planning for an Oracle follow-up, it's possible that Myst before Mas is the better line of play.

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It makes Masonry a little cheaper to research, but is it worth the extra wait? That's why I'm thinking of going Masonry without Myst. We can get the GWall sooner, making it less risky play, and get the GSpy sooner as well.

On a point Seraiel made: I agree we should try to get Oracle and GW in separate cities. That will depend on what city sites are around us, but it's better to get a 100% GSpy first, and not risk an early and pretty useless GProphet. That is what I did in the previous game, and it worked out well there. Got a GProphet later in the game, and Shrined Taoism (bulbed Philo with a GS), and also got several more GSpies from the capital with GWall-points + Courthouse-spy + NE (and later Jail-spies).

Oh, and to refer to a point Rusten brought up in the other thread:

I've not heavily cooked this map, albeit the start looks very good. The two small changes I made, which should be fine to write without spoilers, were to put the settler on a PH (I assumed everybody would SIP, but looks like Seraiel moved), and to swap a coal tile in the BFC with a hill-pig. Everything else is as it was generated. And I've no idea where there is copper, iron or horses. Hopefully at least one of them is nearby-ish, but there are no guarantees. Those super archers should come in handy if that is the case, though.

Oh, and btw Seraiel, Pacifism may be a cracking idea in normal games to pump out GPs, but here, when you need heaps and heaps of military units to protect yourself? Maybe not... It becomes expensive, and the economy is already likely to be in a bad shape due to high unit maintenance.

e: But being SPI, it can at least be an option for a limited time.

Don't take my comments too serious, who knows how others feel about this map.
Spoiler why i thought it's too easy for my taste

Oh well If it turns out to be too easy, it's better for somebody else to make the next map, so I don't mess it up a third time. Did you play it on Immortal btw?

At least a map more on the easier side can mean more people get a taste for this kind of game, without getting overly frustrated. Still hope it will be challenging, but we shall see. I'll start playing now, so I can get a feel for the difficulty myself.

YASS Baby! Good start

T19 Woodie2.




Didn't know this was possible. The Woodie2 warrior defended against a lion in a forest, at 0.8% odds, but didn't get another XP. Thought you stopped getting more XP from barbs at 10XP. Is it capped at 5 for animals or something?

That went better then expected. I did restart and load cheat a little here and there, but for my first immortal AW game, I feel that that is allowed.

Pangaea said:

YASS Baby! Good start

T19 Woodie2.

Spoiler :

Took perhaps a too big risk, but attacked a Lion at 65% and won (3XP). Later on a scout dropped by, and I was lucky and guessed one of the tiles it could land on, and managed to take it out on a hill for another 2XP. Now to hope I find a good target for him

Didn't know this was possible. The Woodie2 warrior defended against a lion in a forest, at 0.8% odds, but didn't get another XP. Thought you stopped getting more XP from barbs at 10XP. Is it capped at 5 for animals or something?

Click to expand...

IIRC, yes.

Alright, I think I'll give this a shot. Gonna be attempting it on Noble though, definitely a drop from my usual Monarch games but I haven't played AW before so why not.

@Pangaea: You are correct, XP from animals is capped at 5.