GK2.1 - Tactical Exercise 1

For those who have stumbled into this thread, this is not actually a succession game. This is a "laboratory exercise" that grew out of Gengis Khan's "GK2 - The Training Day Experiment. We decided to post this as a separate thread so that othes can participate directly. (Anyone is welcome to participate.)

At this writing, the GK2 team members (playing as Iroquois) are discussing various contingencies for dealing with Persia. The question was posed "What can the Mounted Warrior do that the Immortal cannot?"

Gengis Khan, Sir Bugsy, and I were discussing ways to teach this when Sir Bugsy asked grahamiam to cook up a little scenario... Here's a snippet of the opening:



Instructions to GK2 team members: Download > > The Save < < and play a few turns; then post your results. (This may be decided in less than ten turns....) If Niagra Falls gets sacked, you can stop playing at that point. If you sack the Persian capitol, please stop playing. (Edit: Note that Perseopolis is not the capitol of Persia in this game.)

@Grahamiam: Many thanks again for making this a playable "lab" instead of a discussion.

To anyone who wants to play, some parting advice. First from Sun Tzu:

"Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him."

(In other words, fight on your own terms...)

"By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near. "

...and from "Murphy's Laws of Combat":

"When you're short of everything but enemy, you're in combat."

Don't forget, Murphy was an optimist. Good luck!

Edit:

Spoiler factor: If you plan to play it, don't read beyond this first post until after you've played 10 turns and posted your results.

(If you want to play it again after playing once and reading the thread, knock yourself out! )

Quick question guys... should we post a turn log here? Seems like it'd be a spoiler. Or should we just do a general overview of what happened?

Although the imortal is a better UU overall, used tactically right, the Mounted Warrior can be just as deadly.

Hmm, am I mistaken or is that too much mounted warriors to be a challenge? Don't want to post moves either as it would spoil things.

What version of CivIII is this? PTW, Vanilla?

Vanilla - but that is not 10 characters

homeyg said:

What version of CivIII is this? PTW, Vanilla?

Click to expand...

This is van Civ III 1.29 no mods.

Crossed with grs

(edit again: wow, this is harder than it looks!)

I'd like to do a write-up on what I discovered -- anyone with more experience, what should/shouldn't I post to make sure the exercise still has value for the actual team members?

--GJ
(lurker in GK2)

I hadn't really considered the spoiler factor when I started this thread... and we'd need another dozen posts to get a second page going.

@Gogf and grs, have you guys played this? I'd appreciate it if you could offer non-spoiler comments if you have.

To those who have played it, did you do well? Did anybody get hammered?

Do you guys think it would help the spoiler factor if we just posted unit kills/losses, until a second page starts in the thread?

I sacked Arbela in 3700 BC.

I'll post my notes as soon as they're requested/we're on a second page of the thread/whatever.

--GJ

I've taken the capitol, and can get a few cities signed for peace. I can take at least 2 of the 5 cities left within 2 turns, and that will bring me to turn 9. At that point I could get him down to a City-State I'd imagine. It was a good exercise, but a bit over powering with all the MW. Few keys that I picked up during my play. I have a detailed turn log up to the capitol being captured.

Edit: The year is 3700 BC.

Okay - so you sacked it on the 10th turn... how about dropping me a PM to tell me (generally) how you played it?

I hope we didn't make this too easy...

scoutsout said:

I hadn't really considered the spoiler factor when I started this thread... and we'd need another dozen posts to get a second page going.

@Gogf and grs, have you guys played this? I'd appreciate it if you could offer non-spoiler comments if you have.

To those who have played it, did you do well? Did anybody get hammered?

Do you guys think it would help the spoiler factor if we just posted unit kills/losses, until a second page starts in the thread?

Click to expand...

Well, it's harder than it looks. I'm not done, but um... I can't really say much without posting a spoiler. You guys should bring more defensive units to the front once you declare war (I didn't just learn this, I always do it ).

Gogf said:

Well, it's harder than it looks.

Click to expand...

Well, good. I feel a little better now.

You guys should bring more defensive units to the front once you declare war (I didn't just learn this, I always do it ).

Click to expand...

This was done by design. I don't know how closely you're following the TDG, but there is a specific tactic we're trying to teach here....

I think we will want everyone to post what they did. Things to consider in your write up:

What tactics were successful
What tactics were not
What tactics did the AI use that were effective (or not)

@ scout - if you post something in the opening post that a player shouldn't go any further until having played the scenario, and then have some spoiler criteria ala Ainwood's GotM spoilers, I think we'll be OK.

I am looking forward to reading the various experiences.

Finally, a hardy to Grahamiam and scout for cooking this up. I applaud them for a very innovative concept.

Okay - per Bugsy's suggestion, the spoiler warning has been edited into the first post....

Sooo.... post away!! (and I know there are some turnlogs ready to be posted, because a couple of people have PM'd me with them... )

Screenshots too! They will help everyone learn.

...too bad this is Vanilla and not C3C... I love the little rockpiles all over the place in Conquests after something gets sacked.

A couple of people have PM'd me after sacking the Persian capitol in 3700. Has anybody beaten that mark yet? :devil2:

edit: LOL...just seen you made Arbela the capitol not Persepolis as usual - and I wondered for an hour what this is about

Seems I get "fastest conquest" in GK2.1 - Tactical Exercise 1

I sacked Persepolis in 4000BC only losing 2 units.

To post something useful: The Immortal is 4:2:1 while our Mounted Warriors are 3:1:2. That tells us 2 things:

a) we never want to be attacked by an immortal - even fortified behind a river we will stand only a slight chance
b) we are fast enough to accomplish a) - our 2 movement count as 6(!) on roads inside our territory so we can reach the capitol in the first turn and that is just what I did.

Post away it is
Apologies for the lack of a detailed turn log.
(EDIT: I made frequent saves at key points, let me know if you want screenshots.)

---

I started this game off by contacting the Persians and trading Ceremonial Burial and Map Making for Iron Working and Masonry. I did this figuring that if I was going to turn them into a third-rate power, there was no point in withholding technology. (I could have asked for it later, but this would decrease the value of a potential peace settlement - i.e. fewer cities for free later.)

Note that we have Writing - an embassy in Persia is in order. For about 60 gold I determined Arbela's location and the strength of its and Persepolis' garrison (3 spearmen apiece).

Now for some math. Pulling up the combat calculator, we determine that we'll win about 2/3 of the fights where we attack Immortals with our MWs, but we'll lose 97% of the time if they attack us on flat ground. This establishes a couple of conditions: first, we must stay on the offensive, and second, we will need about two MWs for every Immortal. We have this material superiority already in Niagara (20 MWs vs. eight visible Immortals).

A couple of plans spring to mind:

First, we can go for the straight-ahead charge into Persian territory and attempt to sack Persepolis on the first turn. Mathematically, this ought to work out pretty well, especially if we get good luck with the RNG. If it works, we will have cleared out 8 Persian units and one of their cities. But there are some problems: the defense in Niagara is very weak (one regular spearman, who will get KO'ed ~80% of the time versus a vet Immortal), so if we get swept aside in the initial attack, we will certainly lose the choke. Also, we are likely to strand some units in Persian territory after we take Persepolis. This is a particular danger because we don't know how many Immortals Persia may be stocking behind the fog of war. We only know they have eight visible.

Second, we can attack the nearer stack of Immortals and expect to take it down, then retreat into Niagara. The remaining Immortal stack will take two turns to attack: one to move into our territory and one to attack. (They don't get the movement bonus of roads in our land!) We can use this extra time to reinforce Niagara and heal up, attacking these Immortals before they can attack us. (A convenient Barracks in Niagara will help greatly with this plan.)

Before executing either plan, I did some overhead tasks - switching most production to MWs and pop-rushing a spear in Allegheny (the fastest way to get an extra defender in Niagara).

I decided to go with the second plan on my first attempt, but my RNG luck was so good that I changed my mind and plowed straight into Persepolis. After taking it, however, I realized that in addition to the two or three MWs we'd already lost, we were going to lose six more who were stranded near the site of Persepolis.

This led to the second part of the plan: retreat all of the MW's next to Niagara into Niagara and have the ones already there rest/fortify. Leave the remaining MW's as fodder for the Immortals; we might lose them, but this will buy time for us to heal back in Niagara. It still takes two turns for Immortals to attack Niagara, and on one of those they will be sitting ducks.

As expected, the MW's to the northeast were knocked out quickly; the question was now whether we would be able to heal and hold out in Niagara.

What happened next was a stroke of luck with the RNG. 9 full-strength MWs took down enough of a stack of 7 Immortals that there was no impending danger to the town. Once this stack was gone, the rest of the game was history; the remaining MW's healed up, an extra spearman was sent to Niagara, and the counter-counter attack was swift an severe. I sacked Arbela with a horde of MW's in 3700 BC.

---

Again, apologies for the general lack of detail

Summary of notes/lessons:
1. The barracks in Niagara was extremely helpful. Originally I was drafting contingency plans and diversionary tactics based on units there healing 1 HP per turn. With MW's healing entirely in the space of one turn, it was much easier to beat back the offensive.
2. Retreating is very useful; especially in the opening rounds (and when trying to save the troops near Persepolis), I was able to save a fair number of MW's, either because they attacked and weakened an Immortal but didn't kill him, or they were attacked and managed to run away.
3. I think that even if my luck had been worse, I would have been able to hold out on the position on the basis of the Barracks in Niagara. As long as Persia sent fewer Immortals than I had MWs, I was okay, because every turn a batch of MWs would be able to attack until they were at 1 HP, retreat, and be ready to go a couple of turns later. The good luck with the RNG helped a lot, but I think I would have survived anyway. (Note that I replayed the scenario with a different bent and this actually happened. I'll post those notes presently.)

In short - MWs have three natural advantages over Immortals. First, MWs will win the majority of the battles where they're the aggressor; second, their extra movement point allows them to move around Immortals, which gives them the chance to be the aggressor more often; and third (and most obvious), retreating can save the lives of a few extra MW.

As long as the mounted warriors stay aggressive they will have the advantage. They will not win defensive battles against the Persians, but they have the means to stay aggressive through most of the campaign.