The second Finnish succession game: struggle for immortality

[sinimusta]

GJ on taking Rome.

The decision not to bombard Neapolis with our catapults is baffling. What would those cats lost? Their movement. Where would they be moving anyway without the support of stronger units? So those cats that won't be suicided should in general bombard. Casualties were unnecessarily high there.

Also the stack division is a bit weird. Southern stack has 11 cats and 9 WEs after capturing Neapolis (that is 14 cats and 13 WEs before conquering). Northern stack has 8 cats and 11 WE/maces. So the southern stack has high percentage of siege than the northern, and this strenght was kind of wasted by not bombarding. Also the southern stack is without melee units, only WEs. What if AI would have a lot of pikes in south? When dividing the stack I think one should aim for a balanced stack composition.

I hoped that my demonstration on tech trades, though quite short, would have shown my idea about good trading practice. Now I see Huana has a lot of gold, 260 to be traded for Drama. It's not like we lose anything (except trade opportunity for Huana's teches) by giving our vassal non-critical teches. There are some times I avoid trading teches away like liberalism race (avoid trading paper, philo and education) and trading away mil teches like contruction to potential enemy is to be avoided.




Caesar will probably cap soon after we take Antium (next turn with bombarding and suiciding some cats). If not I'll get our armies near Cumae in 3 turns by taking the siege from Neapolis, some defenders of Rome and troops in Moscow. So maybe the decision not to bombard speeds up the conquest a bit but still it's imo counterproductive to bring a lot of siege to the battlefield and not to use it.

After Rome we should get Portugal and that means we have to deal with Ethiopia, otherwise Portugal won't capitulate. That won't be a problem but we should start gathering some troops near Ethiopian borders immeadiately.

I think techwise we should stop researching Engineering since we'll get it from Rome anyway. Instead we should go for Guilds since knights might speed our victory a bit.

 

[Robert FIN]

Yeah, I made mistakes. I didn't realize that JC would capture so soon. Well, I try to improve next time ! It would be your turn now, wanna make PPP?

 

[sinimusta]

This ppp will be quite short.

I'll take whatever it takes to make Rome capitulate, Antium next turn, Cumae in 4 if needed. I'll prepare to take more but I think those cities will do the trick. Meanwhile I'll send a chariot to check out Portugal's land and armies. After Rome has given up I'll gather our troops heal and move on.

I'll also gather a stack near ethiopia.

I'll start building us more monted units (meaning HAs) in Ethiopian cities as they get to the frontlines faster. I think we should also build a couple of courthouses in Russia. Some cities have 14 gpt maint costs. Novgorod has a powerful shrine so I think that city deserves a market.

 

[Robert FIN]

This ppp will be quite short.

I'll take whatever it takes to make Rome capitulate, Antium next turn, Cumae in 4 if needed. I'll prepare to take more but I think those cities will do the trick. Meanwhile I'll send a chariot to check out Portugal's land and armies. After Rome has given up I'll gather our troops heal and move on.

I'll also gather a stack near ethiopia.

I'll start building us more monted units (meaning HAs) in Ethiopian cities as they get to the frontlines faster. I think we should also build a couple of courthouses in Russia. Some cities have 14 gpt maint costs. Novgorod has a powerful shrine so I think that city deserves a market.

Good! Accepted. By the way, I sent our Gmerchant to Ottoman lands, so keep an eye on him !

 

[sinimusta]

Yeah I noticed him. I think we should use him in the Ottoman capital since it's bigger than the city he was traveling to. And that way he can be used sooner.

 

[Robert FIN]

Yeah I noticed him. I think we should use him in the Ottoman capital since it's bigger than the city he was traveling to. And that way he can be used sooner.

Yup. Good idea! I didn't know that the city size matters too, besides distance !

 

[sinimusta]

The game is progressing fast towards the victory.

Julius Caesar was actually willing to capitulate right after I ended the turn. Anyway I decided to take Antium in order to remove cultural pressure from Rome. Lost 2 cats and 3 maces.

After that I moved our units in position to attack Ethiopia and Portugal. Our troops near Ethiopia, I decided to use two-movers in order to take that city in one turn.

Spoiler :

The situation at the poruguese border, I splitted our army in two army groups. You can see the composition of northern stack heading towards Oporto at the bottom of the screen and southern one heading towards Guimaräes at left part of the screen, but the southern stack is reinforced with some WEs that will teleport south when I doW. These are only the spearhead of our army, more troops are coming.

Spoiler :

We've also got 2 GGs and I decided to make super-units for us, the colonel Siilasvuo who has a regiment of maces trained for attacking cities (cr3) and Ruben Lagus commanding a Knight regiment (he was tank commander in RL).

Now that we've got Guilds I shifted main focus on unit production towards Knights mainly for the speed. For the same reason I've built us a lot of HAs. I also built some courthouses to reduce our maintenance, some cities had about 15 gpt maintenance costs.

So I captured Oporto and Guimaräes, those we're somewhat bloody battles since I decided to attack the first turn with minimal bombaardments. In Guimaräes we lost 5 cats and 2 maces.

Portugal is actually ready to capitulate, but still refusing to talk. I think that you could win the game during the next turnset Robert, it's really the matter of marching to kill Suleimans outdated army.

 

[Robert FIN]

Hey, cool! I can finish the game next time for sure ! PPP: 1. Take over Lisbon. 2. Capitulate Portugal. 3. March to Ottoman border cities. 4. Capitulate Ottomania and win Conquest. That's it. However, I'm sick now so I feel too tired to play properly. Let's see what I can do tomorrow or thursday !

 

[Robert FIN]

Victory! 1110 AD, Domination!

Spoiler :

(- =1t.)

-Moving the army towards Lisbon.

-WE died in enemy counterattack in Guimaräes. Armies moving again.

-We get Lisbon in sight and we shoot these idiots. The city has strong walls so we must shoot next turn again.

-Joao wants to capitule even though we didn't capture Lisbon. Well, let him keep it. Otherwise we could've lost units or achieved the victory slower. We start to gather our army up.


-Here's our sweet army;

Siilasvuo's smaller regiment marches to Izmir and southern Ottomania. Ruben Lagus' regiment takes over Ankara and Istanbul.

-Next turn something surprising happens. Suleiman comes to meet us, leaders of the mighty Mayan Empire and kneels in front of us. He was defeated. He didn't want to face our massive, dominating empire. He told us that he'll be our humble servant. Mayans ruled the world.

EDIT: Save and Replay files have been added:

 

[sinimusta]

GG and good job!

You can post a replay here. That's how I posted my first deity win in our previous thread. You can find it from folder Beyondthesword-replays.

Of course it's not too big deal for me to blitz through the endgame myself though that may alter some things.

So overall I think our game was rather easy one. Even though we didn't have an awesome starting location, the land which we claimed peacefully was good. We also had a good civ though uniques didn't play a big part. Happiness wasn't a big issue and in retrospect the Ball courts we built weren't that necessary. We had some plans for Holkan usage but ended up not choking any AIs. With raging barbarians holkans would have been critical I think. Our leader was good, we got a faster start with expansive and financial made it easier to get mil teches.

We never had any more than one enemy at a time (one city Ethiopia doesn't really count and all wars we fought we're started by us so we we're pretty much in control of the situation at all times. There we're no real runaway AIs vassaling a lot of other civs or getting all the wonders and in fact we we're able to steal some of the best wonders quite early (GLH and the mids).

My conclusion is that immortal is quite easy with a decent start. My solution has been joining some pbem games to get beaten by smart human players .

 

[JSS]

That's a pretty early victory date. Good job.

 

[vranasm]

very impressive win date on Immortal...

 

[LKendter]

I'm surprised how each immortal was crushed this game!

Good game.

 

[Robert FIN]

Thanks for the comments, lurkers ! I try to post the replay today, when I go to computer.

EDIT: Replay file is now added to post #229!!

 

[sinimusta]

I'm surprised how each immortal was crushed this game!

Good game.

Thanks for the compliment! Care to elaborate what was so surprising in our game? The fall of militaristic Julius Caesar? Or just the fact that and elepult army took out 3 civs, then we got maces and crushed the last ones? Granted we got trebs and knights but they didn't have much impact, I think.

 

[Robert FIN]

Thanks for the compliment! Care to elaborate what was so surprising in our game? The fall of militaristic Julius Caesar? Or just the fact that and elepult army took out 3 civs, then we got maces and crushed the last ones? Granted we got trebs and knights but they didn't have much impact, I think.

I think that JC beatdown was not a wonder. I was amazed about our success in between owning Zara and starting war w/ JC. After knocking Zara out I wouldn't have expected that Stalin falls so easily. And then we headed right on HC's face and he was such a piece of cake to pacify. GG team!!

 

[sinimusta]

I think that JC beatdown was not a wonder. I was amazed about our success in between owning Zara and starting war w/ JC. After knocking Zara out I wouldn't have expected that Stalin falls so easily. And then we headed right on HC's face and he was such a piece of cake to pacify. GG team!!

To me none of the conquests were surprises. I was expecting us to beat Zara and Stalin, otherwise it wouldn't have been wise to attack.

 

[pigswill]

Just Lurking
For me the impressive bit was being able to knock out a large army in a small time period without ruining the economy.

 

[LKendter]

Thanks for the compliment! Care to elaborate what was so surprising in our game? The fall of militaristic Julius Caesar? Or just the fact that and elepult army took out 3 civs, then we got maces and crushed the last ones? Granted we got trebs and knights but they didn't have much impact, I think.

Game over with maces. I don't think I have done that with monarch!

 

[sampsa]

Awesome job, boys. Sorry I was so useless in the final parts.

Immortal, especially pangaea, is indeed pretty easy if you know what you are doing. Here we didn't even have a good start really as cap didn't have a good food resource. Btw I don't think academy was very useful (maybe start a GA and generate GMerchants was better) as there wasn't much teching to do. That's why you need to plan things early (going for liberalism or not for example).

Again, great job, winning the game in the early 1000AD is always a feat!