"We love Justinian day" - A celebration of Cataphracts (emp challenge)

[BornInCantaloup]

Congratz, elitetroops!
It's a fine accomplishment to win a map with Medieval units only.
Be sure to assess properly the role commerce played, here. Teching first, and then paying for army and new cities.

Teching gets you a window of opportunity.
If the window is large enough, you can win the game going all-in production.
If you need research to reach another window of opportunity, then commerce retains its all-around role.
Developping strong commerce centres will give flexibility to other cities. Either combatting maintenance or powering up research. Commerce cities need time to develop and give little production in the meantime but they ease tremendously Empire-wide moves. They determine what one can afford.

 

[Pangaea]

Good game! Didn't think you could win the map with Cataphracts only, and that's a great finish date too.

Interesting to see how much the odds change when you get across the treshold. IIRC, this means you need one less 'win' in the battle to defeat the unit, which shifts the odds markedly in your direction. For example, needing 5 hits while the other chap needs 6 to defeat you. Or vice versa in the first screenshot. You can see this by checking out the combat log.

 

[elitetroops]

Thank you, I also think it was a quite good game!

@BIC: Yes, commerce would have been a big problem if I had needed to reach another window of opportunity. In the screenshot just before I attack Ragnar in 1140AD, my treasury is empty,slider at 10% and I'm producing 56 bpt and -10gpt. The only thing that keep my economy going was the war and I pretty much had to continue it to keep that conquest gold coming in. If I had stopped to recover after taking Charlie as I first considered, I would have been screwed. Luckily the cataphracts were awesome for this kind of war economy. Fast moving and really strong compared to everything they face, meaning less healing and even faster army movements.

 

[FlyingSwan]

@elitetroops,congrats on your game,I knew you would winas to my game,after I got your caveat I was playing fast and loose,and there is no reason I couldnt of continued and won,I just decided to stop there.

As to me only building barracks..,if im running Feudalism why do I need a stables too?I still get 2 promotions.The GG thing,your dead right ,but I just fancied making a couple of heroes,simple as that(it never works due to the crazy RNG killing them at odds but its fun while it lasts)

Im gonna try this game again soon,this thread is not dead..

 

[elitetroops]

As to me only building barracks..,if im running Feudalism why do I need a stables too?I still get 2 promotions.The GG thing,your dead right ,but I just fancied making a couple of heroes,simple as that(it never works due to the crazy RNG killing them at odds but its fun while it lasts)

Stables are unnecessary, I didn't build any of those either (should have in HE city though, forgot about that). But most of your core cities were without barracks as well...

 

[FlyingSwan]

oops!realy?after I got the cataphacts asap i wasnt paying much attention.Il replay the game properly after 1ad,or from the start as I still think the CS route was a few turns out the way for the earliest cataphacts.

 

[elitetroops]

Hehe, such things happen. I know, I also forget the obvious every now and then...

Yes, I can recommend playing it again. It was actually quite fun to try a different research path for once. And even though many people said Cataphracts didn't seem like the best choice for this map, it proved to be not a completely hopeless path either.

 

[aitkensam]

Nothing like resurrecting old threads.

Never seen this guilds beeline strategy before. Not sure it will be practical often, but it proved a really nice change of pace.

Just played this through to a 1020AD conquest after attacking with 17 cataphracts in 375AD. Overall built 50 cataphracts and killed ~120 units inc. 21 longbows, 18 archers and only two pikes.

Spoiler :

Oracled machinery in 875BC. Had to wait on MC for 3 turns. Guilds came in with a merchant bulb at 50AD (with all other techs e.g. HBR, CoL). Had some spare gold (~150) so had I switched into Caste System earlier I think 1AD would have been doable. Final date could be massively improved on by having a two front war I think. I whipped courthouses when I could have built more cataphracts (economy was weak but not dead...) and ended up wasting a lot of turns doubling back to Ragnar and Brennus.

Would be great to see what good players could do to this map nowadays. I bet Guilds can be far into the BCs with a pro at the helm!

Spoiler :

 

[elitetroops]

Oh wow, this old thread is back! Yeah, I remember this was a fun game!

Very nice victory date aitkensam! You were apparently a lot more efficient than I was at warfare, needing several hundred years less to spread the gospel of the cataphracts around the world. If only there was time it would be fun to play this map again, just to see how much my game has improved in the past 18 months.