TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2008
- Messages
- 27,989
Just finished an immortal Mehmed game. 6 great generals, iron works, heroic epic, Mining Inc from the works, and no need for coal except for the railroads. 2 cities always making a rifle/turn. I never saw a need for power. Hit the domination limit just before I was going to engineer rush broadway. I used riflemen, cannon, and grenadiers mostly, with a few infantry at the end.
Anecdotal "evidence" using what is probably suboptimal play that still works does not make for a strong argument. I can just as easily say I swept maps using coal plants everywhere...and that would also mean nothing. You're free to say things like this of course, but don't go thinking anybody with sense is going to buy this as an argument against power.
Offense is the best defense.
Then why are you even waiting for infantry? Why bother with factories? You can come up with faster/better kill approaches. If you're playing defense (which is valid by the way, and the investment to repel invasions is far less than capturing cities when coasting a winning position to space).
If you're already post-conquest and consolidating cities for a space win, then you already have the necessary military most likely...unless you're just going to finish the game right there.
I will war to slow the leading AI down even if it slows me down (but relatively less). I don't care for speed wins.
Hehe. Hiding behind that instead of talking about timeframes that neither of us have attained. I understand though, it's not like I routinely launch ships in the 1500's (I can launch in the late 1700's AD sometimes with good cottage spam micro, usually 1800's).
Whether one decides to slow down the AI is a factor of whether or not that AI is a realistic candidate to win the game. If it isn't, hurting one's own position to slow down someone materially behind doesn't make sense; just out-race it if you're in front.
Those guys almost certainly have vassal-snatched enough health resources by the time coal is available to use it well (and the map has to be moderately generous). The thing is, they've already won by then, and the coal just speeds things up.
Unfortunately, most industrial-age positions have already settled a likely W or L by that point; rarely is the outcome actually decided later.
You have very good units to make by then, though. You would have to be very behind to want to make wealth instead of war, probably enough to question your chances of winning.
Actually it's the opposite. You build wealth to accelerate a win when your position is already strong (this has the nice side benefit of reducing play time + micro too, but it also increases absolute tech pace).
How are speed games that go 100% perfectly relevant to general play? Hall of Fame trolling is different from a normal match.
Many of the games I referenced are gauntlets, XOTM (standard maps in that case), random/fractal starts, etc. Surely, you don't think a mass seafood start with HRE on normal land is the stuff "freak"ishly fast tech paces are made of. Still, they can make it work. Part of it is that they're so good that they blast through the tech tree fast enough; city spam with SP workshops/watermills already available or within the next 30ish turns means that you can afford to place cities differently; keeping them smaller while health still matters and actually gaining on net empire hammers. That kind of stuff isn't easy to pull off, but the players that do it can do it consistently. It's scary, and I can only sort of mimic it when I try.
The Parthenon also comes to mind. It's much easier to get than the hanging gardens.
That just depends on your early priorities; early calendar resources or tons of forests might merit earlier-than-usual math. I've even seen obsolete oracle math so that he could boost his chops...in that scenario + stone you can get HG.