Neo Guderian
Panzerarmee General
I've seen a few Diety guides out there, but their emphasis seems to rely on manipulating/configuring the initial start in order to give the player a better advantage. While I am certainly supportive of any method that makes a civer's gaming experience happy and fulfilling one, for me personally, I want a more robust strategy that I can use to beat the upper echelon difficulties without tampering.
I believe that if we are ever going to challenge huge, marathon, 12 civ maps with raging barbarians on Diety, and shoot for a Spacehip or cultural victory starting in the ancient era, we are going to need some pretty radical strategy concepts to pull it off. I for one, want to beat the AI in spite of their rampant cheating and fantastic starting advantage.
I think I have found an idea worth exploring further. I had considered just keeping it to myself until I had proven conclusively that it works, but the past two days have demonstrated that its going to take quite awhile to iron out all the particulars of the strategy. For that reason, I want to put this concept before the community and see what you guys can do with it, if anything.
In two simple words, the whole mechanism that 'might' make this strategy viable is 'war weariness'. Whilst reading Krikkitone's War Weariness thread I had the idea that It might be possible to bring the AI to its knees with massive unhappiness by waging a defensive war throughout the ENTIRE game.
The thread revealed that defensive actions, in one's own territory, created less war weariness than offensive wars in foreign lands. Also, the losses suffered by the enemy at the hands of your defenders would create more war weariness for the AI than the player.
With this idea in mind, I picked Churchill and started a Huge, marathon, raging barbs, 12 civs pangea ancient game to test this in practice. I didnt last very long because I underestimated the sheer volume of units that the AI would field and ended up losing around 500bc to swarms of all types of classical age units. Raging barbs actually dulls down the ai's performance so in my next games, I left barbarians normal.
The results were shocking. I started a game with Egypt and saved it at the start. The first time I played it, I remained peaceful, adopted everyone's fav religion, opened borders, paid tribute and generally tried to be everyone's little brother. Around 500 ad, the ai was well into the middle age era. I built up about 20 long bows and declared war on everyone. Within 20 turns I lost, of course.
What was striking was the performance I had when I loaded the initial save and played again, this time declaring war as soon as I had a single archer. By the time 500 ad came around, the Tech scene was very different. I was still fighting classical aged units and the ai's were begging me for peace with techs, and tons of gold. I eventually succumbed to their monstrous forces however.
I wonder, if there is a way to survive the onslaught long enough (Yes, I had an archer that had 400+ experience that was fighting as a 15.30 unit) for war weariness to really bring the ai's to ruin. If this can happen, then the player can then use those super units to trounce the ai's territories unopposed or even vassalize or destroy most ai's. Furthermore, with their economies shattered with unhappiness, the player can then catch up in science and steal the victory. At least that is the theory. I will do my best to prove its value, either useful or useless.
Sorry for the long winded column. What does everyone think? If you give this a try, let me know how it goes. Also, I found it neccessary to always settle on a hill. Otherwise your units are gonna get wiped out fast.
I found the egyptians to be the most suited for this gambit because their Unique Building allows great prophets to be generated. This is crucial for paying for the massive army you are going to need. Adding super priests to your cities certainly covers the cost of that massive army without hurting your science. But im sure that any civ will work.
Civ On..
I believe that if we are ever going to challenge huge, marathon, 12 civ maps with raging barbarians on Diety, and shoot for a Spacehip or cultural victory starting in the ancient era, we are going to need some pretty radical strategy concepts to pull it off. I for one, want to beat the AI in spite of their rampant cheating and fantastic starting advantage.
I think I have found an idea worth exploring further. I had considered just keeping it to myself until I had proven conclusively that it works, but the past two days have demonstrated that its going to take quite awhile to iron out all the particulars of the strategy. For that reason, I want to put this concept before the community and see what you guys can do with it, if anything.
In two simple words, the whole mechanism that 'might' make this strategy viable is 'war weariness'. Whilst reading Krikkitone's War Weariness thread I had the idea that It might be possible to bring the AI to its knees with massive unhappiness by waging a defensive war throughout the ENTIRE game.
The thread revealed that defensive actions, in one's own territory, created less war weariness than offensive wars in foreign lands. Also, the losses suffered by the enemy at the hands of your defenders would create more war weariness for the AI than the player.
With this idea in mind, I picked Churchill and started a Huge, marathon, raging barbs, 12 civs pangea ancient game to test this in practice. I didnt last very long because I underestimated the sheer volume of units that the AI would field and ended up losing around 500bc to swarms of all types of classical age units. Raging barbs actually dulls down the ai's performance so in my next games, I left barbarians normal.
The results were shocking. I started a game with Egypt and saved it at the start. The first time I played it, I remained peaceful, adopted everyone's fav religion, opened borders, paid tribute and generally tried to be everyone's little brother. Around 500 ad, the ai was well into the middle age era. I built up about 20 long bows and declared war on everyone. Within 20 turns I lost, of course.
What was striking was the performance I had when I loaded the initial save and played again, this time declaring war as soon as I had a single archer. By the time 500 ad came around, the Tech scene was very different. I was still fighting classical aged units and the ai's were begging me for peace with techs, and tons of gold. I eventually succumbed to their monstrous forces however.
I wonder, if there is a way to survive the onslaught long enough (Yes, I had an archer that had 400+ experience that was fighting as a 15.30 unit) for war weariness to really bring the ai's to ruin. If this can happen, then the player can then use those super units to trounce the ai's territories unopposed or even vassalize or destroy most ai's. Furthermore, with their economies shattered with unhappiness, the player can then catch up in science and steal the victory. At least that is the theory. I will do my best to prove its value, either useful or useless.
Sorry for the long winded column. What does everyone think? If you give this a try, let me know how it goes. Also, I found it neccessary to always settle on a hill. Otherwise your units are gonna get wiped out fast.
I found the egyptians to be the most suited for this gambit because their Unique Building allows great prophets to be generated. This is crucial for paying for the massive army you are going to need. Adding super priests to your cities certainly covers the cost of that massive army without hurting your science. But im sure that any civ will work.
Civ On..
. I may have to give raging barbs a try so that I can start getting some experience before the AI melee/horse stacks start showing up. It does look like it has a noticeable impact on AI development though, the last game I ran by 800 AD nobody had gone beyond Mathematics.
