A very late ALC attempt - II. Genghis Khan

[tycoonist]

Spoiler My thoughts :

The problem with trading away HBR isn't the enemy building HAs - I'd rather they put their hammers in HAs than in archers or spearmen, both of which cost less and receive considerable defensive bonuses. It's not like 1 star HAs are difficult for a highly promoted gang of Keshiks to deal with. The real problem is if they make construction and have elephants - then your Keshik rush is done. Having said that, they are already done with Feudalism, so I wouldn't worry about it at all - the Keshik rush stops here anyway. Unless you have some absurd numbers advantage, you need seige at this point. Your tech situation is healthy, I'd focus on the economy for now and go for a later push with Cuir or Cavalry to finish it off.

 

[Gumbolt]

I guess I have more of a killer instinct.

Spoiler Thoughts :

Longbows will slow this party but with phants and a split stack this should be very possible. I don't think the Ai will get to engineering that fast here. Sure something like cuirs will be easier to take out the AI. HA on the field should be able to pillage metals quickly.

Mansa had no real stacks here. I doubt the Eygptians will either. They may have 11 cities but their units will be sparsely spread. Engineering here will be useful for trebs. With mace too you will crush this continent. I think there may be 1 more Ai out there somewhere?

Best way to learn this game is to go all out conquest. Great fun. You have a lot of cities to whip here.

 

[Choeimok]

I decided to go with the slower route... not in a war against the target yet though.

Spoiler Turn 200 / 1400 AD :

I don't know why Asoka switched to Guilds, but he was 3 turns from Lib. I actually had to give Ram Education to get Music in time. 6 turns to Gunpowder.
I won't be able to upgrade a lot more than the best couple units... Gilgamesh still plotting. I saw a strange Galley escorted by a Caravel sail along by north coast.


So shortly before Gunpowder...



Annoyingly, the AP declares a crusade on Gilgamesh. I will move my slow troops over to Samarqand to defend while massing cuirs on the Egypt border... I didn't want to defy as I have quite a lot of buddhist cities.



I finish the Taj, change Civics and refuse a demand from Ramesses for Liberalism...


Timbuktu is building a cuir every turn, and most of my other large cities are helping out. Not whipping much since Taj was already so close...

 

[Gumbolt]

Spoiler General game advice :

You need to play this out now. 1400ad cuirs is a bit late. I would be whipping cuirs in every city and be going for this. If there are only 3Ai left then this is overkill. I would not worry about the Sumerians. He would need 3-4 galleys to even land a decent stack.

Still think you need to focus on builds. Temples are really not needed. I rarely build temples.

City builds for me are granary, forge, barracks. Maybe library and other builds in your key science cites. Maybe light houses in food cities. Maybe 1-2 stables in key military cites.

Builds I avoid - Temple, city walls, castles, theatres and colloseums.

Don't be afraid to run wealth in cities to max out science. Also to bulb key techs like edu, lib with great scientists.

 

[Choeimok]

Are happiness buildings really considered to be that bad? I kind of like them, Temples especially when they have the AP hammers. Here, I'm mostly building Buddhist ones, except in cities I want to grow past their current cap. My initial build order in most of these newer cities was some permutation of Granary, Forge, Courthouse and, if heavily reliant on coast tiles, Lighthouse though. I didn't put Barracks or Stables into the production-poorer cities, though I probably did build a few too many stables (I think Pasargadae has one, and some of the Mali cities not called Timbuktu - these are unnecessary).

Not afraid to run wealth, but I do have a bit of a building addiction

Spoiler Turn 232 / 1610 AD :

Gilgamesh actually does have a nasty fleet right here. It's only up to 6 units, but it's 6 units every 2 turns, and I have no navy to defend against it. I will have to divert some Cuirassiers and upgrade that Keshik and maybe the Axe and Archer...


He concedes a turn or two after having lost his landing party though I open borders and renew my trades again, of course. At this point, I have 20 cuirassiers.


With this stack (Keshiks are shortly before leveling up), I think I'm ready to declare. Ramesses entered the Industrial Era last turn, presumably from Scientific Method. Jute will be very annoying here, so I will probably have to declare on Asoka soon just not to lose Akhetaten to culture.


He no longer has Iron now. Asoka has one pretty much in his heartland though, and both have phants. Still, not as nasty as Pikemen.



As the Golden Age ends, I'm one turn from Rifling, have over 53 living Cuirassiers that have taken 3 cities, and adopt some new civics... After losing the peace modifier with Gilga, foreign trade isn't that viable anymore...


Time to get rid of this border gore before it swallows my conquests...



This city actually contains quite a lot of units. Also looks like Cuirs are affected by Chichen Itza as Ram has 85% tile defense. I could turn back and upgrade everyone...


... but after 3 Withdraw cuir attacks, odds got significantly better as the pike and best longbow were whittled down and I only lost 3 guys



With a huge military tech lead, I march on Thebes, which holds a large amount of junk. Asoka is founding cities in presumably AstroLand, bad news.



Let's see if this guy has any idea... I don't think he will trade Gunpowder to Asoka (who can research RP) as are mutually annoyed from the earlier war.


Unless there is a hidden Australia as well, Asoka's cities are probably right here. Pretty close to his lands.



A brutal fight, I lose several good veterans (actually, only 4 according to logs... but they were good)... but where is your 9 wonder hill capital now?


Much rejoice is had as, in the north, Asoka's Iron is no more... unless he has some more up that island, I guess. Those cats have been useful in the slow terrain in this region...


... while in the south, I have added a GG Treb to the army around Pi-Ramesses, it also helped in Thebes. Read about this strategy some time ago and decided to try it, quite nice Second one has been created already.



Last yellow hill city. Asoka has 2 more.



2 cities taken in the same turn. Somebody is about to be mummified.
Shame about "Cuir 1", that guy was great.


Egypt goes down...



... my war exhaustion doesn't. Is it really all from Asoka? That darn Statue of Zeus...
And yeah, I settled a number of excess GP in here, even if maybe another GA would have been stronger. Still don't have Ox and probably won't build it... 5/6 universities and I kind of forgot about it


No city reachable or coming out of revolt next turn, but in 2 turns...



Then again, on the other hand...






That double cuir/cav war was way too easy. Kind of lucky that Gilgamesh's + Astronomy's combined land was so small.



Spammed out quite a few of these guys. The Mansa war was obviously the bloodiest here, as shown by the high Keshik losses...
I did build a lot of theaters near the end to combat the in my larger cities. Surprised that I only have 3 acadamies - those are all self-built...


Karakorum sometimes just queued up wonders while other cities, most prominently Beshbalik and in the late game Timbuktu, were building horses. Some of these like Sankore are kind of junk, but it helped pump random GPs.



The score is probably a joke to you veteran players (just like the end date ), but for me it's nice
Haven't won a game pre-industrialization in quite a while, and never on an at least normal-sized map and above Prince...

... and then I clicked "Exit to Main Menu" instead of "just one more turn" to have a last look at the empire. Oh well. Very fun game


One thing I really need to know though, I will reload the last save...


I knew that Plains tile was suspicious all along. A nice farm to live on, no surprise Beshbalik is sick here.

 

[Gumbolt]

Well done on the win.

Temples - You are talking about Ap hammers. On a conquest game I am spamming whatever unit is going to kill off the AI quickest. For a cuirs rush I would be whipping cuirs in most cities that has any food surplus to grow back quickly. 10-16 pop cities are nice if you run workshops but this game didn't need a science push for the win.

I agree on granary and forge. Library certainly in the capital. Of course in some conquest games building libraries/forges and wonders can actually slow your final conquest date. 2-3 kk vs a forge? The extra 2-3 units could be difference between capturing a city and having to wait 1-2 turns to heal a weaker stack. Same principle on axe vs phants. When a 35h unit will do why spend 50-60 hammers on a build? Point of a cuirs rush is to over run the Ai before it can get modern units.

Barracks and stables can be very useful in food cities. Imagine whipping a city with 2-3 strong food resources. It's +3xp on each whipped unit. If you factor in 1-2 other civic giving +2xp you have a xp units very quickly. C2 cuirs are very nice.

Only cities I don't whip are the HE city and maybe the capital. Or maybe a strong production city that would struggle if whipped.

Overall this was a game to just go all out war once the initial KK setup was done.

 

[tycoonist]

Congrats on the win. I'll post a short report below of my game. Sadly no screenies since I always forget:

Spoiler :

Settled in place. As I mentioned before, the capital was extremely high on hammers, and with conquest on the mind, I saw no pressing reason to move. Founded Beshbalik next to the horses and junlge rice in 2760BC. Sadly no early food (didn't get IW for a very long time) so this city ran on the horses and a grass hills I think for the majority of the game. While teching towards HBR and Archery, I invaded Peter at 1920BC with chariots shortly after he had expanded towards me. Razed his size one city and captured Moscow in 1840BC.

Heading north, we find Darius, who still hasn't expanded (inexplicably) by 1520BC. I take Persepolis with a mixture of chariots and the first few Keshiks. At this point, I found one more city next to the capital (by the fish) to have a total of 5. The economy is in the dumpster, and I'm running on fumes. There's only one solution: more conquest gold. With that in mind, I declare on Mansa (1120BC), with the idea of pillaging for gold. He has a metal connected, so we disconnect it and burn everything that's not in a city to the ground. Meanwhile, the Keshik pumping is in full swing. Still no economy to speak of: no writing, no pottery, no way to get to them. I take a brief ceasefire (700BC) with Mansa after having accomplished nothing of importance apart from some unit trading (works in my favour since I have the ability to produce many more, just can't fund the ones I already have). After healing, we push in again (550BC) and quickly destroy Mansa's 4 city empire by 250BC, razing everything apart from Timbuktu - I can barely support it, but it can pay for itself just about with the furs.

I then head south. Take a barbarian city on the way, then it's time for Ramesses to die. I think I barely teched writing with the conquest gold from Mansa, and at this point I invest in Libraries where I can, in anticipation of capturing the Pyramids. At this point, we are running negative 30 at 0%, so we conquer or die. Ramesses (who has amassed a very nice empire) dies at 250AD (we declared in 1AD). At this point we have just Asoka left to conquer on this continent. Gilgamesh is elsewhere. This is irritating since we don't have the economy to expand for domination right now, and we can't reach Gilgamesh for conquest before astronomy.

We capture the pyramids from Thebes, and like that, we tech to CoL. This is where the economy experiences a massive revival. Courthouses are whipped everywhere and the FP built in Thebes. Meanwhile, the Keshiks heal then declare on Asoka. We take peace with him twice for technologies like alphabet, then currency, which further help to sustain our economy. Finally, he dies in 1050AD. We now have to expand for domination. Build a bunch of settlers, settle a bunch of jungle, take some of Gilgameshes cities on our continent and we're done. Domination in 1210AD.

It was a very enjoyable game overall.

 

[Choeimok]

Gumbolt:
I still don't have the balls to thrash my economy like that just to get more guys faster - until after the Mansa war, I needed my commerce cities (Turfan, Moscow) to be as big as possible not to run out of gold at 0% even with some money from city conquests.
As far as cities with high food output go, Moscow and Karakorum were both not classical whip sites, one being a hybrid capital and one having great hammer output. My only other particularly fast-growing city was Almarikh, settled kind of late after Mansa was dead... (but I did cause it to go at size 11 while other cities were fine over 20 even with heavy WE at some point) and maybe Persepolis, which was also in my top 5 prod cities. Most of the filler cities in between weren't that stuffed... so I kept the whipping "civilized"

Tycoonist:
So the Chariot rush gave you an over 1000 years earlier attack compared to me... very impressive (as is the rest of the report... ), but not surprising considering how long just getting to HBR took. Gilga actually got to colonize those northeastern Drylands?
How many Chariots did it take?

 

[tycoonist]

I believe it was 7 chariots. Monarch AI is pretty forgiving, if it was immortal or deity I would have needed more I think. Also no hill cities to take was a nice bonus to speed. As I mentioned, the capital I took was very high on hammers, so my rush was very early. Only problem was that I nearly crashed my economy dead before HBR, which would have been a disaster.

Gilgamesh did manage to take a few spots yeah. The one near the gold, then a couple near Persepolis and Timbuktu. My army was elsewhere, and I didn't see any reason to stop him anyway (I couldn't afford the cities at the time). In the end, I would have easily hit the domination limit without taking them, but I figured I might as well since I had this horde of keshiks lying around!