AAW - Almost Always War

[katank]

Sweet. I'll give you guys a report some time tomorrow night. Took a quick look at the save. They should be toast in 20-30 turns.

Wow, this one seems to zip by awfully fast.

Anyone interested in an actual Prince AW game? Pangae, AW, raging barbs? We may very well get smacked if the Ghandi silent aggressor game is any indication.

 

[Shadzy19]

I think we should make it at least continents , for me it seems playing AW on a massive land map makes things easier , where if you play on continents you have to make sure you keep you'r economy going and not all civilizations are geared towards war right away. I have several prince/monarch AW wins on my list , those games are definatly a blast to play and i would certainly be up for it.

 

[katank]

I've had a relatively easy time with Prince AW games. Key is whether you manage to pillage and park everyone. On Monarch, I don't succeed quite as often due to AIs starting with archers and also higher production.

Pangaea and continents seems to be a toss up in difficulty for me. While on continents you have to worry about the economy, pangaea you have to worry about a massive AI zerg flood. Thankfully, this flood isn't as great early on due to AIs not prioritizing metal casting and hence forges but later on can be quite overwhelming.

 

[bihary]

I have played some AW games on prince on pangea. I had a problem with it - if I could park them out, i could win easily, if I could not park them out, I lost horribly. Neither was too much fun. That is why I designed this variant. Now this was also very easy with you guys.

I think I will draw back from SG's a bit now.

 

[katank]

What? Draw back? Awww.

Too tired to write up full thing tonight. Here's brief summary. Get screenies and stuff up tomorrow. Save is attached if you are interested. End turn you get victory. Definitely made tons of suboptimal moves this turnset with worker actions. Also went a little nuts on the final 3-4 city assaults. Then again, what the heck. Just finish it ASAP.

Goals: Kill as much as possible.

Turn 0 (1160): Checked everything. Looks good. Keep cranking troops and killing stuff. Paris looks dead. Why the heck do we have so many war eles? Gotta pray no phalanxes around.

Turn 1 (1170): Killed barb swordsman with war ele (3.2/8) Ouch. Bastard pillaged my plantation too. Didn't see that last turn.

Turn 2 (1180): IBT killed two Greek Swordmen, 1 longbow, and 1 axe near Thermopylae on defense. Stack stopping to heal. Keshiks run amok in Greek territory.

Turn 3 (1190): Suicided catapult. Killed damaged (4.7/6) Greek longbowmen with sword (4.7/6). Killed damaged (3.4/5) Greek phalanx with shock promoted xbow narrowly (0.6/6) Burned Kassite and liberated 85 gold. Pillaged Greek iron


Turn 4 (1200): Engineering -> Guilds. IBT France got killed by a barb axeman! Pillaged Greek's last ivory (I think). That keshik then killed a catapult (4.5/6). Act of divine intervention in form of barb swordsman IBT wounded the longbow and the first keshik died but allowed the second win (4.7/6). 4 workers captured! Axe killed barb archer (2.6/5)

Turn 5 (1210): Our brave ivory pillaging, catapult killing keshik falls to a hostile phalanx IBT.

Turn 7 (1230): Initiating siege of Thermopylae with two stacks.

Turn 8 (1240): Mace killed barb archer. yadeeyada.

Turn 9 (1250): Thermopylaw falls at the cost of 5 catapults and 1 brave maceman. Perhaps the Greek army's legendary resistance shone through in form of bad dice rolls for me. Also killed some barbs elsewhere.

Turn 11 (1270): Guilds come in. Start gunpowder. Not as if any muskets will ever make it to the front.

Turn 13 (1290): IBT countless barb warriors suicide on our elephants. Burned Delphi by eliminating lone Greek longbow there with mace (4.5/8).

Turn 14 (1300): IBT one of our newly minted pikers kill a barb axe defending across a river (1.7/6). Another wasn't so lucky and was avenged by our xbow (5.2/6). Tore Spartan defenders to bits with 4 suicide catapults one of whom survived and won a flawless victory with 2 maces, 1 ele, and 1 keshik.

Turn 16 (1320): IBT 2 barb swords, 1 barb axe, and 1 barb warrior suicides themselves. Corinth sacked!

 

[Shadzy19]

This surely was a rather easy game for this quality team , to bad bihary isnt up for something more challenging

I had a lot of fun and enjoyed the discussions , i surely learned keshiks and horse archers in general arent bad units as i always seemed to think.
We surely blasted them away

 

[bihary]

Thanx for the game guys, we fried them. I learned a lot about wartime economy.

I jumped in to MM10: Gandhi’s Mad Science. (0%-Science), it looks like a challenging war-mongerish game, and they need at least one more player to start. Look at it.
I am also in Warmonger's Delight Part II - Aztec Style (AWN), although that game has seriously stopped now and I may drop from it completely.
I think I would have time for another SG if we can decide on something similar to the one we just finished. I propose two versions:

A) Prince AW
B) Monarch Almost Always War (with 3 opponents at any time)

I would try dense archipegalo for either. (Archipegalo with low sea level). It pretty much guarantees all-around coastal connectivity, but still it is hard to do pillage and park which I find cheesy.
I would pick a non-agressive, philosophical leader, just to make it more challenging and to see how GP generation can be adventageous in a warmongering game.

What do you guys think?

 

[katank]

Hmm, I might try MM10 then. I'm also in the Warmonger's delight one. That IS seriously stalled. We started this one quite a bit afterwards and finished this one already. Then again, you guys are crazy fast. How do you have this much time for civ? I should probably spend more time on classes.

Wow, the two versions you propose both sound fun. I'm not sure about Philosophical. I'd rather have Industrious for the oracle-metal casting slignshot and early forges. I don't have much experience with archipelago. Playing that on AW could be I imagine my poor fish nets dying every 2 turns.

 

[Shadzy19]

I never played a archipelago AW game neither , might be fun to try it out.
I would make it a prince game and pick a civ without financial / agressive to make it harder. Why does a philosiphical leader need more farms though , i usually use them the same way as the others , just 1 crazy GP farm in and cottage / production on the others in stead of farming all over the place and spreading you'r GP production , i could be wrong on this 1 though never really tried it the other way

 

[bihary]

Here is my take on philosophical:

GP production is a square-root(n) process, while most of the other resources, notably commerce is a linear(n) process. What do I mean? If you make n cities with boosted commerce, the benefit you get scales linearly with n, obviously. On the other hand, if you make n cities for GP production, you indeed get GP points scaling linearly with n, but the number of great persons you generate scales with sqrt(n), as the GP cost of great persons go up. For 600 GP, you get 3, for 1000 you still only get 4. And I agree - making one or maybe two GP factories is much better than spreading them out - weaker GP producers will never produce a single great person.

It follows then, that GP production is more powerful the smaller your empire is. Indeed, in OCC games it is the GP-generated super-specialists that keep you in the game.

Now I personally like to operate with small empires (and prefer smallish maps too), I like less MM with the same amount of strategic thinking.

So the kind of game I am proposing would be on a small map with more than 5 civs, say 7. On a pangea, as we saw in our game, such a crowded setup leads to fast elimination of the stupid AI civs. Archipagelo on the other hand seperates the players - Organizing an effective parking or rushing envolves more time and more necessary early tech on the seafaring side. Picking a philosophical leader further encourages smallish empire-size, oriented towards vertical development, rather than fast expansion. An archipegalo with low sea level IS however pretty much interconnected through coastal paths. So it is not like we never meet our opponents before Astronomy.

So I am not trying to optimize the traits here, but trying to force us into a more strategic situation with more subtle choices for efficiency. I may be all wrong and an AW game even with these settings would just evolve into a rushing, chopping, crunching rampage, but I wolud like to try.

Would you like to play such a "slowly developing, strategic" AW game?

 

[katank]

Wow, an AW game that does not devolve into a chopfest and "owning stuff" with hordes of swords and catapults? What the heck is that?

Jesting aside, it could prove interesting. Still depends on if we are playing for fun or playing to win. Philosophical is a fun trait for me. Financial is the killer trait on water maps.

Despite the spirit of a slow game, I still may end up chop rushing galleys to try to ship as many swords over as possible to another continent.

 

[bihary]

How about Saladin the Sucker?

He is Spiritual - poised to grab an early religion, and Philosophical. Not quite the warmonger type... Still, he has a nice UU at a nice time, and spiritual is actually pretty good for war because of the tailored civic switch possibility.

I will start a prince AW game with him, OK?

The title of the thread: Prince Saladin the Pirate (AWP)
I will generate a start, post the start and we can start the discussion.