ALC Game #26: Willem van Oranje/Dutch

[dirtyparrot]

I agree with Shyuhe. Gandhi's war target was already decided prior to you dropping to cautious. Now, if you wanted to keep good relations longterm that's a different matter. Could you please post a screenshot of the victory conditions. I would be interested in seeing how much culture Gandhi has in his top 3 cities.

 

[shyuhe]

No-one wants to war with Gandhi... they all either love him or are afraid of his might.

What I'd be most interested to know is whether Gandhi can change his target after he makes the initial decision to "do war". Originally he made that decision when he was pleased with me, so presumably his intention was to war with someone else. My question is, can that change if my relations with him drop to cautious or below for a while? Will he decide that I'm suddenly the more attractive target, or will he go for the person he originally decided to war against regardless of how relations change with me?

No the AI will not change targets. The AI CAN go out of war prep and then immediately go back into prep against a different target but the probability of that happening is quite small.

 

[Killroyan]

Have you checked Ghandi's cultural status already? It would be bad if you got this game wrapped up like this (just mow over the 3 weaklings now) and get to steam power asap if you ask me after rifling, only to find out Ghandi is like 20 turns away from a cultural victory.

 

[timmy827]

Really? I've never really been a huge fan of Curaissers, especially when my neighbours have the ability to build Pikemen. Usually they'll still have to wait for the siege units before attacking, so the extra movement is almost unnecessary. Plus of course, they can't get the city raider promotions! To me, the main attraction of Rifling is the ability to upgrade all those highly promoted Macemen to CR3 Rifles. No-one messes with those - it really will be a steamroll at that point.

Oh well, different playstyles I guess. I'm coming around to the blitz side of things, sure each pike will kill 1 Curiasser unless you get lucky with withdrawl, but overall I like this approach. Either you sacrifice siege units (immediately w/o bombarding) when you could just sac mounted units instead, which still takes longer than all out blitz, or you bombard which takes forever against castles and guarantees a horde of whipped units opposing you. I think in general the cur/cav blitz has a few more hammer losses, but you get your new land sooner and the cities have much more pop since they likely have only been whipped once. Normally, this gives your oppenents less time to tech to rifles or grens, but I doubt that will be an issue here.

CR3 rifles are terrific IF you are fighting comtemporary units. However, in a rifles vs. medieval war, since the defender base strength is typically 6 or 8 against your 14, straight combat promotions on a rifle (or cav) is barely weaker than CR line.

 

[Kwibuss]

Have you checked Ghandi's cultural status already? It would be bad if you got this game wrapped up like this (just mow over the 3 weaklings now) and get to steam power asap if you ask me after rifling, only to find out Ghandi is like 20 turns away from a cultural victory.

I was about to mention that. Looking at the culture graph you can see his line is going steeper every turn and Gandhi is a leader that usually goes for a culture win so keep an eye on him.
Gandhi being the powerhouse is quite funny

 

[EmperorFool]

Rifling used to be my preferred tech path, but I've recently switched to favoring Steel. At 12, suicide cannons usually don't actually suicide; they bring down the defenses faster, and they soften up the defenders so that you macemen take very little damage.

I can usually drop defenses to 0% on the first turn and soften up the defenders and take the city on the next turn. If you bring enough cannons, you can have the city in one turn.

Steel is an expensive tech, but its prerequisite Chemistry opens up Steam Power (with Replaceable Parts) for your Dikes and provides Frigates to protect your East Indiamen and intercept Ghandi's invasion fleet.

 

[Silu]

Damn, that's pretty ballsy to keep a religion adopted that no one else has. Any particular reason for it? (Don't remember if this was discussed in one of the earlier rounds) I would have changed to NSR long ago. Theo bonus is nice, but now with FR available too I would think it's a no-brainer. Not that it matters much, seems that at this point you could take on the whole world at the same time

As for the military techs, with all these previous wars giving foot soldier veterans, Cuirassiers lose a lot of their appeal. I'd say Steel first, then Rifling. Cannon/Mace destroys things even better than Rifle/Treb.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Here's the victory conditions screen, as requested by several people. Gandhi is still a long way from a cultural victory (75,000 culture required on Epic, remember), but that's definitely something to keep an eye on. Thanks for the heads up.



I also added this screen into the write-up.

Hmm, just thinking about the screenshot above, I'm not sure what the (100+) means after each city's culture... I would have assumed it was the extra culture per turn, except it's the same for every city, which can't be right. Any ideas?

Oh, and by the way, I've encountered an error with the BUG mod - cities planned via the dotmap feature don't remain when the game is exited and loaded again. Since the nature of this game necessitates it being played in multiple sessions, that's really rather inconvenient: each time I begin a new session, I have to redo all the dotmaps. As a result, for now I've switched back to using signs to remind me of city locations, which are less aesthetically pleasing but at least remain on the map between sessions. Any future fix to make the dotmaps stay between multiple sessions would be great though.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Edited my post above with a few thoughts on the BUG mod.

No the AI will not change targets. The AI CAN go out of war prep and then immediately go back into prep against a different target but the probability of that happening is quite small.

Okay, good to know. Thanks for that.

Hmm, I wonder if I can convince Alex to declare war on Hammurabi again, to keep him off my back... I'd probably have to get him to make peace with Mao first, though.

Oh well, different playstyles I guess. I'm coming around to the blitz side of things, sure each pike will kill 1 Curiasser unless you get lucky with withdrawl, but overall I like this approach. Either you sacrifice siege units (immediately w/o bombarding) when you could just sac mounted units instead, which still takes longer than all out blitz, or you bombard which takes forever against castles and guarantees a horde of whipped units opposing you. I think in general the cur/cav blitz has a few more hammer losses, but you get your new land sooner and the cities have much more pop since they likely have only been whipped once. Normally, this gives your oppenents less time to tech to rifles or grens, but I doubt that will be an issue here.

Interesting thoughts. I think the hammer cost is significantly lower when using siege units though, and to be honest I really haven't seen the AI whipping much in this game. Perhaps it's due to some error in their calculation of how dangerous my stack is... but for whatever reason, if my first few units will have low odds, the AI seems to think it is "safe" and doesn't bother whipping. Or at least that's what I've seen with China so far.

CR3 rifles are terrific IF you are fighting comtemporary units. However, in a rifles vs. medieval war, since the defender base strength is typically 6 or 8 against your 14, straight combat promotions on a rifle (or cav) is barely weaker than CR line.

Actually the defender strength is usually much higher than that, due to promotions and terrain bonuses (and especially against Protective leaders). Plus, having CR3 Rifles early is a good insurance policy... because they don't go out of date when other nations get up to par in tech.

Rifling used to be my preferred tech path, but I've recently switched to favoring Steel. At 12, suicide cannons usually don't actually suicide; they bring down the defenses faster, and they soften up the defenders so that you macemen take very little damage.

I can usually drop defenses to 0% on the first turn and soften up the defenders and take the city on the next turn. If you bring enough cannons, you can have the city in one turn.

Steel is an expensive tech, but its prerequisite Chemistry opens up Steam Power (with Replaceable Parts) for your Dikes and provides Frigates to protect your East Indiamen and intercept Ghandi's invasion fleet.

True, having siege units that are powerful enough that they rarely die in suicide attacks is a good thing. That would help to reduce the rate at which I'm losing Macemen as well. I think I'm liking the Rifling-Steel plan at the moment, probably with Steam Power after that.

Damn, that's pretty ballsy to keep a religion adopted that no one else has. Any particular reason for it? (Don't remember if this was discussed in one of the earlier rounds) I would have changed to NSR long ago. Theo bonus is nice, but now with FR available too I would think it's a no-brainer. Not that it matters much, seems that at this point you could take on the whole world at the same time

I stayed in Hinduism mostly because it was the religion that all my best cities had. The only other religion that had a semi-decent spread in my lands was Judaism, and since we were planning a war with China (the only other nation that had that religion), I didn't think it was worth keeping them happy. I guess I could have gone to no state religion, and perhaps that would have been the more sensible option for keeping everyone happy - but to be honest I wasn't really too concerned about that, and preferred having the bonus +25% to hammers for buildings.

As for the military techs, with all these previous wars giving foot soldier veterans, Cuirassiers lose a lot of their appeal. I'd say Steel first, then Rifling. Cannon/Mace destroys things even better than Rifle/Treb.

Hmm, another one for Steel first and then Rifling. Maybe I'll have to rethink my priorities. Cannons are certainly very enticing.

 

[Silu]

Actually the defender strength is usually much higher than that, due to promotions and terrain bonuses (and especially against Protective leaders). Plus, having CR3 Rifles early is a good insurance policy... because they don't go out of date when other nations get up to par in tech.

When attacking, combat promotions get applied to your base strength, while CR promotions are deducted from the defender's strength. So the higher the base strength differential (and the higher the defender's defense modifier (=PRO) is), the better Combat promotions are. The logic is kind of screwy - there was a long and winding thread a while ago discussing this.

 

[Lord Parkin]

When attacking, combat promotions get applied to your base strength, while CR promotions are deducted from the defender's strength. So the higher the base strength differential (and the higher the defender's defense modifier (=PRO) is), the better Combat promotions are. The logic is kind of screwy - there was a long and winding thread a while ago discussing this.

Yeah, I'm aware of the screwy effects with the CR promotion. I was just pointing out that often the gap isn't so large, even against medieval units. For instance, a Longbowman with CG3 (very possible with a Protective civ) may have that promotion cancelled out by a CR3 promotion, but will also have other bonuses, like +25% from fortification, perhaps +50% from a hill, not to mention the city cultural bonus. So you can easily be fighting against 10-14 strength Longbowmen even with CR3 Riflemen.

(Of course, that doesn't factor in collateral damage, but that's beside the point.)

 

[Kwibuss]

Lord Parkin: The 100+ behind the culture of the city means that it needs over 100 turns to reach legendary status.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Lord Parkin: The 100+ behind the culture of the city means that it needs over 100 turns to reach legendary status.

Ah, right. That makes sense then. Thanks for that.

 

[madscientist]

Well played. I believe it is time to finish off China and use that overwhelming production lead to mass produce military and clear the continent you own. Rifles and cannons are what you want, at that point screw research and pound the enemies into submission using the culture slider to deal with war weariness if emanciaption becomes an issue. You do not need the SoL wonder.

 

[azzaman333]

No the AI will not change targets. The AI CAN go out of war prep and then immediately go back into prep against a different target but the probability of that happening is quite small.

When you refuse a demand they can change their target to you IIRC. Apart from that, I don't think they change though.

 

[v8_mark]

Yeah, I'm aware of the screwy effects with the CR promotion. I was just pointing out that often the gap isn't so large, even against medieval units

I think Silu's talking about the base defender strength, which, in all cases when you're talking about longbowmen, is 6. Everything else on top of that (CG bonuses, terrain bonuses) is a defensive modifier.

What Silu's saying is that CR rifles vs boosted medieval units is not so effective because CR promotions are only deducted, as a converted percentage, from the base defender's strength. So, in practical terms:

A longbowman (6) with CG3 (+75%) on a hill (+25%) in a city (+50%) has a total defensive strength of 6+(6*1.5) = 15.

A City Raider I promotion for the attacker is 20%, taken off the defender; but (here's where it screws you up) it's calculated against the base defensive strength of the longbow, which is 6. So the defender's new strength becomes:

6 + 50% + 25% + 75% - 16.67% (converted from the 20% attacker bonus) = 14.00.

So it would be 14 vs 14, which is a 50/50 battle, whereas with Combat I, the rifle would have a slight advantage:

14 + 10% = 15.4
vs
6 + 50% + 75% + 25% = 15

...which is why Combat I is better than City Raider I when there is a big difference (about 225% and above) between the base strengths of the competing units.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I think Silu's talking about the base defender strength, which, in all cases when you're talking about longbowmen, is 6. Everything else on top of that (CG bonuses, terrain bonuses) is a defensive modifier.

What Silu's saying is that CR rifles vs boosted medieval units is not so effective because CR promotions are only deducted, as a converted percentage, from the base defender's strength. So, in practical terms:

A longbowman (6) with CG3 (+75%) on a hill (+25%) in a city (+50%) has a total defensive strength of 6+(6*1.5) = 15.

A City Raider I promotion for the attacker is 20%, taken off the defender; but (here's where it screws you up) it's calculated against the base defensive strength of the longbow, which is 6. So the defender's new strength becomes:

6 + 50% + 25% + 75% - 16.67% (converted from the 20% attacker bonus) = 14.00.

So it would be 14 vs 14, which is a 50/50 battle, whereas with Combat I, the rifle would have a slight advantage:

14 + 10% = 15.4
vs
6 + 50% + 75% + 25% = 15

...which is why Combat I is better than City Raider I when there is a big difference (about 225% and above) between the base strengths of the competing units.

Hmm, interesting... I hadn't heard about this before. I guess it makes sense that if you have a very high base strength unit, the combat line becomes much more effective, especially against lower base strength units.

Still, the CR3 will come in handy when the other civs start getting Musketmen/Knights/Riflemen of their own, which they no doubt will at some stage.

By the way, I think Longbowmen only get a +25% bonus from cities, not +50% as you have in your calculation above. But that's a minor point.

Can you explain why the 20% from CR1 becomes a -16.67% and not a -20% in your example above?

 

[v8_mark]

It's to do with reciprocal fractions: in essence, it's explained by the fact that it takes an increase of 20% to get from 5 to 6, but a decrease of 16.67% to get from 6 to 5. Hence the 20% 'bonus' is converted into a 16.67% 'penalty'; in actual terms, the percentages are equivalent.

Good catch on the city bonus; it's not quite as big a difference in outcome as I'd advertised, in that case. Of course, the advantage with Combat I is that it works in the field as well

 

[Lord Parkin]

It's to do with reciprocal fractions: in essence, it's explained by the fact that it takes an increase of 20% to get from 5 to 6, but a decrease of 16.67% to get from 6 to 5. Hence the 20% 'bonus' is converted into a 16.67% 'penalty'; in actual terms, the percentages are equivalent.

Hmm, that seems like a very odd way of calculating it. But I'll take your word for it.

Good catch on the city bonus; it's not quite as big a difference in outcome as I'd advertised, in that case. Of course, the advantage with Combat I is that it works in the field as well

Very true, that. I'll certainly be using the Combat line a lot more once Riflemen come around.

 

[EmperorFool]

I'm not sure what the (100+) means after each city's culture.

Just to elaborate on Kwibuss's answer, it is an estimate of the number of turns remaining before the city reaches Legendary status based on its culture level for the previous turn.

Oh, and by the way, I've encountered an error with the BUG mod - cities planned via the dotmap feature don't remain when the game is exited and loaded again.

It should definitely be saving your dotmaps--it has from the introduction of the feature. I recommend upgrading to BUG 4.0 if you haven't already. Please see the Troubleshooting page for information on getting this problem solved.

I guess it makes sense that if you have a very high base strength unit, the combat line becomes much more effective, especially against lower base strength units.

The key is the ratio of their respective strengths, not how high they are individually. For example, Combat has the same effectiveness for two Infantry as it does for two Warriors because they have the same 1:1 base strength ratio). Combat becomes more effective as that ratio goes up.