ALC Game 28: Ethiopia/Zara

[Coffee Mug]

Very well done, and thanks for the ALC! It was a terrific read.

 

[huerfanista]

Nice game, Benginal. The game was really won at the 1505AD save, if you knew how to take advantage of it. Liz was only 1 turn from redcoats at that point, so it was a good time to reconsider your options:
- Redcoats have no counter until infantry, so you were going to face some very tough slogging, even with cannon. Her land was not going to get you all that much further towards domination, and the cultural problems were pretty obvious going in.
- Nobody else was close to rifling, so all you needed was a navy to start taking out the overseas AIs.
- Liz is a great techer - she had some techs that would really help you and the ability to get you others if you direct her research (she researched biology for me in 8 turns or so).
- The cost/benefit of taking out Liz as opposed to vassaling her was very definitely weighted towards vassaling, IMO. All you needed to do was turn off your slider for a bit to get your oromos upgraded to rifles, build a bunch of galleons/firgates, then go kill.

I'm looking forward to your next game.

 

[Benginal]

The stele is extremely powerfull early on if you have close neighbours. If you are fighting over resources culturally the stele will win you your fight.

Yeah. I didn't mean to be hating on the stele. In some tight situations, pangaea comes to mind, the stele could be very useful in winning you tiles. But in this particular game, where I had no real competition for land the stele wasn't particularly useful.

Very well done, and thanks for the ALC! It was a terrific read.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'll start the next one shortly.

- Redcoats have no counter until infantry, so you were going to face some very tough slogging, even with cannon. Her land was not going to get you all that much further towards domination, and the cultural problems were pretty obvious going in.
- Nobody else was close to rifling, so all you needed was a navy to start taking out the overseas AIs.
- Liz is a great techer - she had some techs that would really help you and the ability to get you others if you direct her research (she researched biology for me in 8 turns or so).
- The cost/benefit of taking out Liz as opposed to vassaling her was very definitely weighted towards vassaling, IMO. All you needed to do was turn off your slider for a bit to get your oromos upgraded to rifles, build a bunch of galleons/firgates, then go kill.

This is all very true. I think I great overestimated how hard it was going to be finishing her off. Your game convinced me that vassaling her and moving on would have been a much better move.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

That was a quick and interesting finish, with a twist. Congratulations on the victory and on completing your first ALC.

I was surprised by the stack size you built, and even called "medium" to boot, and by the size of your score. Maybe there is a correlation there I can learn from. Large army, large score.

Some questions, if you don't mind. What was your thinking behind the unit promotions you chose? The Drill 4 Combat 2 infantry you mentioned got my attention. Do you use Drill a lot or just in specific situations? It isn't a promotion I use very often. Drill 4's usefulness is pretty clear, but you have to go through 1, 2, and 3 first. Drill 1 has never struck me as that powerful.

Since you stated that it was your production base that lead to this victory, in combination with getting to Steel quickly, I am interested in talking about what you did to maximize the hammers. I noticed a few towns in your IW city so it doesn't appear that improvements were key, and your empire wasn't overly large as far as I see. I might be missing something here. This goes back to my earlier question about producing large numbers of units.

Capitulation is powerful. If you can use overwhelming numbers to take out an enemy's core you allow yourself the ability to move on to the next opponent before your army become obsolete which saves hammers, beakers, and just about everything else.

That's an interesting point about how speed saves hammers and beakers, I hadn't considered it that way before. In essence units face hammer decay after they are built as well as before.

By the way, did you have an economic strategy in play this game? I'm not sure what your thinking was in that department. Cottages and city capture?

It is funny to note that if you had been able to hold on to London and Canterbury you probably would have had a Domination Victory instead of Diplomatic. Not that it matters, just how these things work out. Same holds true for letting that island become a rainbow settlement of course, but in a way if seems fitting that giving back two cities turned a Domination win into a Diplomatic win.

Thanks for the game, I am looking forward to the next one.

 

[Benginal]

That was a quick and interesting finish, with a twist. Congratulations on the victory and on completing your first ALC.

Thanks! I'm pretty pleased with the end result, not gonna lie.

I was surprised by the stack size you built, and even called "medium" to boot, and by the size of your score. Maybe there is a correlation there I can learn from. Large army, large score.

A large army is awesome. Later in the game it's pretty easy to pay for and with some way points set it's not too hard to maneuver. My stacks going into the Russian war were definitely large, but when I tackled WvO and Charlemagne my stacks were small. I didn't have any screen shots Charlemagne's stack, but it was massive. And large army doesn't mean large score, per se. But early domination/conquest win does and a large army lets you do this.

Some questions, if you don't mind. What was your thinking behind the unit promotions you chose? The Drill 4 Combat 2 infantry you mentioned got my attention. Do you use Drill a lot or just in specific situations? It isn't a promotion I use very often. Drill 4's usefulness is pretty clear, but you have to go through 1, 2, and 3 first. Drill 1 has never struck me as that powerful.

The infantry with drill 4 were promoted oromos. I send my infantry right up the combat line usually, especially when I have a tech advantage or at least tech parity like I did in this game. The drill 4 on the oromos was easy to get since they start with drill 2.

Since you stated that it was your production base that lead to this victory, in combination with getting to Steel quickly, I am interested in talking about what you did to maximize the hammers. I noticed a few towns in your IW city so it doesn't appear that improvements were key, and your empire wasn't overly large as far as I see. I might be missing something here. This goes back to my earlier question about producing large numbers of units.

Improvements were pretty important. I built a ton of workshops. The main thing though is the forges and factories. I used to underestimate the power of multipliers. But take your average size 10 industrial era city. Then have it working 6 workshops and some food and maybe some watermills. This gives about 20 base . Run that through a forge (+25%), a factory (+50%), Police State (+25%), and State Property (+10%) and you've got 20*(110%) = 20*2.1 = 42 hammers a turn. This means that a pretty average city can produce two infantry every 7 turns. For the older, bigger cities you can get up to 40 base hammers. So take any big city, give it the Ironworks or the Heroic Epic, on top of those and you've got 40*(210%) = 40*3.1 = 124 hammers a turn. I was able to get by with that in this game, but you can easily get late game cities over 200 hammers a turn. To practice, go into worldbuilder, give yourself all the technologies, and then play with improvements and buildings and see how awesome a city can become.

That's an interesting point about how speed saves hammers and beakers, I hadn't considered it that way before. In essence units face hammer decay after they are built as well as before.

Your second idea is an interesting way to think about it. The idea is, if a unit dies it costs hammers to replace. If it doesn't die you can spend those hammers making something else (another unit). So it's better to have units not die, which is why it's good to end wars early.

By the way, did you have an economic strategy in play this game? I'm not sure what your thinking was in that department. Cottages and city capture?

The early economy was powered by the Great Lighthouse and a bunch of coastal cities. The Great Lighthouse is extremely powerful in the early game and can essentially be it's own economy with no cottages or specialists necessary. But I used some of each and also had two gold tiles being worked early. The middle game relied on beelining. The thought there is that I only have so many beakers, so let's dedicate them all to getting steel. Late game was a lot of building wealth and just having the slider completely off since I stopped teching after combustion.

It is funny to note that if you had been able to hold on to London and Canterbury you probably would have had a Domination Victory instead of Diplomatic. Not that it matters, just how these things work out. Same holds true for letting that island become a rainbow settlement of course, but in a way if seems fitting that giving back two cities turned a Domination win into a Diplomatic win.

Yeah, it's the little things that make the difference. The game had been won for a long time already and I was ready to finish this one up time wise, as opposed to turn wise. I probably could have finished in fewer turns had I take more of Liz's, WvO's, or Charlemagne's land, but it's just so much clicking.

Thanks for the game, I am looking forward to the next one.

Me too! I think the RNG felt bad for me not finding my neighbors in this game, so it made sure I wouldn't miss Mao.