All Leaders Challenge Game Strategy Session: Montezuma

[Nares]

And looking down the road, how do I deal with Bismark and Alex?

That's what I'm trying to get at. I figure Bismark's gonna have his UUs by the time I get there. The question then becomes, can I side with one of them, and incite them into war? It seems that's already done in your game, or at least is at this point. If I had to land against one, I would prefer it to be Alex, but I might be better off using him to get at Bismark before he starts cranking the tanks out. Additionally, in my game, they've somehow developed years of peaceful relations, and share a common religion. Seeing as I have five religions, and they have the only one I don't (Taoism), I'm a bit perplexed as to how to garner relations with them short of massive bribery.

 

[The Tyrant]

Nares brings up a very good point -- religion. It seems that Alex and Bismark each have one city with one religion. If you can send a few missionaries over, you could probably get Bismark to convert. Since he and Gandhi are both Hindu at the moment, it might be best to target Qin for the next round of unpleasantness. That would fit nicely with my preference to always attack my strongest competitor.

The different religions and close borders will keep Alex and Bismark unhappy with each other. If you can convert Bismark away from Hinduism, then he shouldn't mind so much when you take out Gandhi. The earlier you can do this, the better, as you may also be able to convince him to stop trading with Gandhi. Wouldn't want the techs you trade Bismark to be traded to Gandhi in turn.

As for the distant intercontinental war, close call but I would probably take out Alex first. Bismark's tanks can be terrifying, but by the time he gets them you'll have all of one continent and hopefully a good-sized chunk of another. You can overwhelm him with numbers. Until the final showdown, I think Bismark would make a much more stable ally "across the pond" than Alex.

Basically, because of the religions present on the other continent, whoever you attack next should ideally line up with who you expect to take first on the other landmass. Attacking Gandhi will upset Bismark, and if Qin converts to Islam, then attacking him will further upset Alex. You're at a critical point in the diplomatic arena. The choices you make now will be felt for the rest of the game.

I like your idea of waiting to get a military tech advantage, then swooping in for the kill. Since you're currently at 60% research, it might be necessary to use good buddy Bismark for trading opportunities to help you get there, even if that means making him a little stronger in the process.

Interesting to note that all of Alex's cities have Greek names and all of Bismark's cities have German names. I'm sure they've warred by this point, but neither can get an advantage on the other. Hopefully it stays that way for a while.

 

[Thrar]

Bismarck's UU is still quite far away, you have time. Besides, if you get your continent and Alex, you'd be over the domination limit, so no need to ever fight Bismarck.
I'd go for Gandhi first, then either Alex or Qin. Don't wait for rifles! Go straight for cannons, on the way you automatically pick up grenadiers, which are more than enough to beat the defense that's around now. Especially since you have cavalry, which works well against anything except rifles. Cannons will be nice once you have them, but don't delay war until then.
Make some 10-15 cavalries, some catapults and maybe a grenadier every now and then for stack and city defense. You can take weaker cities (up to 40%) without bombarding, so send your slower catapults right to where they're needed. Once you have cannons, give them CR II right away, then they can join the fun, directly attacking cities. Note that the catapult->cannon upgrade is 200g a piece, so you probably won't do that often.

 

[stuge]

First I want to congratulate you, Sisiutil, for your great idea. This thread is a great contribution to the strategy forum. Like an in-depth strategy analysis but with a chance for anyone to post their thoughts.

As for the next target for annihilation, I'd vote for Qin. In my experience, Gandhi tends to build a fixed nuber of units but Qin just keeps stacking them up. Best to stop him sooner rather than later...

I like Thrar's idea of going to war with cavalry, cannons and grenadiers. That mix is good enough without rifles and will allow you to start the war sooner and get rid of that itching of your fists.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Nares brings up a very good point -- religion. It seems that Alex and Bismark each have one city with one religion.

Alexander has at least 3 that I see on the screenshot -- Sparta (Islam), Argus (Judaism), and Thermopylae (Taoism) -- but your overall point is still valid. Neither Alexander nor Bismarck has founded a religion, so they should be easily swayed to whatever faith gets spread the farthest and the most quickly.

 

[Sisiutil]

Stuge, thank you for your kind words. I can't recall seeing a thread exactly like this, though I could be wrong and I'm not going to claim complete originality. It seemed obvious to me when I came up with the idea. It's kind of a hybrid of one of those "here's my game, what should I do next" threads and a succession game.

Wow, gang, what a great round of posts and suggestions! Thank you all so much.

I agree it's time to take even more advantage of the religions I've founded. I was going to spam some Confucian Missionaries and send them to Qin and Ghandi just for gold, but it makes sense to leverage them diplomatically as well. I think I'm going to go after Astronomy very soon so I can build a Galleon to carry three Missionaries at once; carting one at a time over in Caravels is just going to be tedious. With a little luck, I may get a Great Merchant and send him over on one trip to fund military upgrades.

(Speaking of GP, I think I've delayed building National Epic long enough. Mexico City is, for all intents and purposes, my GP Farm, especially thanks to that mix of Wonders providing GP points. I'm probably going to build NE there soon and couple it with Oxford for my 2 National Wonders in that city. Thoughts?)

I agree that Bismark should be my conversion target and buddy. I like to target stronger, higher-scoring civs, and Bismark is currently middle-of-the-pack while Alex and Ghandi are duking it out on top. It's proving very easy to get along with the German, while we all know how Mercurial Alex can be. Still, I don't want a war with Alex just yet, so I have to manage relations with him carefully.

At this point I am aiming for a domination victory, so I have to own my continent and then take just enough of Alex's territory for victory. If Bismark has his Panzers by then, we could team up on poor old Alex. It depends how much territory and pop I need for the win by then. I don't want Bismark taking the area/pop I need and necessitating a war against him too.

But that's way down the road at this point. Good to set the groundwork for it now, though.

Thrar, I like your Cannons/Grenadiers suggestion. I was going to pursue Rifling after Gunpowder, but now I'm thinking of heading south on the tech chart as you're urging. Formerly, I didn't see much use in Grenadiers, but I'm gradually warming to them. IIRC, it's cheaper to upgrade Macemen to Grenadiers rather than Rifles, and they later upgrade to Infantry. Plus they wear big tall beaver fur hats and throw things that go BOOM!. How can you not like that?

I am inclined to go after Qin next because he is stronger and Ghandi tends to focus on a lot of non-military production. He can wait. But it means improving relations with Ghandi to reduce the risk of having to fight him at the same time. Conversion is just not going to be an option, so I think some trades to Ghandi's advantage are the way to go. If necessary, I may go after Liberalism and switch to Free Religion if Ghandi is looking threatening.

Also, when I go to war with Qin, I face the risk of something that I have not yet had to endure in this game: pillaging. I share a lot of border territory with Qin, so I can't hope to stop him from invading and plundering my land. Peter didn't have a clear route to my territory for pillaging, and couldn't spare the units to do so. Qin has that path and the units. If I'm not careful, I could even see him taking one of my cities.

I am hoping that Chengdu will flip in the next few turns while I'm pursuing my techs and infrastructure, that way I don't have to worry about it. To then go after Qin, I am thinking I should pull most of my units in Novgorod and elsewhere in the south back to Tijuana and Mexico City and invade from there. My thinking is that Qin will then have to engage the stacks rather than do much pillaging around my core cities. Novgorod and Moscow will of course be more vulnerable to pillaging, but I now have an army of captured workers to fix things once it's safe to send them out into the countryside. I just have to keep them from being captured, especially Moscow once I've built Forbidden Palace there. Or should I hold off on that until the war is going my way to avoid the risk of city capture and its destruction?

It will be a hard war at first, simply because of the number of cities Qin has in the North that are so close to mine. If they're weakly defended and I have a good tech/unit advantage, I can split into several stacks and attack multiple cities simultaneously. But if they're well defended and Qin bee-lines his techs and upgrades to match me like Peter did, it's going to be tough. Ghandi would be easier to invade, as his cities are more or less in a long string and could be taken one after another by a single stack.

But I never take the easy road. Qin has a higher power rating than me. That is not going to change if I leave him alone, and he's roughly on par with me tech-wise. Hard as it may be at first, I think he's next.

As always, your thoughts and advice are appreciated.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

I'm probably going to build NE there soon and couple it with Oxford for my 2 National Wonders in that city. Thoughts?)

IMHO there are two criteria that usually dictate building Oxford in your GP factory.

First, you need to have happiness taken care of, since that means you can't put Globe Theater there. All your religions should really give you more happiness than you could ever need, but if they aren't sufficient (even with cathedrals), you seem to be going for some sort of conquest/domination/biggest, baddest dude on the planet kind of a win, so you should have plenty of happy resources. I think you meet criterion number 1.

Second, you need to be generating most of your science there. That's sort of obvious, but it's worth saying. In this case, since Mexico City is your capital and you can run Representation, Caste System, and other science-friendly civics whenever you like, you meet criterion number 2 as well.

For Qin, you could consider creating a few decoys in areas where you're especially concerned about pillaging (probably in the south where you can't defend as easily). For example, create a couple grenadiers with both woodsman promotions and stick them inside Qin's borders on a forested hill. This is not a strategy I've tried before, so I might be wrong, but I'm guessing that he'll either attack them outright or heavily defend any neighboring cities and resources. Either way, I wouldn't expect him to just walk by so he can pillage your dyes. Even if they only survive a couple turns, that buys you enough time to do some damage in the north and make him think twice about letting anyone leave their posts to do pillage duty.

 

[Sisiutil]

Thanks, Doc. Yes, that's what I was thinking regarding the Globe as well. It may go in Tijuana to ensure my military city operates at top capacity, and it adds to the HE and TM which are producing GA-oriented GP points. Mexico City also has THREE temples (built so I could allocate three priests for my Great Prophet), so that should help with happiness as well.

I like the idea of a couple of Grenadier Woodsman units fortified in Qin's borders. It could work. In my experience, the AI will completely ignore fortified units outside of cities in your own territory, but within its own borders it's quite another matter. The guaranteed effect I know of is the AI will not send workers out if there's an enemy unit anywhere in the fat cross.

In one early game I fortified a warrior on a forested hill in the second ring of Monty's capital. It drove him nuts, since he needed to improve tiles and couldn't. He sent unit after unit at that Warrior, who went from no XPs to Level 3 (Woodsman II, of course) before he finally bought the farm.

Qin's cities are pretty well-developed. If a fortified Grenadier doesn't preoccupy him, I could try using another unit to pillage around that same city, urging him to get his workers out, requiring the removal of the Grenadier before he can do so. It's worth a shot.

 

[The Tyrant]

Don't wait for rifles! Go straight for cannons, on the way you automatically pick up grenadiers

What Thrar said. Grenadiers! They're the "everyciv" version of the praetorian -- seriously overpowered for the units they'll face during their era. I didn't use grenadiers for a long time because... well, because they throw grenades. How effective can that be? Okay, gotta stop thinking 21st Century, think back to those ages, and actually those guys were pretty good. It turns out that grenadiers are awesome and they have a long window in which they are useful.

Grenadiers and cannons would be great, but if Qin starts upgrading his troops I wouldn't even wait for cannons. Just take grenadiers and catapults and go.

 

[vormuir]

It sounds like you've already gone after Qin, but let me cast a belated vote for Gandhi. Taking Qin's cities is going to give you severe corruption/commerce problems for a while. Versailles would make things much simpler.

Ah well -- will be watching with interest.


Waldo

 

[Sisiutil]

(8th Round: to 1765 AD)

First off, no wars this time. This was a set of infrastructure, building, and research rounds. But plenty of interesting developments...

Alexander is getting tetchy:

Maybe he just needs a warm blankie and a nappies. He's running Free Religion right now thanks to having discovered Liberalism, so even though Confucianism is starting to spread in Greece, there's no real hope of converting him. He's placed a tiny little city down on the southern tundra of my continent that will just have to go eventually, but seems disinclined to invade at this point. I think he cancelled OB in some sort of attempt to safeguard his outpost.

I got another Great Engineer, Leonardo da Vinci. History repeats itself; he's sitting around in Mexico City, waiting for a decent Wonder to become available. Sadly, I'm pursuing only military techs at the moment. I snagged Chemistry and Steel and started upgrading some, but not all, of my veteran Macemen to Grenadiers (I want to upgrade some to Riflemen too). I still have some Axemen around who will either attain Level 5 against some Catapult-weakened units in the next war, and then be upgraded, or serve as cannon fodder. Such is life--and death, for that matter--in the Aztec Armed Forces.

While I was going down the aforementioned research path, my buddy Bismark discovered Astronomy! Terribly convenient, that:

Having generously traded Chemistry and Music to him in exchange, I'm now pretty much committed to cultivating Bismark as an ally and relegating Alex to nemesis status, which suits me fine. You might notice that Bismark is running the Theocracy civic; I also gave him Banking in exchange for changing to Organized Religion so I can spread the good word of Confucianism in Germany and eventually convert him.

I kept scouting Qin's and Ghandi's territory, and Qin does have good-sized stacks of units in several cities:

Strangely, though, his forces are mainly focused in the south. His northern cities that border mine are less heavily defended:

Ghandi's cities, in contrast, are all weakly defended by one or two Longbowmen and a Maceman. Only the capital is strongly defended by just under a dozen units. Food for thought.

At this point, I've got a stack ready to go, but I'm wavering. Qin is looking strong though certainly not invulnerable, and he's falling behind me tech-wise now, especially in military. He doesn't even have gunpowder yet. With our mutual religion--he still hasn't converted to Islam--and all those meagerly-defended cities on my border, he seems to be feeling pretty confident about our good relations.

In contrast, I gifted Ghandi a World Map and a resource, but it didn't make a dent in our relations. Still "Cautious".

So even though I'd love to take Qin down a peg, I'm thinking it would be best to take down Ghandi, who's an easier target, all the while pumping out enough Cannon, Cavalry, Grenadiers, and eventually Riflemen to take Qin down shortly thereafter. It might give Chengdu time to flip; I really think it's going to. Then again, I do have a narrow tech lead on Qin at the moment. Maybe I should take advantage?

Thoughts? I want to declare war on somebody during the next turn or so, so let me know which way you think I should jump!

 

[The Tyrant]

The warmongerer in me says to always take out your strongest opponent first, and work down the list. Still, taking Gandhi's cities could allow you to pump out more units for your war with Qin. Vormuir made a good point about Versailles helping with upkeep costs. If you go with taking Gandhi to increase the size of your empire, I would do just as you said and spend that time beefing up your military. You don't want to give Qin a chance to come even on tech and upgrade his units. You'll basically need to go straight from one war into the next. As long as you have a decent number of grenadiers combined with lots of cannons, you'll be able to shred Qin's forces. They may look scary right now, but once you throw a few suicide cannons into the stacks, they'll crumple.

If you delay attacking Qin then a fleet of 8 galleons would allow you to land a stack deep in his territory when you do declare on him. Of course, that would mean about 12 land units you could have produced instead.

If you have a lot of seige units (your stacks consist of 25%-30% seige units) then I say go for Qin immediately. If you don't have that many seige units, it would be best to wait until you do before taking on his stacks.

 

[pigswill]

I'd go for Qin aiming for the northern cities down as far as Beijing:if you go to war with anyone your research is likely to suffer in the short term, allowing Qin to catch up or overtake you. Gandhi doesn't have the military to backstab you.
Generally your commerce needs working on you're at the bottom of the pile and war will likely put you further behind. On the other hand you've switched to production mode everywhere which will be affecting the figures.
If you're building up military then you could think about changing civics to feudalism and theocracy at least in the short term, you don't need OR if you're not building and feudalism will save you a bit of money on unit upkeep (at the expense ofyour capital).
I'm not sure how much you can read into Germany being pleased with you,he seems pleased with almost everyone for no obvious reason.

 

[jsolo15]

Sisiutil and Tyrant

You guys don't know how much this post has help my game. Being a newbie it really help to see a game played out like this.


Thank you guys
Jsolo.

 

[Sisiutil]

Yeah, I'm thinking it's time to take out Qin.

I was kind of tired last night which is mainly why I didn't start warring. Best to do that when I feel up to it. I had to build some infrastructure and research some techs anyway.

Battle plan: split my stack in two and raze Shandong (to ensure a path to Moscow and Novgorod) and capture Tianjin (the Islamic holy city). Fortify my Woodsman II Grenadier in the forest tile just north of Nanjing, another in a wood or jungle hill near Guanzhou (sp?) to hopefully provide worrisome distractions and curtail a counter-attack. Sit back for a turn or two and see if Qin does, indeed, counter-attack; I kind of hope he does, as he'll probably lose a lot of potential city defenders in the process. Meanwhile, my newest units from my core cities (Cancun, Mexico City, Tijuana, Acapulco) swing up and capture Chengdu if it doesn't flip, which I'm tired of waiting for, before heading south. Snag Rifling, plunge the slider to 0%, start upgrading everything with the additional gold from that and war booty. Launch the second offensive and take out the rest of Qin's cities.

After that, it will be Ghandi's turn, believe me.

Regarding civics, I will switch to Vassalage immediately. I've been holding back so Mexico City could finish Oxford a little quicker, and because Tijuana now has West Point to provide the additional XPs I'm missing. I haven't changed from OR to Theocracy because I needed Bismark to run OR so I could spread Confucianism. I'm not sure if I need to stick with that civic until he converts or not. Any suggestions here?

Pigswill (heck of a board name, dude), your point about commerce is well-taken. I probably rely, like many players, too much on the Financial trait (or, when playing as Caesar, on the Organized civic discount and cheap courthouses). This is part of the reason I started my "All Leaders Challenge": to learn to adapt strategies when playing as a leader who may not have the advantages I'm used to.

I notice I've been playing catch-up on commerce and research all game. By this point in most games, I would not be tech-trading any more. The religions are helpful, but I've only built one shrine and I haven't spread my SR too much because I've been focused on military. It's a tough balance while war-mongering this much, I'm finding. I'm hoping the boatload of Confucian missionaries on their way to Germany will help; if each is successful, that's another +3 gpt, and I hope to convert Bismark and have Confucianism spread on its own a little further. It's doing that in Greece, which is gratifying, and I usually build a missionary and spread the good word in any city I capture, especially as it provides an immediate +1 culture on top of +1 gold.

Thanks again for everyone's input, and you'll see how the war is going or went tonight.

 

[Thrar]

There's one major drawback to grenadiers, which is that they're gunpowder units and can't get the city raider promotions. They still own longbows, but aren't that good against muskets. Thanks to their 50% bonus they're good vs rifles though.
Cannons, if you research them early as you apparently did, are very strong offensive weapons. They have the same strength as grenadiers, do get the city raider promotions (try producing them with 6 XP), and on top of that do collateral damage. Give then all CR II promotions, after bombing the worst you'll face (against rifles) will be chances around 30%, better than getting barrage II and doing no direct damage at <5% I think.

Against everything before rifles, cannons are more effective than grenadiers. Against rifles, I'd mix them about evenly. On grenadiers, give them combat I and cover at first, and pinch once you're facing gunpowder units. Remember that they get woodsman/guerilla, too, so maybe have one of those around for defense.

Another thing that's an advantage for you is, that archery units upgrade to rifles, but not to musketmen (or grenadiers, for that matter). So all the muskets they want they have to build from scratch, which means they'll be relatively scarce. And against strength 6, you don't even have to care about city defenses if you're in a hurry.

 

[pigswill]

One minor point I stumbled across in 1.53. A stack of 4 seige units (catapults/cannons) with Accuracy promotion will blow away any city defence in one turn.
Defence 20 = 15,10,5,0
Defence 60 = 45,30,15,0

If its still there its poor design imo and might get ironed out in a patch but its a good trick

 

[Sisiutil]

There's one major drawback to grenadiers, which is that they're gunpowder units and can't get the city raider promotions. They still own longbows, but aren't that good against muskets. Thanks to their 50% bonus they're good vs rifles though.
Cannons, if you research them early as you apparently did, are very strong offensive weapons. They have the same strength as grenadiers, do get the city raider promotions (try producing them with 6 XP), and on top of that do collateral damage. Give then all CR II promotions, after bombing the worst you'll face (against rifles) will be chances around 30%, better than getting barrage II and doing no direct damage at <5% I think.

Against everything before rifles, cannons are more effective than grenadiers. Against rifles, I'd mix them about evenly. On grenadiers, give them combat I and cover at first, and pinch once you're facing gunpowder units. Remember that they get woodsman/guerilla, too, so maybe have one of those around for defense.

Another thing that's an advantage for you is, that archery units upgrade to rifles, but not to musketmen (or grenadiers, for that matter). So all the muskets they want they have to build from scratch, which means they'll be relatively scarce. And against strength 6, you don't even have to care about city defenses if you're in a hurry.

Good advice and info, thanks.

It occurred to me that an advantage of preserving all my Macemen and Axemen is that many of them DO have the City Raider promotions already, so they can upgrade to Grendadiers or Riflemen--units that can't get those promotions, but can inherit them on an upgrade.

I have a few catapults to use before I can bring cannons to bear. So in terms of initial city-taking tactics:

- If the city's defense % is formidable, bring it down with the Cats, though this runs the risk of the city getting reinforced.
- Use/sacrifice the Cats on the usual collateral damage suicide attacks.
- Take out the strongest defenders with my upgraded Grenadiers with their preserved City Raider promotions.
- Take out weaker defenders with the remaining close-to-promotion Macemen or even Axemen. Once they earn their next promotion, upgrade them when there are funds available.

 

[The Tyrant]

@Jsolo -- Thank you for your kind words but I really have to give Sisiutil the credit for this concept. I'm just pitching in my ideas, and hoping others do the same. I'm here to learn as much as anything else. Oh, and to have fun. I'm finding this to be even more fun than I expected.

@Thrar -- Thank you for your break-down on cannons. I never shoot for cannons as early as I could, simply because I feel like I have so many other things to do around that time. I hadn't really taken as close a look at the strengths of that unit as you did. After reading your post, I'm going to have to start beelining cannons when I get near.

@Pigswill -- It still holds true. Four seige units, properly promoted, is all it takes to completely reduce city defenses in one turn, whether the defense is 20% or 100%. By this point in my games I'll have two specialized types of seige units. Each stack will have four to take down city defenses (these are never used for collateral damage) and 6+ with promotions to maximize collateral damage.

 

[The Tyrant]

I've found that when an AI has a large stack they will indeed throw that stack at units within attack range of their cities, as long as their units have a 2-to-1 advantage. This is good, since it practically guarantees killing off some of his units with your bait units. If you can spare them, it might be good to use two grenadiers per bait station in case Qin gets lucky with one of his early attacks.

You should be able to switch to Theocracy with no problem. You don't have to run identical religious civics with Bismark. In fact, when he finds it is in his best interests to change away from OR, he will. It won't matter if you're running OR or not.

The plan for Qin sounds good, as long as you have large numbers of seige units and continue producing more. He has enough cities that you're going to have to waste a fair number of catapults/cannons before you're done.

I've found the same problem with falling behind in tech with Montezuma *IF* playing with small numbers of civs. It seems when I play 18 civs I haven't had that problem because at some point my forces will be spread too thin to continue expanding. At that point I switch to getting the most out of the shrine income and using missionaries to affect diplomacy. Once I get enough income from the shrine, tech stays at or near 100% even while building a larger military. This is really only possible on standard or larger maps with a large number of civs. One of those strategies that seems to be conditional. Smaller maps or fewer civs means it is more effective to war; larger maps and more civs means exploiting the religious aspect can be more effective.