Always War Charlie

[Pangaea]

We know him like this:

But maybe he saw himself more akin to:

Whichever representation is most accurate, the world hates him, and wantssss him deadsssss (maybe they wants his preccciousss sssstaff).

Our lovely burger flipper starts with Hunting, fittingly enough, and Mysticism. That means he starts with a scout instead of a warrior. Not ideal in a world that hates your guts. Can Charlie survive?

To help him out, he has the Rathaus (thankfully not filled with rats) as unique building. It's a Courthouse that cuts maintenance with 75% instead of the usual 50%. Quite handy!

The unique unit is a Landsknecht, a Pike that gets +100% against Melee units, in addition to +100% against Mounted. Usually a bit iffy, but in these circumstances it could prove rather useful due to its versatility.

His traits are:

• Imperialistic: +50% bonus on production of Settlers, and +100% emergence of Great Generals
• Protective: Free Drill I and City Garrison I for all Archery and Gunpowder based units, and +100% when building Walls and Castles

Both should prove quite useful here.

 

[Pangaea]

Charlie and his puny empire has taken up residence in the mountains, surrounded by farmland. Like all good emperors, he needs ample supply of silks for his fancy dresses. Other than that, he'll let his unfortunate brother check out the neighbours. Rumour has it they don't much like him, however, so his brother should perhaps have a good life insurance in place. Or maybe they just like silks too...

 

[Pangaea]

Attached are several WB files, which you can place in the "/Beyond the Sword/Saves/WorldBuilder" folder, and then start the game as a Scenario, much like the Nobles Club games. This means you can play this at whatever level you want without too much hassle (from Noble and up). The only issue is that barbs don't get their needed techs this way, so you need to go into the World Builder and add them manually. Sorry about that, but there doesn't appear to be a work around I'm also attaching the Immortal save, which should have the barbs with the right technologies (mainly Archery, but also Hunting and Agriculture, at that level).

Instruction on how to do this, nicked from the Nobles Club series:

Spoiler how to add techs to the barbarians :

1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
6. Exit the worldbuilder.
7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.

If you're playing at higher level than Monarch, consider also giving them Hunting at Emperor, Agriculture at Immortal, and The Wheel at Deity.

Lastly, some information about the map.

• Fractal. Low Sea level. 7 AI opponents (one more than normal). Temperate climate.
• Always War
• No Huts or Events
• No Vassal States

The above map was the first generated, with two small exceptions

Spoiler :

The settler started on a green hill, so I changed one of the plains hills to a green hill, and the starting spot to a plains hill. The river was also extended southwards by one tile, so that the corn is wet. More forests would be nice, as would early commerce, but I haven't made any further alterations.

The opponents were randomly chosen, as I couldn't settle on a theme (thought about some kind of religious warfare, or a few other themes, but went with random instead, to make it less "biased"). For those of you who want a quick gander:

Spoiler :

1. Genghis Khan (AGG, IMP)
2. Gilgamesh (CRE, PRO)
3. Isabella (SPI, EXP) PS: Typically a Oracle whore
4. Louis XIV (IND, CRE)
5. Ramesses II (SPI, IND)
6. Suryavarman II (EXP, CRE)
7. Wang Kon (FIN, PRO)

 

[Pangaea]

Good luck guys and gals. You'll probably need it! Don't be worried if you need to reload, or even restart, it's a tough game.

One very important tip is to settle cities on hills, particularly cities towards the AIs. They will attack you


Some more tips, graciously written by Doshin in a different game.

Some tips of my own, building on BiC's comments. Please note that I am not an expert and have limited experience with this format:

Always War is much more difficult than you might expect. A wide variety of strategies must be employed in order to win, many of which deviate from standard Civ strategies.

There is a world of difference between surviving and winning, defense and offense. There is no shame in biding your time and gathering your strength, of course, but try not to get caught up in simply fending off attacks, promoting super units, and laughing at the AI's suicidal tendencies. If you simply sit back and defend, you will eventually fall behind in tech and get walloped once the Renaissance and Industrial eras hit. It is no fun facing multiple armies filled with Rifles at once.

A Spy economy, while not crucial to win, is the most effective way to maintain your tech rate and/or play catch up. Should you wish to pursue this route, crucial short term targets include The Great Wall (GSpy person points) Alphabet (build Spies) and Code of Laws (build Courthouses). A Courthouse provides a constant source of passive espionage points, +2 per turn. Once you hit Engineering, build Castles in your Courthouse cities and run Spies whenever possible. Whereas a Scientist specialists provides you with +3 per turn, and a Merchant +3 , a Spy provides +4 and +1 .

Once you hit Constitution, your rate will sky rocket via Jails.

Banking is an incredibly powerful technology. You have no foreign trade-routes, so switching into Mercantilism is an out-and-out positive. Each free Specialist adds +3 or +3 or +4 , +1 per city. These numbers are even greater if you are running Representation.

Your economy will be in shambles for much of the game. You will need to build more Markets, Grocers, and Banks than normal.

Always War is an excellent format in which to indulge your inner zealot. Religions will not spread to you passively, so you either need to capture a town with a religion or found one yourself.

With a religion, you may build the Apostolic Palace, University of Sankore, and Spiral Minaret. For the AW format, these are excellent wonders, since they provide a constant source of passive income. This goes for shrines too.

Organized Religion is, surprisingly enough, a better civic most of the time than Theology.

If the map allows, settle cities overseas for foreign trade routes (= +1 per city).

In terms of units, settle on hills and build Archers and Longbows for defense. Promote your troops through the Drill line. The Drill promotions minimize collateral damage and increase the likelihood that your troops will emerge from their battles unscathed. This lets them defend again and again. Seriously, you must have a very good reason to promote CG or Combat before Drill.

The Drill line is especially useful to have on your super defender. You do not (and should not) attach every Great General you spawn to a unit, but you will soon find that a super-Archer or a super-Longbow offers an invaluable saving in hammers and unit maintenance. You should, in fact, have at least two and preferably three super-defenders during the Medieval Age, who receive enough promotions to protect one another.

Knights pose the first big threat to super defenders, since they ignore first strikes and are a real headache. Sure, Pikemen can defend against these, as can Elephants, but at this point you will start to take losses. A super-LB can fend off a stack of twenty units without so much as a scratch. But if five Knights attack first, they start to take damage and your other defenders have to step in. Worse, they might even be killed.

 

[Pangaea]

I started playing this thing.

Oh my f***ing God. It continues! You know how you need a good start in these viciously tough games?

Spoiler :

Is the RNG telling me: "Yeah, just pack it in mate. I'm going to troll you all night long."

 

[obsolete]

If you are worried of losing at 99.4% odds, it is time to quit this game, because you will be losing a LOT of those kinds of battles at even higher odds with this game set-up. AW is FILLED with stack-battles. I am not sure what level you are playing at, but I've seen hundreds of units lost every turn. The AI's will send that many at you... You will often loose at 99.8%... it is very common to be honest.

And no, this is not sarcasm...

 

[Kaitzilla]

Imm. AWW. with Charlie?

That sounds very hard!
Doesn't he have terrible starting techs?

That sucks losing a Warrior to a Scout.
Ughhhh

3 of the opponents look pretty tough too.

 

[Pangaea]

Cheers BiC. Rough start, but I continued. Must admit I'm disappointed in the lack of interest so far, only one person has downloaded the files, but I'll write about my early exploits, and hope that piques people's interest.

Due to the bad start, I played too much in "funk you RNG mode", and took too many risks, but it is what is it. Most likely will need to restart. That said, T76... We're still alive!

But first some early game thoughts, that all can read without spoilers.

Charlie does indeed have terrible starting techs: Hunting and Mysticism, and we don't even have a hunting resource in the BFC (and we can see the whole of it). With a corn, it is a no brainer to start with Agri. With a starting scout there is no chance to grab an early worker here, so I need a worker out first that can improve the sole source of food. Admittedly we were lucky to be able to grab a worker in the Suli map; it's more difficult in AW because you can't surprise outer ring workers with a DOW, but if you start with a warrior you can at least get him to Woodie2 status and pretty much harass an AI with that unit alone, and feed your empire maybe 10 workers. Not so here

So: Worker first, and Agri. Then probably Mining to mine the hills, also because we're IMP and get +50% on settlers.

Starting with silk kinda sucks too, more so than I realised when posting the map. Takes a long while before it can be improved (Calendar), and it's a crappy tile to work unimproved too. Improved it becomes decent, at least the food-neutral type we have, but that's not for a long while.

Despite only one source of food, at least we have 4 FPs, which only adds 1 , and of course are ideal for cottaging. I may want to go early-ish Pottery here, although I think the GWall should still be a priority, even if we're not PHI for a quick GSpy. Barbs are on, and having all the AIs up against us is tough enough.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -​

For the Glory of Holy Rome Aachen! (clears throat). Onwards!

Spoiler :

You already know about the bad luck with Warrior 2, who managed to die to an injured Scout . Warrior 1 marched out into the unknown in search of spoils. And located an Egyptian with a funny walk..

That is one heck of a capital, and it could have a strategic resource too. If we had started with a warrior, it might have been possible to catch the worker improving the NE corn They also start with the Wheel, though, so maybe roads would already be in place (AIs like to first build roads, then improvement), and he could sneak back over the forested hill and river in one turn, depending on where we happened to approach from.

As you can see from the mini-map, at least a benefit to an early scout is that you can explore a lot. Charlie's 'brother' survived for quite a while, until I took a too big risk and moved him onto a hill next to what turned out to be Sury's capital, and he got eaten by an archer.

Due to the sloppy and quick play, I made too few screenshots and way too few saves, so this is post-fact, but...

Good News!

Initial scouting revealed two pigs near hills, and it made most sense to settle there, therefore teching AH.

The 2nd city went up north west:

Pondered whether to place it where I did, or 1N (coastal, grabs rice later), but the benefit now is that it can help grow a couple cottages for the capital (okay, one!), and it can borrow the horse. Also a little closer (lower maintenance), has fresh water, and surprisingly got auto connected.


And the third city south west:

You can already see that we have completed the Great Wall, and some of the barbs that are streaming past the impenetrable wall (unless you are freakishly big units... ho-hum) towards Ramesses, who is in that direction.


For those of you who checked out the spoiler with the AIs in the original posts, you know that the map contains Isabella. That is bad news. She often goes for the Oracle very early. It also contains two IND leaders, who are always a threat on early wonders. Maybe I was lucky in what they went for. Artemis went freakishly early, 1880BC or so.

I had to try, at least.

Woot! I had to rush to get there (skipping BW for instance, so no chopping, and we have grown into unhappiness), and couldn't risk putting it in a secondary city for a clean GSpy pool. It was tempting to choose Monarchy because it's more expensive and we need it for happiness, but I figured it was best to go for HAs. It's close to 1000BC, when AIs tend to start visiting with more than single units (Ramesses has already been by with a mini-stack), so real 'defenders' besides puny chariots and stationary archers should be good.

Unfortunately I know that the suspicious tile in Ramesses land contains copper. Since I had view of it, I noticed it was suddenly getting mined by a worker, but had no chance to distort it. I did try to send a 3.4 chariot in to prevent it, but sadly 2 archers got the better of it. I had to at least try

I also tried later on, but that was even more silly, and I lost several chariots to a spear and a couple of axes. Sure would be nice if chariots had +100% against Axes in general, and not just on the offensive. That made the decision on HBR easier, though. If I'm going to deal with Ramesses in a good way, I need stronger units than chariots. He could also get horses, and 5 War Chariots will eat up normal chariots for fun.

Finally, then, an overview in T76, 975BC. I clicked End Turn one too many times. Shoot me

The settler out in one turn will grab the Gold. Really glad that showed up, because we need some type of happiness resource, and more commerce will be grand too.

I'm not sure where to put the city though. Figured on top of the wine would be good (where the chariot is), it grabs a lot of stuff, although it needs a monument, but it makes the cow city awkward due to all that desert.

I think this is a good thing in AW, having an entire flank free from AIs. The East is free for us to backfill, and the land isn't terrible, although of course that desert is a kick in the shin. At least there is some food, though, and once Calendar is in, we'll have non-HR happiness from Gold, Spices, Silk and Wine

Next turn, when the settler is out, I'll finally revolt into Slavery, and whip out some stuff. Either Granaries (the NW city lacks it), workers or settlers. Claiming the marble may prove tricky, as Ramesses has a city that will have it in 2nd ring too.

Would be great if that cluster of desert hills to the west was at least one tile closer. I'm not sure if the capital will be protected from direct assaults with the current configuration, but that cluster seems a little far out, at least when there are no resources it can grab, besides eventually a FP-farm or two. Maybe the SE would be decent? Two FPs, fresh water, and spice. Need more exploration I guess.

Although the move that killed the scout was indeed suicidal, at least it revealed the capital (so I can guesstimate what he is building there), and revealed that Sury has access to Stone. Perhaps this will mean that between Ramesses and Sury, they'll build quite a few useful wonders, for when we can finally go on the offensive. Assuming I don't die any moment now...

 

[Seraiel]

Only for those not speaking german:

A "Rathaus" is the house from which the mayor rules the city. "Rat" in german means "council" , so it's basically like a parliament only for a city and not for the whole country.

The plural btw. is "Rathäuser" .

If the next game is with SB or Julius btw. I'll play if GM-144 is over 'til then aswell or if I've submitted my game.

 

[Seraiel]

Good luck to everybody, seems you need it ^^ .

 

[Pangaea]

Only for those not speaking german:

A "Rathaus" is the house from which the mayor rules the city. "Rat" in german means "council" , so it's basically like a parliament only for a city and not for the whole country.

The plural btw. is "Rathäuser" .

If the next game is with SB or Julius btw. I'll play if GM-144 is over 'til then aswell or if I've submitted my game.

I knew it didn't mean rats btw, it was my silly sense of humour getting ahead of itself

You know what ? I'll need to restart on this one.

t32 :

Spoiler :

Ouch!

Think I have to as well. Way too much have gone wrong. 700BC or so (text only below).

Spoiler :

Have five cities, and are somewhat pleased with that, but I've lost a silly amount of units to sheer bad luck. Bad rolls left, right and centre, and 3 or 4 times I've ended a chariot right next to a an axe that OF COURSE killed it.

Getting the Oracle was perhaps good luck, but the rest is really driving me up the wall now. Just got a GProphet with 30% chance now as well. On top of that, Ramesses have about 99482 spears roaming about, so I can't even take the HAs and get some capture gold from razing barb cities to get me to Alpha (oh, and Wang got a barb city practically on my border).

Getting a lot of deja vús from the failed attempts in the previous game. You simply need some good luck with the RNG early on in these games, or at the very least not viciously bad rolls continuously. Losing warriors, chariots and even workers so early is a big setback.

Maybe playing with Julius and BFC iron wouldn't be such a bad idea....

 

[Seraiel]

@ Pangaea:

Either Julius and BFC-Iron, or you do the good old XBow-rush with Sitting Bull . Oracle MC, chopwhip a Forge and a few turns later (because of PHI) you get a GE and bulb Machinery . Not as early as Praets but still very early, this is a common PvP rush tactic.

 

[Pangaea]

Didn't restart after all. Have played to 125AD. Now I'm scared

Spoiler :

Stacks have come from both the NW and SW, so very glad I have two hill cities in those places. Sometimes the AI stacks are doing some kind of crazy back-and-forth dance. And there are two spears resting their eyes in one of the forested silks, which I can't really remove without metal. Damn annoying when that happens. Why can't they just suicide?

Dared to send a lone archer into the forest-jungle NW, and after dancing around some chariots and archers, noticed what appears to be a fantastic blocking spot. Unfortunately it looks impossible to get a settler party over there. Would cost a bomb too.

Have got 4 GGs so far, through normal defence and active defence with HAs and Chariots. Have made 2 medics, one for each front. Unlike last time, I've gone with two super defenders, also one for each front. Here is one of them, promoted along the Drill line.

When I saw that incoming stack, I felt we needed a proper defender, because as you see the city is pretty lightly staffed.

The annoying thing in this game is that absolutely everybody are bringing surreal amounts of spears. This makes it impossible to take out stacks with HAs. I've managed a few times, when spears are missing or go to a different tile for whichever reason, but not nearly as often as I would like.


Some time before 1AD we learnt Alpha. Damn shame about the low-chance GProphet earlier, or we could have stolen some techs from Ramesses. The useless git is just sitting around, because settling him feels like such a waste. No doubt I'll get another one next time as well (50/50 GSpy-GProphet).

The overview at 1AD looks so:

And Louis must have one killer capital!

Below is what scares me.

That's a lot of dudes!!

How on Earth are we supposed to survive that, shortly after 1AD?

 

[Pangaea]

That didn't take long.

Spoiler :

Our defence now consists of...

Feck!

Sorry for being a lousy host

This was pretty sick. Don't think I could have defended against those stacks even with Longbows. Not sure there is any point trying again.

 

[obsolete]

Pangaea, I will try not to sound harsh, but will say a few things... since on one ever listens to comments in all the other AW games that have been posted sine time immemorial.

You took a really big risk with your cottages were they were. I would have banked on disaster, though just maybe things COULD have worked out for you since you were not dropped into the middle of the meat-grinder here... but it was still a huge risk I would never attempt.

But losing to a couple stacks where only a sword was the most advanced unit the AI had... should have no excuses. It isn't until Knights show up where you start to have some troubles, because you will start to lose some top defenders to the knights...

And YES, you could easily defend against this stacks with Longbows... If you promote them right, etc... you would be raping those stacks. I am ALWAYS be-lining the LBs in AW... I have played countless AW many years back, and time and time again, the LBs are definite king. I keep mentioning this, but no one ever wants to listen....

Also, I hardly consider those stacks.... for Immortal AW, those are just tiny little probe baby-stacks. They will get MAGNITUDE OF ORDER larger than this as the game progresses. If these small stacks are a problem already... then thats game right there. There was not even a single elephant added in (yet).

I suggest this, drop down 2-3 levels... and give it another go. Practice makes perfect (assuming you learn from your mistakes).

You can also turn on events & lucky huts if you are struggling. There are a lot of big freebies that give you a clear advantage when the dice roll your way...of course that's a two sided sword...

 

[Pangaea]

Pangaea, I will try not to sound harsh, but will say a few things... since on one ever listens to comments in all the other AW games that have been posted sine time immemorial.

You took a really big risk with your cottages were they were. I would have banked on disaster, though just maybe things COULD have worked out for you since you were not dropped into the middle of the meat-grinder here... but it was still a huge risk I would never attempt.

This doesn't make any sense. The economy in AW games is bound to be crap. There are no foreign trade routes, currency won't get you piles of gold from selling techs, and you'll pay out the nose in unit maintenance early on. You need cottages, and lots of them. If I'm not going to develop them on the clearly best tiles, then the economy would be even worse, and I'd still not be at Monarchy, maybe not even Alpha.

Trust me, I'm fully aware the stacks will keep growing, but defending against ~50 units in ~T125? That's a tough ask, even with Longbows.

If you want to teach people something about Always War games, then it would be better if you wrote concrete advice instead of insults and variants of "you're doing it all wrong, lol". Seraiel can be very harsh too, but he also writes concrete advice that people can learn from.

For those who load the attached savegame, where it's effectively game over, you'll see I have two spies in place. Once they get 50% bonus, I think I'll have enough EPs to steal IW. Maybe that would help, but then again, we're up against Wang here and his brutal Hwachas.

 

[Seraiel]

I don't think obsolete ment it that bad Pangaea and that he just wanted to help. I agree about the Cottages with you, but I also asked myself how you can have Warriors defending a city and I also doubt certain things about the AW-approach that you (not only you Pangaea ^^ ) are currently playing, i. e. Oracling HBR sounds like a big fail to me, because the Oracle-techs are as expensive as HBR. With Charly I'd try the GS-Machinery / Engineering rush via skipping Fishing. Should be strong, easy and np because you don't need Sailing for TRs anyhow and the start is landlocked. Getting Longbows (if not via Oracle) imo. is more complicated than getting XBows and I wouldn't know how HAs that get no defensive bonuses should help at all.

 

[Pangaea]

Warriors weren't exactly the main defenders. It's simply the starting happy guy, but when everybody dies, so do they, and it was the last man out.

I was actually looking at a Machinery bulb, which is why I hadn't done Fishing yet, but naturally things went pretty far south. Since we start with Mysticism, getting to Priesthood is less expensive than otherwise, but naturally I could have picked something else with the Oracle. The only choice was Monarchy though, and I preferred a stronger military unit over increased happy limit. Maybe it was the wrong choice, but those HAs certainly came in handy the times I could take on Swords, Vultures, Axes, Archers and Catas. Spears was a big problem, but thankfully not every stack was protected by them.

If I were to try again, maybe skipping the Oracle entirely and going for the Machinery bulb earlier would be better. Still think I'd want the GW because otherwise barbs would become a big headache here, but with a clean GSpy first and a GS after, maybe it would be possible to bulb Machinery in decent time for Crossbows. It's a pretty good unit early on when a lot of stacks consist of catas and axes/spears/swords. Elephants would of course pawn them, but then elephants literally stomp anything but hill longbows and other (well promoted) elephants.

I get so frustrated when things go to hell in these games. Maybe it would be better to try to finish the BOTM 101 game before the deadline instead.

I did create this map with all levels from Noble to Deity though, so I hoped it would garner a bit more interest. Perhaps I ought to drop down a level or 7 as well. Immortal AW is extremely tough!

 

[Seraiel]

@ Pangaea:

I think you're not understanding that mounted units don't get defensive bonuses. If a city has 40% culture then an Archer has a STR 7.2 in it (3 * (50% for city+ 25% fortify +25% hill + 40% culture)) . That is only very slightly weaker than an Elephant which gets STR 8. XBows and Longbows are far stronger defended than Elephants and even normal Archers are far stronger than Horse Archers, which are already an offensively weak unit imo. , but in the defense they're trash.

I'd either skip Oracle completely or try to get a tech like Metalcasting with it, because that supports the Machinery bulb, and then generate a Great Spy + Great Scientist simultaniously, preferably play Sitting Bull because of PHI or Julius because of Praets. Charly is a difficult choice as he only gets good in mid-game, but it's the early game that needs to be survived first.

 

[Pangaea]

Of course I understand that mounted units don't get defensive bonuses (a few exceptions aside). They're an offensive units, not a defensive one. Which is why I used them as active defenders. They can be very valuable in taking out stacks in the open, and flank attack catas.

Hill archers are pretty good. But once catas wreck them, they're not much to brag about. The RNG also trolled me hard in this game. A single HA killed the best CG archer without taking any damage, and of course Drill archers are next to futile against them due to immunity to first strikes. Goes back to what I've stated a few times about my limited experience with these games: you need a good start, and that the RNG doesn't troll you hard. HAs taking out top defenders without any damage isn't exactly a "fair" roll. Don't know the chance of that happening, but probably pretty low.