Always War Mansa

[dutchfire]

I might give this one a shot (haven't had a lot of time to play civ though). I also still need to finish my umpteenth attempt in the Mehmed game.

 

[Pangaea]

Don't think I've ever seen this before; a barb city popping up and instantly spawning axes instead of archers. Must be due to popping on top of copper.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Never seen it either.^^

Victory! 1828 Domination victory, killing over 600 troops at a loss of about 180ish.

Spoiler :

Things went pretty much as planned. I started by slowly taking on my eastern opponents, first with trebs, later with rifleman. Took them both out. Afterwards I took out the Ottomans with the help of cannons. Got to infantry in the end and the Ottomans to artillery and airships, but the number game had already been played by then and neither effected the war much. As the sole ruler of my continent I just waited for some borders to pop and get the required land percentage. The other 3 opponents didn't do much except for look menacing on the fleets and sending a couple of soldiers over once or twice.

Oh, nearly lost the game to an untimely AP vote, didn't see that one coming. I had wiped out two opponents and had just taken a city or two from the Ottomans, so everyone now had the religion, was off by just 20 or so votes.

 

[Pangaea]

Can't read that spoiler yet (but congratulations with the win! ), but here is a zoomed in picture from my game at 800AD (T150). I wonder why nothing happens.

Spoiler :

Here the stack hasn't arrived in LOL City yet. Spare a thought for Mehmed's unrivalled city settling skills Since then they've been parked in that city, growing, but never moving. He has done absolutely flip all so far

I do have a defense in the now Forted tile between us, but not a massive stack. I find it very odd that he's not doing anything to try to invade, when we've been at war for probably 3000+ years. Elizabeth and Joao are certainly hitting us in the East.

Forts are great btw, at least when positioned like this. +75% defensive bonus, that cannot be bombed away. Units even get City Garrison bonuses.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

gg, ConfusedCounsel

@ Pangaea, that last pic :

Spoiler :

Has Mehmed scouted/revealed any of your cities ? You blocked the 1-tile choke very early.
AIs can send scouting units in the wild, randomly.
But attacking stacks can only target cities. If he never knows about your cities, he can't ever attack you
That, has least, is my understanding.

Even if Mehmed knew about your cities and he had an alternate path to your territory - provided you'd blocked that 1-tile choke - then he wouldn't try to storm it either.
As described in this post or that other one by retired code driver. Didn't find the original place where he explained it all.

 

[Pangaea]

@BiC

Spoiler :

That's very interesting, thanks for the links. He should know about my cities, at least the capital from the early game, as I killed a scout. But I'm actually not sure if he has spotted the city tile itself. Maybe he hasn't?

If he can't pathfind to the cities anyway, due to that one-tile blocker, then I guess there could be a scout or warrior, and it would do the same task as 100 Tanks.

The AI sure can be weird!

Just remembered. He has messed up many farms with spies, so he must know a lot of my land through spies.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

reply :

Spoiler :

Ok, then maybe he's just intimidated ?
Manco Capac's posts hint that the AI would try and storm a complete block.

Can't help

 

[Pangaea]

I tried something (BiC).

Spoiler :

Moved out all defenders to see if he moved. He didn't the next turn, but the one after he did. Figured once he had started moving things would be okay, so moved them back. Next turn, Mehmed's stack moved back into LOLTown

So I moved them out again, and this time until his stack was next to the fort, in our cultural borders. Couldn't wait any longer, so put them back inside then. Naturally this meant no fortification bonus, but I hoped he would attack...

Spoiler :

Finally he attacked. Yay!

No casualties on our side, but the odds was getting into danger territory towards the end (33% and 19%). Two guys got the scare from watching all their comrades die.

Thanks for making me aware of that strange mechanic

 

[Pangaea]

FFS. The AIs really do have spies on every single tile in the game, don't they?

None of these were doing jack. One might have been moving, the rest were stationary. None were doubled up on either, which increases the chance of getting caught.

 

[soundjata]

ITT the AI's pushed into unbearable perversion,
like suicide 20 units,
which is equivalent to annihilating 10^3 hammers

 

[dutchfire]

Wow, this one is really a lot easier than the previous game. I played quite quickly until the middle ages and was mostly fine

Spoiler :

Until I overlooked a naval invasion by Zara...

I played on Emperor, got the wall and Oracle->Feudalism. Economy was good and I was slowly conquering my way through Portugal.

 

[Pangaea]

Not even a scratch, huh?

But then the elephant was that badly injured due to a 27% HA withdraw, so I guess those two evened itself out.

Not cool when they bypass your blocker cities, so I threw what I had within reach at him here.


Btw, I find this pretty incredible. Shows how strong an espionage economy can be when you're well set up for it. Nationhood plus Scotland Yard in the capital. Some Jails too, but not everywhere. Have 3-4 libraries (10 cities), but no Academy.

 

[Pangaea]

@ dutchfire

Spoiler :

How did the Ethiopian invasion go; did Zara land a lot of units?

I'm always a little concerned when AIs get Astro, but usually they don't do a lot with galleons, and rarely make fullscale-ish invasions. More like a galleon or two, but those can be tough to defend against too, with a long coast when they can land anywhere any time.

My game is up to 1500AD now. Working my way through Ottoman lands, while the east holds up well enough with the blocker city, though they do unfortunately sometimes bypass it. Peter and Genghis have finally located me, and they're in a Jewish AP lovefest.

 

[Pangaea]

Here's an update, a little after 1500AD (picture heavy).

Spoiler :

After much huffing and puffing, Mehmed finally took the bait and attacked the Fort earlier, losing 20+ units, worth around 1000. His power took a big dive. A little later I stole Guilds, and intended to pretty soon invade Ottomans to the West.

However, as things can often be in an AW game, a challenge was uttered from the East instead, with England and Portugal invading, and annoyingly, bypassing the blocker. Englishmen are flowing from the north-east, where some Portuguese forces are in the pictures, over the next handful of turns. This meant I needed to have solid defence in 3 cities, instead of 1.

Good thing we had just got access to Knights. I emergency whipped a Castle in Awdaghost down south, and whipped out Knights, plus producing them normally from the Heroic Epic city north of the capital (where the horses are). And of course yet more Longbows in the new target cities. It was a little messy, but we killed them all, some through defending, and others with active defence.

One more thing, we swapped into Representation and Nationhood, after self-teching Constitution and Nationalism. This meant I could draft some emergency maces here and there, though I didn't draft many.

Since we already had Nationalism, a good opportunity arose:

Lib had not gone anywhere yet, so I crossed my fingers and went for it. We had the gold, and would beat Mehmed.

We had enough gold left over to upgrade 13 Knights to Cuirs, Mehmed's lucky number. Time to pay him a visit.

Soon after, Peter and Genghis discovered me with Caravels. Peter could have easily won Lib, he already had SciMethod, but had gone there via Astro and thankfully ignored Lib.


I could just have bypassed it of course, but first order of business is to raze resource-less LOL-Town, with the help of a spy revolt.

We slowly but surely gobbled up his land, with Cuirs and another small stack of Muskets, Crossbows and Trebs. Didn't really have enough foot soldiers to use it as an independent stack, so some Cuirs helped out. But it was nice to bomb away the walls of a couple cities, and get collateral against some tough defenders.


Approaching 1500AD.
The Heroic Epic location isn't nearly as good as the one I had in the Suleiman game, but it can produce 2 Cuirs ever 3 turns, so that's okay. Since this picture I've windmilled the hills (after RepParts) and put up some workshops, and that way squeezed out some more . That iron in the city was popped btw, so that was a lucky one. Copper popped a little further south as well. I really like to get out units with 4 promotions, so have settled 5 GGs here. Those, plus 2 medics, are all I have got so far.

AI cities in this period are stuffed with buildings, so it's very frustrating when this happens. Not the only time either

Oh-oh! Peter is on the move. That's a lot of Galleons...

Glad I caught it in time, and could move a stack of Cuirs down south in case he landed a ton of guys. Wonder what he will bring....

At least it wasn't only trebs. Naturally we farmed them, and gained some more experience.


Same turn, and finally Istanbul falls.

Not a great deal survived there either, but it's good to get rid of some war weariness and deny the AIs Statue of Zeus, and get happiness through Notre Dame. It's a big continent, so nice to have it here Another Shrine doesn't hurt either.

In a previous picture you may have noticed a Great Artist stuck out in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to try something. It was a low-chance birth, and I didn't feel like launching a golden age just yet.

Gotta admit, that Great Work didn't work so great Not a single working citizen. Therefore I moved all I had into place to take Mehmed's last city and wipe out all that nasty unhappiness, so we can get that kickass size 18 city working properly for us.

But of course not without stealing all his first

RNG wasn't kind and we lost more units than we should have, but I wiped Mehmed off the map, and all the unhappiness with him. Annoyingly 3 of his workers jumped into a galleon, so they were lost, but 3 others stayed in the city.

Now to turn the attention to the East, though I should probably still keep most of the surviving Cuirs around in case Peter does something nasty again. I assume he must be to the West. No idea where Genghis is, but he might be over there too, or maybe up NE where there is also a big black blot on the mini map.

Amusingly Zara settled a city on "my" continent.

Could soooo easily wipe it out, it's only guarded by a maceman (there was one more, but he left the city for some silly reason and got farmed). Instead, I'll use it to steal techs. The tech pace in this game is actually a lot faster than it was in the Suli game for me. Genghis is already on the cusp of Rifles. Zara has Communism next turn (I want that), and Peter is beelining HARD, to Steam Power. I'm self-teching Rifling and will get it in a couple of turns. Then Cuirs will be upgraded to Cavalry, and I'll start to mow down Joao. Hopefully I can do a decent job on him before Rifling goes round and everybody have Rifles and Cavs everywhere. Rifles put a definite end to Mounted warfare, although Airships can help in a pinch.

Probably still a long way to go, depending a bit on what happens on the tech front.

 

[obsolete]

Like last time I made two small changes:

Instead of tampering around and editing the map to give yourself big early advantages, I would rather you just hit the regen option, so you can at least claim that's what the generator gave you with. I really do hate playing on edited/tampered maps. It never feels right, and is sort of like cheating (which it is).

I also noticed you turned off vassals IIRC. This is another turn-off for me with the save. I can certainly understand why it feels this mechanic sucks (and it does), but in honesty, the AI will be heavily penalized in tech rate with this off.

 

[Pangaea]

Understandable you dislike the edits, even if they were very minor. I got mighty fed up of hitting Alt-G. The buttons on my keyboard almost needed replacing.

However, the disabling of vassals have practically no impact on the game anyway. The AIs will only be at war with the human (odd map layout and fortunate religious situation aside), so they won't get vassals that way. The only way there is likely to be a vassal is when the human has bashed up an AI enough and it can peace vassal to another AI. Can mean a bashed up AI can get some free techs from its master just before being wiped out, but it's not exactly a game deciding factor. By the time an AI is weak enough to peace vassal, it is already being swept away by a tsunami.

The bigger issue here is that the map happened to be on the easy side. That has very little to do with those tiny edits, and a lot more to do with factors that were randomly generated. The Charlemagne game is much tougher

 

[obsolete]

I was referring to the PEACEFUL vassal mechanics... Where due to random die-rolls, AIs will randomly vassal, and then there is a flurry of free techs swapping all over between the AIs involved.

P.S. I feel the most IMPORTANT skill of all the great players was to know when/where to move your settler... I used to watch Snaaty spent 3-4 turns moving his initial settler around before settling in our deity games. These were AW rulesets as well...

So yes, no edits... it is the responsibility of the user to either go-in-place, or gamble for a better position.

 

[rah]

Instead of tampering around and editing the map to give yourself big early advantages, I would rather you just hit the regen option, so you can at least claim that's what the generator gave you with. I really do hate playing on edited/tampered maps. It never feels right, and is sort of like cheating (which it is).

The only difference between some minor tweaking and the regen option is saving some time.
If one is cheating, the other is also.

 

[dutchfire]

Wow, this one is really a lot easier than the previous game. I played quite quickly until the middle ages and was mostly fine

Spoiler :

Until I overlooked a naval invasion by Zara...

I played on Emperor, got the wall and Oracle->Feudalism. Economy was good and I was slowly conquering my way through Portugal.

Spoiler :

Loaded back a few turns before where I left last time, to prepare for the possibility of a naval invasion.

It is now 1400 AD and Portugal is dead (with horse archers, catapults and knights). Next up is England!

I started mostly self-researching but am now switching towards espionage on Mehmed, who is slightly ahead of me in tech.

At some point, I stole Nationalism from him and used a GE to snatch the Taj Mahal, which he was building. That was nice!

 

[Seraiel]

Instead of tampering around and editing the map to give yourself big early advantages, I would rather you just hit the regen option, so you can at least claim that's what the generator gave you with. I really do hate playing on edited/tampered maps. It never feels right, and is sort of like cheating (which it is).

Editing a map is not cheating, the maps in SGOTM are all edited heavily.

People need to play what makes fun obsolete, 2-3 small changes are really nothing to think about and there's nothing to hate. The map that Pangaea created makes a lot of fun, just don't think about the edits, play it, win earlier than anybody of us.