Another fine mess...

blueparrot1966

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 6, 2006
Messages
85
This was inspired by the "two painful .25 games" thread. I posted it there, but thought I might get more conversation out of a new thread.

In a two continent setup, Alexis launched a surprise sea attack on my capitol which was totally unsuccessful. I figured it was time to do the usual late game mop up of pesky warlike AI civs, built an army accordingly.

I planned on taking out 3 or 4 cities to start, an area that included desperately needed gunpowder as well as nice-to-have gems. I showed up with an army of around 60 units, plunked 'em down on a couple of hill tiles next to the first city I had marked out. It consisted of several national units, archmages, knights, war chariots and such, the two dwarven heroes, and the rest rounded out by regulars- a good mix of maces, pikes, crossbows, and catapults. I never figured to knock out a whole advanced civ that way, but I DID at least think this'd be a good start.

Had a stiff counterattack on the first AI turn, including a nasty surprise from a High Priest of Leaves. It had never really sunk in for me that "entangle" hits a whole stack, and the entire army was on two tiles.

But the REAL surprise was on turn two. Alexis coughed up enough units to ANNIHILATE the entire army in one turn. Every last unit. I could believe my eyes. The rate of battles lost was quite high, even though my army included defensive units and was sited on hill tiles. There's no mention of it in the civlopedia that I could find, but I have to figure entangle lowers defense rate too, or something.

Obviously, investing in some sort of magic resistance would've been a good move before I built my army. And I could go back to the drawing board, move them in with 18 ships and 120 units, twice what I tried the first time. But with a civ powerful enough to wipe out 60 units in a turn, I seriously wonder if I can BUILD enough of an army to gain a foothold before the end of the game.

*****update*****

I gave it another try, bombarding the target city with meteors from the archmages, (archmagi?!), and to my surprise, an amphibious assault worked. Got the whole army onto three tiles, the two hills and the city this time. Over the next couple of turns, I wound up retreating into the city, and again watching my army get slaughtered. Not only was the sheer NUMBER of AI units overwhelming, but even in the city, I kept losing a suspiciously high percentage of the battles.

The city is on a desert tile, and it has no walls. (can't build 'em for 10 turns due to pop resistance.) I guess I could cast "spring" to eliminate the desert -25% defense, but my gut feeling is that it hardly seems to matter. They seem to be marching in and slaughtering my guys, never mind the city defense. And I'm not talking about sneaky stuff like assassin units, it's just stuff like moroi, vampires, and the Calabim regulars.

What am I missing? Did I just wait too long to get on with the conquest part of things? Am I supposed to just build an insanely large army all at once, or will the AI STILL have 2-3x the units I have?
 
I've never used more than 20 units in FfH for a major assault. The army you described building sounds like overkill to me. But i play on Monarch level, (huge maps) maybe you were playing much higher?

I just think it is nice to see the AI using offensive spells.

- feydras
 
Vampires are quite tough, because of Feast... did she have blitz on any of her vamps? My advice would be to get an adept w/ earth mana for wall of stone to help with the city def, and carry a couple of thanes in to eliminate resistance and boost borders for cultural def immediately.
 
Yep, Calabim. Map size is large, continents, difficulty is (blush)... prince. I've been dialing it down because I was consistently getting thumped at higher lvls.

The wall of stone is an excellent idea- even after many games, I tend to get bogged down and miss things. There are so many variations of units and spells, it's easy for me to lose sight of everything that might be available.

As for the size of the army, yep, I thought it was overkill too. It's the largest single assault I've ever launched by sea in a civ game. Which is why I'm all the more impressed. It wasn't just stopped. It was WIPED OUT!

I'll go one better than a screenshot. Here's the save. Try it for yourself. :eek:
 

Attachments

An AI putting up a real fight? That's a delightful deviation from the norm.
 
You could use hedgehog formation so the AI won't get to your best units on the first turn, but you'd see how big their army really is
Haste your troops to get as close to the enemy strongholds as possible to the best possible defense terrain and if they have stacks, try to eliminate them with crush, or even better, maelstrom
 
...this is the reason why, back before BtS, I quit playing non-pangea-style maps. Invading with well over a hundred units and getting nowhere, while the AI is too stupid to build ships and invade you. I know you said they made a naval invasion, but what if a hundred units had shown up? Or a counter attack after wiping out your attack force?

I suggest razing all her coastal cities before landing your troops. I tried to load the save but it crashed so I don't know how many there are. If there are enough it should force units to be disbanded due to lack of funds. If not perhaps it's enough for you to be able to outproduce them.
 
From the feedback I've gotten, I'm not doing anything stupid, it's just a very, very strong AI civ. It's a shame it's still so narrow in what it's capable of as an opponent.

I agree, about the naval invasion. With that kind of land based force, she could definitely put me in a fight for my life, which would be fun, and a refreshing change from usual civ play.

I was playing this way because I was BORED with pangea setups, but it looks like that's really the only sort of map setup the AI can handle well, even after 16 years of Civ evolution!

Razing the cities is definitely an option, but it's kind of cheesy. Not really my style, and it'll just drag out the game.
 
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