[BTS] BOTM 177: Shaka, Prince: First Spoiler - 1AD

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 177: Shaka, Prince - First Spoiler - 1AD



Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD

How did your impis fare? Did you conquer anyone or were you peaceful?

Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 177, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

 

[lymond]

Welp, I'd say DS was a tad bit evil on this map..ha. AI had extremely easy access to strats, in some cases from what I've seen so far, most have two sources right next to their cap. Hatty started right on top of horses . If one chose to warrior rush, one might nab one cap. But game was clearly designed not to make early rushing easy.

Played until 150BC before stopping the session. Just took Hatty's cap. She was at war with KK, who asked me to join and was already in process of preparing to attack her anyway, so why not. Bribed GK in as well to keep him occupied since he was sporting rather large stacks walking around and he beelined HBR.

Settled 1SW as expected. Opened BW>AH>Oracle>Alpha. Oracled Currency. Did not want to mess with delaying Oracle with Señorita Izzy sitting over there. Finishing up CS currently.

Had some Impis hovering around Hatty/Izzy. Scouting Izzy - and with Alpha just in at the time - I noticed she did not have her copper hooked up or BW tech. She did not have Hunting either much less archery. 1 Warrior in Madrid. Position the 2 Impis properly > trade BW to her for gold cause why not > and took Madrid. Lost first Impi at high odds though. Meanwhile GK attacked her next turn and took Barcelona before I had a chance. No more Izzy.

So, at 150BC, I have 12 cities - mostly settled, a few turns from CS, Construction is teched, at war with Hatty having taken two of her cities. She has two more left but GK and KK are fighting her two.

Not surprising, Sal beat me to GLH, which I was trying to build in Madrid. He loves that wonder. GLH not bad on this map with some island cities in the south...plan to settle those very soon.

Not sure yet where I"m taking this game. Things seem a little slow so far, but I plan to use to cats on one of the Khans, probably KK first. GK's Keshiks will be a pain, although KK may or may not have them soon as well. I do otherwise have a pretty significant tech lead on everyone so expect to take advantage of that.

Interesting setup here and pretty decent land. Oh..settled first new city up 1S of the copper below KK.

edit: Oh..forgot to mention but I somehow switched into Confused after teching CoL some turns back. I was checking the religion screen as my mind was playing tricks on me since I usually play with "choose religions" on in casual games. So I always expect a popup for religion. Anyway, somehow I clicked or double click something and switched. (Part of problem is that I mouse left-handed now, which I'm generally fine at doing but I'm not a lefty) Anyway, bit pizzed about the unnecessary loss of a turn..and possibly a second lost turn unless I wait for Music.

 

[Fippy]

So i took the Impi challenge ~~

Spoiler :

Shaka approves, as i built only Impis (no Axe or so)

 

[Fippy]

at war with Hatty having taken two of her cities.

When i Impi attacked Hatty, she had 2 warriors & 1 settler & Stonehenge in her Cap
Which also was her only city lol, i went for Kublai first..really shows how AIs struggle if the rng decides they want a wonder first.

 

[lymond]

Impiressive game so far, My! Nice to see you playing with the bunnies

 

[Fippy]

So far? On turn 101 no bunnies to play with are left for my Impis

 

[lymond]

I didn’t catch that the game was already won (on my phone looking at tiny map)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Shaka approves, as i built only Impis (no Axe or so)

@DynamicSpirit approves too - because you use single unit graphics, which @DynamicSpirit loves (seriously, I really detest the multiple-unit graphics that the game shows by default if you don't change it).

As for the victory date... Only 350 BC? Couldn't you manage 375 BC?

Oh OK, well done! That's actually pretty amazing... I think that might be a hard date to beat!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Welp, I'd say DS was a tad bit evil on this map..ha. AI had extremely easy access to strats, in some cases from what I've seen so far, most have two sources right next to their cap. Hatty started right on top of horses . If one chose to warrior rush, one might nab one cap. But game was clearly designed not to make early rushing easy.

You mean your 100%-bonus-vs-mounted-units impis couldn't cope with a few war chariots? Besides, I'm sure you'd have been disappointed if your impis didn't have some mounted units to fight against. So you see, I was doing you a favour really....

 

[Frederiksberg]

Awesome game by @Fippy

350 BC will indeed be hard to beat, and it won't be me who beats it, because at 1AD de Gaulle is still alive in my game. Well, barely alive with a single size two city left and I expect to capture it in a couple of turns.

I played an opening gambit moving the settler north in coordination with the scout looking for another civ. Found Kublais capital and settled 3 tiles SE on a plains hill and built 4 warriors back to back. Unfortunately Kublai built an early worker so when my warrior stack sacked his city it was size 1 and auto-razed. Next victim was Hatty. She only had one city at the time of attack but several war chariots so I had to call back my chariots and wait for impi backup. Thebes fell fast with the impi support and the army could swing south and start attacking Izzy. She had recently founded Barcelona that was captured and razed immediately. Then a short cease fire waiting for reinforcements and Madrid was taken. Around this time I met the final civ, Saladin and concluded he had to be located behind Genghis. Thus Genghis was the next logical target. Settled a couple of cities to get gems and ivory and traded for gold with de Gaulle. Genghis was easy to eliminate. He did have some keshiks but they were easy prey for the mighty impi's. By now my army had become a mix of chariots, HA's and impi's. Razed two cities and kept Karakorum.

The end game was not handled in the best way. I missed that both Mecca and Paris were hill cities with 60% cultural defense and brought insufficient forces for my first attacks. At this point I had two armies. One fighting in Arabia and another in France in the opposite end of the world. And in both cases I had to abort the assault on the capitals after razing a couple of minor cities. Rather than prompting the AI to emergency whip archers every turn I made a cease fire and built my stacks for the final attack. When I returned with two 20+ unit stacks the capitals actually contained fewer defender (I was expecting up to 6 units but faced no more than 4) because both de Gaulle and Saladin had settled an extra city and moved defenders there. This made the final attack very easy and both hill capitals fell with no problems and the remaining stacks were big enough to immediately move on to the left over cities.

I agree with @lymond that @DynamicSpirit wanted the AI's to be able to fight back militarily by placing all those strategic resources near their capitals. I also tend to think that Paris and Mecca were placed on hills on purpose to make the last captures difficult. At least it stalled my attack for a while.

@Fippy : Did you manage to capture Paris early? Or did you simply build a giant stack of impi's to deal with the hilltop cities and the defending axemen?

 

[Fippy]

I smashed stacks of Impis into Axes at times, yup
Genghis was the first with them i think.

But shhh dun tell Shaka-brade, i will always be My-Zerg ~~
(DG was last for me too, i could have finished a little sooner with more army movement micro)

 

[Frederiksberg]

Yeah, I imagine it must have been a carnage attacking with impi's against defending axes.

I struggled a lot with maintaining sufficient happy faces and I was almost out of gold when the final attacks set in. I can deduce from your screenshot that you got to Currency. Was that planned from the start? And did you also go for Monarchy?

I stopped teching after BW and HBR and my choice of moving away from the gems may have cost me dearly in terms of tech. (Got gems later, a lot later!)

 

[krikav]

Haha, nice game @Fippy!
I'm up at T157 and my Impis have yet to wrap the game up, very sloppy play, just for the lols.
Lost 116 impis so far, but I have a feeling that I will lose some more.
0.00% chance against Saladins capital equipped with protective longbows, but someone will be the Lucky Impi breaking through.