Can this Assyrian Strategy work?

[El Caballerion]

As I grow tired of 'traditional' games, I want to fully exploit each CIV's potential, shaped by the combination of their UA, UB/UU/UI. Will this Assyrian Strategy rock out? Will it leave me in a quagmire? What are your thoughts?

• Settle on a small continent with 2, possibly 3 other CIVS (Island must be completely isolated from other civs until discovery of Astronomy)
• Beeline to Calendar (so I can build Stonehenge, and hopefully acquire a religion mainly for Tithe)
• Beeline to Mathematics and build 2-3 Siege Towers (by now, each CIV should have 2-3 cities on the map)
• Declare war on CIV A
• Raze cities for the sole purpose of farming techs
• Settle peace
• Declare war on CIV B
• Raze cities for the sole purpose of farming techs
• Settle peace
• Wait until mid-Medieval for another round of war (by now, CIV A & B should have built two other cities each)
• Go to war and conquer the ENTIRE continent for free techs. With no one around from other CIVS before Renaissance, there wont be a warmonger penalty and I'll be sitting comfortably on a conquered continent.

Thoughts?

 

[comatosedragon]

Sounds like an interesting idea, I have only played as Assyria on Immortal, and have NEVER gotten a tech by conquering a city. I think you have to handcuff yourself pretty hard to not be the tech leader, that and I think the UA and UU do not go together -- that is the UU is great for early conquering, but the UA will not be useful until much later in the game. That's my expereince, anyway.

 

[Navelgazer]

I'd say the biggest stumbling block to this strategy is that the way to make the most out of the UA is to beeline your war techs while letting your conquering fill in the gaps, but that means your going to find yourself moving up in eras pretty quickly. Timing the final war correctly after farming techs will be tricky.

 

[MKDELTA3]

Farming cities for techs sounds like a huge hassle.

The UA is mostly good for beelining vital scientific and military techs and stealing the rest. Which is probably super awesome at higher difficulties, moderately interesting on the not-so-high difficulties and a waste on the lower ones.

IDK I've played Assyria several times and never had a good game with them. Either I get into a too intensive early war and happiness and gold issues and then everybody gangs on me or then I do some moderate early conquests and everything is peachy, I curbstomp the peacemongers to point of no return and keep off the warmongers. Then I get chain denounced, Siege Towers become useless and I have a pile Trebuchets with mismatched promotions and no idea where to go from there.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

Are you going to pick AI's or just go with random? If random best hope that Polynesia are not on the other continent. If they appear as you are attacking Civ B for the second time they are going to be telling bad stories about you to everyone on their home continent

Any other Civ's get Ocean going ability pre-Astronomy? they are the only ones I can think of.

 

[Dgodus]

On emp difficulty the only way I've gotten any techs from the AI is basically if I've only researched military techs.

Seige towers were neat, but I really only built 2 for the bonuses to add to my conventional forces, so the odd promotion they ended up with was cover 2 which is always helpful anyways. But I had no real intention of upgrading them anyways, was just going to keep them around giving the bonus until they got one shotted by a city/garrison.

I basically abandoned the game as being classical it felt like just a regular warmonger Civ, so I never really got to make use of the UB, as I hadn't a chance to steal (through conquest) any works yet.

I think Assyria is something I'll try when I move up in difficulty so the AI will have a more significant tech lead as I focus all efforts on forming an early rush and continuously gear for war.

 

[Navelgazer]

Interesting. I never want fewer than 3 Siege Engines, all together, forming a nigh-unstoppable city-leveler.

 

[joshua43214]

Nope, won't work...

You get one tech per civilization, and you get a tech that civ has already researched, which means you get something useless like bronze working from the first, and if your lucky writing from the second.

You could have had the NC completed by the time you get the second free tech

 

[Navelgazer]

One tech per CITY, you mean. But in a recent game, for example, I watched Edirne get founded and razed a few times, and I think the "once per city" limitation might apply here.

 

[El Caballerion]

Are you going to pick AI's or just go with random? If random best hope that Polynesia are not on the other continent. If they appear as you are attacking Civ B for the second time they are going to be telling bad stories about you to everyone on their home continent

Any other Civ's get Ocean going ability pre-Astronomy? they are the only ones I can think of.

That's true. I think Polynesia is my least favorite CIV to play against simply because they will have a monopoly on island ruins.

 

[reddishrecue]

Handcuffing yourself from the usual tech lead strategy and instead move to military power instead with assyria sounds like a good plan. However, if civ A or civ B have good melee units and iron then you could be in trouble since that could be the seige tower's weakness I'm guessing because I've found it easy to stop seige towers with swordsmen.

 

[Dgodus]

Interesting. I never want fewer than 3 Siege Engines, all together, forming a nigh-unstoppable city-leveler.

Yea, I use unlimited barb xp, so my barb hunters are already pretty devastating (first war with logistic archers? It's almost not fair).

 

[Amarr Emperor]

some AIs like to expand like hell, try starting with russia or zulu to maximize your farms

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

One tech per CITY, you mean. But in a recent game, for example, I watched Edirne get founded and razed a few times, and I think the "once per city" limitation might apply here.

I think it applies to any new city founded with a settler regardless of the name. That once per city limitation is to stop people from taking, losing and retaking a city repeatedly until all that civs techs were stolen. If you raze a city and they settle a new one with the same name you'll still get any tech they might have that's eligable.

I think with the Assyrian UA your best bet is to research both military and scientific techs then let the UA fill in the gaps. You might get some techs that would have only cost one or two turns to research but that's one or two turns you can be researching something important.

 

[joncnunn]

The entire contenant part will not work as you probably won't be 12 techs behind everyone.
The first part of it might though. And with early game most AI cities being junk anyway ...