Club Immortal

[CharonJr]

Turn 100 - end:

Spoiler :

At turn 103 enough of my troops are in position for a DOW on Asika. And while he has a bunch of horsemen and spearmen by 109 I have taken 3 of his cities and Gao is about to fall.

I reject his peace offer and Gao falls on turn 110 with another city to follow at 111.

I neglected to take a closer look at the pop number of the last city I puppeted and suddenly find myself at -10 happiness. My offer of peace is accepted.

Since I already have all the luxuries I can get and lach the money to rush a colloseum I have to wait for another turn till my road to the first conquered city gets finished, bringing my happiness back to -9.

With the fairly large number of puppets and the trade network between them I start to make some decent money (just finished my replacing farms with tradeposts at about this time, too).

When the second former Songhai city gets connected to my traed network the remaining 3 conquered cities are connected as well, bringing my happiness to a comfortable -5.

At turn 115 research in education gets finished and I bulf banking, thus finally being able to pick the Freedom SP. This will allow me to upgrade the 6 horsemen I am moving towards Russia to knights, since I will not have to use the money on colliseums till I DOW Russia and will lose 1 luxuries due to it.

3 knights remain in the south and head towards Beijing. A DOW vs. China follows on turn 117 and at turn 119 Bejing falls. Since China just have one more city and barely any troops I ignore them and go for the kill vs. Russia.

Turn 120 sees the DOW vs. Russia with 4 knights semi-surrounding Moscow, and the other 2 knights guarding my border. By turn 121 Moscow falls and the game is over.

Basically I played this game as a pure rush, with expansion mainly via puppets. The cities I build myself were mainly there to hook up luxuries/strategic ressources and focussing purely on research (each build a lib and had 2 specialists - basically preventing any serious growth).

I think I could have been a bit more focused on getting horseman/knights than I have been, but it took me till around turn 80 (mainly by seeing how easily I was able to steamroll the Iroquois) to recognise that knights will be more than enough to win this one.

I even was a little bit afraid that all the AIs would gang up on me around turn 80, but it seems like a PoS with one AI and the other having set its sights on one of its neighbours kept me save.

Overall I had some fun with this one. Thank you for providing the game.

BTW, how are you getting those screenshots in here? I finally found out how to take some, but those are 8MB .tga monsters.

CharonJr

 

[wurstburst]

@TheMeInTeam

Spoiler :

I've been watching your vids as you post them. Just watched number 20. Definitely a different play style than me. You're very tactical focused and get 100% out of every unit on the board. I tend to dig more into the city level stuff and pick up a few more GS than you, build libraries earlier, etc. I don't play my battles quite as well as you do with all the flanking and prep for attacking that you do.

If you were able to get out knights a bit quicker, you probably could have sped up your conquest quite a bit. You were definitely in "just in time" mode - you just got knights when you really needed them. Just finished out Hiawatha in time to run back to deal with Gandhi. You play the tactical side well enough that some less focused effort on the city side can be overcome. However, an extra GS or two could make a big difference for you in getting or keeping the upper hand during your wars.

On the issue of promotions, I agree with your approach in this game. Insta heal is nice once in a while, when absolutely needed. But if possible, it should be avoided to get some well promoted monster units. I tend to like the rough terrain promotions on horses. My reasoning is that I can usually deal with units I catch in the open ground without having open terrain promotions. And the rough terrain bonus makes hills and forests a better place to park my horses after an attack or setting up for attack. It also lets me root out units in the hills when I need to. I usually have about 75% of my units with the rough terrain promotions and the rest with open terrain promotions - in case I need something more situational. On the other hand, the open terrain bonuses do let you defeat even superior forces, so I might think about taking more of those in my future games.

Thanks for posting up all the vids - very entertaining. Can't wait to see the finish.

Final comment - you were a bit lucky that Gandhi spread his attack. If even one of those extra few units that attacked futilely down in Karakorum and the other city had instead walked up to Washington, you'd have lost the capital for a few turns before being able to retake it. That would have slowed you down a lot. Fortunately the AI is not so smart.

 

[Iberian]

I typically make most of my units Open Terrain due to the fact that most tiles are open. I will make a couple for defensive positions Rough terrain but typically the maps are mostly open. Even if I will still normally win in open terrain it is better to trounce them and 1 hit kill them with little to no damage vs having the ability to take out a unit in a rough terrain hex. Most often you can just go around that unit. Even more so in the case of horses. Trying to keep them on flat land allows for attack/retreat vs attack/counterattacked.

 

[CharonJr]

Actually I like the rough promotion especially with horsemen in order to take cities. Essentially you are never able to start a turn, attack and finish your turn out of te cities/defenders reach anyway. So being able to retreat to a nice rough tile after the attack is fairly helpful IMO.

And on open ground you can most often move some horsemen into flanking positions if you face a hard unit. In addiion to the terrain modifier for getting attacked on open ground this is usually enough. Basically with fairly mobile forces I see no point in getting an even larger advantage by using promotions there.

CharonJr

 

[CharonJr]

BTW, anybody up for a similar game at deity level?

The thread about Darius and unlocking the GA steam achievement made me give a deity setup for this one a shot and while I am only at turn 40 here this game looks to turn out quite interesting.

Basic setup is Darius, deity level, large pangea map (standard number of civs/CS, so 8/16 IIRC), quick combat enabled.

CharonJr

 

[wurstburst]

Actually I like the rough promotion especially with horsemen in order to take cities. Essentially you are never able to start a turn, attack and finish your turn out of te cities/defenders reach anyway. So being able to retreat to a nice rough tile after the attack is fairly helpful IMO.

And on open ground you can most often move some horsemen into flanking positions if you face a hard unit. In addiion to the terrain modifier for getting attacked on open ground this is usually enough. Basically with fairly mobile forces I see no point in getting an even larger advantage by using promotions there.

CharonJr

That was my thought process, too. But seeing TheMeInTeam easily take out longswords and musketmen with horsemen makes me rethink a bit. Being able to fight a war if you are behind in tech can be a life saver. And you can only do that if fighting in the flats, so those promotions might be key.

An more even mix of units with shock and drill might be the best way to go. Also, when you attack with a few horsemen, there's not always enough hills or forest to retreat to. So, having a horseman sit on the flat with the right promotions might make the difference between living through the counterattack and dying.

I'm trying it more balanced in my next game to see how it goes.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My suspicion is that balance is best also.