[C3C] COTM127 Dalecarlia Sid - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[Spoonwood]

I'm aware of that. But what would it take to survive the early game at all? I was afraid I had made this game too easy, but even these props wouldn't have sufficed on pangaea? A full Pikeman Army?

Do you allow for the luxury/resource exploit? Because if you use that, then you just need to keep the AIs happy enough so that they won't attack you and get some of their gold, perhaps so that you can keep them happy. If they're at least aggressive, I don't think that's generally difficult, because on an archipelago map they often won't attack you early even if you don't gift them some gold/tech every often to keep them happy. Then again, this is a CoTM thread, so I probably shouldn't assume that... except templar_x referenced it implicitly.

Lanzelot's strategy of gifting cities can work on a more land full map, including gifting the same city multiple times if desired (every turn in that thread involved gifting the city to an AI). I'm not entirely clear as to what you question is, but I would guess that the answer is a pikeman army with 7 hitpoints. They will attack a 6 hitpoint 3 defense army on flatland, but not a 7 hitpoint army. Possibly fewer hitpoints if you build a fortress/barricade in the right spot. Perhaps the AI won't attack a 12 hitpoint spear-man army in a barricade until they have tanks? I haven't tested that, but it might prove interesting.

Of course though, you'll probably also want a nice stack of artillery type units and some good offensive units.

 

[Spoonwood]

Perhaps a mountain choke-point with a fortress and a single pike in it? That would buy the human player time until Map Making.

??? Did you mean Navigation? Even so, I'm not sure I understand this comment.

If you only have one army, which of the following works better?

1. Using it to go and pillage out the AI's territory.

2. Using the army to protect your stack of artillery type and offensive units to kill and promote and perhaps spawn another leader vs. the AI slow stack.

Mind you, you might use a special unit like a horseman, an explorer, or a warrior combined with some RoP rape to pillage out their horses/saltpeter/iron.

Even without the pillaging, I'll go with 2. Well placed artillery units work well, and you can get more MGLs that way. Then again, I might stand biased with the types of games I play.

 

[Lanzelot]

??? Did you mean Navigation? Even so, I'm not sure I understand this comment.

What I meant is: if "our part of the Pangaea" is separated from the "AI's part of the Pangaea" by a one-tile choke-point that will not be attacked by the AI's land units, the human player has time to build his/her core undisturbedly until the AI discovers Map Making and can therefore "ship around" the choke-point with galleys. (And I think a pike in a mountain fortress should be enough to discourage the AI from attacking it with archers, swordsmen and the like, shouldn't it?)

If you only have one army, which of the following works better?

Yes, "2" is more powerful than "1" for sure. But "1" can be implemented earlier: you won't have a stack of artillery early in the game, but you can send the Army over for pillaging, capturing workers etc. as early as you want to. (Or rather as early as you feel safe enough against their counter-attack... ) So "1" can be used very effectively for crippling an AI quite early on, while "2" is more a late-game strategy, isn't it?

 

[Spoonwood]

(And I think a pike in a mountain fortress should be enough to discourage the AI from attacking it with archers, swordsmen and the like, shouldn't it?)

I'm not sure. I'd want to test that out or see tests. This, of course, consists in way in which old saves can help with the present game, without reloading in the present game.

But "1" can be implemented earlier: you won't have a stack of artillery early in the game, but you can send the Army over for pillaging, capturing workers etc. as early as you want to.

Wait... so you have a pikeman army and thus Feudalism, but you've decided to forego building catapults? I guess building catapults makes for more units, but doesn't having your cities go something like catapult-barracks-attack units/defensive units, generally make more sense? Then again, you look weaker to the AI when doing that, but they can kill you early anyways if they care to do so. And with the benefits of forestry and some good chops/river crossings, doesn't getting Engineering before Feudalism generally make more sense so that you can build trebuchets before you can get that pikeman army?

Also, tribes like Greece and Carthage and Rome who can build an ancient unit with a defense of 3, did not start all that far away from mathematics.

 

[Lanzelot]

Wait... so you have a pikeman army and thus Feudalism,

It seems we are talking at cross-purposes... Who said anything about Feudalism? I'm only discussing/evaluating the proposition that Più Freddo made above: namely to start the game with a worker, a settler and a Pikeman-Army. (The purpose of that Pikeman-Army being to eliminate the chance factor that you get overrun by your nextdoor neighbor within the first 20 turns...)
My objection to this was, that once you have built up a reasonable core and sufficient defences, you can dare to send the Pikeman-Army away into AI territory and cause havoc there. (With a few clever MAs in place, you can probably already do this even before you have sufficient home defences in place?!) So the Army, once it has fullfilled its original purpose, can then be used for all kinds of (semi-)exploits. Therefore I suggested to replace that Army with a "sufficiently protected" choke-point that fullfills the same purpose: giving the human player enough time at the beginning, where he can build up his core without the danger of getting rolled over by a nearby AI.

If a pikeman in a mountain fortress is not sufficient, then perhaps a musketman? I remember seeing an investigation somewhere here on the forum, as to which units are "immune to attack", but I can't find it at the moment. If I remember correctly, an Infantry in a mountain fortress would not even get attacked by Tanks, so I assumed that a pikeman in a mountain fortress would be immune to attack up to let's say Medieval Infantry?! But before designing a Sid COTM that heavily depends on that feature, we should better test it...

 

[Più Freddo]

It seems to defeat the purpose of having a pangaea map if you divide it up into islands anyway. On the other hand, the next Sid game is Greece with Hoplites...

 

[templar_x]

i see where you come from. but as Lanzelot says, Sid Pangaea survival of the initial game phase simply requires luck.
t_x

 

[Più Freddo]

i see where you come from. but as Lanzelot says, Sid Pangaea survival of the initial game phase simply requires luck.
t_x

Which is unfortunate for GOTM. No one wants a competition decided completely or largely by luck.

 

[lifetap]

WOW, hit and run tactic, I've read that before in one of the forums, but I haven't tried that since I don't know how much powerful it is. And now that we've played the same map, I can now comprehend how significant the tactic is. 8-10 berserks to destroy hitties in SIDS while I only get to conquer Japan using stacks of cavalries, cannons, and armies.

 

[Spoonwood]

I was afraid I had made this game too easy, but even these props wouldn't have sufficed on pangaea?

I haven't tested it, but my idea goes something like this. Maybe it's something that lies around here somewhere else... I'm not so sure.

1. When you find your first neighbor/neighbors, just scout their territory and use warrior resource denial (if it's legal for XOTM competitions) as soon as you can. This step will just make things easier in the long run, but maybe it's not so necessary.

2. Try to wait until you have enough force to capture the border cities of your first target neighbor with units of movement of two. I would suggest using combat settlers to get into a position to attack immediately and not have to spend a turn in their territory even. Capture those border cities.

3. If the enemy has fast units, then gift those cities to the most distant tribe without an RoP with the target tribe/found a city or two so that the recently captured cities and your newly built cities form a new border with your new opponent. If they don't have fast units, then you might potentially wait a turn or two.

4. Sign, or maintain, an RoP with the tribe that you gifted the cities to.

5. Repeat steps two through four for new captured cities or at least until you've really hit them hard.

There. Now, perhaps that might enable you to forget about defensive units for the first war. You have an RoP with the friendly intermediary tribe, so your 1 unit move units could move three tiles if all tiles have roads, but the enemy can only move one tile per turn. Then after you've done something about your first target and the RoP expires...

6. Retake those captured cities from the most distant tribe... or don't and instead use them again for another opponent.

The idea here isn't so much to "hit and run" as with Lanzelot's Berzerk technique, but rather to slow them down and make it so that you don't need, or only need minimal defensive units for that first war.