deity aw 2

[GKey]

Question guys: I rolling aw starts to see if I can find a "comfortable" one. I pick Unrestricted leaders and Aggressive AI's in start settings. Then I meet neighbors: Elizabeth, Washington and even Mansa Mursa. Aggressive AI's?!

 

[Dirk1302]

Aggressive ais is only an interesting option if you don't play aw. It means an automatic -2 in relations with the human player. Chances for a declaration on the human player are higher. Maybe they build more troops as well but i'm not sure of that.

You'll have to handpick to make sure you get the toku's and other slow researching idiots in the game it think.

 

[GKey]

Thanks! I was misunderstanding this. Then Aggressive AI's in AW game are complete nonsense.

 

[Snaaty]

@ gkey:

if you find a start you like, feel free to start the 3rd deity aw thread here (deity aw 3).

remember to pick natural shorelines for those peninsulas in pangea and some small islands around them.

and for more early space, better select 5 ais only. but the problem with lesser ais often is that one ai gets a lot of land and runs away... ...so im usually torn between giving the ais lesser space (which, on the other hand, also means lesser space for us) and trying to give us more space (which, again, on the other hand, means more space for the remaining ais)... ...stupid decision to make, afterwards you usually feel like you decided wrong

-> compare the first two aw games i started:

1. game:
5 ais (one ai less then under normal settings)
no wins, runaway ai

2. game:
6 ais (normal ai number)
very likely no wins, ai starts with a huge borderline thanks to beeing cornered in early...

...

you might try playing a deity aw teamgame, thats how i learned to handle these settings (at least a bit). if 2 humans team up against 3 ai teams of 2 (low shoreline needs to be selected or you are REALLY cornered in early) chances are a bit better. downside is that the spy system is totally bugged in teamgames and therefore you cant play a syp-eco there, making it a huge challange to keep up techwise... ...and teamgames against the ai are big fun btw

 

[GKey]

Regarding dilemma less space to AI's = less space to us:
I think it's fine. We can't afford settler spamming anyway.

I try high sea level with standard AI's number, looks not bad. Now I just need peninsula possible to defend.

 

[MarigoldRan]

One idea is this:

Why do you exist?
Answer: You exist to get skirmishers.

Why do you get skirmishers?
To kill teal blue early.

Why do you kill teal blue early?
To get their land

What is the purpose of your capital?
To build skirmishers.

The computers go after your capital. It's on a hill and very well protected. Thus, build a few fishing boats, and then whip skirmishers non-stop. Once you take out teal, you can build at teal's location, allowing your capital to be the enemy magnet.

 

[Snaaty]

to 1 ad (part 1):

Spoiler :

first of all, i had to find out that i played a bit sloppy at the end of last set... ...and there is another huge army outside of our main blocking city...

so we need reinforcements and we need them NOW:


the city is emergency whipped and the city next to it gets emtied. to reach the hotspot in time, this skirm gets the gg hanging around in our capital attached and gets promoted on mobility...

still, we loose 1 skim in the following fight... ...well, could have been worse i guess...

...

then, in hopes of good news, we storm the persian capital... ...oh well, more bad news, the rng wasnt our friend this time. hoping for no losses, expecting 1, at max. 2 units to die, we loose 3 units... ...first cr2 catapult at 59% odds, next cr2 catapult at 76% odds, and to top it, also an elephant at 92% odds (first 3 fights, rest of the fights were above 96% odds)


...

but, on the bright side, some atlas titanus guy (strange name btw) infiltrates hanni of rome, to start the spy area of mali, 25 bc


...

in parallel, things were not going good for pericles of persia, despite our losses near his capital:



we congratulate him for settling at least on damn city at the right spot and keep it for ourselves. researchwise i decided to make a little detour for poly-mono, so we can switch to monarchy + org religion at once (isnt shown on the screens, took only 2 or 3 turns)

and an overview of whats left of persia and how we plan to "reculture" it

 

[Snaaty]

part 2:

Spoiler :

then, in 1 ad, we start our big spy attack on hanni of rome:

strike 1:


strike 2:


with like a lot of spypoints on your target, chances are really, really good on stealing techs

...

and an overview over main-mali:


we then revolted at the end of this set to heredity rule+org reli. as planned.

...

and timur, what a heroe he has become in only a short time (i retreated the 2 top hostigators on the tile with the elephant when no superstacks where near, so timur would take over the fights right from the start):


and upgraded to a lb at 1 ad, timur will be really painfull now for the ais

...

further plans:

1. not getting killed
2. focussing a bit on empire building during the next set, since we almost doubled dour empire during the last set (2 cities captured, 1 settled). getting courthouses up and running, in our sattelite cities, growing our capital and holy city via cheap warrior mp and working more cottages there.
3. getting our specialst farm online and breeding a GS there to get an academy in our capital somewhat timed with bureau
4. taking or settling 2 islands to further boost our economy
5. stealing currency + IW from hanni
6. spreading our religion a bit, now that we have a decent amount of cities (or will have soon) and time a gp (from our oracle + holy city) after the gs from specialits farm.

...

saves attached. i doublechecked this time to make sure i didnt forget to resave after putting down all markers and making the pics...

 

[GKey]

Are you going to shut down research from now on? Pure spy economy?

 

[Snaaty]

Are you going to shut down research from now on? Pure spy economy?

no, da plan:

- research cs

- steal currency, ironworking, metal casting, machinery, if some spypoints are left, steal calendar, is some more are left, steel guilds instead

- collect money after cs is in. then guilds-banking for grocers+banks+merk or paper-education for unis+oxford (normally i would clearly favour guilds-banks, but having access to stone makes this interesting again... ...a quick oxford in capital with bureau and lots of cottages might bring us fast enough to rifles or grens+cannons also)

-> we have to stay flexible... ...so spying and selfresearching must be combined to get the max out of it. ideally, by doing so, you can prevent from falling behind too much in tech

...

the ultimate goal must be to reach rifles or grens+cannons not that much after the ai gets there. with rifles or grens+cannons against units of the same era you can do a lot of damage to the ai. if you only get there once the ai already is near infs, that window of opportunity is over...

...

my short term plan (or better put, the middle term plan, the short term plan is to kill persia) is to keep the offense running against justi (he seems weak) to prevent him from joining rome, hre, khmer + mali in the advance and therefore not hitting our western borderland cities with stacks... ...reducing the front effectively on 2 blocking cities... ...so much for the plan

 

[Snaaty]

up to 275 AD (Civil Service in):

Spoiler :

during the next set all goes according to the plan. we only make a minor mistake stealing techs, but later more on that...

first, we steal currency, to get our economy out of the deep hole the persian expansion and the therefore needed army and whipping activities had plunged us into:


we were at -3 gold at the lowest, so i deamed it neccessary...

i was debating hard between ironworking and currency, because we still have no metals and i really would have loved to make a woody 3 healer (attaching the gg to one of the top skirms and sharing the promos with an axmen... ...7 xp axmen we would be able to build with theo, so we would get 17 xp right away, so woody 3 str 1 that is).

but since i opted for currency i decided to attach the gg to the rambo-healer skirm (remember the healer 1 skirm that ended up somehow with 80 xp... ...and i made him the super healer... ...or better, rambo-super healer

...

then, we raze the persian backland city of ecowhatever...
"
...giving us 122 gold for our "crawling towards CS" project...

...

and we finally capture the island city of gordio:


the city will be great btw, with 2 seafood, but beeing on a hill and with us only shipping 1 catapult there, losses were again abysmal, costing us a catapult and 2 phants... ...but i voted against bombarding and waisting several turns to get the plunder gold to finish CS... ...which worked out nicely, at least lucky there

...

and here you see the mistake i made while stealing techs:


i stole ironworking (only to see we have exactly 0 iron... ...sometimes you gotta love the rmg). iron did cost 192 spoints and theo would have been 481 spoints.

...

then, the turn cs comes in, i remember the concept of switching 2 civics together to save 1 turn of revolt compared with switching them 1 by 1... ...and i have to steal theo without the full stationary bonus (to switch to bureau and theo):


that did cost us exactly 101 spoints more then whould have been neccessary if i would have done it right... ...getting iron 2-3 turns earlier wouldnt have made a difference i guess (even more with no iron)...

...

so i immediately whipped a settler somewhere to resettle the iron-cow spot in expersia at the end of the set, to get us iron somewhen (we also dont have cows and health will become an issue soon in our capital)...

...

summarizing it up, this set was going very well. overall losses were ok (4-5 units in total dont remember exactly) and we managed to get hold of most of persia, including our first island city. there is another island city persia has settled. that will be the next target to get our economy up a bit more.

...

on the spy front things are also going great. we still have over 1500 spoints on hanni and we are gaining + 14 each turn (some courthouses and some spy-specialists). not having lost a single spy so far was a lucky call and really made up for the units we lost and had to replace. we have 4 spies btw. exactly for this reason... ...2 we need for stealing and the other 2 are idling next to the enemy culture to replace losses if needed (so far it was not needed, which is great)... ...with stealing odds around 95%, we should be able to steal 20 techs before the first spy is caught (not calculatin in the risk of beeing discovered pre-stealing, no idea how high this is per turn), but better save then sorry, no?

...

looking at the score, we are also not doing that bad, if our defences hold (or band of superheroes that is), if we are able to eliminate perisa quickly and if we manage to push right away for mongolia, we might even have a small chance here...

...

next job is to check all cities with our state religion, if we can whip something usefull there (last whip under org.reli), then switching to bureau + theo immediately.

...

lots of if´s i guess, but well, at least there is hope, no? there is another gg hanging around in our capital btw, but i guess i will also use him to make another super-heroe lb... ...we are a bit thin on defenders and cant make fs4 units rigth out of the gate. and attaching 1 gg to a super-skirm not only means another heroe-lb, it also means making 3-4 more fs4 lbs (if sharing the xps on these units. we can build units with 7xp now, and have some with 5 xp left, so we only need 3-5 extra xp on these...)

 

[Dirk1302]

I tried and i'll quit in this position 775 BC. Still alive but it's too tiresome to play any further

Spoiler :

Start went fine. Fishing-> BW finishing the worker which goes roading so we can chop and begin mining without movement loss later. Got my warrior to woodsman II soon by battling ai scouts. I then went into the jungle in search of ais. Found Rome and hung about for some time. Sure enough i'll fetch a worker around 2800 BC. Founded early cities near gold/pig, next one 1 nw of phants, these are pretty obvious spots. Got oracle 1800 BC took Col as suggested by Snaaty in the other thread. So far so good i'm in a reasonable position now. Founded a 4th city 1sw of corn. Then slowly but surely things went bad as my border cities were all ignored and troops came for my capital. All these ai troops die eventually as my cities are well defended but it means i can't get necessary improvements up so i'm not progressing. A phant attack on Persia is the only chance as 4 cities isn't enough but there's no way i can get it going here. I think in the save i have played sloppily already as i wasn't too interested anymore after ~ 1000 BC.

Ai behavior seems pretty random. In aw1 all ai troops sacrificied on my block cities in my first try giving me some room to do things. In my third try they went straight for my cap. The only way you'll ever have a chance is if they sacrifice on your border cities imo. I took the top defender out of phant city pretty early but to no avail.

By the way there is an interesting non obvious alternative on this start: Go BW first and start with a worker and chop a second worker while getting fishing. Then use 2 workers to chop 3 work boats and other stuff lightning fast. The problem with this is that you get to size 2/3/4/5 some 5 turns later compared to starting fishing so you lose hammers from the mines you'd otherwise work. But the second worker and chopping power probably more than makes up for this.

It's a tricky start to play anyway, normally i'd certainly whip the capital at least once (second worker at size 5 for instance), maybe twice. But the necessity to get oracle means we can't lose the anarchy turn and the loss of commerce from whipping. I actually found weighing the alternatives on this start by far the most interesting feature on this map.

It's has been this way from ~ 1200 BC, first Han, now the Persians, look how that Han stack on the fp's makes cottaging those essential tiles impossible:

 

[Snaaty]

i faced the same problem on my phant tile... ...maraudering stacks of chars + a spear here and there were the main problem. my solution to that was to make a super-skirm, but instead of going fs+cg going fs+strength.

he was killing stuff in the open with odds above 93% right from the start with fs4 str2. i had some lucky fights there i guess, not loosing him, but after getting to str3 or 4 ,odds were around 98%+, so from this point on nothing was getting through from the north (no big stacks tried, only some 2 or 3 units stacks).

perc went for my capital twice, but he was clever enough not to raze the floodplains but to suicide himself onto the capital, so no harm there either...

...

in summary, i guess you are right, in the beginning a lot depends on some unknown ai decisions, meaning why does the ai in some few cases send a big stack pundering, and why in most cases they are happily killing themselves at the city walls...

...

and i guess on this map, key to have a small chance is reaching phants in time (with no bronze nor iron its very likely the only chance). i got there 525 BC, and from that point on things were improving drastically, cause 2 phants kill most stuff trying to sneak through at great odds...

 

[Dirk1302]

I lost the phant tile quite early to a 10 units stack, that stack was typically an attack stack (normally doesn't pillage) but unfortunately it had one chariot in it that was on a different mission . Actually i can get the phant tile back now it's too late . Stacks coming for my capital were typically size 5 with ~3 axes mixed in, no chance to stop them on the phant tile. Until now they sacked themselves on the capital but now Han seems to have decided on extending his welcome which in combination with the annoying persian invasion is enough.

I need to develop the inner region especially cottages on the fp's near the capital. But my workers don't have a chance to get anything going around there. So i'm improving non essential tiles near the relatively quiet phant city.

I think you have to play a game like this with a choke point or just get lucky with ai decisions, much more than in a normal deity game actually. Interesting to see if you can win it from here. The hard part is that you had to conquer persia in order to get as much land as in AW1 so you're not really much better placed to win it than in that game. Well you have spy economy so maybe there is a chance, would still be a huge achievement if you can do it.

I was wondering at your 2400 BC screenshot. How did that oracle city tile get deforested? Did you chop it for the 8 H that will get lost otherwise? Seems you don't have time for that with all the work you've done on other tiles or do you have 2 workers by that time?

 

[Snaaty]

@ dirk:

great observation concerning the workers:

i did a lucky early workersteal from persia (i just checked the save cause the second worker really isnt shown in the shot. hes in the capital, heading towards the marble tile to get the quarry up. what you can see is my woody 2 warrior hanging around next to the persian borderland city... ...i got several workers later, but the early one did really help the most). so i deforested the tile before settling it, since i had spare workerpower and 8 hammers are 8 hammers. the more precious forests i wanted to keep for later...

...

edit adds:

the game dragged me in a bit i have to admit... ...so i played another set just now.

i will post a detailed summary with lots of pics + the save later. things are looking not bad, but every turn is really timeconsuming (i dont play with fast combat. its essential to see if you loose any unit anywhere. so the usual combats at the beginning of each turn already take its time)...

...

bad thing is that i wont have time to play for the next 2-3 weeks due to work piling up... ...everybody feel free to pick the save

 

[Dirk1302]

Yes i stole a worker too from the Romans. Since you can usually kill some scouts it's not that hard to get a woodsman II warrior. It seems chances for a steal are not that bad if you just hang around in the woods near ai and that trying this is more or less essential tactics.

So your worker came from Persia, makes sense to get the 8H passing on the way in that case.
My worker came from the north and it was also used for connecting marble asap.

 

[Snaaty]

up to 500 AD, part 1:

Spoiler :

it wasnt a really spectacular turnset, but very timeconsuming. lots of units clashed against phantblock... ...and died against our heroes there. beeing very limited in production (the main problem with playing aw on the higher levels is that your basic job seems to be to decide without what you still can survive and missing what will get you killed) i opted for not building lots of lbs (i built 2-3, at max. 4, dont remember exactly). since we still needed to somehow survive i started to attach ggs to experienced hostigators, upgrading them to lbs for free.

but from that resulted another problem:
i didnt have a city with enough ggs settled to get fs4 units right of the gate. but i could build 5xp units, so i ended up with another compromise... ...i attached the gg to the best skirm, but did spread the points on 3 more skirms/lbs so all would end up with 10xp in the end, giving them fs4 (60% less collateral damage + 10% against horses)

...

the most interesting during this set was this "surprise attack" from justi of mongolia:


9 keshliks + 1 catapult trying to sneak through aretium towards my almost undefended center. there are even 2 more keshliks 3 tiles behind the stack that joined it on its way towards oracle city, since the 1 catapult slowed the main stack down

...

without the spy in aretium or even without the stupid 1 catapult in said stack, that stack could have been the end of mali... ...but with the catapult and us seeing the stack like 6-7 turns before it could reach any dangerous position, it was a suicide ride... ...attacking an enemy who´s power is based on phants alone with only keshliks (+ 1 catapult to slow the stack down) is bound to end like this:


the rest tried to run and was destroyed next turn. all fights were at 98% odds or higher (str 1 phant or more). i even reserved promos on all fresh phants to get 2 xp, not fighting at 99something odds (str2...) and to be able to promote after attacking

...

on the spy front, things went again very smoothly:


stealing mc-machinery did cost me 1 spy (he was discovered exactly the turn when reaching 50% boni), but well, thats why we are operating with 4 spies instead of 2, no? the dead spy was replaced immediately, but at the end of this set, there is nothing left to steal, since justi is researching engineering right now and has nothing on us left... ...so a better investment then the 60 hammers for the spy would have been another catapult or lb... ...sh*** happens, afterwards you are always wiser...

...

in parallel, we eliminated the last persian island city... ...off course loosing another cr2 catapult, reducing us on a total of 2 cats if i remember right... ...and i opted for razing this city, because like it was placed, it would miss a clam ressource:



so i rerouted the settler on the way to found newpersepolis, to settle the city on the horses (clamhorse), for the second 2 commerce traderoute.

at a second thought, this might have been another mistake, because like that we still have no iron and wont have for another 15 turns or so (getting another settler to the newpersepolis site + getting a borderpop + getting iron connected)... ...and now beeing able to build maces in theory and NOT having iron ready asap was a really superstupid move

well, anyways, newpersia is big enough for 5 decent cities (also counting the 2 cities we have captured from persia), so we should have reached a critical size to survive the middle ages also (maybe even getting to rifles somehow).

and thats what mainmali looks like at 500 AD:


6 more or less well developed and specialized cities. adding the 5 form newpersia, we soon will have soon a total of 11 cities, so getting a shrine up and running also is another goal we will have to archieve.

researchwise i opted to squeeze in aest-lit (no, not for the glib, that one has gone long ago), but to build the heroic epic and maybe even the other xy epic (the one that gives double gp points). we soon will need lots of units and we better build them cheap... ...that was my thinking behind it... ...and i also hoped for hanni to research guilds, so we could steal it, which quite obviously wont happen anytime soon, but well

you can already deduct from the markers i placed on the cities and maybe even from the improvements + building projects what is the plan for which city... ...but since i have taken shots from all cities at the end of this set, you will get a detailed tour in the next post anyways

...

on a side note:
the ap has been built a few turns ago, and the ap reli is hindu... ...we have 1 city with the hindu reli and we already have a hindu missionary fortified in our capital (another mistake i made during this set, although only beeing a minor one). i thought about spreading the reli there and getting another monastry up for the extra 10% research, but spreading the religion will immediately result in at least 1 from "fighting our brothers in faith", so i kept delaying and delaying it...

and since i opted then in favour of building the mali uu forge in the capital first, the missionary is now hanging around even more and costing us upkeep every single turn... ...and now with hindu beeing the ap religion, spreading the religion into our capital might even be more risky... ...it might very well be that we have to defy a resolution at some point, like giving a certain city back to some stupid ai...

 

[Snaaty]

part 2 (cities):

Spoiler :

this will be our main army city:


right now a bit small, thanks to whipping some phants to stop the keshliks (and a spy), but after the cata is finsihed, it will grow a bit while building the he. right now the city has only farms, but some workshops will get added in a few turns. ideally when guilds+banking are in and we switch to caste system + merk (a free spy in all cities and 2 extra hammers for every workshop). whipping looses interest fast if you have 4 or 5 hammer workshops available everywhere.

if we get iron somewhen, we will build maces and other stuff here.


our second army city:


this is the last city we founded in mali. only a small filler city, but it will do a decent job building units:

when the workshop on the plains tile is finished (and guilds are in) and a forge is built, the city will generate 20 hammers/turn at size 6. upkeep and science/commerce output are more or less even, so the city is all right for now. with banking, we need a courthouse here anyways (for the free merk. spy) which will reduce the upkeep to something around 3-4 gold/turn.

if we get to rep.parts, we even might consider to farm the fp and to assign the other fp to this city and get 2 windmills on the desert hills running, which will add another 5 hammers with the same income...

a classical helper city:


after the last culture building is finished (which we need to have the ai fight in our culture), it will build wealth and will have the following output at 100% science:

16 beakers
6 spoints
4 gold (-3 gold upkeep) = 1 gold
_____

at a certain point we wanna get a forge up and maybe working a 4 hammers workshop to increase the gold output to 10 gold/turn, but this will be a long way ahead...

these cities will make the host of our cities. all new cities in expersia will get assigned to that job:

bringing in gold each turn at 100% science + generating 6 spoints. ideally we have a city that generates 10 gold per turn (12 hammers + forge, assuming an upkeep of 5).

our specialist city / later moai city:


it will grow next turn and get the marble tile from the capital. then the moai will be up in 9 turns. a GScientist (80%) or a GSpy (20%) will get born in 8 turns, so the timing is fine. since there is a city in expersia with a double fish i decided to switch this city from our pure specialist breeding city to a production city (=army city), adding moai here, since it will easily reach 20 hammers/turn and to get the new specialist city up and running in expersia we only need a granary (was in), a lighthouse (will get whiped soon) a courthouse and a library (both will get whips fast with 2 fish). decent production cities (army cities) on the other side take much, much longer to be set up

most likely the build order in this city will be:
moai, forge, baracks, units

our capital and destined science city:


since this city is growing very fast, i keep whipping it for infra every 10 turns for pop 2 or 3. building stuff would simply take to long since most mines are assigned to the nearby cities (have i mentioned that i like stuffing cities close to each other?). it will be our only science city and should generate the science output we need for our empire (we will never win a price for the fastest research, but well, it will have to do). buildings we need here fast:
academy (if we get the gscientist in 8 turns, at 80% odds. if not, caste it is and we have to get a gscientst as next greatperson)
second monastry (not 100% sure about this one)
university
oxford university

the goal would be 300-350 beakers from this city per turn. adding some beakers from the helper cities, we should therefore reach 500 beakers/turn in total (not much, i know, but must do)

 

[Snaaty]

part 3 (demo, tech, save...):

Spoiler :

but not to forget our last important city:


quite obviously this will be our money city. but since we need it also to breed the gprophet for our shrine, we need a temple here first. next buildings will be:
forge
market
grocer
bank
wallstreet

i added a farm to this city to have it grow a bit faster, since i also keep whipping it every 10 turns. same game as in our capital... ...the production tiles we need more elsewhere. and once the last filler city (near the gold) is settled, the gold will be assigned to the new city also, leaving this city with a plains mine and a green mine. maybe ill farm over some of the newer cottages later, once some of the money buildings are up to hire 4 merchant specialits for the boni on the gold...

spyscreen:


we need more spy-specialits and some more courthouses... ...spoints on hanni are running out slowly...

spies are the best specialists anyways, since they are the only specialists that bring in 5 revenue (4spoints 1 beaker). compared to the merchant and the scientists with 3 revenue each, they really shine

on a side note concerning the effects of a spy economy on an ai:
since the ai always wants to try to match your spoint spending, he will raise the spy-slider higher and higher. so this is a quite effective way to stop 1 rival from teching fast also.

on the negative side that also means we should switch spoints at a certain point to another ai that is still teching fast and hasnt massed that many spoints on us, so we need to be prepared to raise the spy-slider ourselves at 100% for some turns also...

...

tech-screen:


no runaway ai so far. jc, sal or kathy might get dangerous soon, and so far i cant tell for sure which one will be the most problematic ai in the near future, but since jc got the mids, glighth, colossus, gbib and some more wonders, my bets are on him...

and the demo:


bsp + food are fine, prod has to improve. only 1 ai beats us bsp wise (at 100% research that is), so things are surprisingly ok (and like i mentioned above, my bets are on jc here)

...

which path to head down techwise i still havent decided yet. paper-edu or guilds-banking are both very interesting and with our defences holding so far, both options have its merits

...

war-wise, things are more straigth forward:
1. killing persia (or our captured cities will never grow due to lots of for we miss our country
2. crippling mongolia (he´s weak and he seems to sit on the southeast peninsual of this map, so expanding this way will keep us out of the way of the strong ais)
-> since there is no tech left to steal right now, we are sending 2 spies out to scout the surrounding lands:

first spy goes to mongolia, second spy goes to JC. 2 spies remain in the roman borderland cities to steal engineering the turn hanni gets it (2 will do i hope, since they are not stacked in the same city)

...

save is attached

 

[Habitus]

Well I've tried the 2 games so far and failed badly each time (thou i've only just tried Immortal in normal games recently so kinda expected it). I've tried afew home made made ones as well and just rolled a start now that i think could be winnable. So if nobody minds i'll post an AW 3
Will give those of us who failed the last 2 something new to try.