deity aw 3

[obsolete]

Dear God I just did a quick test. A simple Que against a NON-PROMOTED and NON-PROTECTIVE archer fortified in a hillcity that has ONLY 20% culture defense, still has much less than even ONE PERCENT CHANCE to win...

Expected combat result... 0 damage to defender, lol.

This is a fugazi...

 

[Habitus]

Sounds about right, 3 * (1+fortifed+city+hill-Que bonus+culture)) = (3 * (1+0.25+0.5+0.5-1+0.2)) = 3 * 1.45 = 4.35 vs 2.2 (2 * 1.1 (Combat)) with a first strike for the 4.35.

No hill = 3 * 0.95 = 2.85 vs 2.2 with a first strike for the 2.85 (so the 2 for 1 sounds about right)

Since you only really want to keep the Hill Cities in AW it doesn't seem like it would work so well.


Did you try Maya as a Civ, just wondering if the resourceless spears would solve the phant and horse archer stage (still think Skirmisher are probably best just thinking about alternates and know you've probably tested them all already )

 

[Dirk1302]

Not sure if you're talking about a Quecha rush here, but if you are, unless they are creative or founded a religion I never face more then 20% culture for my first attack.



Given 20% culture defense ( which is what you should be facing if you do it right ):

On average it takes 2 Quecha's per ( non pro ) archer in a non hilled city.

If the archer is on a hill then it takes about 3 Q's per archer on average.

If the archer is protective then it's probably around 3 Q's per archer.

This is why I attack with 6 total to start, and attack before turn 30. Usually by that turn the enemy has only 2 archers in their capitol on deity ( normal speed ).

If the archer is protective and on a hill then you look for another city because it takes about 4-5 Q's per archer. You can still take that city but the first city you take should be an easier target.

The idea is to take 1 city then use that city to produce more Q's, then take the next city and so on. If you can take 1 strong city ( usually their capitol ) then you can deal with hilled protective archers with massed Q's from the first captured city.



In my experience ( were talking a ton of Quecha rushes here ), it's about a 75% chance you can pull it off on a Pangea map. If it does work you will own the rest of the game like you wouldn't believe.

Are you and obs talking about the same thing here?On normal deity Quecha rush could be good, don't know as i've never tried it. I see it as a bit of an exploit and i usually don't need this rush to win normal deity anyway (especially with HC) as i explained in another thread.

AW, don't believe it's working, definitely need to see a vid or post about how you can win Aw with this tactic. I did do some testing before starting this aw3 thread, Around 1 AD Ai stacks really grow bigger and have cats. If you don't get feud soon at this point your archers will be crushed like useless bugs, skirms can hold out a bit longer. Then if you Q rush you have twice as much land too defend (or you don't really profit) extremely hard from what i've seen sofar.

 

[Um the Muse]

I know I'm not nearly in your guys' league, but could you maybe have a better chance with Hwachas? I would think that catas are more important than LBs? With Hwachas, you'd start hitting their siege earlier, thereby targetting fewer siege in collateral. Just being able to target the seige sounds like a big boon; maybe even Numidian cavalry would work well here.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Are you and obs talking about the same thing here?

I have no idea.

Then if you Q rush you have twice as much land too defend (or you don't really profit) extremely hard from what i've seen sofar.

If you spawn next to a civ on a corner of the map and take his cities then you will still have just a small front to defend. In my video I took out a civ who was in the center of 2-3 other civs so I had a long front.

Just a matter of spawning in the right place, but that applies to every AW deity game.

 

[GKey]

Well the question is will you fast enough to get to longbows after that before rest AI's will send these enormous cats/HA's stucks? The window for that was already very narrow.

 

[obsolete]

Hmm, just ran a Stalin of Incas last evening. Was able to wipe out india very early who had stone, and then I put my own marble to use along with it.

Was quite an easy victory to pull off from there, however my opponent had both his capitals on flat-land which made a hell of a difference.

 

[RedKi-rr]

Please don't forget this thread!
It's very interesting to read these reports. We every day check forum with hope to see some progress and nice pictures.

 

[Dirk1302]

^I have played until 300 AD. I'll post some progress tonight.

 

[Um the Muse]

Well the question is will you fast enough to get to longbows after that before rest AI's will send these enormous cats/HA's stucks? The window for that was already very narrow.

Well, like I said, I'm nowhere near ready to take on this challenge; to me, this is just a thought experiment. That said, I'm not arguing that you should research catas. You're getting them from the AIs anyway. But I imagine there's still a gap between "acquiring" construction and researching feudalism?

 

[Dirk1302]

Cats are not that important early on or you must have an opportunity to go on offensive early as Snaaty managed in Aw2. Basically the trick in this sort of game is to make the Ais sac all they have on your Block city/cities without losing any units yourself. This means you need so many units in your cities (~20 around 300 AD) that they soak up most of the collateral damage. If you're going to sac cats to weaken their stacks you waste far too many H. And it won't work, in this game the amount of units thrown at my blockcity is truly enormous, no way i could make an impact with cats of my own. I have just begun researching construction this game, to get phants, not cats.

Some other point regarding Ha's that i noticed,

The first real problem begin with the Ais getting Cats, we knew that. But HA's are a problem as well as they ignore FS and have a habit of withdrawing. As long as there are only axes/swords in play 5 skirms tends to be enough as they kill metal units before the real fight begins due to FS . Not so with Ha's, they tend to do some damage and a damaged skirm is not much use because of it's low base, it lives by it's bonuses. So extra units are needed fast when you see those first Ha's.

@snaaty, i follow your advice upgrading skirms along the FS line first and this is clearly best. One of the reasons is that skirms shouldn't get damaged, they have 50% CG and 25% Guerilla defense build in so extra CG and Guerilla makes them stronger but not as much as as FS do, they can win their fights usually without taking damage. And they tend to face units that are hurt by FS.

But does it work the same for LB's? 2 points why we might do it differently:

They have less build in defense than skirms (only 25% CG) so CG/guerilla help them more relatively
They're the ones that you'd like to fight the HA's but if you promote them to FS4 they're not that much stronger than HA's and don't have the FS advantage. A CG3/GuerillaI LB will make mincemeat of a HA probably without taking too much damage. I think we may need to mix it up for lb's, some FS4 to deal with cats/swords and some CGIII/guerillaI for HA's. The problem with this is that the CGIII will always be chosen, also against cats. So maybe CGIII/formationI? Or another combi, CGII/FS2/formationI or even CGI/FS3/formationI(still better than FS4 against HA)?, to make sure the right defender defends against the right attacker. Pity Archery units can't get charge.

 

[Habitus]

For Formation you need Combat II or Drill II, so Longbows as Drill II Formation on hill cities have 12 Strength against Mounted and 2-3 FS for ones not immune. HA can only get Combat to improve their damage as far as i know so a Combat 2 HA has 7.2 Strength.

Odds to win a round for the LB are 62.5%, with it doing 25 Damage. So odds of it winning 4 rounds in arow are 15.26% (to 2 decimal).

Combat II Formation LB gets 14.7 Strength against Mounted and 1 FS against ones that aren't Immune.

Odds to win a round are 67.12% (2 decimal), doing 28 damage. To win 4 rounds in arow, 20.30% (2 decimal)


So maybe early LB go C II Formation to handle the HA, a skirmisher needs Drill IV, CG III, Guerilla I before it beats a Drill II Formation LB against HA, and is never stonger than a C II Formation LB.

If in an AW there is Egypt i'd consider a C2 Formation Skirmisher, and then upgrade that to a LB, or in any game your First Drill IV Skirmisher can take Formation, then C I C II and get upgraded to a LB for the HA

 

[Um the Muse]

Cats are not that important early on or you must have an opportunity to go on offensive early as Snaaty managed in Aw2. Basically the trick in this sort of game is to make the Ais sac all they have on your Block city/cities without losing any units yourself. This means you need so many units in your cities (~20 around 300 AD) that they soak up most of the collateral damage. If you're going to sac cats to weaken their stacks you waste far too many H. And it won't work, in this game the amount of units thrown at my blockcity is truly enormous, no way i could make an impact with cats of my own. I have just begun researching construction this game, to get phants, not cats.

Yikes, ok. So you decided not to try and steal construction? What about forts on hills/forests? If you build them in front of the city, you could get the catapults to waste themselves against a handful of units (probably skirmishers, since they're more hammer efficient and therefore make better sacrificial lambs) and then you won't have to defend yourself against collateral.

P.S. Thanks for humoring me

 

[ben-jammin]

Yikes, ok. So you decided not to try and steal construction? What about forts on hills/forests? If you build them in front of the city, you could get the catapults to waste themselves against a handful of units (probably skirmishers, since they're more hammer efficient and therefore make better sacrificial lambs) and then you won't have to defend yourself against collateral.

P.S. Thanks for humoring me

Between lots of units, drill iv, and a supermedic in the city, catapults themselves arent the biggest problem. I could be wrong but the tipping point seems to be when multiple AIs get stacks big enough for them all to attack on the same turn instead of giving you time to heal in between stacks.

 

[Habitus]

For those interested, below is a save where the Civ has been swopped to Inca from Mali for testing. Played afew games testing if Dirks opening on this map worked with Inca's. Other than a worker steal switching Agi at start for Mining and the time ended up pretty much the same, so now the better players might be able to test how choking/rushing an AI would effect the start over have better defense until LB from Skirmishers

 

[Dirk1302]

Didn't have time to write the update as of yet, i'll try to do so tonight or this weekend.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Habitus

Spoiler :

This is certainly not the right map for inca/quechas as the Ais are far away. Inca would be better on a very crowded map which still has chokepoints (as you can't defend otherwise with archers as opposed to skirms).What's the use of choking one Ai without taking his land while other ais still come at you with big stacks anyway? Playing with Mali costs enough time as it is, if someone is to prove inca is better than mali at AW it'll have to be AZ, i don't believe in it and from his comments i don't think Snaaty does.

 

[Dirk1302]

Until 1600 BC

Spoiler :

I managed to secure a hill in the jungle, not the X site, this one's better probably for block purposes. This city'll be crap for a long time but i think i'll be able to develop the banana site behind it some day. We have Charlie in the south-east and unfortunately there's not as much land as i thought at first. Writing is in, after granary i'll build a library in the capital then raise the science slider to 100%. Tech choice is probably between Monarchy and math/construction then. Some good land so a desperate rush on Charlie is not really necessary right now. With espionage i can keep up with the ais for a long time from here. After library i need to settle more cities asap.

 

[Snaaty]

@ dirk:

it´s good looking so far in your game. i also have played to around t70 a long time ago (before i posted the save to be honest, cause i wanted a more "playable" map this time).

i will post my save and a few pics once i find a bit of time

...

@ all:

round 2 is now officially open, to t70 btw (totally forgot about that)
round 3 is also open, it´s up to around t95

 

[Snaaty]

i just checked for my old save... ...and i turns out i even played a bit more then i thought, meaning somewhere around t100 in one session...

apparently, i also didnt take lots of pics, and i also dont really remember why i did some stuff, since i played this a bit ago... (and i did some weird stuff, like settling strange cities, not on hills, near the front). maybe i just played quick and sloppy, maybe i simply played bad, without any excuses

Spoiler :

i opted for exactly the same strategy as in deity aw 2:

getting col via the oracle and getting my gs by a spy-specialist from an early courthouse. but this time, i got the oracle in the capital (no decent second city near with enough wood) and got the courthouse in my second city:

here is a very informativ pic with me getting col:
View attachment 291174

quite late, but this is aw with no techtrading, so wonders just go later and something like t70 still is ok for the oracle.

my cities and land:
View attachment 291172

i apparently managed to pull off quite an impressive rex with 8 cities at 500 BC... ...i´m a bit surprised by that myself, didnt remember that my save was any good and was already thinking about switching to dirks game...

there is even another settler in a galley heading for the 1 tile island... ...so i guess i will go on with my save a bit more, having 9 cities pre 1 AD is great

and yes, all these markers make this screen very, very informativ and such (but i dont wanted to delete them, since i´m used to save workerturns and do stuff while moving them around, like roading for a turn, or cottaging for a turn and deleating these markers would really screw off my worker mikro i guess)

two other pics i have found from my play:

View attachment 291173
the barbcity that blocked the hill i initially wanted to settle my blocking city onto (the one dirk settled, since it blocks better)

View attachment 291176
brennus of france helped a bit punishing the stupid barbs for settling in my way:
View attachment 291176

sadly, he managed to take the city (he had 4 units, if i remember right, 2 swords, 1 axe, 1 spear against 4 barbarchers)... ...and the lucky bastard he is, he won every single fight and sacked the city, stealing MY plunder money... ...well, at least i could kill his almost dead sword at 99.9% odds to punish this at least a bit (and i razed the city).

...

the problematic city i see here is clam city. this city might be too close to the front and draw units towards it. actually, there is a nasty stack of chariots and impis (7 units in total) near the blocking city right when i stoped playing. they could really become a problem. i have 3 skirms drawn back and stupid clam city is working on city walls right now.

i think i remember now that this stack actually was the reason why i stoped playing