deity aw 3

[Snaaty]

i also would be interested in your 1100 AD oxford try (the loosing one) and the most actual save of your current try.

-> i also like this format very much. it´s actually fun.

dirk, maybe you are interested in doing a deity aw 4 game? we could do it as a 2 players mini-sg to shave off a bit of time. we both might be able en the end to learn some more stuff from each other that way...

 

[Dirk1302]

I'll post the oxford try and the new try for 1100 AD (have time to play it tonight if i'm not already at 1100 AD, actually don't remember exactly). AW4 as a mini SG is ok once this one is finished. Imo we shouldn't impose a tight schedule on ourselves if we're going to do that, especially after 1000 AD playing costs a lot of time (if you want to play it right that is).I don't always have that time and if i have i'm not always in the mood to play. But i believe it's the same with you. Maybe we can get obsolete to join.., rest of the world isn't ready for deity AW as of yet it seems, actually they're quite right and i'm a bit of an idiot to try again .

 

[Dirk1302]

Turned out i had played until 1120 AD already in my last try. I played to this point much more quickly than in the oxford save so i was concerned that i had slipped up in micro but it's not that bad, it actually looks quite ok. Cities are even a bit bigger in my second save but that's because no unis were whipped i think. I didn't build as much units this time, also since i'm not intending to capture Bantu this time.

Oxford until 1120 AD

Spoiler :

Oxford is indeed ready, about 1050 AD iirc. Great research, almost 700 bpt but since i wasn't stealing much i'm actually behind compared to my last try. And money is already running out.

Direct PP espionage approach

Spoiler :

Did The Bantu trick as mentioned, capturing it and handing it back after putting religion in it. Already stole engineering, philosophy and nationalism. I actually get my techs half priced from Bantu. Nat is ~3000 beakers if you research it. Had to pay 1550 esp points. Sulei is researching constitution atm. Once i have castle in capital i go 100% esp against him for some time to get some good tech, demo would be great for the buro's and espionage gains independent of the slider.

I built an academy in capital as there's no certainty Sulei will go rifling soon, i may even have to research GP myself.

For the record i just whipped a bank in capital, i played one turn further to record gold (with capital bank)/science and esp at 100%:

bpt at 100% 508, was 685 with Oxford
gpt at 100% 357
esp at 100% 406, no castle in capital as of yet, will have it the next turn (1140 AD) netting another 30 esp

This second save is actually light years ahead of the Oxford one with the very nice esp position i have here. I don't think Sulei will actually position a stack big enough in Bantu to get me in real trouble.

I don't think our approaches are that different, also from other games we both played i can see we both try to expand as much as possible in the early game, generally more than other players i think. I don't see you building much wonders too, i hardly build wonders at all. As for the Oxford approach, i didn't have enough experience with AW games to see in advance that this is not going to work. It does work in normal games of course as you get back to some 70-80% research after war with foreign trade, building wealth selling resources etc. Here you just cannot do that, a point i failed to appreciate.

Interesting how we use our GG's. I have settled everything in both tries, you have a lot of super units. I wonder about that, it seems to me that after CGIII, Drill IV and Guerilla II other promotions are not that interesting, defensively that is. I actually have a few questions about this:

Are those units really almost invincible in defense?

You use these units to attack as well i assume, they have 85% withdrawal chance amongst very good attacking odds.

You mentioned that after i got rifling i should attach a GG on my best lbow and upgrade. Upgrading brings experience learning level back to 10, with GG attached 35 so i have to wait quite some time before i can get my upgraded my rifle leadership, is it really worth it to do that. If i do something like this i'll better do it before upgrading so i can get leadership on the unit before resetting learning point by upgrading.

So short term it seems to work better , however when i went on offense in the oxford try i was helped enormously by the ability to build cr3 units out of 2 gates, lvl 3 on the other units often gave me ~70% against the lvl2 units of AI as well.


I looked at your 1100 AD save

Spoiler :

I can see why you build extra cottages on plain tiles, as long as you're in buro the capital will certainly profit from those cottages. However the capital really lacks production so after chemistry workshops on those tiles are at least as good i think. Also you will probably switch nationhood somewhere i guess and then the capital is just an ordinary city.

I don't understand why you didn't cottage the grass tiles in your most eastern city early game, it's not as if you lack workers. It's not enormous but i get some profit out of those cottages.

I mentioned that i liked the place of block city in your game but from your save i can see that crab city really gets targeted in your game, is this the first time that happened or is it business as usual? Scary to defend with 2 super lbows but they probably won't get scratched by direct treb attack and having only 2 units cuts down on the collateral damage.

In my game there trickled some units through sometimes but never big stacks like this, Stalin is really going for that city it seems. Are those 2 units strong enough to hold in a non hill city?

One tip, in the oxford try i built maces before actually researching MS. This got me some 10 cr3 grens and these have terrific odds against AI rifles once cultural defense has been revolted away. So 1. you don't need siege directly which is important as on the first offensive wave your stack isn't that big yet. And a stack with siege that isn't very big is extremely vulnerable to flank attacks. And 2. Once you have siege you don't need to sac as much as you will probably still have 7-8 out of 10 cr3 grens left.

 

[Snaaty]

dont have lots of time right now, so just some quick answers/points:

1. if you upgrade gg units, there is no exp. cap. i´m rel. sure about that, so upgrading them makes you not loosing any exp.

2. gg lbs with str 6 + fs 4 + shock and such have, including the retreating odds, odds of 99+% against everything on the attack also at least in the open. this is including attacking cities once def has been bombarded down. only exception are hill cities. upgrading them to rifles makes them invincible for a long, long time, giving them odds of 99.9% always and anywhere. my plan is to breed some more of theses and use them as shield against enemy units and stacks when going on the offence and also as city crackers

3. i have a city with 3 settled ggs. adding theo, i can make units with 3 promos. even without theo, this makes 9 xp, so with each gg i attach, i have 20 units with 10 xp when spreading them. so all other ggs i will keep attaching to units i guess. maybe even some maces to turn them into uber rifles with cr once upgrading them

4. yes, crab city is under siege since quite a while. one ai decided to go for this city exclusively lately, so all their stacks went there (or suicided already on the way + on the hills against my 2 "heroes"). without the walls, things are a bit risky if bigger stacks attack, but since i kill 2 units each turn the stacks arent very big once they have bombarded def. down, so losses so far were 0 in this city...

...

once i had time to look at your saves i will surely have some more input/questions

 

[Dirk1302]

Time to continue the eternal war. I played this some time ago so the report maybe a bit sketchy at times. I update until 1500 AD, 40 turns is a lot but actually nothing too spectacular happened.

Spoiler :

Recap we just stole Nationalsim , next turn we steal drama. Globe theater will be very important for my plan and it's about time to start on it now. Walata is a great site for this wonder with corn and fish.

1200 Sulei proves the world is round. I'll have to watch out for his fast ships.

1210 Steal Constitution. Now the esp fun can really begin, start jails everywhere.

1240 Steal GP. and i meet the Washington, leader of the celts, and declare on him. He's a christian as i am. His religion could actually spread to me since we were not at war until now. He's also the score leader without too much tech. Lot of land. He will definitely send some impressive stacks the next turns now that we have become acquainted in such a nice way.

1280 Self research RP

1360 Steal Demo (Security buro's ). Finish Rifles. I had anticpated this and i start a GA now. Switch Theo/Caste/Nationhood. Land has been transformed from farms to mostly workshops to profit from GA. Pity i don't have chem yet. Demo steal was costly so i have to build up esp again.

1430 Music

1460 Steal Mil trad. Can breed cavs now, easily the strongest unit until infantry.

1500 Waiting for Sulei to research chem. He's one turn from rifles this turn, not much choice for him next turn, chem or electricity. 90% sure he'll go chem. Hope he'll go MS next

So basically not much happened but i'm in a reasonable position atm. get 268 esp with slider at 0%, 918 at 100%, not too bad. I'm building cr3 maces in my best military cities.These will be upgraded to grens once MS is in. Cr3 grens have good odds even against protective rifles once cultural defense has been revolted away. Since i need to cross some open land in the line of all AI stacks i don't want to go with siege right now. Once we're deep into Charlie land we'll finish with siege (cannons, trebs after 1500 AD is just ridiculous). After MS i will use 3 saved GG's to build military academies. Together with 1 rifle/turn from GT i should be able to get a good attack force together by that time.

Washington came indeed with some nasty stacks, mostly grens and trebs. He's a straight forward guy though, just smashing his stacks on Kumbi. Brennus gives me the most trouble in this respect, he's far from strongest but he tries to sneak past every time. Don't have much problems with his musketeers since i got knights though.

Sulei is ahead of me in tech now but once communism is stolen i think i can keep up with him easily even with the slider very low. I'm about even with Washington and ahead of the other AIs.

So plan is simple, get MS then communism. After MS build up military with mil academies and drafting and punish Charlie. Somehow i feel the game is only just beginning .







I have a lot of esp against Sulei right now but for communism i'll have to steal all of the Edu->Lib->SM->Communism line so this tech is still some way off.

 

[Snaaty]

looks now that its finally down to only you (dirk) and me. no one else seems to dare/bother posting here any more

i havent played on my game, but i will try to do so to catch up a bit with you. i like your approach going directly for the big spy techs. i havent done that myself in my games so far, i usually beeline rifles and go for the first war. after that selfresearch always seemed the better option to me since you cant keep up spying without all the boni. your techpath eliminates that problem.

questions (before looking at your save):
- dont you get massive problems once the ai builds the anti spy buildings in their cities?
- wont the ai use the counterspy mission?
- i always thought the ai would build all the spy buildings and would run away in spoints after demo. are you still ahead in spoints where you stand?

i will have a look at your save once i find time.

 

[yatta77]

looks now that its finally down to only you (dirk) and me. no one else seems to dare/bother posting here any more

Wait! I'm still here lurking and downloading!
Great material!

 

[Dirk1302]

looks now that its finally down to only you (dirk) and me. no one else seems to dare/bother posting here any more

i havent played on my game, but i will try to do so to catch up a bit with you. i like your approach going directly for the big spy techs. i havent done that myself in my games so far, i usually beeline rifles and go for the first war. after that selfresearch always seemed the better option to me since you cant keep up spying without all the boni. your techpath eliminates that problem.

questions (before looking at your save):
- dont you get massive problems once the ai builds the anti spy buildings in their cities?
- wont the ai use the counterspy mission?
- i always thought the ai would build all the spy buildings and would run away in spoints after demo. are you still ahead in spoints where you stand?

i will have a look at your save once i find time.

It actually wasn't my tech path. That led straight to rifling. However Sulei techs things like constitution/Demo and they're very helpful.

Thing is you get boni for spying too and they're substantial after communism. I noticed in the oxford game that science essentially breaks down at some time as you get more units. I had hoped to recover with conquering more land in my oxford game but it only made things worse.

You can make esp work after communism even with slider close to 0.
A city running 0 specs but with all the buildings reaps quite a lot of spoints:

Intelligence center 50%
Jail 50%
Castle 25%
Nationhood 25%
-----------------------
150%

so one city with all buildings but no spy specs gets 55 esp. One spy spec (from merc) adds 10 esp directly in those cities. I have 12 cities so at 0% i can have 660 esp already, add some specs and build a SY in capital eventually , then raise the slider to 20% and you're close to 1000 esp/turn or probably more. Now try to that with science, it doesn't work.Conquering land actually helps here as number of cities is the most important thing in espionage as long as you can get the basic espionage infra in place.

Spy situation is extremely fortunate with pore Bantu close and my religion in it. I basically get my techs half priced there. So compared to science my esp output should be multiplied by 2 ftm.

In a bad spy situation you pay about full price for your techs. Base cost for a tech is 1.5 the cost in beakers (iirc), the 50% for stationary spy negates this and the distance penalty tends to be roughly even to the espionage spending bonus. Still much better than self research.

- It won't be easy for Sulei to get Security buro in Bantu, it's a terrible city for him. He'd have to buy it. He hasn't done so. If he does i'll have to take the buro out before continuing. That is not terribly expensive.

- Counter mission is not used by AI afaik, never noticed it also not in other games.

- I raise the slider now and then and then i overtake Sulei in spoins easily. But also if the AI has more spoints on you stealing is still profitable, you still get a bonus from your esp spending as well, its a bit lower that's all.

 

[Snaaty]

@ dirk:

i have opted to finish the deity aw 2 game. so i guess you will be left alone in finishing this one because finishing both will simply take (way) to much time for me.

concerning the next game we wanted to play sg-style:

obs agreed to join, so that makes 3 of us. i posted some ideas about it already in the deity aw2 thread, maybe we can discuss the settings there a bit already, while we still play our games?

 

[Dirk1302]

OK, i have played much further than 1500 AD in the meantime. Playing this format is very time consuming as i tried to get it right. Will report progress when i have time.

@obsolete, glad you agreed to join . Will be a good game.

 

[MesSer]

Amazing game, deity is way too hard for me, but I'll try a AW on monarch or emperor ;o

Its kinda weird to see that you manages to get into a good position, might even be better than my usual ones, even when all AI are attacking you. Simply weird

 

[Snaaty]

@ dirk:
looking forward to your report

...

@ messer:
yup, i guess we are all a bit crasy

 

[obsolete]

@obsolete, glad you agreed to join . Will be a good game.

Don't get too excited just yet. Snaaty can tell you over the last few years, I've lost more GGs in both forum SG and on-line AW games, than everyone else put together...

Sad but true.

 

[Snaaty]

Don't get too excited just yet. Snaaty can tell you over the last few years, I've lost more GGs in both forum SG and on-line AW games, than everyone else put together...

Sad but true.

i think i can beat you now to that... ...in my last game (the deity aw2 game) i lost ALL of them... ...yup, all of them, 6, 7 or maybe even 8 or so in total... ...all dead.

i guess this must be the record now, loosing some isnt hard, loosing every single one of them (even the healer mace, no idea when or how this happened in the era of rifles and cannons) is almost impressive

 

[Dirk1302]

Until 1570 AD

Spoiler :

As expected Sulei techs chem which i steal immed for the workshop bonus, he continues MS which i hoped. I have a large surplus on spy points so i steal MS at -20% instead of -50% stationary spy 1530 AD. MS is not expensive and i have 3 GG's ready to build military academies, 3 turns later will cost me some. Also i'm getting impatient to get the offensive going, enough units but i need to upgrade maces to grens as i have no siege. ~15 maces are upgraded now from money i saved

1545 AD
SM is stolen next. I can raise the slider to 50% esp now breaking even for ~750 esp. With tech ~1/2 priced that's effectively 1500 bpt. I'm still behind Sulei though who is teching much faster than anyone else. Still some tech to steal from him, i need need Edu->Lib->Communism and he's got physics as well (some airships would be nice).

I feel i'm ready to go for Addis Adaba now judging i have enough units to do it. It's a crucial moment, i have some 70 units assembled in Kumbi, overkill but i can't slack on the defense of that city. As Snaaty suggested i have attached a GG to a strong unit, Hernan Cortez he's named. Settling GG is not that useful anymore and my military cities have military academies. I was a bit skeptical at first about attaching GG's to units but they really promote fast and defend a lot without too much damage.

Kumbi will hold with some 35 units left but i'm a bit worried about my attack stack which consists of heavily promoted cavs, some defensive rifles and ~15 cr3 grens.Looks like a lot but if it's really attacked hard by cats/trebs followed by cav's/curis it can be decimated very quickly. Natives can field quite some units but it's the celts i'm really worried about, they're able to send stacks in excess of 40 units. However they're nowhere in sight atm so i have to deal with Natives and Ethiopians mainly.

With lots of enemy stacks around i take an extra turn through the woods before coming down 1W of Addis Adaba. 1 NW puts me in range of all those stacks that have assembled before Kumbi.



Still lose some units after landing, maybe Hernan should have joined the offense, didn't risk it. But good thing i didn't have trebs or they would have been flanked to treb heaven.



Those were left behind to defend



Revolt Mission is not expensive and has good success rate



And Grens have indeed reasonable odds against those rifles



Strongest defenders are attacked first of course but i think the RNG gave me a reasonable deal here...



So we capture Addis



And i decide to keep it. It's not on a hill and i would have razed it if there was a hill nearby in my culture but there just isn't. In case of real calamity i'm prepared to give it up as long as it's not to the Ethiopians. It's the relief of culture that i'm really after, i'll be able to get future stacks deeper into Ethiopia without having to worry about all that open land. Deity AW2 is probably harder than this one but Snaaty had one thing going for him, the troops that attacked Persia were naturally sheltered by persian lands from the other Ais. I think an early attack with cats/phants would have gone flat for this reason here.

Meanwhile back home Brennus is again cowardly trying to sneak through instead of bravely sacking at 0% odds. He doesn't realize he has ceased to be a factor long ago. It's annoying to have to mop up his useless units every time. Actually it's between me, the Celts and the Zulu's now.



Celts come with a really big stack. As can be seen from this screenie, the sting is in the tail/details, apart from the very visible cavs you can see 22 rifles and 19 grens in this stack making it > 60 units.



I'm happy that

1. This stack won't attack Addis
2. For some reason Washington doesn't use siege much, none in this stack for instance.

I think Kumbi will hold, attacking with no siege at all just doesn't do enough damage. It's easily possible he'll lose ~10 units without doing any significant damage at all.

Only celts (well maybe Natives too) are more powerful than i am. Offense has cost me some units but i will overtake Sulei again soon.



Capturing Addis,not losing too many units in the process, was an important step. Next turns will probably be about holding/surviving/healing. If can hold on to my 2 blockcities now ,Ethiopian lands will be wide open for my next offensive.

Tech and esp

 

[west45]

I've been following these threads for a while, and I find the AW games posted here to be very interesting. I've tried a few myself but never could finish them.

An AW general discussion thread would be very helpful and maybe get some more people interested in AW games, if one of you had the time to do that .


Here's a game I tried today. Attached is 2 autosaves: the autosave before I lost my major blocker city, and the 4000bc save. It is on emperor. I normally play IMM and can win it often but AW is much more complicated (I forgot to turn off tech trading for the AI here so they are way ahead of me).

I'm going to put this game down as a loss, but I wanted some advice on the game if you guys can provide it.
I have a good idea of what I did wrong here, I won't go into detail but alot of it is pretty obvious . The gamebreaker was the caste switch. No whip = death for the blocker. Djenne got HE up far too late, it could also have saved me.
edit: im not sure what combat log will show for anyone opening save, but I had been losing units in blocker steadily so that's why I have so few.

Spoiler :

 

[Dirk1302]

Basically your esp rate is too low. I think you should have built and worked more cottages. If you would have had nationalism/constitution in that 1360 AD save you would have been fine i think. In the AW4 discussion there have been some suggestions that we should play without cottages, that may work if you can get more than one gspy to steal your way to constitution and if you get a large espionage advantage by gifting a city with reli in it to AI. But with an average esp situation like here you really need those cottages as there's basically no other way to keep up.

If you lose units in blocker city that means you don't have enough. After knights you really need 20 or more (on deity that is).

 

[Snaaty]

in will try to have a look at the saves this we

 

[obsolete]

Hmm, only one hero unit (very weak too), and a couple settled GGs spread out. Don't think that is a good recipe at all.

Interesting that you built the Oracle...though, but I guess that cost you the wall?

Some of your city placements was very poor... actually attrocious to be honest though. Don't you realize you get defense bonus behind rivers, etc?

 

[Dirk1302]

It's indeed better to settle GG's in one or 2 cities. Drill IV >> Drill III so getting > 10 xp units out of the gate in a high production city (+ HE) is a priority.