deity aw 4: the three musketeers

[kossin]

I've caught up on the reading and observed the game. I think the plan is good I will try playing until the last turn of GA so we can re-evaluate our position.

One thing however is I might sneak in a few missionary builds more than were planned for faster spread.

 

[kossin]

Here goes. Turns were pretty uneventful, the AI stacks were smallish and few. But that's probably about to change for the worst.

First barb city is captured with no problems and kept, it is quite good.


We lose our spy in Trojan This pretty much rules out Theocracy... regardless I think we'll be better in OR for some turns yet to come: Louis is researching Metal Casting and those Mints will be more than welcome for the hammers and gold. A new spy was whipped into the Walata settler.


Meanwhile, Shaka is pummeling poor Hatty who is down to 1 city it seems.


I raze Mycene as it has nothing else to offer and is poorly placed to use the good tiles left. You can see a settler ready to settle the horse city next turn.


What's left near our borders isn't too impressive.


Finally, the tech situation.


Notice Shaka can research Banking? That's right, he has Knights to kill Hatty. And then the whole stack he has will come for us, we better be prepared (and we can forget about making catapults to strike a nearby city until that is dealt with).
WK will likely get Guilds soon also. The good news is the AI are too dumb to get Alphabet and thus can't trade.

Once the GA ends next turn, we'll lose 33 commerce and gain a few gpt/commerce.... putting us close to neutral.

EDIT: we'll need a plan to get another stealing spot since Louis is almost useless. Else we'll be fighting Cannons with Longbows

 

[RedKi-rr]

Isn't trading off in this game?)

I'm very happy the game is continued. Recently read SG Immortal AW game (started by Duckweed, end of 2009 year, Khmers). With great pleasure.

 

[kossin]

Oh you're right, it is disabled

 

[Dirk1302]

Yes tech trade is off, actually ais are acting very smart here . I remember that immortal SG, that one wasn't too difficult but really tedious to play and to finish.

Our game doesn't look too good (not that you did anything wrong kossin). Score wise Louis and the Germans are not far behind but technologically they're really backward compared to some of the other ais. That war between Hatty and Shaka is very unfortunate as well, i hoped for some easy pickings later on, not going to happen. Don't have a ready made plan as of yet, finding a new stealing spot will be really difficult, we may need to hope that Louis picks up speed.

 

[Manco Capac]

Yes tech trade is off, actually ais are acting very smart here . I remember that immortal SG, that one wasn't too difficult but really tedious to play and to finish.

If the AI was smart, wasn't it better to get Alpha for spies and then, with all their huge EP bank provoke civil disorder to aid their stacks to advance...

 

[Dirk1302]

. Sure that would be very smart almost human like. Not teching alpha is kinda smart within the borders of ai thinking which doesn't go beyond water poisoning/sabotage and the occasional tech steal. Shame actually, letting the ai do city revolts would have been interesting and doable though probably not too easy.

 

[Snaaty]

i already played my set btw, but the flu reduced me to bed the last 2 weeks, now, slowly recovering, i will try to dig out the actual save and the pics (next year that is)

...

edith adds (after reading a bit more here):

ok, seems i´m already a bit too late, since kossin stepped in and already played (which is great, so dont get me wrong here). in my save, i played up to around 800-900 AD and luis is a bit more usefull with each turn passing. we can steal mc and cs from him if i remember right (or one of them and the other he is reseaching).

anyways, want me to look for the saves and the pics or do we simply go on with kossins save (i basically played along the same path/plan as kossin, but did some turns more)?

...

i´m also a bit late on real live stuff, so i need a few days more to get fully back into this game...

 

[Dirk1302]

Since he's backwards in tech Louis probably has a lot of land to do reasonably well. This means he will become more useful in the future.

A bit unfortunate that you have both played. Not a lot happened. We can go on from either save as far as i'm concerned.

 

[Giaur]

Hi everybody

Have you tried playing an agressive leader? Agressive gives you more flexibility it's both good on offense and defence. F.I. woodsman3, combat3 formation praetorian can defeat cavalry scouts (single units), before they reach your territory. Intuition tells that combat with 95% odds seems to be stable. It could be difficult to win combat having medieval unit with a cavalry unit. But medieval unit is also much cheaper. That means that 90 odds transformes to 95 percent while enemie's unit is twice more expensive.
Protective fades in front of knights and flanking units. You can whip formation pike easily in non Heroic Epic city. Besides there are only 4 drill promotions and only 3 cg promotions, which means that with 20 exp (with charismatic) further you are forced to promote your longbows to Combat which is weak on defending units.

I am reading this thread slowly but still ...

 

[Dirk1302]

Hi Giaur, Long time..., welcome back .

 

[Habitus]

Protective fades in front of knights and flanking units. You can whip formation pike easily in non Heroic Epic city. Besides there are only 4 drill promotions and only 3 cg promotions, which means that with 20 exp (with charismatic) further you are forced to promote your longbows to Combat which is weak on defending units.

IIRC, Protective is for the early game to allow for an easier time (less units needed to defend with), and i think they pick up shock/formation before combat since drill also unlocks those.

I'd be interested in seeing how aggressive would play out thou

 

[kossin]

i already played my set btw, but the flu reduced me to bed the last 2 weeks, now, slowly recovering, i will try to dig out the actual save and the pics (next year that is)

...

edith adds (after reading a bit more here):

ok, seems i´m already a bit too late, since kossin stepped in and already played (which is great, so dont get me wrong here). in my save, i played up to around 800-900 AD and luis is a bit more usefull with each turn passing. we can steal mc and cs from him if i remember right (or one of them and the other he is reseaching).

anyways, want me to look for the saves and the pics or do we simply go on with kossins save (i basically played along the same path/plan as kossin, but did some turns more)?

...

i´m also a bit late on real live stuff, so i need a few days more to get fully back into this game...

Technically, since you've already played (before me) we should go with your save. We can consider the turns I played a "what if" story

Since he's backwards in tech Louis probably has a lot of land to do reasonably well. This means he will become more useful in the future.

A bit unfortunate that you have both played. Not a lot happened. We can go on from either save as far as i'm concerned.

True, or just horrible land

Hi everybody

Have you tried playing an agressive leader? Agressive gives you more flexibility it's both good on offense and defence. F.I. woodsman3, combat3 formation praetorian can defeat cavalry scouts (single units), before they reach your territory. Intuition tells that combat with 95% odds seems to be stable. It could be difficult to win combat having medieval unit with a cavalry unit. But medieval unit is also much cheaper. That means that 90 odds transformes to 95 percent while enemie's unit is twice more expensive.
Protective fades in front of knights and flanking units. You can whip formation pike easily in non Heroic Epic city. Besides there are only 4 drill promotions and only 3 cg promotions, which means that with 20 exp (with charismatic) further you are forced to promote your longbows to Combat which is weak on defending units.

I am reading this thread slowly but still ...

The way I see AW, there are 4 difficult areas:
1-early game when you have unpromoted units and no GG
2-before you get Feudalism and the AI comes at you with siege
3-the era of Knights+Trebuchets
4-conquering the AI before they win space/culture

Aggressive will only help out for #4. And by that time, you are in a race against time not against promotions really - humans are so much better than AIs at warfare that it's not a big contest.

Protective will help you most to survive #1 which is where most AW attempts would fail. And then it helps you getting those supporting units to fight off the overwhelming odds for #2 and #3. The 2 free promos are worth so much more than free Combat I.

 

[Giaur]

@kossin - thx for comment. I just fell not strong enough to agree or disagree. I've put what you said into my head. Maybe it produces something after several months - it's just the way I am

@all - I've noticed that there was some HoMM disscusion some time ago. I didn't followed it, so anyone is willing to start the new one?.
I believe that every HoMM fan heard about Wake of Gods. But have you heard about unofficial patch to WoG called "New Upgrades" or "New Creature Upgrades". So there it is ...
Every type of race has additional unique building which unlocks further upgrades such as:
Master Gremlins -> Santa Gremlins
Horned Demons -> Warevolves
...
and Level 7 creatures can also be upgraded to Level 8 creatures.
also some new bitmaps are added

And there are pros and cons of this addition. I am hesitating about stability and balance of this patch. I suppose you have not heard about it, so I will stop disscussion at this point.

 

[obsolete]

Right now I don't have much time to check the save as I have to head to work in a few hours, but since we're going to use Snaaty's save anyway, I guess it's no biggie.

Just don't tell me that Snaaty lost any of our leaders...

 

[Snaaty]

welcome back obs

...

ok, here comes the save and some infos about our standing in the game:

a general ov:
View attachment 310584

as you can see, i played along the same lines as kossin:

first barb city taken, second razed, since no seafood anywhere near. to be honest, the northern part of our land is quite food poor, so not much good/use will come from there.

i already settled down the missing filler cities and am busy farming around there, to make them somewhat usefull in time.

we still have quite some financial trouble, mainly because we have 3 new cities now and a bigger army (later more on the army).

techwise i proceeded according to the plan, construction, aest, lit, with lit just finished this turn, so i thought it a good point to stop, since we have some stuff to decide what to tech next.
right now, we are -14 gpt in the red at 0% research, but the first 2 markets will go online next turn and some more courthouses and markets will follow soon, bringing us in the green again. if needed, we can stay afloat building wealth in a few cities if it takes to long to get there...

did steal callendar + theo, next on the plan is mc. hopefully luis i going for cs next (i thought he already had researched it, but looking at the tech screen convinced me that i was falling for whishfull thinking)

...

we have a gg hanging around near the front. i parked him there in case we might need him, since settling him now without a second one and a ready to use he city is of no use. so better have him there for emergency purpose then settling him now (we might save a bit upkeep, but well, i didnt want to settle him and leave it up for discussion)

...

what else (quite some time since played i noticed... ...have to doublecheck everything i did):

moai are done next turn, i would go for baracks next, let the city grow, then he (maybe ov whip into it, but without marble... ...meh)

i banked some hammers into ankor wat in capital to get some cash at some point... ...but maybe we want to finish it for breeding a preest later? im not decided on that matter, so another point up for discussion. right now, we should switch capital back to aqueduct and whip (or manually finish... ...but i guess i would whip) said thing for getting rid of unhappy.

...

hatty is dying, shaka is running here over. he has knights btw:
View attachment 310586

-> he can research banking, so he has guilds... ...not good

once hatty is no more, we will really (really, really) be hit hard with a huge stack of battle veterans. hopefully shaka wont upgrade all his has to knights or we might face a serious problem...

my estimation is 5-10 turns untill we will face the wrath of uber shake of greece

...

i did also a bit of an investment in new units, so we have a total of around 20 defenders in our 2 frontline cities:

View attachment 310585

i guess after finishing the markets just whipped, we need to do another investment into units. as a rough estimation, we need around 30-35 units near the front, 20 in the upper city (which gets hit most of the time) and maybe 5 as mobile reinforcements in the back and another 5-10 in the lower city (depends IF attacks there increase... ...besides some lonly wandering units, nothing went there, so i used our ggs to pick stuff out of the surrounding jungle if the odds were good enough)

 

[Mylene]

Iam wondering if it wouldn't be better to grow Walata, and let Tadmekka dwell at small size

 

[Snaaty]

good question...

right now, i think the clams have to stay with the island city (tadwhatever), after the lh is done, it might be otherwise, but i guess lh + courthouse for the island, maybe even market might be ideal

-> for the trade income, its best to have the islands as big as possible, because you can generate more income via traderouts like that in all our mainland cities. but for our special case this wont work, since we will be blockaded into oblivion anyways after the first gallons show up, so no idea what target size for the islands is best