Deity conquest 1190 AD

[Mylene]

It's the same strat as for the Landsknecht rush
Just that it is easier cos of a good leader (maybe the best cos of PHI and starting techs).

Good job, ofc the settings are very favorable here with AIs hating each other on a narrow map (it's standard size, but plays like small), and tech brokering on (this is the opposite example for @AZ theory that "no tech brokering" always makes things easier).

 

[hr_oskar]

Part 1: The Plan

To be able to bulb Machinery with a GS I must:

1. Not have Fishing (leads to Sailing bulb)
2. Not have Code of Laws or Drama (leads to Philosophy bulb)
3. Not have Civil Service or Theology (leads to Paper bulb)
4. Have Aesthetics, Mathematics, Alphabet, and Iron Working (to eliminate those bulbs)
5. Have Metal Casting and Pottery (prereqs for Machinery)

To then go and (almost) bulb Engineering with a GS I just need Construction while making sure I don't have any of the "banned" techs above.

Avoiding the banned techs isn't actually as hard as it sounds. With an inland start I won't miss Fishing that much, and the other four techs are more mid-game techs anyway. I must just make sure I don't trade for them accidentally.

The hard part is getting 2 GS while also getting Aesthetics, Math, Alpha and MC. I usually end up trading for Alpha and self-teching the other 3, though I might occasionally manage 2 from trades. So I need plenty of early commerce - ideally from FP cottages. I also only settle 3 or 4 cities, close together, to keep maintenance to a minimum. The research is important because I have to tech Feudalism after I get Engineering, to be able to vassal the AI's. The next and last tech I'll need to research is Guilds.

Once I get Feudalism, I switch to Vassalage. I don't use Bureaucracy at all with this strat. It's much more valuable to crank out Knights with 9 or even 11+ XP (with settled GG's).

Production comes mainly from constant whipping. Unhappiness is not a problem as long as I keep getting more land and vassals for happy resources (I also get +1 happiness per vassal). I make a HE site once I get Literature and avoid whipping there. The HE city should ideally be able to produce Knights in 2 turns.

I always accept a capitulation as soon as it becomes available. This strat is about knocking as many AI's out as possible before my medieval units go obsolete. I avoid fighting more than one AI at a time, as that will make them more reluctant to capitulate ("We're afraid of your enemies!"). I try to take the fast techers out first (Mansa Musa!) but logistics are very important too - I try to plan a single route of conquest through the map to avoid having to march my entire army across the continent for the last target.

Finally, I only keep the first few cities I take for two reasons:

1. It takes too long for conquered cities to compensate for what they cost me in terms of garrison units and maintenance.
2. Most importantly, I want to keep the cultural borders of my vassals to facilitate troop movement - this is critical for a slow medieval army!

 

[Yamps]

2. Not true. (Meditation)

Anyway, GG!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

2. Most importantly, I want to keep the cultural borders of my vassals to facilitate troop movement - this is critical for a slow medieval army!

It has a double purpose then. AI that share 8 or more tiles with your vassal are more likely to capitulate to you. Non-vassal war allies count too, but are less...certain .

Good points on logistics and the amount of time a captured city needs to develop. Incidentally, how often do vassals that are over the land/pop threshold break free on you? As in the past I've not given cities back to that extent, I almost never see a cap vassal get over both land and pop 50% and be able to break free. In your game 2 AI could have broken free in theory.

I suspect that power, current war progress, whether or not you're even at war, etc plays a role on this...but don't know specifics and knowing firaxian tendencies, some or none of that may matter.

 

[Grashopa]

but logistics are very important too - I try to plan a single route of conquest through the map to avoid having to march my entire army across the continent for the last target.

I'm not sure why this is difficult for me.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Not bad.

Surprised your score was only 300K.

 

[hr_oskar]

It has a double purpose then. AI that share 8 or more tiles with your vassal are more likely to capitulate to you. Non-vassal war allies count too, but are less...certain .

Thanks - I didn't know this, although intuitively it makes a lot of sense.

Good points on logistics and the amount of time a captured city needs to develop. Incidentally, how often do vassals that are over the land/pop threshold break free on you? As in the past I've not given cities back to that extent, I almost never see a cap vassal get over both land and pop 50% and be able to break free. In your game 2 AI could have broken free in theory.

I suspect that power, current war progress, whether or not you're even at war, etc plays a role on this...but don't know specifics and knowing firaxian tendencies, some or none of that may matter.

I've actually never had a vassal break free, despite them being past the supposed threshold. In this game, I was genuinely worried about either Mansa Musa or Sury breaking free - especially after I deliberately allowed Mansa to tech up to Cuirassiers and Cannons.

I'm guessing that their attitude towards you would also help to keep them loyal. Liberating their cities boosts relations by a fair bit and the constant warfare builds up a respectable "mutual military struggle" bonus too. In the late game many of my vassals were either friendly or pleased with me.

 

[hr_oskar]

Not bad.

Surprised your score was only 300K.

Well to be exact it was almost 336k But score was only a secondary objective for me - I was fighting for the earliest possible date. I suppose keeping more cities would have boosted the score somewhat. The low population of my cities is another factor - for this reason I stopped whipping some 3-4 turns before the win was guaranteed, in order to improve my score a bit.

 

[hr_oskar]

Part 2: Early Game

With such a promising BFC and conveniently starting on a riverside PH, I went ahead and settled in place.

I teched Pottery first (not AH as TMIT said), to cottage my 2 FP's right away. Next was Animal Husbandry (for the pigs, as well as sheep to the north), then Mining -> BW. After this I would go Writing -> Math.

Why Math instead of Aesthetics? Well, although the AI's usually research it early, they tend to be reluctant to trade it for a long while - often too long for me to be able to rely on a Math trade for my strategy. Since I'm likely to have to self tech it, I'd rather just get it early to boost my forest chops. The plan is to trade for (part of) Alpha, hopefully with Math.

I see some very nice land in the vicinity of my capital and two obvious city sites that I absolutely must get (to the north and south east). Since the AI are to the south, I settle the southeastern site first.

The situation in 2160 BC:

Spoiler :

At this point I have two workers out and a third on the way. Luckily I have copper in my capital's BFC, so I hook it up and make a single axeman which will hopefully be enough for barb defense. My capital will build a settler next for the northern city, followed by a library for the scientists.

1560 BC:

Spoiler :

There my capital is working on the first scientist while putting out my fourth worker. Edirne is building a library, because I intend to grow my second scientist there. But I actually get my first GS before Edirne's library was complete, so I just go ahead and have Istanbul grow another GS. If I had anticipated this I might not have built the lib in Edirne at all, though I suppose the research boost helps a bit.

I get Math a turn later and go for Metal Casting next. I know I will definitely need to self-tech that one, and I like to be able to build Forges early, so that I'll have that bit of infrastructure ready once I bulb the key techs.

675 BC I get my second GS:

Spoiler :

I had founded my fourth city, Bursa, the turn before, next to a FP and some gold to the south. In retrospect it may not have been worthwhile as it was too late to contribute anything to my war preparation. But I found myself with some excess hammers (which perhaps should have become 2 axemen) and figured it would add enough commerce to improve my research a bit.

At this point I'm about half done building forges in my three main cities. I'm teching Alphabet, hoping to trade Math for the rest of it. But the AI's don't value Math much at this point, so I end up having to self-tech most of Alpha. I work on Aesthetics while waiting for a chance for an Alpha trade but anyway by 575 BC I have both of them, allowing me to bulb Machinery. I trade Aesth and Alpha around to backfill my techs, while moving on to research Masonry -> Construction -> Engineering bulb. I also need to make sure to get Monarchy through trades, so that I can start going for Feudalism asap after Engineering.

Around that time I also bribe Mansa Musa on Bismarck and get some trade blockades going as well. With this I'm trying to slow down AI tech trading, to buy me more time to kill them before they get too advanced.

While researching Construction I don't want to whip much, in order to keep my tech rate up. But I get plenty of chopping done, so the Crossbows start streaming out. 375 BC I finally get Engineering and at that point I start whipping like mad (and continue to do so most of the game). By 275 BC my invasion force is ready.

It takes me a while to decide who to attack. Bismarck is the most natural target as he's closest and already at war with both Shaka and Mansa Musa. I also like his land. I really want to finish MM off fast though, and since he's teching Feudalism I'm worried he might vassal Bismarck before I do, so I'm very tempted to attack him first. But MM has skirmishers (and soon longbows) while Bismarck only has archers. So I go for Bismarck...

275 BC, army poised for the attack:

Spoiler :

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/692/suleimanconquestprepara.jpg/

Attached the 275 BC save in case anyone would like a look.

 

[wertyu70]

I have just finished a game trying this strategy with Mao: despite I made some mistakes (I kept too many conquered cities, I was involved in the first war too early) I got an easy win and conquered most of the world with just Cho-ku-nos and Trebuchets (Knights arrived too late, researching guilds required too much time).
I will retry it soon.

 

[GGracchus]

I have just finished a game trying this strategy with Mao: despite I made some mistakes (I kept too many conquered cities, I was involved in the first war too early) I got an easy win and conquered most of the world with just Cho-ku-nos and Trebuchets (Knights arrived too late, researching guilds required too much time).
I will retry it soon.

What finish time/difficulty? I did this on noble and got myself a 660 AD finish, but I probably could have done it faster. I doubt I really needed CKN's and I probably should have gone with a phi leader to get the GS's faster.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^ On noble just use horse archers.

 

[GGracchus]

^ On noble just use horse archers.

I was on noble for the explicit purpose of trying this strategy: I didn't know if I could do it on emperor/immortal(my usual level)

 

[soundjata]

I love this kind of story, opening with a dramatic conclusion and then... This is how it all began.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I was on noble for the explicit purpose of trying this strategy: I didn't know if I could do it on emperor/immortal(my usual level)

Of course you can. I'm actually a little stronger while using it rather than other things. You just have to hit fast. Once you get used to the tech requirements and situations for it the AI really can't handle treb/xbow with classical melee and maybe some longbows; it's a slaughterfest. Although it can beat most things, protective can be trouble. Ironically it's good against the super warmongers who tech poorly and thusly leave a larger window open to it.

 

[Grashopa]

I used to do this often on the forum, but I never cap'd anyone. It was TMIT that drilled into my head the speed cap'g. My last forum game was oracle->CS so early trebs and macemen.. Hit their stack inside a city, take that city then cap them!! I used to go around taking all their cities with my 1 move units

 

[shyuhe]

@hr, isn't it better to have spears instead of axes for protection against mounted units?

 

[hr_oskar]

@hr, isn't it better to have spears instead of axes for protection against mounted units?

If you're referring to the lack of spearmen in my first stack, the simple reason was that Bismarck didn't have any horses whereas he had lots of melee guys. I'd come to favor axemen as a filler unit with this strategy mainly because they make for good cannon fodder and mop up units. They're almost half as cheap as crossbowmen and will kill the last few wounded defenders easily enough and help garrison while the x-bows march on.

I don't like to build many spears in the preparation phase because I'll be able to build pikes once I start the fighting and I don't want to plan on doing upgrades (spears -> pikes) since I'm too pinched on gold while teching Feudalism and Guilds.

 

[MacBalt]

It was TMIT that drilled into my head the speed cap'g. ... Hit their stack inside a city, take that city then cap them!! I used to go around taking all their cities with my 1 move units

I'm not sure I get this, but it sounds intriguing. Can you tell me more or point to where I can read more about it?

 

[GGracchus]

I'm not sure I get this, but it sounds intriguing. Can you tell me more or point to where I can read more about it?

Basically it's capitulating civs as fast as you can to get the earliest finish date(and a higher score)[I think]