Dr kossin #33

[kossin]

Round 4

On the second turn of war, Brennus capitulated to Cyrus, not having lost even 1 city... meh.

Teching the middle line, trading for the bottom line with Cyrus.

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A bit of Wonder spam... thanks to being first to Radio.

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Missed out on R&R by 1 turn... silly Deity bonuses. The cash was put towards research.

A while after... more precisely after Bombers and a fleet were built, I pulled this trade:

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Which came with a bonus!

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Cavalry vs Tanks

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vs Infantry

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Getting rid of Izzy's culture...

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I didn't accept capitulation to keep trading with Cyrus a bit. (didn't pay off much, should have capitulated)

Naturally I went into Bureaucracy for my Ironworks Capital...

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Sitting Bull had it coming ever since stealing the flood plains area...

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Bombers really are the way to do Modern warfare in civ...

Because I had 2 spare Great Engineers...

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This is another two-parter, which will make up for that other day I missed.

Cyrus built the UN so an easy diplo victory was out of the picture. Space will be very easy with this amount of land and research capacity.

 

[kossin]

Bonus round!

Actually... I didn't go for space. I took the highway and got to work.

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I also made a quick stop by Isabella to eliminate her... getting rid of unhappiness in the process.

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In this next shot you can see my civics during the military buildup... this gave Cyrus a lot of Anarchy. Even more when he decided to revolt away hehe

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Why trade Fission? I banned nukes after building some for myself alone.

Here's the first SoD I sent.

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If you don't build massive stacks, collateral damage will decimate your stack in no time.

Bad news Cyrus...

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Before

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After

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I landed in Kyoto, which was home to some nice wonders.

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I pillaged the roads around it with Gunships so that a counter attack would have to wait before I could move.

Anyway... I built Stealth Bombers and beside losing 2 cities to SoDs (retaken the next turn), cities fell like flies. The big difficulty was controlling the seas which I managed after a good part of the war was done.

I won't bore you with everything that happened but here are some highlights:

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Of course Cyrus will not capitulate despite having 20% my power (his vassal Saladin was stronger at that point... Brennus had broken free.

Although I could have voted myself into the UN chair a lot earlier (liberating captured cities)... I decided to go for real Domination a bit later.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Post-game

A rather easy game, but the RNG was kind to us in the beginning. I think I've had enough warring for a while now however, but it might just be that the next game requires heavy warring as well.

Bombers and Stealth Bombers are verrrrry good.

Some statistics.

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I owned all but 4 wonders by the end.

 

[Udey1]

excellent performance once again. I always get bored with late game war... (currently in our deity uni, might just call it for diplomination there too.

Takes too long to move the stacks, i dislike 5 minute turns.

 

[Verarde]

Good game kossin. I specifically enjoyed the late push and taking of Persepolis and Pasargadae. Those were the nail in the coffin for Cyrus. Any thoughts on what DR #34 will look like?

 

[kossin]

Check the bullpen, it's Darius on Inland_sea.

 

[Eplekjekk]

Fine display once again kossin. As I was browsing through your screenshots of Round 4 I kept thinking: "man that is some tedious warring" and "that must have taken a while". Usually when I find myself facing a relatively strong AI on a distant continent in the lategame I prefer to end the game by Diplo or Space, or even start a new game, only to avoid the drudgery that is modern warfare in Civ IV. The joy of winning I find is offset by the amount of time it takes to amass a gigantic stack and warring when every move gets slower and slower.

 

[kossin]

^^If I recall correctly, the bonus round took about 3 hours. I did have to do a lot of micro (assign specialists over and over between production/gold etc.) which took a while however.

Anyway, it just felt good to do a "real" intercontinental war on Deity. Granted I used anticipation with a few nukes but still...

 

[Inso]

Nice game, can't believe cavalry were still effective in the 17-1800s, guess those bombers were roughing them up enough first. I'll have to investigate this combination in my games, I always switch to infantry once the enemy has rifles and above, the movement advantage of cavalry would be nice instead.

That stack for the intercontinental war is insane!!!

 

[Chimera1804]

Nice sign there next to karakorum

Great game, though...reading through these makes me wonder if Deity is actually hard at all...but then I get my tail whooped on Emperor and I remember it is.

 

[kossin]

Nice sign there next to karakorum

Great game, though...reading through these makes me wonder if Deity is actually hard at all...but then I get my tail whooped on Emperor and I remember it is.

Hehe yea... I had planned a nuclear war at first but changed my mind as it would have been boring. Nice to beat the AI unit for unit

 

[Killroyan]

Damn, why does it always looks so easy with you guys and when I go up to emperor I get my behind kicked

 

[ahcos]

Hehe yea... I had planned a nuclear war at first but changed my mind as it would have been boring. Nice to beat the AI unit for unit

hm, nuclear war is boring indeed, but oversea invasions can be pretty boring too.. especially lategame warfare needs alot of time, nukes do make it easier, alot faster... nonetheless, there's only one single thing i hate even more than wars that take forever - and that's using nukes. dilemma

following your games makes me doubt my goal to beat deity ... yes, there are several possible ways to beat the AI, but it seems that one has to play so straight forward and with limited options especially regarding warfare (can't remember a succesful deity attempt that used renaissance units like trebs/maces...?) plus, you have to play totally concentrated as it seems - for myself, i struggle here... i like to pause the game often to chat with friends, clean my room or whatever you may think of, and therefore tend to forget things like "i have to switch to CS to maximize effectiveness towards lib" etc. ... seems like deity won't work out with my sloppy gameplay. fair enough, emp and maybe imm are challenging enough :X

last but not least, i like your gameplay... win by warfare > all. good series, keep it up x)

 

[Deckhand]

When conquering with cavalry, how did you handle cultural defense?

• numbers?
• cavs with flanking promotions?
• bring it down with spies?

What promotions did you generally give your cavalry?

Recently started reading this series. You sure make diety look easy. Between BOTM28 and you, I might be ready to try diety.

 

[kossin]

Pure numbers, I did build 163 of them

On the first assault, on Bismarck, I just slammed my Cavalry into the cities, expecting 50% loss. It got a bit more bloody at the last 2 cities as he got Rifling and brought his SoD (wounded) inside a city.

Since I had 11 exp Cavalry out of the gate, I used 1 super-medic, 1 Sentry cavalry to see better (didn't prove that useful in the bomber era however) and the rest were either CIII or CII+Pinch depending on what was targeted.

Against Izzy and SB... well Bombers took away the defense but I also made sure to weaken the troops so that they would stay in the cities and not lash out. This second part is actually more important than taking away the defenses as usually you'll have the next turn or 2 to finish bombarding the defenses anyway to allow movement/healing.

Basically, it was akin to Cavalry vs Muskets but Rifles/Infantry do more damage per hit however.
You'll still lose a good amount of Cavalry when facing Infantry inside a city with 10 str points left but the odds will be in your favor as I showed.