First post...of course, out of frustration! I was playing on monarch as Ottoman, on a brutal map landlocked in the middle of 5 other civs and fighting wars on all sides thanks to religious problems. I love Otto's traits and UB - happiness was never a concern for me. Thanks to a strong economy (a super specialist city, two powerful commerce cities from Mao, and two good production cities), I was able to be right near the tech and points lead, and way ahead of both Saladin and Kublai, so I was able to fend both off for a long time with cavalry and janissaries (before getting grenadiers), but they wouldn't accept reasonable peace offerings. Made peace with Saladin after pillaging him for 20 turns or so, and finally got Kublai Khan to make peace with me (he kept demanding my production city as part of the peace treaty!) for 10 turns. My force was depleted from these stupid long wars though - watched my power rating stay stagnant while Peter, Bismarck and Brennus all beefed up, laughing at our stupid religious wars.
I switched all my cities to military production to try to get my force back up, and continued researching. As background, I was pretty much first to chemistry and military tradition, and had just started to research rifling when I made the peace with those two. Just after I made peace with those twom and five turns from me hitting rifling, Brennus (who was only cautious with me, and had rifling) declares and moves in a stack. Brings trebs, rifleman and grenadiers to my main production city. I saw him coming and had at least three turns to react, so switched to nationhood and tried to trade for rifling - no takers. After the anarchy, i go to draft....and it drafts janissaries!!!! Not grenadiers (strength 12 vs. 9) or cavalry (15 vs 9), but janissaries. What a complete suck job. I lose my super military production city (with heroic epic, military academy, 3 settled GGs), and at that point, the game is done...no chance to fend him off, with furious civs on both sides.
I was so pissed at the stupid janissaries...cavalry or grenadiers totally would have stopped the onslaught. My beef with the game is why can't you choose what unit to draft - why does it have to assign one - I play warlords - is it the same on BTS. Not being able to draft cavalry and grenadiers totally killed me and ruined a nice game. Nothing worse than playing on epic, having a great, long game, and something stupid like that completely shells it. Ugh - I hate reloading, and after playing 5-6 more turns, realized that I was about to lose a key commerce city, and saw I had no hope of recovering from that. Time to start a new game - why does the stupid drafting system choose a crappy UU over two much stronger options?? If I could have chosen my draftees, I would still be alive and have a great shot to win.
I switched all my cities to military production to try to get my force back up, and continued researching. As background, I was pretty much first to chemistry and military tradition, and had just started to research rifling when I made the peace with those two. Just after I made peace with those twom and five turns from me hitting rifling, Brennus (who was only cautious with me, and had rifling) declares and moves in a stack. Brings trebs, rifleman and grenadiers to my main production city. I saw him coming and had at least three turns to react, so switched to nationhood and tried to trade for rifling - no takers. After the anarchy, i go to draft....and it drafts janissaries!!!! Not grenadiers (strength 12 vs. 9) or cavalry (15 vs 9), but janissaries. What a complete suck job. I lose my super military production city (with heroic epic, military academy, 3 settled GGs), and at that point, the game is done...no chance to fend him off, with furious civs on both sides.
I was so pissed at the stupid janissaries...cavalry or grenadiers totally would have stopped the onslaught. My beef with the game is why can't you choose what unit to draft - why does it have to assign one - I play warlords - is it the same on BTS. Not being able to draft cavalry and grenadiers totally killed me and ruined a nice game. Nothing worse than playing on epic, having a great, long game, and something stupid like that completely shells it. Ugh - I hate reloading, and after playing 5-6 more turns, realized that I was about to lose a key commerce city, and saw I had no hope of recovering from that. Time to start a new game - why does the stupid drafting system choose a crappy UU over two much stronger options?? If I could have chosen my draftees, I would still be alive and have a great shot to win.