Dunkirk?

Should I run, dig in, or fight?

  • Run!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hold the line!

    Votes: 1 100.0%
  • Unleash Hell!

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1

GloriousRevolution

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 16, 2016
Messages
1
I am in need of some guidance on my current game. I am playing as Songhai, on emperor level and so far the game is one of my best ever. I landed Petra in my capital and since then it has been a wonder factory, my second city has Alhambra and heroic epic and is churning out level 3 musket men every three turns (epic pace). I opened on a subcontinent with William who I wiped out in the medieval era. Arabia found a coastal route to my continent and met me just as I finished off William's last city and started sassing my warmongering so he was removed from the game in the renaissance era.

In the past when I try for domination victories I usually conquer my continent fairly early, but then I stall trying to consolidate my empire and end up not going to war again until battleships show up or settling for a science victory. This time I was determined to keep my momentum going so I decided to conquer Rome or Russia who both looked ready to take off on the other main continent. Rome was crawling with legions and I thought I would try to take out Russia before the Cossacks started rolling out. I found a nice patch of tundra within striking distance of both Moscow and Russian-occupied Istanbul, but unfortunately my army took 20 turns to get there. By the time my army was situated I ran face-first into a Cossack rush.

I managed to fight them off, killing 3 Cossacks and a lancer, but my renaissance army took heavy losses including 2 of my four crossbows, a musketman and a mandkalu cavalry who was also my medic. To make matters worse I am being harassed by Catherine's small navy. So now I have to decide what to do with my ragged expeditionary force, the way I see it I have three choices; 1. Peace out and make a long retreat back to my lands, upgrade and pick on someone else, 2. Harrass Russia's lands and try to occupy her Cossacks until I can amass and transport a more modern army to the battle, or 3. make a desperate attack on Istanbul, risking the entire army of veteran units, but if I managed to take it with acceptable losses I would have a base from which to take Moscow and eventually war against Rome. So what say you civilization experts? Do you think I should run, dig in, or fight?

ETA: Catherine just offered me 20 gpt in a peace deal, so I can save face in bugging out.
 
Well, i'd say that you would probably benefit from reading Consentient's guide (if you haven't already done so):

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/domination-on-immortal-deity-a-noobs-guide.547630/

I know it is aimed at higher levels, standard speed and so forth, but I think you could probably still use a lot of the information.

I'd say that your army is probably about a third of the size it needs to be. It would be better to have at least six crossbows. Eight to ten would be better -- ranged units dominate in this game. In the immeidate situation, I would pillage as many of the enemy tiles as I could. If you have a worker on hand, you can keep repeatedly pillaging and repairing a tile, which both heals the unit and earns gold. Some people don't like this exploit, but it is up to the player to decide whether to use it or not. Workers are also useful in the war zone as bait -- enemy units will capture them, you then kill the enemy, recapture the worker and repeat. It is a good way of luring enemy units out of a city so that you can destroy the garrison. I notice there is a City State nearby -- if it is not already your ally, you should spend gold to make it one, and it will then fight with you. In fact, with the amount of gold you have, you should probably ally as many City States as you can. Another trick might be to buy or build a Settler and found a small city nearby, so that you have a place where your units can heal more quickly. And you can also buy and build units in that city so that they don't have to travel from a distance to get to the war zone. Anyway, a MUCH bigger army would be better. Stop building anything else and just build units. Clearly, no other Civ is going to be able to win this game from this point, whatever they do, so just flood the terrain (and the sea) with units. Try to reach Dynamite as quickly as you can, and use Artillery to wipe out the opposition on land.

Edit: for comparison, look at this map!
 
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