Earth 1000AD Aztec Invasion

[MAvL]

So inspired by the nonsensical yet funny addon of Crusader King 2 called "Sunset Invasion", where Aztec invade Europ in the late middle age, I decided to try produce this feat in the Earth1000AD scenario.

Earth18civ (4000BC) should be relatively easy though amazingly you would still be a bit late in technology, for the realistic reason that you were more isolated.

Earth 1000AD is tough to play as amerindian even normally (Rapidly and Early eXpanding with cottage spam and aiming at diplomatic victory).


The challenge : Capture one town outside of america (not reachable through land and coast) ASAP.
Preferably on Noble or higher.


Preferably without gunpowder unit. To reach Europe before astronomy (or even optic), I have found an exploit where you place a town in Greenland and built 10 culture with it so as to pass through ocean with galleys. Amusingly, this trick is only available to amerindian despite the close real life counterpart being vikings setting foot on america.

I lamentably failed on Monarch and am trying it again on prince, with more knowledge than on the first run (I know the importance of cottage spam now). Has anyone ever tried this feat, or would like to give it a shot?

Other question for those who played the 1000AD scenario as the Aztec (or the Inca), what is your time line? What time is it when you finish settling the East Coast (assuming REXing)?

For now, I'm not close to it in 1600, but I made one town in south america and one on the West coast. While not necessarilly a bad move, probably not what I want to be doing for a Sunset Invasion attempt.

Edit : I've made a third run in Noble and though it is not perfect or satifactory, I checked some of the goals :
- 1590 : the East Cost of North America is fully colonized (saved for one tundra spot I don't intend to settle)
- 1635 : The Greenland outpost is settled, and the paths will be opened ten turns later, in 1685.
- About 1700 : A trade road is opened toward Europe (and used), about 4 turns before the european discover Astonomry!! Trade with England somehow started as ealry as 1650, through Iceland. I guess they can go through glacier, other european powers just lacked vision of my outpost. Contact with Russia, Arabia, Mali and India were established in Europe - south Italy/north Africa, rather than in America !
- 1828 : Dub Linn (barbarian) falls to the stirkes of aztec trebuchets and grenadiers, after a 3 years siege. I had not started to plan the invasion until after I've seen Dub Linn being up for grabs, so as you see, it takes some time, and I could have saved some by wrecking my economy (took about 40 turns from start to finish, 2/3 of which being travel time).

I'll post some pics and save in a reply. I'll try again on Monarch for some reasons

 

[Olafeson]

Eh what ? Aztecs invading Europe ?

 

[MAvL]

Yeah I know this is crazy.
Realistically, I'm more thinking of capturing barb Dublin, before dumb AI on noble with aztec.

 

[Olafeson]

AH i see it is one of those scenarios you cna play. Funbily even after thousands of hours of civ 4 i never played the scenarios. Maybe one day.

 

[Wrathful]

I've looked at this scenario a few times, but I've never actually played it out. All of my Earth-map related needs are fulfilled by the Giant Earth Map (a fantastic mod in my opinion).

You already mentioned the Greenland trick. I wonder if it might be possible to do something similar in the Bering Strait? If so you could pass into Siberia and capture some lightly defended barb city or Mongolian outpost in the frozen north. The AI loves to put towns there later in the game. Of course, if the goal is to invade Europe specifically, this doesn't really help very much.

You could also consider the Astronomy bulb. If you beeline Optics, avoid the prerequisites for Paper and Philosophy, and tech Alphabet, Mathematics, and Calendar, you can bulb Astronomy with a Great Scientist. On standard Deity maps it's possible to get Astro in the early ADs using this tactic. The general tactic is to tech to Optics while generating the needed Great Scientists, then trade Optics and its prerequisites for Math, Alpha, and Calendar. Then use your GS to bulb Astro. In this scenario Roosevelt or the Inca might provide some of these trades.

With Astro in hand it's just a matter of building an army to capture a single European town. You can trade Astro for Civil Service and Engineering, unlocking Macemen and Trebuchets, then attack with these. Ivory should be fairly easy to get in trade (unlocking War Elephants) and horses should be possible too (for Knights if you trade for Feudalism and Guilds). You might begin the army buildup after finishing Optics, because at that point commerce is no longer required (just GPP for the Astro bulb). Without gunpowder units you will need a lot of siege to take a city, so keep that in mind.

Ironically, this strategy might be more effective on higher difficulty levels, because on Noble you won't get many trades.

 

[MAvL]

I've looked at this scenario a few times, but I've never actually played it out. All of my Earth-map related needs are fulfilled by the Giant Earth Map (a fantastic mod in my opinion).

You already mentioned the Greenland trick. I wonder if it might be possible to do something similar in the Bering Strait? If so you could pass into Siberia and capture some lightly defended barb city or Mongolian outpost in the frozen north. The AI loves to put towns there later in the game. Of course, if the goal is to invade Europe specifically, this doesn't really help very much.

You could also consider the Astronomy bulb. If you beeline Optics, avoid the prerequisites for Paper and Philosophy, and tech Alphabet, Mathematics, and Calendar, you can bulb Astronomy with a Great Scientist. On standard Deity maps it's possible to get Astro in the early ADs using this tactic. The general tactic is to tech to Optics while generating the needed Great Scientists, then trade Optics and its prerequisites for Math, Alpha, and Calendar. Then use your GS to bulb Astro. In this scenario Roosevelt or the Inca might provide some of these trades.

With Astro in hand it's just a matter of building an army to capture a single European town. You can trade Astro for Civil Service and Engineering, unlocking Macemen and Trebuchets, then attack with these. Ivory should be fairly easy to get in trade (unlocking War Elephants) and horses should be possible too (for Knights if you trade for Feudalism and Guilds). You might begin the army buildup after finishing Optics, because at that point commerce is no longer required (just GPP for the Astro bulb). Without gunpowder units you will need a lot of siege to take a city, so keep that in mind.

Ironically, this strategy might be more effective on higher difficulty levels, because on Noble you won't get many trades.

GEM looks like a nice map I might look into it. It's a little (x1.2 I'd say maybe x1.5) bigger than the Earth map available in the base game (I'll call it DEM for Default Earth Map). The base movement speed set to 2 should really help, DEM is already huge and you can't put the time speed to epic (at least for the 1000AD start. If anyone knows how to change that, let me know ; it might make Europe and maybe China-Mongols imbalanced though as country with a smaller standing army might fail to developp one in time).

In GEM, both Bering strait and Greenland seem to be passable with galleys with a (necessary) single culture trick (and it Europe -> America looks easier than the other way around).
If I am not mistaken, in DEM, I think only America -> Europe is possible that way.


For starts at 4000BC, or in the BC in general, Astronomy is probably the best shot, I don't know if I would be able to execute it, but the strategy you outline should work very well. For DEM, the trip Northern America to Dub Linn takes 10 turns in Galley (so typically 20 turns from barracks to battlefield), versus porbably about 2 turns in Galleon (typically 6-10 turn I'd say). Which ever the map, the galley trick is probably foolish at anything but epic (and probably foolish at epic too).

For Ivory, I've found India to be surprisingly willing to trade it. I guess there might also be some available in north Africa isn't there?


Yeah, I've worked my way up to emperor in civ 3, and I've came to hate the way difficulty is generated, with the exact same dumb AI getting tougher by the sole power of cheating. The science pace is among the main reason I find higher difficulty degenerated. It's funny the first time when you struggle to not be left behind and at the same time beat all your time records on weaker level, but then it means you don't even get to play on certain era. So I'd rather play noble isolation, but for this specific challenge, I just made a try on noble, and I might crank the difficulty back up for several reasons, one being having a more fruitful scientific cooperation with Incas.