Earth 18, always war, conquest only

I basically beat this already. Had a save where victory was near certain (but would've taken another 200 turns to actually win) that was lost from reinstalling.

I played as Hatty and chariot rushed saladin, cyrus, and asoka. It's kinda a luck-based start - sometimes saladin would tech hunter-archery immediately and I would restart while cyrus would start with hunting and not tech archery for 40 turns.

After taking mecca I immediately started building pyramid there, plan was to run representation+mercantilism+statue of liberty for science, since you'll have insane city maintenance until state property, at which point you should have basically won the game and can then steamroll all ais.

I filled in the land from egypt to india and then into turkey a little bit, and then just defended while I teched to infantry. It's really hard to push into europe head on so I would build a spare army every 20 turns or so and ship them to greece->rome->spain->england and finally landed in france.

I left mansa alive for a very long time, he's not a big threat at all, idk if it's worth it to kill him fast and start developing all of africa asap, or to just focus on your already good cities and conquer europe first.

 

Looking at Aztecs only. I think mainland start would be easier.

 

I played around with this awhile back, but haven't gotten past 1500 yet. Played a strong opening and then coasted on autopilot for a whole bunch of turns so I'm sure this can be done better, but I think I've got a shot at winning if I put in the time. It's going to be a long slog to conquer the old world.

I favour Aztec over America mostly due to the difference in quality of the start. Settling 1 NW of the Aztec start position gives a plains hill city tile and a forested plains hill deer in the inner ring. The American start has no easy access to hammers and falls behind very quickly in the early turns. Worker, warrrior x4 then move out and choke the Americans. Aim to avoid contact for as long as possible to keep him in peaceful expansion mode for as long as possible. The warrior stack should arrive in time to prevent the 1st settler from moving out of Washington. The Americans can be finished off with either Jags or with axes. I used a mix after settling on the Copper. Expansion needs to be managed carefully to avoid slowing the tech pace too much.

I don't think that Mids and GLH are both doable on Immortal. Both Louis and Qin love to build wonders and there are only so many hammers that can be diverted from dealing with America and expansion. I went with Mids after settling 3rd city on the stone and GLH went shortly afterwards. It may be possible sometimes to get both, especially if a few workers can be farmed from the Americans. GLH is good here even with AW as it is quite straightforward to settle 4 cities in the Carribean for the ICTRs. Settle them early enough and you'll have enough time to whip out a gran/lighthouse and grow enough to whip out a galleon or two from each of them as well. Mids OTOH is a great wonder as a Spiritual leader that enables swapping between Caste/Rep and Police State/Slavery as needed.

I'm aiming to settle the 1 tile islands in the East Atlantic, South Atlantic and Pacific and use them as Airship bases in support of my navy in the Atlantic and as staging for applying the Sirian Doctrine in the South Pacific and against Japan. Use the conquests to burn Qin's ports to slow him down before launching an assault on either South Africa to establish a beachead or Egypt to secure Suez. It'll be Rifles and Grenadiers supported by airships until either a supply of horses or tanks can be obtained.


As I said, I'm pretty certain that this can be done better, but here's my latest save if you want to take a look. I'm a turn or two away from swapping back out of Police State/Nationalism/Slavery after getting a few muskets and frigates drafted/whipped.

 

Egypt is likely a lot easier. Inability to affect the Old World makes things tough.


Now the real challenge: Beat the map as the Inca, AW, conquest, No Tech Trading, Immortal, Normal, No events.

 

Doubt you could win as Inca's. The start is horrible. Problem is the ai across the sea would become uber strong. Aztecs would be a pain. Their uu may not be that affective as you need galleys. Unless you head for the jungle.

For Aztecs i think you have to pick which wonders you want. Mids certainly. GLH maybe? Oracle would need a beeline. Even mids could be risky as many ai have stone on the main land.

Decision then is what to beeline. Col and bulb philosophy? Or alphabet to push science.

If you can warrior rush Americans you have a lot of land. It's just getting to a decent tech soon enough. If you over expand it slows science. Maybe playing no tech trading eould make game more even. Albeit i think Atecs shouldn't need this.

 

My main aim was to draw players to the Hall of Fame and GOTM, but Hall of Fame takes much time not playing and GOTM only offers short fun, so while I' m generating Maps over night I' ll play this over day now.

 

I chose Deity and Renamed Roosevelt to Philip Christopher Plöger German Empire and wanted to start, but found no gamespeed specified, is Marathon ok? ^^ And I found no option for always war.

 

You have to choose "Custom Scenario" instead of "Play Scenario" in order to modify settings.
Also, note that on this map AI starting units won't be adjusted with difficulty level, so you might want to exploit that in the beginning.

 

I play E18 quite a bit. In my experience, nothing beats the Europe starts. As France, I can routinely warrior-rush Spain, Germany, and Rome followed by chariot rush of Britain and Greece. Even on immortal level, I can often do that and get Pyramids, GLH, Oracle along with GL, HG, Taj, and MoM a bit later. Adding TGW is doable often too, but it just seems as if fail gold ends up being better for that and the other wonders. Other than Africa or Russia, barbs don't seem to be too problematic anyway due to so many AI's on the map. I have gotten to where I can win Domination victories circa 1000 AD on Immortal with 2M score but can't seem to get my score higher than that.

One thing I struggle with is that Colossus is a great wonder to have on this map due to all of the water tiles, but exactly when to cut the cord on that and start the New World invasion / colonization since Colossus terminates with Astronomy, is not an issue that I claim to have the perfect answer for.

 

On Deity, Incans have the best start because there' s no way to survive against a Deity-Monetzuma who settles his 2nd city two tiles away from the optimal American capital and Barbs on top are simply too much units.

Here are some screens for you:









I' m meaning non-Worldbuilder non-Reloading.

Noble should be easier than a Deity GOTM though, so I won' t play it.

Remembered that I tried Deity-AW once already, Deity-AW at least is not winnable on HoF settings, My game was like having wet corn + 2 Golds I settled on Copper and the AIs simply outbuilt me and needing to defend the resources took too many units.

 

Getting all the wonders was not a problem with Aztecs apart from GW wirhout sacrificing early silver.

Americans are a pain. Monty gets early archers and will send them your way.

I think with Aztecs you just need to cut out stuff. Getting early writing with mids super charges science. My issue is ai on mainland trade techs and it's harder to keep a tech advantage. If your playing marathon on Earth 18 that feels like cheating. If you take out Americans it will be a very boring game till Astronomy and warfare on marathon speed.

I have no doubt peaceful as a European nation would be quite easy even on AW. You can pillage ai quite effectively. The 1 city Europeans are a small threat. So take out China, persia and Russians and game is a lot easier.

 

E18 is a fun map but really lacks polish lol.... or at least I don't know how to get the right settings going

Spoiler :

Got a worker before I got a city

Spoiler :

2 capital cities and 3 workers on T17. It's just not deity when the AI starts with 1 city and has only warrior defenses. Hatty actually has severe health issues on higher levels, since the Nile is nothing but flood plains.

 

I think that’s unavoidable on this map. But even with this stellar start, if you play an Always War game on deity with 18 civs is that not still a challenge? I’d have thought it was still nigh on impossible!

 

It might be nigh on impossible on normal speed primarily because of "HUGE". IDK I don't have near the patience or time to play a huge map. I played a few more turns, and indeed I'd have to rethink things since I'm not getting horses without a border pop in Paris and the AI was able to spam a heavy number of warriors. Probably still doable if I had rushed Madrid first or just waited til Praets. My point was that it seems like there are cheesy starts available in or around Europe because of the AI starting with 1 city + warriors. I'd think this must be easier than starting in the old world, where even if you conquer it successfully, you'll wind up in an end game against 15 other civs including a massive China. As someone pointed out in a prior topic on this map, Inca is incredibly difficult even without the AW setting.

 

I played a test game recently on Deity Marathon with Raging Barbs as Incans and I built the Great Wall. I gave the barbs the starting techs (Archery, Wheels, Hunting and Agriculture). By 1 AD, Russia, Persia, India, China, Mongolia, Egypt, Mali, America were wiped off the map. Germany, Greece, Arabia, Aztec were fighting for their lives. England and Japan never able to hold a city on the continent. I think this is a pretty good to win with Always War on World Map.

 

The ai start with warriors. So raging barbs could easily kill off many ai. With deity the barbs arrive much sooner.

 

Raging Barbs can even kill off All AIs @Gumbolt .

I' ve had that recently in my Espionage game.

 

Let's skew the settings to massively favor the player and then call it an optimal strategy...

 

On a standard Earth 18 map you need great micro to win by conquest on always war if you start in Americas. My experience with Aztecs is the ai tech pretty quickly and trade techs. That is based on immortal. I think my tech speed was too slow. As you just want to keep expanding. At some point you want to attack. Barbs are just as annoying as you need 5-6+ fog busters.