Emperor Toku rush

[cripp7]

I'm trying to get my emperor level down better and I loaded up Bat 3.0 and rolled a Random Leader/Standard/Fractal/Epic game with all victory options, everything else on also. The start I get looked good with plains cow, 2x plains ivory, 2 fp.

Spoiler start :

I moved the warrior 1E and found corn and another fp, I moved and settled 1E and hut gives me a map of the SE. Started a worker and tech Hunting to improve the ivory. Plains ivory with a camp is like a hill/mine +3+2

Spoiler :

It's 950bc I scouted out the land and found Bizmark 7 tiles to the North, founder of Budha and the Oracle (took MC from it) and Wang 13 to the East built GW.

My tech order was Hunting > Ag > AH > TW > Archery > Mining > BW > Myst (could've skipped)> Pottery > Writing

I found horse directly SW so I built a settler with 2 pop and settled it, then found copper to the East. I managed to take Berlin, raze Hamburg but I need a faster takeover than this.

I'm used to monarch, so what's the best rush on this and how fast? Going chariots is a knowbrainer but how many? With cow, 2x ivory worked is +10 so getting units out is no problem. I haven't replayed it yet to finesse my play, I'm looking for advise first.

Spoiler 950bc :

edit: BAT MOD 3.0 required

 

[AbsoluteZero]

a good axe rush with no cats is at about 1500 bc.

A good axe + catapult rush is about 500 bc.

This applies to diety and lower.

Those should be your target dates to rush an AI.

Usually chariots are a VERY early rush ( maybe 2000 to 1800 BC ), and on the higher levels they are not so effective, unless you have Persia or Egypt. So you're too late for a chariot rush probably.

Your best bet is to tech construction and pump out cats + axes ( and maybe a spear or two ). Then go after bismark.

Your first wave should have 6 axes + 6 cats or so.

 

[vranasm]

I think you didnt do badly.
One thing I see from screens is you could have chopped capital more aggresively.
and I am not sure, but from your description it's not clear to me... that copper city was settled before rush or after? If before that's unneeded diversion. You should have stayed small and build chariots with 2 cities and rush sooner.

in your situation next steps seems cat+axes war against WK, with that many forests around berlin you will have a lot hammers to chop out nice cat army.

 

[obsolete]

Hmm, I would have expected to see at least two capitals fall by this point in the game. Agg leader + epic speed + copper.

 

[cripp7]

Hmm, I would have expected to see at least two capitals fall by this point in the game. Agg leader + epic speed + copper.

I take it that's a heavy chariot rush? I did settle that copper before right before the war, so I had a mix. I'll replay with a proper write-up and see how it goes, and then ya'll can critique it a little better.

 

[cripp7]

Toku replay

4000bc-
I move the settler 1E to grab the corn and 2 floodplains

3975bc-
Settle Kyoto and start on a worker, tech is set for Hunting to camp the ivory for +3+2 just like a mine. Hut gives me a map of the SE
warrior goes scouting NW

3875bc-
Meet Bismark

3750bc-
Hunting is in and decide to go AH next, knowing the map I have an advantage
Get 63 from a hut

3575bc-
Meet Wang

3425bc-
Wang founds Budha this time, seems like Bismark and Wang are religion teching
3400bc-
Kyoto finishes a worker and decide to go with a warrior
Our worker starts camping the riverside ivory

3300bc-
AH is in and go AG to get that corn

3250bc-
Our ivory is done and move to get some steaks

3200bc-
Get a bad event losing -10 on Ag

Spoiler :

3075bc-
Ahh steaks on the grill now lets start building a road to our horse

3050bc-
Kyoto warrior done and at size 2 start another settler

2975bc-
Agriculture done moving to Mining

2775bc-
worker's roading done, going back to camp another ivory
Bismark adopts slavery

2725bc-
Mining and on to BW

2625bc-
Kyoto settler done and going to settle the horse fish site, start worker

2575bc-
Settle Osaka 1NW of horse and start a barracks
worker start getting our corn on the ready

2400bc-
Corn is ready and go farm a floodplain

2375bc-
Meet Salad's workboat and he's the founder of Hindu
Kyoto worker's done and goes to pasture the horse, start a barracks

2300bc-
BW is in, revolt to slavery and queue Pottery

2200bc-
Kyoto barracks is done, horse online so start spamming chariots
Osaka's barracks is due next turn and will start spamming chariots

2075bc-
Pottery is done and go Writing next
chops continue for chariots

1850bc-
Bismark completes TGW

1800bc-
Bring 7 chariots to Bismark's border, and bring him the news

Spoiler :

1775bc-
Writing is in, start on Math

1725bc-
Capture Berlin with an archer and axe, didn't lose any chariots, set to worker

Spoiler :

1700bc-
4 chariots go West and capture a worker, lose a chariot to an axe, other chariot gets him. Found Hamburg with 2 archers one with GI
Kyoto chariot goes towards Hamburg, start settler for copper

1650bc-
2pop settler
Hamburg has 4 archers and I have 6 chariots

Spoiler :

Here's 1600bc and the copper will be settled next turn, the worker is roading towards it. I need another worker or 2. One worker is chopping in Berlin.

So do I keep teching towards Construction for Wang? Build some axes to finish Bismark?

 

[huerfanista]

hunting> AH> AG seems completely backwards to me. Food first for growth, so AG> hunting> AH seems much better. What's your logic for that tech order?

 

[vranasm]

I had map knowledge and it really is not first try, so I went for the learning experience mostly, 2 reloads where i tried other order of attack actions.

Target was done 2 capitals from AIs before 950BC. I choosed axes, since that what obsolete hinted.

For whatever reason I settled on ivory, did not pay much attention for improvements just went chopping heavy, build some farms, bonus resources, cottages.

the germans where tough nut to cruck, settling 2 out of 3 cities on hill, that meant after 4 turns of useless amassing armies I decided that the city is not worth the wait and moved WKs way (initially wanted to get the last city and wipe them out before WK).
I razed 1 city and Berlin will be some nice city after it will win the cultural battle against hamburg (or I just take it a bit later)

Out of 3 first cities of WK 2 were on hills. Can you believe it??!
But I managed to get 3 and let WK with 2.
Settled in between gem city for another happy and commerce.

Future plan is easy, rush recovery and some more cities around. Maybe finishing those 2 AIs.

Spoiler :

Actually was fun experience, but somewhat I didnt payed much attention to cities and maybe it's a bit slower then some pros could do.

 

[cripp7]

hunting> AH> AG seems completely backwards to me. Food first for growth, so AG> hunting> AH seems much better. What's your logic for that tech order?

I was thinking improving ivory first for the hammers, but looking back Ag first for farms, then ivory, then cows.

@vranasm
What was your tech and build order on your set?

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Sometimes for the fastest possible rushes you can skip food techs and go straight for military techs. Beelining iron working as rome comes to mind.

It's situational, but sometimes it can pay off. Especially on the slower speeds.

Personally I would have gone AG > AH > Hunting.

 

[JBossch]

Sometimes for the fastest possible rushes you can skip food techs and go straight for military techs. Beelining iron working as rome comes to mind.

It's situational, but sometimes it can pay off. Especially on the slower speeds.

Personally I would have gone AG > AH > Hunting.

Teching hunting and Ag first speeds up AH. The tech order was OP's biggest mistake.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Teching hunting and Ag first speeds up AH. The tech order was OP's biggest mistake.

Does it? By how much?

 

[JBossch]

Does it? By how much?

Depends on the amount of commerce but on normal speed its usually one turn. Maybe not game breaking but doing otherwise is suboptimal when you need all three techs anyway. Teching more than one pre-req always provides a bonus to the next tech in line.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Depends on the amount of commerce but on normal speed its usually one turn. Maybe not game breaking but doing otherwise is suboptimal when you need all three techs anyway. Teching more than one pre-req always provides a bonus to the next tech in line.

I see. For a rush I would prefer to have horses online 6-7 turns earlier then saving 1 turn on AH. I could see the argument if the bonus was really huge. Do you have a link to the actual math BTW?

 

[JBossch]

I see. For a rush I would prefer to have horses online 6-7 turns earlier then saving 1 turn on AH. I could see the argument if the bonus was really huge. Do you have a link to the actual math BTW?

I guess. Some play tests based on specific conditions might prove you right, but it seems to me like having more improved tiles faster is pretty much always better, rush or not.

The exact math behind the tech bonus is a mystery to me. Probably around here somewhere, but I know it exists.

 

[babybluepants]

Your base beakers get multiplied by +20% for every extra pre-req. In other words, if you tech AH @ 10bpt with only one of Hunting or Agri, it gets applied as 12bpt, if you have both 14bpt. There's also a known civs with tech multiplier, which is (KnownCivsWhoKnowTech/NumberOfCivs) * 30/100 - NumberOfCivs includes you, so you can't quite get 30%. (I don't know the actual names of the variables, btw - these are just my descriptive nicks )

Edit: extra pre-req means just that. If you need two techs to unlock another, it's only 1.2x (for instance, 1.2x for CS with COL+Math, but 1.4x if you also have Feudalism).

 

[vranasm]

@Cripp
I remember only the starting order (and that is probably the most interesting for you anyway)

agg->hunting->ah with improvements FP farm, FP farm and I am not sure if I got to work on cows before ivory. In 1st try I definitely made only 1 fp farm and then ivory, in 2nd try I think I could have done cow before ivory.

then mining->bw since I knew about copper (map knowledge)

I preroaded to 2nd city and tried to sync it a bit to start improvements asap.

Builds could be worker -> wars to size 3 -> worker->settler -> rax in both cities, then axe* after 1 spear for safety
Somewhere I switched to slavery for whipping rax in 2nd city and axe here and there. Whipping in capital with that high production doesnt looked worth the effort (even if I whipped there 1 axe).

At first I wanted to get to Berlin before 2nd culture pop, but misstimed it :-( and had to get there in 3 turns for attack, but luckily the defense was light. I had bigger problems with all those hill cities :-( if it were all plains I didnt had so big mortality.

 

[cripp7]

I see. For a rush I would prefer to have horses online 6-7 turns earlier then saving 1 turn on AH. I could see the argument if the bonus was really huge. Do you have a link to the actual math BTW?

On higher levels I noticed that chariots have a harder time vs archers. Also I have read a lot of games about researching both prereq techs does give a bonus.

@vranasm
How big a stack usually makes up for taking on archers at higher levels? I've seen obsolete do chariot rushes very well, but it's getting enough out early and fast that's key.

I'll do another 100 turn set to see how I can speed things up.

 

[vranasm]

well there is a difference between chariots and axemen.

I used axes. I calculate usually with 2:1 number of attackers with some surplus. It's lower then it should be safer would be 3:1 against flat. Against hilled... well then there is much luck involved.

On flatland the first attacker has to do enough damage for the second to clean up and it usually works good, so the 2:1 plus some surplus (1-2 more)

On hills you can get streak were your attacker doesnt get any strike what so ever so the stack has to be bigger.
That's why I tried 2 approaches for WK capital (my only cheating). First I tried going with lower exped axes first finishing with higher exped CR's expecting lesser number of losses, but that way the lower exped didn't deliver.
So I tried the other way around and I got lucky, out of 6 units 4 died but managed to kill 2 archers and left only spearman and even though he was full strength in next round, my 2 axes were sufficient to get the city.

As you can see I risk a lot in warfare

 

[cripp7]

I retried and still can't seem to get those cities down by the same date you do! I lost a lot of axes vs Wang, got Bismark down to just one city and to the peace and took iron working to start building swords to get Wang.