Exercise: Aggressive Early Warring & No Cottages with Shaka

[Gwaja]

@Dhoomstriker,

Spoiler :

LOL! OMG! This is totally on another dimension far away from my own! Talking about early aggression to the extreme! ^_^ Your forces look really intimidating.

I haven't had time to study more of your save, but I will get to it soon. You've taught me another valuable lesson: When executed early enough and properly, chariot rush is very effective!

I almost never have the guts to initiate chariot rushes. I've done a bit of axes and sword rushes, not to mention praetorians with Rome, but this is just.... so refreshing!

@huerfanista,

Spoiler :

No doubt. I love cavalries. ^_^ Too bad they don't upgrade until Adv. Flight into gunships. I'd love to study one or few of your saves.

 

[huerfanista]

Thru 1665AD (4 down, 2 to go):

Spoiler :

Pretty straighforward shot to liberalism (1 bulb into edu), build unis/Oxford (Rome) while going GP> MilTrad> Rifling> chemisty (bulb)> steel (4 turns left). I turned off the slider after rifling and upgraded a ton of cuirassiers to cavalry. I also revolted to nationhood to draft a bunch of rifles. In 1620AD I was ready to DoW Ashoka. He was the tech leader, already having astro/ physics/ bio/ demo/ communism, but his cities were guarded by longbows and a few muskets/pikes. I set up 4 stacks for the initial attack:

I took 6 cities in the first 2 turns, and took almost all of his mainland cities in around 9 turns, then capped him.

Nice haul in Delhi:

land:

tech:

I'm 4 turns from steel, and already have a bulb into SM. I'll finish it and get communism from Ashoka. HC has rifles, so I'll give him a pass for now. Hammi has around 20% land, which should give me enough for domination. He doesn't have gunpowder yet. Shouldn't take long.

[EDIT: saves attached, gwaja]
View attachment Gwaja Milk Shakes AD-1100.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment Gwaja Milk Shakes AD-1665.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Gwaja]

Thank you for the save, huerfanista! ^_^

 

[west45]

to 1510 ad

Spoiler :

Getting ready for war, had to pay an arm and a leg for some iron. I did pop a source of it in cap later!

Spoiler :

DOW next turn

Spoiler :

Thanks boudica!

Spoiler :

First city falls

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Second city falls. Castles are awful.

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Boudica sent a loaded galley to my capitol, I don't notice until it was too late. How embarassing.

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Tolosa falls, along with bibracte a few turns later and I cap her because I didn't want to bother with the island cities.

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At this point I stopped the game, will play it in a day or two. I have 3 ways I can go here: 1) espionage to catch up and get rifles/cannons, 2) attack with what I have, 3) tech miltrad, trade for mil sci, steal steel and go with that. Grenadiers, cuirs, cannons should be ok for dom, the only problem will be infantry and machine guns later on.

Since destroying boudica I did put some espionage on caesar, infiltrated a gspy and have stolen a few techs (gunpowder and chemistry I think)


a few screenshots

Spoiler :

 

[huerfanista]

1818AD domination:

Spoiler :

I healed up and attacked Hammi with one large stack headed ofr his core cities, and a secondary stack to take out the city he had in the middle of the former indian empire. Not much to say - I took a border city on the first turn, then moved my units out when his main stack showed up. I let them retake the city, then took them out with my cavalry (he had mostly knights, plus some maces, pikes, lbows and siege). It took me 2 turns to wipe them all out, but after that it was just heal and steamroll him. I took capitulation once I had all of his mainland cities. I had hoped that this would trip the domination limit, but I was a few percent short.

HC had infantry, so I teched artillery and declared once I had upgraded my cannon.

He didn't have that many units - his mains stack of around a dozen infantry was in his capital, and he moved them to defend the first city that I targeted. I had a ton of blimps to take his infantry down to around 16 strength, 1 turn to take down the culture, then attack with all the artillery and clean up with cavalry. After I took 2 cities I crossed the domination threshold:

I was on the way to his capital with this stack:

My HE city was producing 17XP artillery like this:

Wrapup:

[EDIT: the save] View attachment Gwaja Milk Shakes AD-1818.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@huerfanista

I recommend that you separate your Heroic Epic City from your Westpoint City. The more Hammers that you spend on non-units, such as on the Westpoint National Wonder, in your Heroic Epic City, the less value that the Heroic Epic provides.

If you want to "simulate" the extra production that the Heroic Epic provides, but also want to build Westpoint, then you can pick a different City in which to build Westpoint and can (after teching or trading for Military Science) set up a Military Academy, using one of your saved Great Generals, in the Westpoint City.

While it is nice to get 17 Experience Points units, it would probably be better to get 9-Experience-Point units in your Heroic Epic City (Barracks + 3 settled Great Generals = 3 + 3 * 2 = 3 + 6 = 9) and 9-Experience-Point units in your Westpoint + Military Academy City (Barracks + Westpoint + 1 settled Great General = 3 + 4 + 2 = 9).

Not only will a single combat victory get you to the next promotion level, but it will also give you a chance to Heal your unit when you promote it for the third time on the turn after the combat.

Plus, you'll be making considerably MORE well-experienced units in total, not to mention more troops earlier by not "wasting" the Heroic Epic's Hammer bonus during the Westpoint-construction time period.

Another important point to realise is that you actually "gain" 1.5 settled Great Generals by using the additional 3 Experience Points that come from using a second Barracks in the equation. I "spent" this Great General on a Military Academy, meaning that you wouldn't need to spawn yet an additional Great General in order to get the Military Academy built.

 

[vranasm]

looking at the plains tile i would put too all my money on horses.

The forests around scream "here will be something!!!!" and from my experience I can't remember if I ever saw copper/iron on plains tile.
Be it flat grass there would be pure guess between those 3, be it hill I would go with copper (with small iron possibility).

And then there are the occasions where map gods grin at you and make it coal or something...

 

[huerfanista]

@Dhoom

Your points are quite valid, even if I don't agree with them. In particular, with an AGG leader 4 promos will give you commando gunpowder units (with MT), and these can be really great to use - they've pulled my bacon out of the fire many times (in games where I could get them). I find this more compelling than having 2 cities that can build 3 promo units (which isn't hard to do without WP, really - just split up your GGs so that you have 3 settled in 2 cites and use theo).

In this particular game, WP was really an afterthought in a game that was already won. Also, I couldn't trade for MT with anyone and I wasn't going to divert research there (physics was way more valuable for blimp collateral damage). I've used WP in lots of different ways, and have sometimes done exactly what you suggest here. But with AGG or CHA leaders I alsmost always put it in a HE city where all my GGs are settled to get super-XP units.

 

[Gwaja]

I was going to wait until I play out from my save, but I just couldn't resist the temptation to look at huerfanista's save. Way to go! I think your game was over long before you declared it was over.

Having 17 exp units right out of the gate... pretty darn impressive to say the least. And commando promotions? Wow.

I admit, I would have gone the route of Dhoomstriker in most of my games, but nevertheless, having a super military city in this case is just so overwhelmingly powerful. I've gotta try that.