G-Minor 20

[Harbourboy]

I have had about 7 additional attempts at this, but I can't come close to beating my 1871 AD time. I just can't do it any faster. There are two approaches:
a) conquer the old world; or
b) race to the new world

But I can't do either of them quickly enough. I can take 2 or 3 civs with a quechua type rush, but meanwhile the others have all teched away to have longbowmen and knights. Alternatively, even if I win the race to Liberalism and go all out Galleons and Settlers, I can't spam the new world as quickly as you guys do.

My current game is probably one of my better attempts (because I managed to take out Madrid early with a lone quechua (wooho!) but even if I get to finish it before the deadline, it wouldn't be much earlier than 1800.

 

[Andrei_V]

even if I win the race to Liberalism and go all out Galleons and Settlers, I can't spam the new world as quickly as you guys do.

Why do you need Liberalism for Astronomy? It's an awful lot of expensive techs: Paper (600) + Education (1800) + Philosophy (800) + Liberalism (1400) = 4600, none of which you really need, while Astronomy itself is only 2000.

You can get it reliably around 200-400AD. If you also manage to get CS with the Oracle around 800BC, you'll make it to Macemen in BC era, while the AI still has nothing but Archers + Axes + Spears.

Of course, you must build enough Settlers in advance, and switch to Caste System right after whipping Galleons/last Settlers.

 

[Harbourboy]

If you also manage to get CS with the Oracle

Ha ha ha. Last time I played, I got Alphabet from the Oracle.

 

[Andrei_V]

Ha ha ha. Last time I played, I got Alphabet from the Oracle.

Well, next time you play Incas, try CS for a change. You can research Alphabet after that, while under Bureaucracy.

 

[Misotu]

I know how you feel Harbourboy. My date is better than yours, but you are having exactly the same problems I do with these games. Obviously I don't know about your game play, but I found that I was just not cranking out enough units for long enough. I was too worried about the cost of units.

Also, even on full unit production, quechas die in droves taking out archers in city hills, which means that you have to leave these cities for ages and then come back. Throw in a few fortified AI axemen & spearmen and I was losing too much of my army. I have tried Moonsinger's tip of parking a quecha on a forest hill etc etc - it's a disaster for me. The AI pops out, takes a look, goes back in & then comes back in 20 turns or so with 3 archers. Every time. I've started sending my quechas out in pairs, which works much better because they still attack if I park a pair on a just a forest I find. There must be a secret to getting it to work Moonsinger's way.

I go for construction as early as possible now - macemen are good, but I never get the Oracle or, if I do, I get it too early to take CS. Loads of catapults and quecha, with a few axes & spears as escorts and the odd swordsman, are *very* efficient and I find that I don't stall as badly as I used to now. Course, even so, it does take a while to get to construction ...

Played "one last try" yesterday & this strategy worked *very* well. I had the AI down to one city by around 500-600 AD and my galley was nipping off to colonise a couple of islands close by. But sadly ... the old world had less than 62% of the land and astronomy was a long way off. If there'd been 64% there I think I was in with a very good chance of getting in under 1000 AD. Which would have left me *well* chuffed, I can tell you, heh.

 

[Andrei_V]

If the AI comes back with 3 Archers, all you need is 3 Quechuas to intercept. They usually head to pillage your cities. You can anticipate that and be ready for some free promos to your Quechuas + Great Generals. If you have fewer Quechuas than Archers, don't attack with your last unit, since the AI will kill unprotected wounded ones. Wait a turn, then attack.

If you don't have any Quechuas nearby, you can whip some in any city larger than 1. Queue two Quechuas, wait a turn, then whip. You'll get 2 Quechuas in one whip.

Once you get a GG, settle it in your best production city and build Barracks. You'll be able to crank out CRII units (Quechuas and Axes as soon as you connect to Copper), which are capable of taking cities on hills etc. You can even chop down a few trees to speed up things.

I personally found that Construction is almost useless in this sort of games, since city defenses are 50% at most, and you need like 8 cats to bombard them down to 0 in one turn. It's a lot better to just suicide one cat, and attack with your Axes. If the city is protected only by 1 Archer + 1 Spear, a suicide Axe will do even a better job, and it's cheaper hammerwise.

 

[Moonsinger]

Also, even on full unit production, quechas die in droves taking out archers in city hills, which means that you have to leave these cities for ages and then come back. Throw in a few fortified AI axemen & spearmen and I was losing too much of my army. I have tried Moonsinger's tip of parking a quecha on a forest hill etc etc - it's a disaster for me. The AI pops out, takes a look, goes back in & then comes back in 20 turns or so with 3 archers. Every time. I've started sending my quechas out in pairs, which works much better because they still attack if I park a pair on a just a forest I find. There must be a secret to getting it to work Moonsinger's way.

There isn't much of a secret to how I do it. There are really only two things for my method to work: unless I have a stack of catapults, (1) don't attack a city that defends by more than two archers and (2) don't approach a city with more than one Quechua (unless you are ready to storm the city).

(1) If more than one archers, use the pretending to go fishing trick that I mentioned previously to lure their army out and kill them in the open meadow. Each of your Quechua can kill a dozen archers and get promoted to a tank this way. If using the vanilla version, the worker trick can also be used.

(2) If they see more than one Quechua approaching, they may not want to come out of their city.

And of course, there is the unpopular suicide method: One Quechua against up to 2 archers defending their city. Your Quechua would usually have 18% chance to kill the first archer for 2 instant promotion against the second one. I usually do this very early in the game (would explain why I don't use MapFinder - why waste time on finding good map when the game could be abandoned in a few minutes).

 

[Moonsinger]

If the AI comes back with 3 Archers, all you need is 3 Quechuas to intercept. They usually head to pillage your cities. You can anticipate that and be ready for some free promos to your Quechuas + Great Generals. If you have fewer Quechuas than Archers, don't attack with your last unit, since the AI will kill unprotected wounded ones. Wait a turn, then attack.

Good advice! Unless there is only one archer standing, never attack with your last Quechua. Even when they have a stack of 100 archers, they would never dare to attack your last Quechua. Please don't ask me why, ask Firaxis.

 

[Misotu]

Yes but ... yes but ... I do all this, honest . I must have misunderstood. I thought the idea was that in Vanilla you can send out quechas and park 1 near each AI capital (well, in theory) on a good defence point. Then the AI wastes units coming out to kill you, but singly, so you have time to heal and in the meantime you're clocking up promotions.

When the AI sends out 3 units to attack my single fortified quecha, 3 extra handy quechas would be useful. But since I'm around 18 squares away from my capital and in no danger of pillaging for quite a while, but also with no handy units to send in, I just have to run away I have started trying to lure them out with some success and this game has been interesting - I've learned a lot about getting the AI to do what I want, rather than what it would like. But clearly, I've a way to go <wry grin>

Moonsinger, when you say they would never dare attack your last quecha ... can you give a little more information about the circumstances you're talking about? In the field, at least, they will happily attack my last quecha ...

On the catapults, I like them although they are a little expensive. But much cheaper than macemen, and generally more effective because of the collateral damage to other units in the city. I only usually have to suicide one, sometimes two per city. And that's in the early stages of the game. After that, my catapults will take out a unit each, plus causing collateral damage, and I rarely lose one once they have 3 city attack promotions. Which means that I can then attack badly damaged AI defenders with units other than catapults on 85%+ likely success, selecting which ones I want to promote.

Anyway, absolutely my *final* attempt I made 1010 and would have done a bit better but the old world was less than 64% of the land mass (again).

 

[Andrei_V]

YI must have misunderstood. I thought the idea was that in Vanilla you can send out quechas and park 1 near each AI capital (well, in theory) on a good defence point.

Oops, you're playing Vanilla, then.

I was talking about Warlords all the time. In Vanilla things are a little different. Yes, indeed, they'll attack your single Quechua, and maybe with 3 Archers or even more at a time, so you need a stack of 2-3 units, one with Medic promo. However you can use this to your own advantage, simply accumulating xp (swapping promoted and unpromoted etc).

Quite frankly I forgot the details of Quechua Rush tactics in Vanilla, but there are a few things to point out. Since you don't have GGs, you probably need cats early.

However you don't need Math for CS either, so you can go Pottery -> BW -> Writing -> CoL (through Polytheism and Priesthood), and time up finishing CoL and the Oracle for CS. Get Masonry for Marble and Fishing for water tile commerce along the way.

This can be done by 1200BC or something. Then research Math -> Construction, Alphabet, or whatever you want, while running Bureaucracy.

 

[Moonsinger]

Moonsinger, when you say they would never dare attack your last quecha ... can you give a little more information about the circumstances you're talking about? In the field, at least, they will happily attack my last quecha ...

Like Andrei_V said, in Warlords, they would never attack the last Quechua no matter what. Also, they would never attack/capture your wandering worker/settler (wandering = they are not inside your territory). Unless I'm playing with barbs, I don't even bother protecting my settler or worker from the AIs because they don't attacking harmless units in Warlords. Of course, in vanilla, just park your Quechuas on forest-hills and let their archers to commit suicide. I always have a medic in my stack. If you have only one Quechua, make sure you camp 1 or 2 square away. IIRC, in vanilla, they would send only one archer per turn to commit suicide; therefore, one Quechua with Medic promotion can hold them up for a long time.

PS: I did submit a game for this Gauntlet. It was intended for the Space race G-Major#12, but ran out of money. So I settled for domination after AD.

 

[Harbourboy]

In the field, at least, they will happily attack my last quecha

You and I must be playing a completely different game from everyone else. In Warlords, my last quechua gets killed all the time, usually outside the most distant AI capital meaning I have to give up on my attempts to stall that AI as I have no time to get any more quechuas all the way over there.

 

[Thrallia]

You and I must be playing a completely different game from everyone else. In Warlords, my last quechua gets killed all the time, usually outside the most distant AI capital meaning I have to give up on my attempts to stall that AI as I have no time to get any more quechuas all the way over there.

hm...ditto. In Warlords, the AI will gladly attack any settler/worker I have, regardless of whether it is within or outside my borders, guarded or unguarded.

 

[Moonsinger]

hm...ditto. In Warlords, the AI will gladly attack any settler/worker I have, regardless of whether it is within or outside my borders, guarded or unguarded.

I'm pretty sure that I'm not wrong because I sometimes use workers to block off the AI stack. I think they programmed the AI to ignore workers/settlers in Warlords because they want to prevent us from using the worker baiting trick. So, whenever the AI thinks (Firaxis thinks) we are using the worker baiting trick, they don't attack our workers. There are some other explanation I can think of as follows:

May be the AI in your game aren't goal driven or mission driven. For example, if the AI archers main goal is to escort a settler, they will do exactly just that. No matter what you do, they will not abandon their mission to attack you. I think you can fix this by giving the AI something to do. For example, leave your capital or one of your city undefended so that the AI archers can focus on capturing it.

 

[Moonsinger]

Btw, the AI secret weapon is that they know everything about us in the game. They don't need to park a unit near by to see if how many units we have inside our city - would explain why they seem to know exactly where to hit us that hurt the most. So, what do we do? We use their own secret weapon against them. We pretend that we don't know what they know. We pretend to leave our city undefended. We pretend that we don't know what we are doing. One of my goal isn't to win the game but to outsmart the game creator.

 

[Misotu]

This is interesting and yes, I have seen this and used it too. By moving my fortified quecha out of my city, I can persuade their pesky archer to head straight for me, rather than pillaging my cottages And it is true that an exploring unit will tend to keep exploring rather than pillaging territory, even though that would be a much better move. But when their mission is to attack you, they will do it so far as I can tell. Last quecha or not.

My 1010 submission has been accepted, but hasn't shown up on the Gauntlet table. hope I didn't get a setting wrong or something

 

[superslug]

My 1010 submission has been accepted, but hasn't shown up on the Gauntlet table. hope I didn't get a setting wrong or something

The Gauntlet clock has already cutoff on the server. We refresh it at the actual time of update to sweep in last minute submissions.

 

[Methos]

My 1010 submission has been accepted, but hasn't shown up on the Gauntlet table. hope I didn't get a setting wrong or something

We refresh it at the actual time of update to sweep in last minute submissions.

Check now and you'll see it's there. We'll update it again when the update takes place.

 

[Misotu]

Thanks! Just thought I'd done something stupid.

Ho hum. My time is down from 1190 AD to 1010 AD (yarooks I think) and all that happens is I drop a place in the ratings, down from 5th to 6th

 

[Denniz]

Thanks! Just thought I'd done something stupid.

Ho hum. My time is down from 1190 AD to 1010 AD (yarooks I think) and all that happens is I drop a place in the ratings, down from 5th to 6th

I had a 1010AD finish as well and I was 4th so my score (150K+) must have been higher than yours.