Game Diary: Fast Lucian rushing and Charadon beastliness (On diety, Tholal's)

[Horatius]

Playing probably the most unpopular character in the game.

I was thinking of making this thread a case in favor of Charadon and Doviello but I decided that I would not really convince anybody that has the mind made up and so instead of wasting my time I am only going to have some fun trashing the AI. That means that I'm going for fast conquest and unfortunately I will not show the middle game strengths of the civilization (because they have them).

As a note to new players, don't play Doviello on quick speed against smart opponents or even high level AI. Don't say that they are only good at Marathon, though.

The settings:
Deity
Pangaea
Temperate
standard map size
normal speed
no Acheron
the rest is standard

the start:


We settle and get a map. Let's play according to the land:



We spread our units to find stuff and, lucky we, a goblin fort and:


We also get some money from another tribal village. Actually I had already changed plans and started to build beast men and accumulate money to buy goblins for a goblin rush since Cassiel is very close, very very close. He's so close that if we were playing with most civs we would already be condemned.

But hey, we are close to the tundra and so it's not surprising that soon enough we are going to get - The Very Deadly Wolf Rider probably my favorite unit in the game:


The game has just started and the rush is already on (its Charadon style, baby!)

Declaring at around turn 20 with about 10 units seems about right .

 

[Horatius]

Charadon Early Rushes:

With a close goblin fort -

If an opponent is close by also you can do a very fast and deadly goblin rush together with some beastmen and Lucian; no fear in stopping growth to build units and setting the slider to 0% to buy goblins.

Depending on the difficulty level, if there is no one close enough just buy a few goblins to try to get some wolf riders around forest tundra. Then do some choking and get safe promotions to kill the closest civ later.

The aggressive and poison goblin is also good enough to capture any animal,btw.


With a far away (or not) goblin fort -

Get some wolf riders with goblins.
Help protect the goblin fort, if needed.
Buildup towards horseback riding with markets and merchants. Do a trade mission.
Hire a bunch of poison wolf riders.
Laugh your rear off doing the strongest possible rush in the early game.


Without the goblin fort -

On the low difficulty levels, Lucian and a good fast amount of beastmen can still conquer easily if there is someone close by. Otherwise just choke slowing them down while you expand without worrying about barbarians.

Do a proper buildup towards bronze working with markets and merchants. Get copper, do a trade mission, spam as many beastmen as possible before completing BW. Charadon pretty much has normal ingenuity for the melee line, so you can upgrade (even outside your borders) a fine amount of Sons in good timing and do a decent first conquest without siege. Capture workers and upgrade them.

Don't forget that you can get shamen without mage guilds.


-------

No one close by to attack? That's fine, just expand strongly without worrying about unit maintenance for a while. Charadon doesn't have to commit to an early rush, you know?

In the middle game, the Doviello do have their strengths and are actually a smuggler's civ. But that's another story...

 

[Tasunke]

Nice start. Why did you ignore the gold to the south? Is it because you are going Calendar first? (to pick up incense)

 

[Horatius]

* Lucian report: first blood and flying feathers:



Cassiel tries to box me in. There is no choice but to attack, everything else is a losing proposition:



The barbarian trait goes up in value the higher the level of difficulty. The barbarian waves across our borders while having a beer and moving forth to attack others and we can join in. It is much easier to attack during very early barbarian waves for many obvious reasons. I once had a game where I was following Orthus around and conquered cities because of his first blows.



Anyway, there's no time to lose:



* Lucian report - please say hello to the first promotions (oh, yeah):




A silly scout tries to conquer our undefended city and our wolf rider appreciates the attempt:



* Lucian report - the first kiss, I mean, the first conquered city:




Moving on with our brutish ways (we must pound, we must pound, we must pound):



For some reason the AI decided to advance some units out of the city (Wolf rider killed one warrior previously as well), maybe because of barbarians or because it wanted to counterattack... It wouldn't matter anyway - we unleash "The Pack"! (Aoooooooooooooooooo):




* Lucian report - Combat III and Shock II at turn 32 (You're welcome):


All of the opponent's warriors now scream in terror.

 

[Horatius]

Nice start. Why did you ignore the gold to the south? Is it because you are going Calendar first? (to pick up incense)

I settled there for the three calendar resources. It has reasonable production as well but I was just thinking of commerce and maybe try to go for early markets and early trade mission to upgrade beastmen after bronze working or to buy Wolf riders like I showed you in the save state that I sent you.
It takes a while to reach mining without something and I can't get anything with crafting. The gold would be for the second city in a normal expansion game...

the game went in another direction, though.

edit: (the settling pic was wrong for a while actually)

 

[Aline]

Nice to see one of those again, one thing i am wondering is, was it realy worth using the worldspell at this point?
Lucy and his pals should have been able to beat up those warriors or am i missing something?

 

[Senethro]

You got the most unpopular character right. That said, I never understood the Doviello hate in general. Agristocracy Mahala with OO religion lead to a sustained axeman push fuelled by Cultist stacks harvesting all the coastal cities was my favorite way to play the game. The ability to upgrade quickly and cheaply and to ignore production requisites was worth a huge quantity of free hammers.

 

[Horatius]

Nice to see one of those again, one thing i am wondering is, was it realy worth using the worldspell at this point?
Lucy and his pals should have been able to beat up those warriors or am i missing something?

Assuming I wouldn't get below average rolls, yes. But I would still lose most of my units and I figured that since I wanted to rush somebody else trying to lose the minimum and have sure promotions would be a best approach not wasting turns waiting for novice reinforcements.
I'm not sure, I think that it was an okay decision. As it turned out I didn't lose a single unit, and after a few turns of healing I was able to march on immediately towards another victim...

Understand that I'm going to try to take out as many civs as possible in the minimum time possible. in a more normal game I wouldn't mind sacrificing my units to take out just Cassiel since I also wouldn't care for the unit maintenance.

 

[Horatius]

You got the most unpopular character right. That said, I never understood the Doviello hate in general. Agristocracy Mahala with OO religion lead to a sustained axeman push fuelled by Cultist stacks harvesting all the coastal cities was my favorite way to play the game. The ability to upgrade quickly and cheaply and to ignore production requisites was worth a huge quantity of free hammers.

Indeed. I like her combination of traits.

 

[A Moon]

Playing probably the most unpopular character in the game.

I think Loki would like figuratively to have a word with you.

 

[Breunor]

Horatius,

I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your write-ups and your strategic and tactical insight! Great Stuff!

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Horatius]

I think Loki would like figuratively to have a word with you.

Man, don't even say that name to me

 

[Horatius]

Horatius,

I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your write-ups and your strategic and tactical insight! Great Stuff!

Best wishes,

Breunor

Thank you

 

[Horatius]

Here we go.

While we wait for others to heal we send one saved wolf to scout the north and a couple of goblins to the West.
We spot another wolf to be captured and see how a 3 str aggressive goblin is pretty good against animals:



In a few turns, we actually end up with a total of three wolf riders, btw. Not bad at all.

We decide to go exploration, cartography. Usually I don't like to do this since it is usually better to improve resources right away and get other stuff.
But since I always try to do something a little bit out of the ordinary in these writeups, and what we are going to do is to try to conquer as many cities as fast as possible and keep them even if it's not optimal, I think I need to go city states fast. Pillage money will help us do some research, roads will help the beast men march on.

Anyway, I will try to get at least 10 cities by turn 100.

And with that goal in mind we march towards the West where the freaks reside (Arturus is in the north, don't know where Flauros is). Curiously enough Loki still hasn't been built but once it comes into this world it will of course disrupt our conquered cities.

People that have read some of my previous posts probably know how much I love to play against the freaks and Loki. Not surprising then that I'm declaring against them at once.

Such clowns deserve such reactions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McdL21gQDvo

We step in and





So we avoided facing a Grigori adventurer but now we have to face a freak one.
That's just great...

 

[Horatius]

* Lucian Report - Lucian vs Nosamonce: FIGHT!



Nosamonce had come out from the city to deal with some barbarians and gets pounded on by our muscled hero's mighty axe.
What a shame

Soon we turn our attention towards the freak city and



Then, with the help of the barbarian waves, our veteran units ravish their capital (a piece of cake):



The circus business is indeed hard in these days.

We can see that if the barbarian leaders spawn next to a goblin fort and forest tundra for wolfs they can be very very dangerous extremely early.
Specially with a double shock Lucian

We keep all cities despite the maintenance and will try to reach cartography with the pillage money.

Some roading is being done towards Arturus (oh, you bet we're going for it right away) and capture another wolf:



We spam beastmen and don't stop!:



Now, you see Halowell down there? We are going to ignore it since it is only one population and it's hardly producing anything for now. According to our goal we also don't want to risk razing it.

The thing is, a diety AI using God King, specially the Khazad, will start building a new warrior every turn during war mode. So we are going to pillage all of the capital's mines right away and prevent other cities' troops from reinforcing that 75% tough thing with the hero throne.

Meanwhile, we wait for the slow melee stack to reach the city hoping that the number of defenders does not increase too much.
On quick speed this could be too hard to pull off. But normal speed is just fine and sufficiently close to be balanced for all civs' different strats.

If we had smashed Halowell, we would have to waste precious turns healing and we could have lost some units, of course. Meanwhile the AI would just spam and stack in his last two cities. But as it is now, the AI also has to split more his forces and defend a third city because I have, in truth, literally a line of beastmen marching on from down south.

Well, in short, it's better to hit the big production center first.
To be continued.

 

[Aline]

200+ turns for calender, the game will be over bevore you get the tech. XD

 

[Horatius]

200+ turns for calender, the game will be over bevore you get the tech. XD

I'm not generating a single beaker! XD

 

[Aline]

Thats something i allways wondered, there is no infinite turns display on the techbar so what happens if you acctualy spend the 200 turns with 0 tech, do you get it then even though you invested 0 beaker?

 

[Tasunke]

yea ... cause that'd be awesome

 

[Horatius]

Thats something i allways wondered, there is no infinite turns display on the techbar so what happens if you acctualy spend the 200 turns with 0 tech, do you get it then even though you invested 0 beaker?

The 217 are beakers required to complete the tech, not turns (or I guess it would be if I had one beaker).


Edit: Lol, not trying to be confusing: you don't really get the tech without filling up the bar.