Great Generals - test game 1: Charismatic

[carl corey]

Played round 5 and got my next Great General. Almost everything went according to the plan. I made some trades with Hatty that I didn't want to at first, but the money I got in return war used to speed up the war, so it's all good.

 

[futurehermit]

Looking forward to next round. Would suggest prebuilding elephants to upgrade to cav. Would also suggest trading to hatty for music/hbriding while you research gunpowder-miltrad, but that may be coming to late since you've already played the next round

Glad to see Shaka didn't manage to get off the ground, he must've got sandwiched in, which is lucky Genghis isn't much of a threat. He's always backwards later in the game. In fact, besides HC, I don't see anyone on your continent as being too much of a threat (Hannibal was, but is no longer).

So if you can get cav and get on Genghis and Shaka you should be in pretty good shape.

You made a medic 3 unit with first GG iirc? What are you plans for the next one?

 

[carl corey]

Music and HB were 4 and 1 turns to research, so not much of a problem there. I didn't want to trade either Education or Nationalism to her that early.

Shaka's pathetic. He's behind in techs and even though he's decent in military it won't help him.

And yeah, I got a Medic 3 & +1 movement from the Warlord Chariot. The next one is exactly the reason for which I stopped the round. I'll post the update soon, but I'll have to sort through the screenshots first. Got a little carried away with the pretty pictures.

 

[carl corey]

Round 5: 980AD - 1420AD

As we decided, we'd go for Military Tradition and Cavalry in this round. I started on Gunpowder first, to be able to build some Musketmen instead of only Longbows.

A couple of years later our world saw its second war: Ragnar declared on his long-time enemy, Hatty.

They really weren't kidding. If I remember correctly Ragnar got a Great General for his efforts first, then Hatty got one to compensate.

In the meantime, on the domestic front my capital gave birth to a much needed Great Engineer. I had great military plans for him.

And then Taj Mahal was completed and the enlightened people of England + Carthage started their first Golden Age.

This had the additional benefit of reducing the time needed for Military Tradition to exactly 8 turns. I'd be getting in on the turn I exited my Golden Age, and then I'd be ready for my Cavalry charge. In the meantime Shaka asked me for Music, and for once I accepted. He's not such a bad boy if you look past the appearances. (But I am. He will pay for this.....)

Hatty didn't get the direction in which I was heading, and asked me to go to war with Ragnar. Sure, like a Buddhist enemy was all I needed right now.

I got her back to Pleased with some trades later.
And to underline how stupid I would have been to go to war with Ragnar, he got to Economy first and got a Great Merchant for his efforts. He'll be upgrading troops like mad and I'd have to pass through his buddy Huayna's territory to attack him. Fat chance.

Hatty wasn't doing so wonderful though. First fell a bad placed Giza, then whatever defenses she had weren't enough to save Hippo from the Viking Cavalry. That's right, I wasn't the first to use Cavalry.

Ragnar now wanted me to help him get rid of the Egyptians, but as I'm still quite fond of our little Hatty (not to mention she was the only one trading with me) I decided to tell him to go play alone.

In the meantime I was preparing Utica to be a military powerhouse. The Heroic Epic got built there earlier, and now I put my Great Engineer to work on the West Point. Don't worry about the huge number of turns needed to complete it, I was just setting the city on full growth mode.

While checking the trade scene I noticed Hatty having a lot of money all of a sudden. Missed the Taj or something? Anyway, I decided it had better use in my treasury, upgrading MY troops. So I made the following trade (Theology was there just to complete things):

Hey, if she wants to ruin her economy to upgrade her own War Elephants to Cavalry, be my guest!

Education was also becoming pretty known right now, so when Hatty offered the Printing Press and some $$ in exchange I just couldn't say no. One step closer to Redcoats.

[to be continued...]

 

[carl corey]

[...continued from the previous post]

Well, the money I got from her went, as planned, to give the Elephants a "species-change" to horses for my Cavalry units. And then, when I saw I was at last a decent power in this world I decided to put that power to good use. The Anglo-Mongolian war has started.

Ragnar must have thought I'm quite dumb as he came back to ask me to fight against Hatty. Sorry buddy, I have other plans. Rain-check.

Soon I got my first taste of Mongolian soil.

Genghis sent his Golden Horde to take it back, but it amounted to nothing against the incoming Cavalry.

Anyway, a couple of turns later I planted some English culture in it from a Great Artist born in my capital.

But the next city would offer me my first surprise. Since I hadn't researched much on the way to Rifling I had no idea how far the others were ahead. It turned out that it was just enough to get these:

Ok... DON'T PANIC! I still easily outnumbered the Mongolian defenses and I understood a little better where all that "power" came from. Probably a big part was from the military techs. Soon that city fell too, not much he could do about it.

And I got my next Great General. Gen. Zhuge Liang is awaiting our orders.

Here ended round 5. I'll give the state of the world right away and then we'll talk about how to use Gen. Liang.

 

[carl corey]

State of the World: 1420AD

I'll start with an overview of the technological situation. Hatty's still the only one on trading terms with me, and all of my "allies" have everything but Liberalism now.

Genghis won't give anything of interest for peace yet, but I'm not interested in peace anyway.

Shaka shouldn't be a problem. As I said before, he doesn't have horses, and it seems he's still got a way to go to Riflemen. As soon as the Mongolian war is over he's next.

Speaking of the Mongolians, here's what their lands look like. There's a "New Sarai" out there somewhere which Genghis so generously offered, but I think I'll stick to taking the capital and Beshbalik and then I'll try to vassalize him. I'll better be careful for Ragnar, since he's pretty much friends with everybody but Hatty and I don't want him to backstab me.

The others act as predicted. Huayna and Hatty are still on my side, but I might switch back to OR to be sure of Hatty's commitment. I'm in Free Religion right now.

In the end it will probably be me and Hatty vs the world in my domination attempt. Huayna's still big and strong, but with my new colonies I should be able to outproduce him.

I'm on the right track too, with only one conquered city online.

Ragnar mass upgraded to Rifles I think. He'll be hell to fight. Huayna's a little lower and the others and I are on the same power level. That will change.

And I'll end with a view of my future victim's land. Four interesting cities, and then I'll tackle the Buddhist contingent. But that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

I'll be back tomorrow/later today for the Great General talk.

 

[Melon Head]

Also remember, if you're at the same power level on the graph as the AI, you're much better off in a war, because humans have a significant advvantag over the AI when it comes to actually fighting a war. They don't leverage their troops very well and tend to have most of 'em sitting around defending.

 

[carl corey]

Yeap, I kind of realize that. But this time anyway the difference between my forces and the opposing ones was incredible. I mean, I lost something like one catapult and one elephant against Hannibal because he had close to no defenses. It just seemed he was nowhere near my power even if the graph told another story.

And look at what Genghis has now: the power graph shows almost the same power, but so far I haven't seen more than 5 troops in his cities plus the stack that threatened to recapture the first city I took. Compare it to my Cavalry. And even after his losses he's still equal. What can he possibly have in the capital to counter all that?! I'll find out soon enough.

~~~~~~~

About the Great General:

Option 1: Another Medic III. But since I only plan to take two more cities from Genghis the one I got will be enough to heal all my units.

Next war, against Shaka, I'll also have 4 (5?) cities to take. Considering I have quite the tech lead on him, it should be even less of a problem.

And I'll probably get another GG until the third war.

Option 2: A Military Academy. The best site seems to be Utica, since it will then produce 7XP Redcoats with a 150% production bonus. Later coupled with a Military Instructor I could get level 4 gunpowder units from the start: CGI + Drill I + Pinch + Combat I & II, or CGIII + Drill I + Pinch.

Option 3: A Military Instructor. Again, settling him in Utica will give me the level 4 Redcoats but at a slower pace. Next GG could then build a MA there. Which order seems best? I'd say option 2, as they are already good units, I just need enough of them.

Option 4: Promote multiple units. Probably not so useful since I'm Charismatic and I'll also have an advantage due to Redcoats and to having Protective gunpowder units in general. Also, I don't want to use it now on Cavalry units since they won't do the most city attacking later.

Conclusion: If I would have had a tough war to finish I might have gone for multiple promotions. But everything points to the contrary. Plus, my future army will consist mostly of units I haven't built yet. MA in Utica seems the way to go.

 

[futurehermit]

Is it worth it to put a MA in a city where you're putting HE (I'm assuming you have HE since you said 150&#37. I find with HE most of my units take 1 maybe 2 turns to produce so a MA seems like overkill. Why not start a 2nd military city up?

When you're producing mainly cav I find a MI to be questionable since you get 2promotion units with barracks/stable. Of course you will produce other units as well. I think it kinda depends on whether you can run vassalage and/or theocracy though. If you can't run one or both then the value of a MI goes up.

I've been thinking about two medic 3 GGs because it's more a question of speed for me. With two stacks healing rapidly you could zip through someone's empire much faster meaning your units won't be obsolete when you move on to the next empire. That's my thinking on it anyways...

 

[carl corey]

Yeap, I have HE in Utica. So far the production isn't that great, but I'm thinking of State Property somewhere along the line. Probably an MA in it is really overkill. I'll have to see about a second military city, probably one of Genghis' or Shaka's.

And I don't plan to build too many Cavs anymore. Shaka will go down against them, but I'll try to get to Redcoats as soon as possible. Granted, 3 promotions instead of two won't do that much now that I think of it... I could run Vassalage once I start on Redcoats and thus skip the MI. For now I'm thinking of switching the capital to a Stock Exchange/Harbor/Grocer queue to get the most of it. The other cities can still pump up enough units and I'll need the extra money to pay for them.

Theocracy might come into play when I go with Hatty against the Buddhists. I have Confucianism in some of my cities thanks to a small attention from Hatty, so I'll build a Monastery in one of them and start pumping out Missionaries to convert all my cities for later.

Two Medic III seem good. But what I mentioned in the previous post was that I think I'll have another Great General by the end of the war with Shaka. Can't I make that one Medic III and use this one for something better?

---

Bottom line, I'm still torn between an MA (in Utica or not, good for the nearby future) or another Medic III (in my opinion good for later wars). Or I could do both. Branch the game here and play both versions. While the first GG was pretty straight forward after all (no MI 'cause I was heading for Cavs, no MA at the time) and helped me a lot as a Medic, I'm not sure the current situation is as clear-cut as a millennium ago.

 

[futurehermit]

I would say it boils down to whether or not you have another spot immediately in mind for another military city? If not might as well go for another medic 3 unit now and plan a 2-pronged assault then make a MA with subsequent GG?

I don't know, another option might be to start stacking MIs in you HE city?

 

[carl corey]

Well, Carthage isn't working a crab tile right now due to a Mongolian caravel, but with it online I should be able to transform three newly built cottages into workshops. On the other hand it could hold quite a few specialists later, not sure I'd want it to be specialized in producing units...

Both Nottingham and Kerkouane (East of York) can be turned into unit building mode, but Nottingham already has a University in it and Kerkouane has quite a few water tiles and a desert or two and won't be that productive later.

None seem like really military cities to me, nor do the future ex-Mongolian ones. I'll think more about this tomorrow. I'm not gonna play the next round just yet anyway. Good night.

 

[carl corey]

I went for the MASH version for now. I might come back to this point later to try out a different version though.

For now I played 100 years and vassaled Genghis. Took Beshbalik and Karakorum and razed Old Sarai. Found New Sarai when he showed me his map... Ugh, glad I didn't accept it in the Peace Treaty.

I'll continue the plan with an attack on Shaka.

 

[futurehermit]

So does the MASH version mean another medic3?

If so, I concur. That will allow you to do 2-pronged assaults on people = faster conquering (as long as you have enough troops that it doesn't get into a divide-and-conquer situation).

Future generals will boil down to MA vs MI imo. And that will depend on how many decent production cities you have. I tend to prefer MA to get more units as I always lag behind in unit production. But it depends I guess...

 

[carl corey]

Yeap, that's the MASH version. I'm pretty impressed how much two Medics can do in this era. Shaka had a lots of units defending so most of my units are badly injured. I think if I played with earlier wars I would have used the GG differently, but now I'm quite satisfied with this choice.

I played the round until one turn after I got a Great General (wanted to capture one more city), but my computer's having a meltdown right now and I still haven't identified the cause. So it may take a while to update. I'll try to reinstall Windows this weekend if I don't see any hardware problem, but there's no guarantee.

By the way, the Mongolian capital has an MA and lots of food (3 seafood tiles). Looks great for a Globe Theater & MI city for drafting. We'll see.

 

[futurehermit]

Ahh, nice, a free MA! Yeah, putting MIs in there might be a good way to go (however might it be far away from your later wars after Shaka is gone???)

I would still prefer more MAs if you find more production cities, but there are a few options to consider for sure.

 

[cabert]

I would have gone for level 4 redcoats in the HE city.
Anything else is just meh at this point.
What is the building rate of your HE city?
Can you build a redcoat every turn, or every other turn?

 

[futurehermit]

I'm not opposed to level 4 redcoats at all. However, I just prefer to mass units. That's why I side more with the two medics + MAs. Draft/whip/mass units and 2-pronged attack civs into quick submission?

 

[cabert]

the difference between level 3 and level 4 in the field is worth the reducing of a handful of units.
If you need the culture from the academy, then why not. Else it's not worth it. And I'm very dubious about the medic 3 trick.
I tend to war "slower" than most, so I may not be the best advisor here.
What I know is that a fast non lethal push is costing more in WW thant slow progression (less fights each turn, less casualties, more defensive fights)

 

[futurehermit]

Oh, I'm not advocating anything other than a lethal push, don't worry

I mean go in with two prongs and cripple the civ asap taking out key military cities first. Then heal quickly and go for the kill...

With only one stack, the AI can concentrate his forces against you and stall your war. I've been quite surprised with the AI in some games actually. Quite good tactics...But if the AI puts all of its eggs in one basket against one of your stacks, your other one can take him out in a weaker area...