Immortal - Mehmed

[SittinDown]

Comparing the games here....

Spoiler T-60 :

I like how Sampsa settled the empire, with the early double gem.

• Gems as #2 seems too strong to pass up, especially with shared corn.
• Ankara 1S of rice makes a ton of sense as a cottage helper / forest chop / okay food site.

Sampsa - are you planning on going Math -> Construction -> HBR, and doing elepults, or are you planning on going earlier with Catapults & Archers, or hoping to trade for metals / metal techs? What'll you do if the Romans DOW before you get construction?

Antium makes sense as a first target because it's flat and makes it easy to cripple the copper.

Spoiler T-100 :

@Pangaea - your army is way bigger than mine. I couldn't get peace as early as you did, because I lost a [poorly] settled city early on, and he got Iron connected, and the Praets are much tougher to beat up than the Axes.

Really shows me how war success can snow-ball.

I also killed 7 Praets, and I only have 2 active archers.

 

[SittinDown]

Weird how the techpace was different.

In your game in 104 - I see Taoism is already out.
In my game I was first to Confucianism around T-108 after self-teching monarchy, and trading Aesthetics for Iron.

 

[Pangaea]

@SittinDown

Spoiler :

@Pangaea - your army is way bigger than mine. I couldn't get peace as early as you did, because I lost a [poorly] settled city early on, and he got Iron connected, and the Praets are much tougher to beat up than the Axes.

He probably hooked up Iron earlier in your game, and got out Praets earlier because of that. He never actually invaded me with Praets, which as you say are much tougher to beat. They get easy winning odds against archers, even behind walls I suspect, so he'll build up war success. Axes only had 17% odds or something like that against my wall-protected archers, and all of them died. That meant it was possible to get peace with him once he had suicided enough units. You haven't been able to get peace yet?

Continued the game with the war. Took longer than I imagined, which I think was largely due to walls in every city except one, so I needed 2-3 turns to bomb away that first. Seemed futile to keep throwing catas against 8-strength units (or archers on hills) when they have 0.5% winning chances or something like that. All those archers kinda became a weight on the economy as well, and we paid 30+ gpt during the war for unit upkeep. I do think it helped to have 5 cities instead of 3 tho. It's not that easy to keep whipping out units, at least here with poor food, so it was useful with a few more cities. He actually surprised me by landing two units from a galley on top of the northern iron, so that needed some elephants diverted. Thought it was an exploring galley. City wasn't in dire risk because it had an archer as defence, plus a cata that hadn't left yet, and then got an elephant two turns later from the capital.

This is from 1 or 2 turns after the war ended, so I've whipped a few buildings and suchlike in the former Roman cities. Zara is by far the tech leader, with Longbows, so think it makes more sense to consolidate now, and have a go at him later. Settle that city in the south (to pick up fish and crabs), and grow the economy. We're already in Buro + OR, and will soon get Philo. The GG came too late to the front to promote units in a sensible fashion, so he's resting with the bulk of the army in Neapolis. It's swamped in Zara culture, so needs a pile of MPs.

The war could probably have been carried out better, as it did take quite a while, but take a look at the save if you want. Maybe there is something to be learned when coupled with the pre-war save. Depends how you do these things, and if I've messed up something along the way. If so, please point them out

(I'm not terribly pleased with my settling pattern in the north, as there simply isn't enough food to spread cities this thin, but at that point I was working on the assumption of a small 6-ish city empire, so they were settled with that in mind -- not warfare).

Upon loading the game to take these pictures, I see that we killed "only" 6 Praetorians. Quite lucky I'd say. But then I erroneously thought of them as Maces, so expected axes to be upgraded to Praetorians -- which of course is not possible (because they are Swords in disguise). The timely peace treaty must be why he had so few. Though he could have whipped more during the second war, I'm sure. But not after we took Rome, because then had no metal left.

A sizeable army left, though I think a new war needs better siege. Either trebs or wait until Cuirs or Cannons. Archers actually made quite a few kills as cleanup, but later on I had ample supply of elephants + axes, so they were just along for the ride (and to smash cottages for gold).

 

[Pangaea]

Suggestion in your game @SittinDown

Spoiler :

The war with Rome probably won't go terribly well at this point, Neapolis is very vulnerable without culture nor walls, and you have few units. He wants the city for peace, which isn't great. Perhaps this is a too dear price to pay, but I bribed Peter in on him, and then bought peace with Julius. Had to give him all techs except CoL, but it's not too bad really, as he's a little backwards. Haven't even met Peter in my game, so I don't know if he can even reach JC, but he does at least have open borders with Zara I see, so maybe?

You only have two workers, and desperately need more. With peace, you can sort that out instead of building more units, probably settle a city NE so it can work that nice iron tile. Chop more forests, some of them into workers. Hopefully Julius will be busy with Peter now, but nevertheless it makes sense to get out walls in Neapolis, once you have got a granary there. And go HR + OR (for example, Mono for Math with Hammi).

Maybe go Currency next? Looks like you can get there in decent time, and by then you can probably trade it for Calendar and improve the Spices. Otherwise I suppose you can start working on Civil Service. Since a few people have Calendar, hopefully you can get a happy resource for the extra Gems soon. Plenty on offer in my shadow (Saladin had many actually).

Also, why do you have EPs on Julius? He'll never trade with you. Better to put them back on Zara. He's a good techer and on top of the scoreboard. Also go Buddhism (no state religion I just noticed). May even become friendly with Zara over time. Saladin won't like you very much, but he'll get over that once he's in the ground.

Btw, what happened to the first GG? Did he die? I didn't see a super-medic nor a settled guy.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler A few more screenshots from my game :

I reached construction T85, having self-teched every tech basically.
Got Alpha T61 and traded writing for AH and started horseback riding.
The GSci was ready about the same time as horsebackriding was done, and bulbed math and started construction then.
All forest except the 4 marked "not" are roaded and pre-chopped in this screenshot.

4 workers and 5 axes at this point. Could perhaps have built some more axes, but I also wanted to build research and reach construction asap.
Economy was rather bad, I didn't lay down any cottages, but two libraries, one in capital and one in gemtown. Ran scientists in both for a while too.

Here is close to, or the turn when I declared. The reason I declared here is basically that my forests are gone. My peak potential is now.

I don't know when julius got his iron, but checked the earliest save I had (T61) and at that stage he boasted about his spears, so it had to be after that. But he had a ton of pretorians.

Army size at DoW.

Tech situation at DoW. Zara the crazy got confu early and did oracle -> philosophy.

At the time of the fall of rome, statistics of built and lost units.
I continued to whip up in my cities, but after the forests the pace got down to just a trickle.

The dude really likes his pretorians.

Saves from T61 (alpha), T85 (Construction), T94 (DoW?), and T104 (Fall of rome) in rar.

 

[Pangaea]

The dude really likes his pretorians.

Can't blame him. It's an awesomely OP unit. At least with elephants you need some expensive techs (for the era) to get an 8-strength unit, and it's not as strong (no city raider, and no fortifications or defensive bonuses).

 

[sampsa]

@SittinDown

Spoiler :

Sampsa - are you planning on going Math -> Construction -> HBR, and doing elepults, or are you planning on going earlier with Catapults & Archers, or hoping to trade for metals / metal techs? What'll you do if the Romans DOW before you get construction?

The plan was to start the war before HBR, add phants later. However, recent scouting reveals he has iron that's in a position where it's hard to pillage, plus he has walls in Antium so maybe archerpult is just too risky. He founded the oasis-marble city close to me and I can camp in the forest next to it so I guess I'll just harvest xp and gg-points until I have phants.

I have plenty of archers already and if he went WHEOOHRN I'd just build archers and fortify in capital. I think it would actually be a good thing for gg-points and no diplo penalties for killing him.

 

[sampsa]

T88

Spoiler :

I did get a 5th worker and whipped a hammam in capital. Library only after got a few cats out. No huge rush for a , I'm planning to use him to bulb engineering.

Declare T82 with something like 8 cats, 8 archers. I choose to not capture the city, but maybe could've just done it and let him attack my (poor) defences. At least then the praets would be slightly wounded and not have fortify bonuses, which was btw way nastier than I anticipated (cr1 cat vs c1 fortified praet is less than 10% odds).

T88 HBR. Got a -trade from Sal and now Zara is sending a missionary. 1 point away from a GG, but not sure if it matters that much. Maybe attach to elephants rather than make a healer? Oh Julius completed GLH but I don't think that changes anything, it's worth a few pennies once I get that far but tech in general won't matter much post-engineering.

I have killed 10 units (5 praets) at the cost of 4 cats. This is definitely not the type of war you should generally go for, but maybe I can start pushing forward soon.

 

[krikav]

@sampsa
Every type of war, is a type of war you should generally go for!

 

[SittinDown]

Thanks everyone for the advice and play through - I hope you enjoyed the map.

I tend not to play a lot on the weekends, but I am following along with what everyone is saying, and learning from it. Good to see different perspectives, [and all much better than my 1st attempt!]. I don't plan on continuing from my own game.

Those that beat up the Romans or are about to - my general take is that with the gems and marble, and nice river capital, and room for plenty of cities, it should be easy to get to Curs or something similar, and go domination.

 

[krikav]

Good point with gems and marble leading to a easy cuirstomp, I agree on that assessment.

What I saw in this map was the ivory which is synonymous with construction attacks to me.
And that combined with gems which guaranteed getting there rather quickly. And that combined with lots and lots of forest which guaranteed that I could bring alot of punch in a hurry. Well, that solved the puzzle for me, thats how I can win this map.

I'm somewhat sure that I did not even register the marble at all, probably quite stuck in tunnel vision.

 

[sampsa]

What I saw in this map was the ivory which is synonymous with construction attacks to me.
And that combined with gems which guaranteed getting there rather quickly. And that combined with lots and lots of forest which guaranteed that I could bring alot of punch in a hurry. Well, that solved the puzzle for me, thats how I can win this map.

I'm somewhat sure that I did not even register the marble at all, probably quite stuck in tunnel vision.

My thoughts exactly. Everything discovered so far points to fast play, so I barely noticed the marble. My mind was already made up - start at construction, get engineering asap after, get feudalism and pretty much stop researching. will be used to pay the bills of the massive army.

I'm not saying it's the only way though. You could just take out Julius and win lib, conquer with cuirs. Maybe you could also not attack Julius, but that already feels a bit iffy to me with such a small land area.

 

[SittinDown]

Good thoughts. Makes sense [now] @krikav .

I'm not that familiar @sampsa - with an engineering treb stomp - certainly not at this level.

When you do that - do you also get civil service for maces with the trebs, or are elephants enough with trebs to beat longbows?

Diplomatically, I think this game looks like you have to fight Julius early, because Zara has boxed him in, and they're friendly, and he has early iron.

I wasn't heavily considering the marble either, but I thought that maybe after Julius was gone, you'd need to recover a bit before you could take out Zara, and by then he'd have longbows, so you might want marble for GLB or just failgold.

I'm assuming cats don't work against lonwbows at this level.

 

[krikav]

@SittinDown When you go for engineering, you basically don't need anything else than trebuchets for attack. You do need things to defend you stack though. And that usually involves a mix of xbows (to hard counter melee), pikes (to hard counter mounted). Some maces might be nice. For example they are nice to level up to city raider3 for later upgrades (grenadiers or rifles) too, or they can give their life to injure a brutal top defender in a city to save alot of trebuchets.
But any rabble of units can clean up after the trebuchet storm.

Catapults do work fine against longbows, IF you have enough production, because hill cities do take their toll in catapults.
You have to be able and willing to lose alot of them and replace them just as fast.
To break out with a smallish stack from a 3 city empire against hilled longbows from the getgo is probably just going to end in tears, but if longbows show up when you have cut halfway through a AI, and you are starting to get reinforcements from the conquered cities, well.. Too late for them to save the AI then.

 

[Pangaea]

I agree. Trebs against Longbows will usually go okay. Once they get CR2, it's usually only 1-2 suicides and you get 95+% odds. Maybe you're lucky and the first one survives and you suffer 0 losses.

Cats is a good deal worse, since trebs are effectively strength 8 units when attacking cities, before adding CR on top of that. So cats against longbows will be very painful. it can be done, but you need a lot of them. Like krikav said, though, if an AI gets longbows halfway through the war, it's too late.

If you face Sitting Bull's longbows with catapults, maybe think over your options again