Into the renaissance - Russia - Achievement

[LuckyArt]

1. Just got this achievement. Wow! what a struggle! I now have 210 out of the 227. This was the hardest achievement for me for this scenario. None of them are easy, imo. I will give some insights on how to play this as Russia for those players who are not normally emperor players. I usually play at the king\emperor level and must have spent at least 200 hours trying to get this achievement. To me, what makes this a hard scenario is the starting position of Moscow. Very poor production.

2. After several starts, I realised this and reloaded the start position to where I had two hills, which is normal, and three forests with deer, which is luck of the draw. I also had two grassy areas with cows. This is about as good as it gets. I had lots of forest that I chopped like crazy. My first build was the NC while my settlers looked for a good spot. At turn 8, my build order was two workers , then three cb's. I started building roads before improving terrain until I had cb's because barbs are eager to raze. My build order in first two cities was worker, cb , then library.

3. I believe that this scenario will teach\force you how to look at the terrain more closely with the idea of maximizing in seeing future production, food and defensive possibilities.

4. Again, after7\8 starts where I got to turn 80\100, and didn't like what I saw, I found that the best start for me and the way that I play, was to start the social policy trees with liberty to get the free settler and then the worker. then, I took the right side of commerce to get the happiness from luxuries bonus. Then, back to liberty to start a golden age and finished the tree to get the happiness bonus from connected cities and a free engineer for Oxford U. I tried to get the honor tree earlier for the raging barbs, but I found that I was coming up one policy short when I got to education. Speaking of which...

5. I started guilds-machinery for the crossbows, then, civil service for the pikes then to theology- education. After that, Chivalry to upgrade the horsemen, and then straight to Metalurgy to upgrade the cats and then to get the Cossacks. then, straight to Chemistry for cannons. Speaking of resources....

6. Iron was in short supply, I had to go almost to Austria to get six and I picked up two from the mongols. my recommendation is this.. pick up all the horse and iron sources that you can. Do not, repeat, do not, trade for these resources with anyone except Theodora or when you need them, they won't be available to you anymore. Cossacks and cannons will be your way of equalizing the 3 to 1 disparity in military force you face. Speaking of Theodora....

7. I did not declare a friendship with her because all the other players will be hostile towards you and your trades will suffer. This causes you to lose an RA, but I felt it was worth it.

8. I built my cities east and west of Moscow and by turn 61, I had 5 cities. I wanted to delay meeting Khan as long as possible because I knew that there would be a DOW soon thereafter and that I would be the one declaring. obtw, Khan will be to the south. I had 24 gold, 11gpt and -5 happiness. My army consisted of 4 com\bows, 7 crossbows, 2 horsemen, 3 spears, 2 swords and 7 workers. spotted khan's area to the south but not formally introduced as yet.

9. At turn 121, Khan was reduced to one city. I had a total of 10. two by puppet, then annex. two cities were way south, one for 6 iron, one for 4 horses, I traded with theo for 5 iron , so I had 13 iron. My army consisted of 8 Cb that were garrisoned for happiness purposes; 2 knights, 7 pikes, 7 cossacks, 4 swords, 11 trebuchets, 3 gg's and workers. I had 67 gold with 44gpt and +11 happiness. I was most often looking to improve happiness and gold for most of the game. It was at this point, I felt somewhat confident of a win.

10. My plan was to attack Sweden on my continent, then Riga and Polotsk when allied with someone other than Austria, then France who was coming east and finally the turks. This plan worked! I did not want to go up against Austria as they had a 4 to 1 manpower edge.

Ok, off to the fall of rome scenario. Oh, if any deity players read this, welcome your comments and a question for you all, when playing on deity, say out of 20 games, how many do you win? tia

 

[killmeplease]

i played long ago so dont recall details
austria was leading in score, expanding and buying CSs like crazy, winning an every election, so i decided to go after it.

i built a small number of cities and then started conquering cities to the west. captured polotsk, riga and warsaw and faced the austria, declared war. razed a city or two and then turtled until cossacks.

austrians showered me with constant flow of units, longswords and knights first and then muskets and hussars which i barely could repel. suffice it to say this was the only game when i was forced to build forts. on the east Khan dowed me so i utilized the same tactic. forests helped a lot against keshiks.

all my territory was packed with trading posts and also i finished the commerse tree. rushbuying was the only way to get units as i havent enough supply for my huge army and production in my cities diminished to zero. when i got enough units i steamrolled eastern and south europe razing just every city on my way. i got tons of score points for conquering infidel cities and my score was several times greater than that of a closest rival 30 turns before the end of scenario. and these 30 turns were extremely boring as i parked my units and was just skipping turns what took up to a hour of my life :suicide:

ps a hint: captured catholic missionaries can be used for converting mongolian cities just before capturing them; this way you'll get some extra score points

 

[Matthew.]

I just played this scenario for the first time with the Almoravids (sp?) for the achievement. Absolutely epic map, although turn times get long towards the end.

I do not know the best strategy for the map, but I can help out with a very good anti-strategy

Here was my brilliant plan:

1. Create a chain of cities going east. Cap cities at 3 pop and connect luxuries.
2. Tech straight to camels.
3. Swing east and grab Jerusalem and Mecca, then head north and sack Constantinople.
4. Coast to victory.

It worked, but it wasn't pretty. First, there was no reason to slow growth as I was sitting at 90+ happiness for the entire game. Second, you don't get points for sacking cities with your own religion. Third, I didn't blaze through cities nearly as quickly as I thought I would.

Breakdown went like this:

Turn 100 I finally begin my conquest. Took 30 turns to take Ayyubids mainly due to unlucky horsemen snipes so needing to trudge slow pikemen across all of Africa.

130 turns in I have Jerusalem and begin my assault on the Turks. And hit a brick wall. It took over 50 turns to make my way through Turkish hell. It basically went like this: One turn, attack city. Next turn a bunch of Sipahi and Janissary spawn and attack. I kill them but gives the city time to heal. Next turn attack the city. Turn after that, more Sipahi and Janissary spawn. Town heals. I was making progress, but it certainly wasn't fast.

I would have lost the game to France, who was leading the entire time, but Spain helped me out by spamming a bunch of cities on the northern coast of Africa and converting them all to Christianity. I proceeded to throw pike/Xbow spam that way and rack up some easy victory points.

Turks finally give in and give me 5 free cities after I take the last one I need to get to Byzantium.

With just 10 turns to spare I finally get what I wanted:

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For anyone attempting to get this achievement I highly suggest not doing what I did. Go with the historical route and head north to Spain. Capping Spanish and French cities will lead to a much easier/safer win.


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A couple of post-game screenies. Spain's carpet of doom is the main reason why I let her keep her remaining cities near my empire. She had the number one military score and turn times were already taking a full minute to load, so I didn't want to add on to it by fighting off waves of military spam.

The Mongol one amuses me. I'm guessing he and Russia were BFF's, however if he went hostile he could have swept across Russia's empire easily. Any military Russia had was far to the west fighting off Sweden.