Is Whip/Chop overflow an Exploit? I say No

[TheMeInTeam]

I actually don't like tanks much. If it's a same-continent AI infantry/arty are an earlier option with much less initial-hammer investment. The hammers needed to get controlling airpower AND build tanks AND build garrison troops that function to keep the tanks alive after taking cities is kind of stifling. By the time you're done w/ all that, maybe it's not even FASTER on a game-turn basis than infantry/arty, either, and more can go wrong on the way.

For intercontinental stuff I prefer to go 100% amphibious where possible, which is often. When it isn't, that's when air power and some decent stack composition start mattering.

 

[Dirk1302]

You have to have a fairly big techlead to actually conquer cities with tank/bombers, in that case the tanks can also hold the cities. If the ais have flight i tend to lose lots of bombers to fighters. But mostly I like to use them to support infantry/artillery as i use cavs supporting rifle/cannon, to quench enemy troops in the field. They give you a feeling of security that you can react to counters quickly. Later they can keep up with mobile artillery and do the city taking, by that time i tend to have mech inf too, cavs would be more or less ok too but even after heavy collateral cavs won't win all their battles, tanks do and can attack twice, this gives them a good lifespan even without upgrading to modern armor. They're not the best units but often very useful all the same.

 

[Jrrd Tzu]

Since when has efficiency become an "exploit"

 

[Crusher1]

@ Duckweed

HotCathy - old patch - no whip/overflow because the map/land situation didn't call for it - However, I did expand slightly faster than you which should have allowed me to work tiles sooner which is the basis to some degree of my previous point BUT,

I wasn't able to trade for as much stuff and had a lot of weird random wars through most of the middle game out of the blue so my research wasn't ideal and it definitely slowed me down having to keep making units (too bad or I would have done much much better given my start), however, I do have more cities than you did and have a higher total score:

Spoiler :

Edit: forgot to add the save!

 

[Duckweed]

^Good effort to get a higher score -- with the land of DG. Nice rush, but you forgot the game rule set by Pauliskhan -- NO DOW 1st.
Edit:
Or was I wrong? -- DG dared to declare on you that early--probably ~1500 BC--that a deity aggressive AI DOW date.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^Good effort to get a higher score -- with the land of DG. Nice rush, but you forgot the game rule set by Pauliskhan -- NO DOW 1st.
Edit:
Or was I wrong? -- DG dared to declare on you that early--probably ~1500 BC--that a deity aggressive AI DOW date.

You can always bait the AI into passing war checks by spamming demands. Even DG will declare @ furious if you don't just SPAM troops.

 

[Crusher1]

^Good effort to get a higher score

It was meant to be a simple comparison game that potentially happens when settling more cities earlier to work more tiles - something I still think overflow allowed much better - even if I didn't use it so rules, on this bad example of a map don't apply anyways.

As far as the score goes, it was a give take with the early war because I ended up in about 2-3 wars with Nappy after and had to make a lot of units at random times through out the game, not to mention my trade suffered because of it and it really slowed me down mid game.

Once again, I think you are a very good player Duck but I do not agree with your thinking in regards to overflow, which doesn't matter now anyways ^^.

 

[Duckweed]

It was meant to be a simple comparison game that potentially happens when settling more cities earlier to work more tiles - something I still think overflow allowed much better - even if I didn't use it so rules, on this bad example of a map don't apply anyways.

As far as the score goes, it was a give take with the early war because I ended up in about 2-3 wars with Nappy after and had to make a lot of units at random times through out the game, not to mention my trade suffered because of it and it really slowed me down mid game.

Orleans is probably the best city in the map, so that gold mine will help a lot in early expansion. Sincerely, no matter in deity or levels below, blocking and settle some cities in a later stage is proved to be the optimal play by many players. And this is our final debate where I asked "Why do you want to rex to extreme instead of blocking and settle some cities later".

overflow, which doesn't matter now anyways ^^.

I mentioned in last two posts already.

 

[Crusher1]

Orleans is probably the best city in the map

It was very far from the Capital and that gold mine barely paid for maintenance, however, you are right, that is a very powerful city and helped out a lot as the game wore one, especially since I had to continuously make so many units during my wars.

There's nothing wrong with blocking but I still stick to my original train of thought that the earlier you can start growing your cities the stronger they will be later. After all, if you can find a way to "afford" the city early a 15 population city which was settled before 1AD will do much better than a 5-6 population city founded at 500-600 AD.

I'm sure we would both agree "balancing", "timing" and "transitioning" throughout the game are all game breaking issues. I'm always looking for a way to get things started as early as possible and when overflow was allowed I could accomplish that better.

1000 AD might not be the best time frame anyways with more emphasis being on the potential long term gains made. During this game I could have easily afforded 5-6 more cities but my score at 1000 AD would have been a lot lower. So that was my goal for this game - a good 1000 AD score.

So it seems the way I look at things and "said" them was flawed. A larger Horizontal expansion typically needs a little more time than I was giving it to pull ahead, however it will still pull ahead. 10-12 cities might research faster and get a lot more infrastructure and maybe even have more popluation, food, etc, however, 15-18 cities won't need a lot of time to quickly bypass the earlier advantage gained from a smaller empire - my opinion anyways.