Kievan Food UHV Challenge

AbsintheRed

AbsintheRed

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After all the talk about the Kievan UHVs, you guys got even me enthusiastic (and somewhat competitive) about it ;)
Tonight I will try my hands on it, with the latest version

Note: There were some small barb balance changes in the area in revision 1081.
Won't make that much difference for Kiev, but still... in all fairness it would be best to update to the latest version before you start.

Rules: Get as much food on your UHV counter as possible by 1300
You also have to complete the other 2 UHVs
This is a gentleman's game, just post a final screenshot of your food score on the turn of the UHV date (in 1302AD), with a couple lines about your strategy
(obviously you may post about it in detail, this is basically a strategy thread after all :) )

I take the game in this post as the first result to this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12586326&postcount=15
With 4 more turns to go, the base level is 33.500 food
 
If you keep the rule that the player has to complete the other 2 UHVs, then just make it 1290, why keep playing for 4 turns after you've won?
(And everyone can just post a similar screen with the "historic victory" and the food counter)

For anyone that's interested: in this post you'll find my starting save, which I found to be quite good. (I got Feudalism, Engineering and 3 more techs from Bulgaria & Byzantium and founded Kiev; if you send one of your horse archers towards the Arabs they'll sell you Machines - after you bribe them some gold to open their borders, they might also have Vaulted Arches)
 
Note: There were some small barb balance changes in the area in revision 1081.
Won't make that much difference for Kiev, but still... in all fairness it would be best to update to the latest version before you start.
 
while not quite a new record, I still want to present you: Kievan Food Challenge EMPEROR:



The 35k food are definitely doable on Emperor, so 40k might be possible on Monarch. But that would require a lot of luck on top of a good strategy.

If anyone wants to try this at home, I have to warn you, the Mongols can be quite devastating:


They can destabilize even the strongest Empire!
( I fought ~65 Keshiks but they often appear in clusters of 5, sometimes even more - I had turns where I had to deal with 14 Keshiks....)

I attached the save from 1245 (2 or 3 turns after the first Mongols appear) - as you can see, they caught me with my pants still down (I thought I had untill ~1250).

edit: some words about the strategy I used:
(first important tech goal: Plate Armor to chop the forests and use this to build your churches)
1. I managed to score 2 additional units (I think skirmisher and horse archer) plus could buy Feudalism from Byzantium for Farriers -> 2 turns of Anarchy, 2x Feudalism Civics + Serfdom + State Religion (and I bought some cheap techs from Bulgaria)
2. I sent 2 mounted units to explore, 1 northwards (Norse, Germany, France, Burgundy, Spain, Cordoba), 1 southwards (Arabia - you can get incense from them for pig and if you don't trade with them before adopting a religion it might really take time untill they will offer such a deal again)
3. I build Kiev (on the spot) plus one west from the start, south of the Barley, next to the Dye plus one just north of the wheat at the southern end of the Province -> 2 axemen + 1 horse archer went to the forest tile north of the barbarian highway (you destroy the 2-3 pieces of road leading towards this spot) and Kiev built spearmen.
4. In an earlier try I got lucky and Kursk was only guarded with 1 Archer, if you're that lucky go and attack it, once you have 2 spearmen to defend against the barbs, else just hold on (like I did in this game), use your horse archer to kill the barbs that retreated (so your Axemen/Spearmen don't have to leave the forest) and to scout the sourrounding tiles, to know when they will reach you.
5. just expand north, 1st city is next to the deer/fur and then close to the stone (I chose 2W this time, since you don't need the stone THAT early in the game), try to sell the deer to Justinian to fund your research
6. around ~1000-1050 AD try to take Minsk and the other independent city north of you (I built a Druschina for this and used my 1 Flanking2 HA + 1 CR2 Axeman from the barb defense), as soon as your troops are in position build a catapult/treb for Novgorod.
7. I only build spearmen as city defenders since they're incredibly cheap and I had to worry foremost about horse archers. So around the time the troops march towards Minsk you should have 3-4 spearmen defending your forest against the barbs and here you could probably expand a bit faster along the south-east than I did
8. try not to get below -3/4 on stability while expanding and keep in mind that you have to build Orthodox churches.
 
my big prblem is that if i move a HA in the city it will defend against barbs and not the spears! and mainly HA vs HA-barb is 50% in practice, so you loose them qiute fast... :(

anyway: GG
 
If your horse archer is even slightly wounded, defending against an attack horse archer is almost always a loss for you, yes, that's why you shouldn't let the barbarians reach your city in the first place.
The inital city placement and the destruction of the road leading towards Kiew from the south are both really, really important.
I also tend to promote one of my archers in Kiew to a crossbowman to fix this problem as soon as I can. (I usually have enought gold since I sell my deer to Byzantium for 6-10 gold/turn and they can attack a wounded horse archer that sits on your horse or somewhere else next to your city, while an archer would have to wait for them to attack)
you should only expand to the south-east of Kiew around maybe 950-1050 AD (I think I started even later than that), by then you often have either promoted spearmen or even guisarmiers (I tried to avoid them by selling/giving away my iron, since spearmen are much cheaper) to deal with the barbs.

I'd really love to see your game with Kiew (maybe in the other Kiew-strategy-thread we had a while back, the one the first posting links to), even if you don't break my record.

(I'm sorry, been busy with other things lately, will soon expand the random events posts and everything else)
 
I would love to show you my kiev strategy, but i dont have....i won them back in 1.1 but it was long time ago.....now i tried them on monarch and viceroy, but i was beated by barbs and orthodoxy avoided my land too.... barbs were coming from 3 direction, and anyway......
 
Great, congrats! :)
Some pictures would be great though
 
gilgames said:
why pics if you can load it and see all details?
Click to expand...

Most people are lazy :D
Also your save is from a specific SVN version
It cannot be opened with a different version
(to be more precise, it cannot be opened if there are some significant changes between your current version and the version of the savegame, which usually happens at least once in every 3-4 revisions)
The best is to upload the savegame with stating the version you use, but also adding a couple pics if you want to show your victory to as many people as possible :)
 
Played on Viceroy and got 24291 food which means that I failed the 3rd UHV by missing the requirement by 709 food.
Spoiler screenshot :

Not that unhappy because this is my personal best so far. I started building settlers very early and continued that until all light blue/green/yellow stability provinces were taken. What I should do better next time is to be more confident about settling less stable provinces, e.g. Moscow and Murom. Stability does not seem to be that big issue for the Kievans anyways - not at least on the difficulty level I'm playing at.
 

Attachments

  • Yaroslav AD-1302 Turn 234.CivBeyondSwordSave
    872.2 KB · Views: 165
Cool, with the experiences from this game I'm sure next time you will easily accomplish it, even on Monarch. :)
 
@rfcfanatic

I case of Kiev, difficulty doesn't matter only in the number of keshiks... I mean it. I give you a hint: till 1100 you must always build at least 1 settler, but the more the better. and build cities in Moldova, murom crimea, maybe even more, conquer potolsk smolensk, and it easy to gain land in novgorod, they really suck/lack units.
 


Missed out on the 35k :(

(SVN 1225, Emperor)


This game is all about snowballing. Having to start with 4 turns (3 civics + 1 religion) of anarchy however is pretty annoying. I noticed that I forgot a lot, took me several restarts to get this one going, first try only got me to 28k and had me almost collapse.
 

Attachments

  • Chep AD-1290 Turn 230.CivBeyondSwordSave
    898.2 KB · Views: 198
congerats on the UHV. It is one of the few I still have left.

It may sound a bit silly, but I refrain from trying it (once more) because I ran almost out of UHV's (that are possible) to complete and the game feels a bit empty without them (uncompleted UHV's).

A bit like a good book you don't want to continue reading because it will end the story.
 
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