King of the hill 2- open challange for all playlevels

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Long Update....

Question:

Spoiler :

I noticed that you are not using any siege of your own. Did you find that simply doesn't work?

 

[ABigCivFan]

@VOU

Spoiler :

I do not have Construction since I did not prioritize it. I have Machinery, and stealing toward Engineering for castles.

Against multiple monster AI SODs, I feel that a few suicide siege will not make a dent when I have super defenders with ridiculous bonuses who can kill 20 units in a single turn. Hammers are precious here so I mainly put the hammers on Spies/LBs and necessary buildings.

Also since we are Protective and have totem pole, a same priced LB with these free bonuses are worth more than a suicide cat with no special bonus.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

@ABigCivFan:

Spoiler :

I'm impressed. Nice going there! You always play deity? 'cause if you don't, you should.

 

[DampRain]

Question, after getting alphabet I don't seem to be able to play with the espionage slider. Could someone tell me what I need to get the slider? It doesn't appear after I get a spy or pottery

Ahh nvm, got it the very turn after pottery finished, so pottery is a pre-requisite?

 

[mboettcher]

How do you change the settings of the game?

 

[mboettcher]

25 AD

Spoiler :

I had some success sending out dog warriors to choke both peri and hatty. It made it too difficult though to get oracle. Only got TGW. Did reduce the stacks coming from that direction for a while. 5 Ai is a lot though as most have seen already Im sure IT'd take between 10 to 15 dog warriors to choke everybody. The lack of the AI trading does help a lot though (more than in obvious ways) because a choke on one precludes them from doing much for a lot longer time.

Is it legal to get the AI's to fight each other or is that not possible? Not that I'm in a position to do that.

Spoiler :

Did the AI put all their cities on hills btw? I was semi considering instead of choking to try and knock one out early and then use that Stack to choke another. Make it a more sporting 3v1. Still don't know if that'd work though and would almost definately preclude wonders. Was fun trying a different approach though

 

[ABigCivFan]

25 AD

Is it legal to get the AI's to fight each other or is that not possible? Not that I'm in a position to do that.

Spoiler :

Did the AI put all their cities on hills btw? I was semi considering instead of choking to try and knock one out early and then use that Stack to choke another. Make it a more sporting 3v1. Still don't know if that'd work though and would almost definately preclude wonders. Was fun trying a different approach though

Spoiler :

3 v 1 might not be better than 5 v 1 on this map since I am convinced that it is not the # of enemies that cause the most problem, rather it is how powerful the Top AI is compare to the human in terms of Military technology.

Even if you manage to kill 1 AI early, you can not keep his land, another AI will simply grab this land and become more powerful later on.

When I used my super defender strategy, I rather have all 5 AIs owning similar amount of land, and research at similar rate and I know what SODs I am expecting. I actually want my next door neighbor to be the most advanced so I could steal the latest military tech rather cheaply.

The Worst scenario is a far away AI becomes super advanced, and shows up with stack of Cannons/Rifles when you are still defending with Longbows. That is game over.

Given the super duper GG defense bonus (e.g. CG3+Guerrila2+Drill4+Combat6+Woodsman3), a Longbow general is like an Infantry with 6-9 first strike when defending a hill city. Even if you get attacked by 5 different SODs from 5 civs comprised of Mace/Treb/xbow/Phants on the same turn, the chances are they all get killed by this GG because the winning chance for these attackers are 0.0%. But if the top AI gets Rifle super fast, it become a race for you to steal Riflling. The window is small before this AI shows up with a large stack of Rifle/Curis/Cavs which can cause real problem even for the best GG LB defenders. Your only chance is to steal Rifle and upgrade the LongBow GGs to Rifle GGs before a super large Curi/Rifle shows up and overwhelm your defenses.

 

[Halt]

Sorry I am not helping on this one

My computer died last week building a new one this week so no Civ until that happens.

So have fun without me.

New computer build will be a E8500 GTX260 4GB etc....

Now all I need to decide is if Win7RC1 will run civ bts well or go with XP for another year or so?

 

[mboettcher]

@ABIGCIVFAN

Spoiler :

Yeah that seems about right. In my next attempt I simply only built TGW and beelined alphabet with that gold mine. Saving the hammers and beakers from an oracle excursion helped and let me get out several good archers and a couple of what turned out to be very useful dog soldiers (for defending the gold hill) before any real threat showed up

Lots of fun strategies to try here

Spoiler :

Also pretty much any AI stack b4 catapults has proven to be completely impotent. I don't think that I've lost an archer defending the capitol yet and only one on the gold hill. I have a real problem though getting out two settlers for the satellite defensive cities. With early GG they would be pretty easy to defend. Would be nice to research CoL too b4 switching research to spy points for the courthouse/Spy specialist boost. Every GSpy is worth a lot of techs in the long run.


This is a very good map for such a defense. A nice city spot to the south is available on that land chute with the gold and cows makes for a nice city and you can just put a bunch of hill defenders on the mine and the way is blocked. Plus the AI tends to ignore that route almost entirely.


To be very successful I think one has to steal at least 2 workers, get two cites up in good blocking spots to the north and then one to the south and that would provide a proper base for defense/actual production. The fact that the AI actually wastes SOOOO many hammers suiciding makes this game possible. There isn't one AI worried about infrastructure though Pericles was incredibly annoying early.

Spoiler :

I also considered using Dog Soldiers to simply camp on somebody's copper to prevent any real stacks from that enemy for a LONG time though that enemy would still take land and retain power parity. Reality is the copper stacks turned out to be pretty easy kills and not worth the early hammers

 

[Snaaty]

This is a very good map for such a defense. A nice city spot to the south is available on that land chute with...

I invested quite some time in this map and did quite some work, to create a playable map for the deity experts around who want to try to win... ...no idea if its really winnable, but the extra assets are:

1. room for 10 cities
2. area defendable with 3 hill cities (even took care in placing enough hills in decent spots, so you are flexible in where you found this cities
3. lots of early happy near (gold, gems, silver)
4. some nice islands with all you can dream of (even resources and production) to get some oversea trade early
5. beefed up capital site
6. did quite some testplay (therefore I know that you can get TGW and/or Oracle)

...

So I think this might be winnable after all for the deity experts

 

[DampRain]

@ABigCivFan

Spoiler :

Why necessarily rifling? Supposing an ai techs chemistry and then military tradition. While grenadiers do have less str (and no bonus against cavalry), it might be a reasonable alternative?

 

[ABigCivFan]

@damprain

AIs like Cathy loves to bring 30 cossack/cav stacks, Rifleman GG with all the wonderful promotions make them twice as good as a Grenedier GGs in this case. Especially against knights and Curis which are immune to first strikes, Rifleman's +25% against mounted bonus really shine here. I also would not worry about AI grenadiers since your super GG's first strikes will kill them alone. Rifles are also much better against large number of siege. You won't have enough EPs to steal all techs quickly, so you have to make choices under very tight windows. Sometimes delaying Feudal/Rifle by just 5 turns can lose you the game.

So given the choice, I would save up the EPs to beeline steal Feudalism/Rifling/Assembly Line ASAP.

@Snaaty

Winning Deity AW on an open pangea map against 5 strong AIs without any form of cheating is a dream that will never come true for me...

Edit:

Spoiler :

AIs got to the modern era in the early 1800s. I was down to 2 cities when i was 1 tech away from stealing AL, the fighters ravaged my land and the Airships/bombers/guided missles pounded my 7 GG defenders before large stacks of Artillary/Tanks/Marines assulted my city....

 

[mboettcher]

625 ad

Spoiler :

Lasted through most of longbows this time. Was VERY VERY unlucky with spies as my FIRST TWO died before reaching the nearest city (AFTER ONLY TRAVERSING ONE AI CULTURE SQUARE and I was at 75% cost so that shouldn't have been an issue)

Subsequently the high relative costs of spies early and the fact that I was seriously delayed in being able to steal feudalism set me back significantly. Would've been nice to have some copper for spears early to deal with the Phants Cathy sent at me and also a bit of a production bonus.

The issue with the gem site is that its so far away. Cathy simply can come down the middle to the capitol. I settled a closer hill (by the horses) which turned into a decent/good spot to hold her off and she was the only AI focusing at that city.

Ironically one disadvantages is SUVY's lack of copper. If he had copper he would've built a lot fewer horses early and therefore suicided his troops on my other city instead of running chariots and later HA all over the interior and threatening my workers and I didn't have any spears to kill them outside the cities and Dog warriors are exceptionally bad at this. I did get a random forest growth that by the luck of the situation blocked any 2 move entrance to the interior. This reduced the number of raids.

Building forest forts proved to be a great strategy. The AI focus' less on them and the unbombardable +75% defense is nice (+100 for hills but I didn't have any good hill spots)

Building walls early actually proved a very bad strategy in the west ironically. The moment I did This the AI suicided fewer stacks and more went for the Capitol

The fact that catapults hit 6 units with collateral is a real doozy. One stack of AI cats early is fine but two in one turn was nearly disastrous at one point. You need 12-14 archers in the western city (with DII or better preferably) to distribute the damage to the point that only a few backups get killed in the worst of times.

While 12-14 were needed in the west I was getting away with one strong GG and 3-4 backups. this city also worked a farm and plain mine that were behind it so it pumped some decent archers and a spy or two for support. Cathy also never tried to bypass this city for the interior which was a really nice feature.

Map nuances

This map is a particularily fun game. I don't know if its winnable but small tweaks and nuances of the terrain are key. If changed smaller details about the map it could mean a few hundred years easy

Copper for Suvy, also in Cap BFC (maybe too much) or in a good spot for the satellite cities to work/defend

Make the forest entrance north of the Cap a hill as well for a nice fort defence

Maybe a forested hill on the southern approach (south of the western satellite city site) for another nice fort defence. I had a nice system set up in my game where Hill defenders were one turn on roads from both the cap and the western defense city. This hill also blocked a southern approach to the city but also let me reinforce the cap or the western city in times of need. The cap could run only one defender this way and was only ever really threatened before the fall of the other cities by smaller raiding mounted parties (notably suvy's 10 chariot stack)

Maybe a little tweaking for the western city site. A closer productive option would be nice as Peri tends to get there fast. The obvious close bottle neck is between the two lakes with that hill. A good defense location but not very productive at all (got all my use from this city with two farms and whips. It can still be walked around though and if one more tile was a lake this would be more defensible...

My demise

What did me in was a massive two catapult stack from both Peri and Suvy. This was only a turn or too after Churchill with all his wisdom, sent a in a very smart move sent a decently strong stack between the northern lakes and attacked the capitol. This forced me to send reinforcements and weaken both satellite cities and led to my fast demise.

The military strategy keys I think are keeping the capitol from being attacked and getting them to focus more (entirely) on the satellite cities. This lets the Capitol produce spies/archers/settlers/workers and reduces the required defenses. Settling close enough to each other that the cities can support each other quickly and the AI doesn't have large gaps to bypass helps a lot.

The key Pre-longbow techs I think are Monarchy, Alphabet, CoL and Math (forts). Cats are a useless and expensive waste of hammers. A courthouse in the capitol for a spy specialist really, really helps. I think Alpabet, Monarchy and math can all be researched before support costs hit you and CoL was a good first steal in my second try.

I'm not the best Deity player on the planet so I'm gonna tweak the map and see if it makes a huge difference. Also I hate those phants.

 

[mboettcher]

@ABigCIvFan

Spoiler :

Its definitely 'cheating' modifying the map a bit here and there to make it somewhat more defensible but I think since its a deity 5v1 king of the hill it would at least be an interesting case study. You can't win anyway with out knowing the map ahead of time and since you get replays popping open the world builder and examining is not so bad.

Even on this rather good map for KotH its the only way you have a prayer. The logistics of getting out two early cities, TGW, workers, settlers, archers and spies all from the capitol while researching Bet, Monarchy, Math before the AI gets some serious heavy hitting material is not really possible.

Even with a really beefed up super capitol this would be a serious stretch.

It occurred to me that Imp might be a particularily useful trait on this map. Phil is absolutely necessary for having any economy for a LONG time so replace prot wouldn't be so bad with Suleiman. 40-50% more great generals (cause of TGW and increasing costs) and earlier/cheaper satellite cities may out weight the advantages gained from stronger archers. Especially sense the GG do ALL the important fighting.

 

[mboettcher]

The other factor of the only chance that I see is using spy sabotage on the AI's resources. Getting rid of iron for knights (their first strike immunity hurts) and oil later can seriously reduce the AI's attack prowess.

 

[Snaaty]

625 BC - State of the King:

Spoiler :

Things went pretty well, because
a) I found out that I didnt loose the first GG but settled him in the capital (no idea why)
b) a helped a lot in getting out shock dogs which led to c...
c) Kathy somehow doesnt like to build archers in this game and sends waves after waves of CR aces + spears directly towards my capital (in stacks of 4-8) which
d) is lots of free xp for my shock dogs and, even more important let to e...
e) I managed to burn down a strategically very important city from Kathy near the lakes, on a hill (3 from rice), defended by... ...2 spears which
f) helped me in getting 2 more blocking cities up, closing the ring around my capital (didnt expect this to be possible, but well... ...thanks Kathy)

In parallel, I stole iron and poly from Hatschi and math will follow in 3 turns. I started chopping the jungle (dias) and plugging first huts down, helping my eco. along.

Empire-Overview:
View attachment 218917
Big stack of 15 units is approaching, but with 7-8 elite defenders (dogs and archers), we should hold

At the end of this set i discovered something funny/strange, thats why I stopped erlier then planned (my techstealing spy discovered 4 units from Greece suiciding against an egyptian city):

After I masacred a quite bick stack from Greece, Hatschi aparently had decalred war on Greece (damn opportunist Hatschi)

Thats why I stopped immediately after finding out, because I feel inclined to worldbuilder them back to peace, because I dont think that´s in the spirit of the game... ...opinions?

 

[mboettcher]

My experience with the AI units was very similar. Lots and Lots of spears and many axes.

 

[mboettcher]

Spoiler :

Managed to get the 1300's in my next try but didn't finish it (I was clearly on my way out though). I couldn't keep up with the espionage stealing and Churchill beat me to rifles by too much. Also the Knights were a HUGE problem for my longbows and the Uber GG who couldn'r take more than 1 a round really. Lost 2 of my 8 GG at this point. Problem is that Drill is important to have right away for GG and regular longbows for pawning the other units and taking those large treb stacks and smiling. Was worn down badly and with rifles (redcoats damn churchy) Churchill overran me.


ABIGCIVFAN is right about balance. CHurchill and Cathy were really strong and teched fast in my game, Peri and Suvy were middle and Hatty was very weak (I was at 0.7-1.0 power rating all game with her)

AI Wars

Spoiler :

I think this is the only way to win so I support it somewhat. The issue is that its all luck based. If there was a way to incite wars using Espionage then I'd be all for it but otherwise the luck is a huge issue here.

A fun map beef up that got me far

Spoiler :

After playing extensively twice I realized a couple things that were a huge snag and made the map really hard to defend certain points.

I Decided to have some fun and see if any game was winnable against 5 deities. I gave Suvy and Church better copper (to balance the AI power and have them send slower and easier to deal with spears and axes as the chariots were annoying pillagers. This backfired as the new choke points made chariots easy)

I also majorly beefed the capitol to see if I could afford anything this way. Put copper, another gold in bfc and put stone on the city's placement hill for the uber center tile. I created pretty nice choke points with rivers, forested hills, lakes and mountains. In the east I compressed that width to the ocean as it had been impossible for me to defend before (Cathy sent massive armies to bar cities behind me and they eventually came up on my back door) and If i ever wanted to win I figured i'd have to 'hold the line' so I could have some economic cities behind me. I also moved the gems over and made the eastern city a decent econ spot.

The northern bridge into the capitol I made a forested hill and put a river across to make a very lamely excessive defensive line. The forested hill river I would repeat for the two western approaches (one being a city site. this was a mistake). The western city site was also beefed with the iron moved to an actual useable location and some corn added. I didn't intend it but those cows there became convenient and made for a good city prod wise. Wish I hadn't made it so it'd be on the front line all game even if it was easy to defend. If I had designed the site so that it would've been behind a forested hill river at both choke points it may have been more useful down the road.

As the game went on I regretted not engineering the eastern city to not be one of the two forested hills.

Spoiler :

The first play through of the super beefed map failed miserably fast. I had not counted on the fact that a barb city would spawn on BOTH city sites by 2000 bc.

Second play through I couldn't send warriors to try and worker steal. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Suvy's scout didn't come by me until the AD's and as such did not declare war on me. Church was also a late declare but not as late. I think the lack of seeing me early meant they didn't get the common enemy diplo boost from Perry and Hatty and as such didn't get open borders. I also think there were religious issues there. Hatty and Perry founded different religions and at one point fought a 2 turn war that amounted to nothing. Eventually everybody but Perry settled into Hatty's relig.

The map's choke points worked fantastic. I managed to tech pretty decently (as you can imagine with the uber capitol) before my economy crashed and I had gotten Math, Alpha and had the prereq's for CoL and Monarchy (critical techs to steal). The stone let me build out TGW in a lightening fast time of 8 turns so I didn't even have time to chop. Got a couple workers and my settlers out in time and managed to build forts at the forested hill choke points soon before things got too critical.

Unforseen consequences. It continues to amaze me when ever the AI does something minorly intelligent. The western city was entirely ignored by both Perry and Hatty early and they teamed with Cathy walking all the way around the forested-river-hill forts and only attacking the eastern city (which didn't have a river defense). It was nice having them focus only on one perimeter city for a while so I could focus defenders and GG there. It was also REALLY nice to be able to see the stacks as they walked around for a nice move the archers around warning.

Hatty was very weak all game (which was very relevant to other issues I'll explain later) so her stacks were pretty insignificant. Even Churchill and Suvy(who was also a rather non factor though more for a seeming lack of motivation) walked around until the renaisance mostly with only minor skirmishes in the west.

Perry was pretty average as far as the other attempts had gone which means pretty consistently annoying with large but breakable stacks. Cathy was her usual extremely viscous self and also sent many more artillery then the other mentioned (which is also normal for me). Churchill though more than made up for the relative calm of the others. He was relative parity with Cathy in terms of score but he sent more units despite being further away. He also sent lots of artillery. At times he had 3-4 MASSIVE stacks on the horizon. Stroke of luck though that he managed to capture a barb city three tiles from the western city. Great spy location for me (he was tech leader) and it caused him to split his forces a little west and east. During the longbow era before I had a ton of GG to garrison every fort I actually at one point lost both River hill forest forts and they were pillaged but after a slight lull and the stacks were beaten I rebuilt them. (The unbombardable +125% and the CIty garrison bonus kept me going a long time.

Because the forts were so sucessful I regretted not being able to have one instead of the city in the west as the front line so that city could've been more free to produce and that entrance better defended. Because churchill seemed to love knights so much I took a huige hit in the late renaisance losing many long bows even over a river to him and it slowed that city down a lot.

Long story short I lost. Chuchill and Cathy were too strong. Cathy had lots of land that Hatty had in other attempts and stretched the length of my whole northern frontier. CHurchy got redcoats fast and I took an unrecoverable hit from them before I could get my own rifle (lost 2 of 9 GG's at this stage). Managed to make the AL era but was overrun by infantry and fighters before I could get enough up. Reality was that I was done in before that and it was along spiral downward. Once the choke points fall the map cannot be won. At no point was I beyond simply surviving. And one must thrive at some point to win.

On deity I'm just not sure this map is winnable. The sheer volume of units one has to build precludes any ability to backfill at anytime. The support costs are way to high to do much of anything but survive on GSPY tech steals and hammers are too precious for to long to build out settlers and spare units for the barbs behind you.

The knight's immunity to first strikes also makes the game enormously difficult. Defense is also a very much a numbers game until the Warlord D4 Longbows taht ABIGCIVFAN talked about. One GG of mine had 508 xp as a longbow and was eating stacks of 30+ including 8-10 cats and trebs with out getting more than 10% injured. This was before knights appeared in numbers. After that it went from 1 strong GG (maybe 2) and 4 longbows D3 per major battle point to needing 4 warlords and 8 longbows in the critical spots and still barely survivng. Knights just did too much damage. Needed Pikes badly but didn't have the EP to spare on Engineering as I was already deserate to keep up with church to rifles.

The support costs were just so high. I was researching COnstruction when I stole rifling. I was at 20% Ep slider all game and barely paying for my troops. Can't be won with the deity support costs. With more AI power parity the game would've been a lot easier but that is just the randomness of each play through and wouldn't have changed the number of units i fought but would've changed the tech rate and perhaps broken up some of the knight stacks into more manageable 2-3 from each leader at a time instead of 6-10 from Church all at once.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@mboettcher

It is a good idea to give Formation to your defending GGs after CG3+G2+D4 to deal with mounted units that are immune to first strikes.

I modified my strategy on the 2nd try.

1. Built GW, then Oracle->COL to found Confu. A religion can help with early happiness and later can utilize OR/Theo. GProphet is not too bad here either since we could either settle in capital or build shrine. This also opens up opportunity to take a barb city or settle a city, spread confu to it then let AIs take the city to get state religion discount on spy missions. And Early courthouse + spy specialist helps with GSpys.

2. After Pottery, research Sailing, Monarchy, then Alpha while accumulate EPs. This order allows cities grow faster, bigger and able to run Spies faster.

3. Run some spread culture spy missions on a target city to get more discount for tech steals.

4. Get a few Dogs out early, try get them to Woodsman3, then use GGs to get 2 to W3+Medic3 for 40% healing.

Still i dont know how much all these optimization matter, a single guided missile can reduce a uberGG's strength by 30%...

@Snaaty

Spoiler :

When AIs get catapults, you will need at least 10 defenders (Drill Archers) in each of the front line cities, with your aggressive expansion, It will be extremely difficult to defend all those cities. The best I could do is to place 2 front line hill cities located less than or equal to 4 tiles away from Capital (2 turn transit delay for reinforcements).

 

[mboettcher]

I wish we could chose different leaders.

It might be fun to try JC or AC. The Imp trait could be really powerful with TGW and AC's Ind trait could help early alot. Org for JC could help in getting those courthouses up fast to pay for more troops and run spy specialists.