Landless Archipelago Challenge

[Ignorant Teacher]

One of the most repeated mottos of this forum is "Land is power". [The other one is "The evidence is clear, x is the superior."] I think that land really helps, but what can you do when you're stuck in a tiny island with only one nice city spot? Most will reload (I often do), but I think that playing a crappy map now and then can help us improve a lot. Do you have what it takes to win this map?

You are isolated in a small and icy island, without room for many cities. Our leader is the glorious João II of Portugal. His UU is the Feitoria, a Customs House that adds 1 to the water tiles. His UB is the Carrack, a Caravel that can carry two units of any kind, giving you a headstart in the race for settling the world.

This is the start:

Rules? Only one: try to win.



The settings are Standard Map, Archipelago/Archipelago, 18 random civs. The initial save is on Emperor / Marathon, but if you open the WB save you can play any difficulty and speed you want to. The save is BTS 3.19, but you can open the WB file with BTS 3.17 if you haven't patched yet.


I guess you can follow whatever checkpoint system you want. If you have no idea, you can follow something similar to what they do in the LHC. It can be 1- after scouting the island to discuss city placements, 2- after meeting the rest of the world, 3-when you commit to a victory, 4-victory/defeat.
But these are mere suggestions, feel free to do however you want to. Reloads, restarts are ok. This is about learning how to cope with an unfamiliar situation, so feel free to experiment different paths or whatever you think will help you get better.

Initial save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=219372&d=1246242167

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Is this really standard size 18 civs?!

If so...some fools gonna get wrecked...!

 

[futurehermit]

On these maps GLH is power.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Is this really standard size 18 civs?!

Yes, it is.

If so...some fools gonna get wrecked...!

Please sir, do show us.

On these maps GLH is power.

For a while.

 

[shyuhe]

Some fool being Joao himself

 

[Gooblah]

Is this the same start as in the other thread?

Spoilers (not about map but about general strategy):

Spoiler :

Considering that we'll probably start isolated- three options: Cultural, AP Religious Win, or UN Diplomatic Win. I suck at Cultural, but I've always wanted to try. I'll figure it out through a guide or something. AP will be somewhat hard, but there is a strategy for it:

Beeline Theology, then Astronomy to pick up a Religion, Carracks, and the Feitoria. Hit the Colossus and the Great Lighthouse (as both are kind of en route). Considering that land is limited, focus on a Specialist Economy; tech trades will probably also be limited. Build 2 Carracks, put a Missionary in each, find the first heathen -> convert. Hit Galleons -> put 1 Missionary in each (allowing you to alt-build Missionaries by having a constant Galleon drop off/pick up cycle) -> repeat with the bigger cities. Eventually, you'll have a lot of friends. Due to the fact that some AI will invariably have bigger land than you, don't sweat it if they discover you. Just make sure that you use savvy tech trading.

Eventually, call a Religious Victory vote; you'll prolly win.

The UN will be both a bit easier and a bit harder. You can ignore Religion, but focus on TGL, Colossus, and Astronomy -> Mass Media. Use trade routes and Great Scientist bulbs to win. Liberalism will prolly be hard to get, so ignore it IMO.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Is this the same start as in the other thread?

Yes, it is.

Spoiler :

I like your AP idea. I've only been able to make something like it work in a custom made map.

Spoiler :

6 hemispheres, 18 civs as Mansa Musa. Pretty straightforward: found early religion, pray for some neighbor found the other, take him out and try to grab as many religions as you can. When reaching optics, find the rest of the world and convert them. Convert one or two to another religion to get them as pariahs and win AP or UN (the latter being somewhat easier). I pulled it off when I played Prince, not sure if it works on Emperor or higher.

Now, concerning this game I'm still playing that one and trying to get a Conquest or Domination. (I'd rather have a Conquest win because I haven't even seen its movie!) I'll finish Mad's Sneaky Mao and begin posting here.

But feel free to try to win anyway you like it. It's always nice to see the way people respond to difficult situations. It's very educational and the very purpose of this thread.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This took me a full extra hour of unit micro compared to normal games. I hope you're happy.

Since playing on marathon would be TOO EASY, I downloaded the worldbuilder start and went EMP/Normal no events.

To liberalism.

Spoiler :

Settled in place. I thought about trying to squeeze six cities, but that would concede resources, and we have sight of Asoka and an optics transport UU. So I built four cities!

After some thought, I decide to gun for the only wonder I'd build the entire game:

Allowing for religion and caste system.

Circumnavigation goes early

For my part I'm building cats and soon maces to pay a visit to asoka.

The war takes a little while but the maoi capitol pulled me through with mace spam and I had a good bit of cats from the start. Asoka had longbows and magiced his way to maces, but nothing I couldn't handle. His land.

The AIs are terrible on these maps. Settled non-rep spec spam (I missed TGL, so only got national epic from that...and yet I STILL won lib?)

Tech choice was obvious. Trade routes ho!

Kicking lib around straightens things out, and it's not like I'm behind in land.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And continued, so that I don't go over picture count.

Emp/Normal

To 1952 AD and (finally) game over

Spoiler :

What what? Bend over, Zara! I went for him first because he would be problematic if left alone. Judging by his city names, he either played a bad joke or he wiped out gilgamesh.

Tech picture at invasion

And damn it two things go wrong fast. First, he bribes mao on me (most people are dogpiling ragnar and vassal hammy). Second, I get my cavalry vs MAGIC RIFLES . But before the war I traded for an equalizer:

I take the city, peace w/ zara, and stomp on the backstabbing b witch.

Dead.

Back to business, now with more oomph!

More airship beatdown. Pinch cavalry are pretty good vs damaged rifles.

In addition to my moai capitol, other cities helped, and delhi matched lisbon because I put heroic epic there. The 6 carracks used to invade asoka were used to ferry those troops to the lisbon island where I could launch my troops at once. Annoying.

Anyway, I kept producing, and got into SP. Tech rate kept up only somewhat because I was basically troop spam HR the entire game. Justinian, however, is still backwards:

Leaving tech at:

From here on out, I teched out combustion and flight, then started wheezing again while I upgraded and went full production. Although backwards, nobody got flight for a while, and I had the ultimate advantage on a map like this: production and a tech parity navy. Game over...watch as other than against AC (the final tech leader until death), I run roughshod and absolutely crush tech superior AIs rapidly because they're all so small.

And a SS of top 5 cities ----> note the wonders in lisbon!

Not the best score ever, but if I played this on marathon I bet it doubles.

Let's look at lisbon on the final turn:

Nothing impressive. It got me where I needed to go though. Once asoka fell I had 7 cities, and that's above average on this map. This wasn't a challenge so much as tedious...but still fun at the same time!

Yep, found a way to meet the challenge goal I think.

Some fool being Joao himself

Not on emp/arch/18 civs on a standard map!

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

This took me a full extra hour of unit micro compared to normal games. I hope you're happy.

Very happy indeed!

Well done, sir!

I have two questions:

Spoiler :

1- Why didn't you try to get the Great Lighthouse?

2- Did I see it right? You invaded countries with Rifles using nothing but Cavalry? What did you promote them to? Flanking or just Pinch? Don't you lose a whole lot of units? Wouldn't it be hammer saving to go with Cannons/Rifles?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Very happy indeed!

Well done, sir!

I have two questions:

Spoiler :

1- Why didn't you try to get the Great Lighthouse?

2- Did I saw it right? You invaded countries with Rifles using nothing but Cavalry? What did you promote them to? Flanking or just Pinch? Don't you lose a whole lot of units? Wouldn't it be hammer saving to go with Cannons/Rifles?

Spoiler :

1. Trade routes with what? Before we capture Asoka's cities, GLH is of very marginal use...we can barely settle enough cities to trigger the extra trade routes, and they'd all be worth 1! With Asoka's land it would increase in value, and again at astro before hitting corporation. Still, I didn't have a lot of hammers to throw around and its return on a map with 4 cities and no foreign trade for > half the time you have it just didn't seem appealing, especially since with 18 civs I'd have to sell out on it to get it.

2. NOTHING but cavalry? No, you didn't see that correctly . In addition to the cavalry, I also had frigates bombard away the defenses (kind of an important detail), and airships cutting the rifles down to 11.2 strength (again, any use the rifle has as a counter unit vs cavalry is nerfed pretty hard by being 11.2 str). High CG rifles still came out slightly ahead, all the other kinds were fought a 70% odds or better. Most of my cavalry took pinch, and that includes when I used them against infantry with fighter support (cavalry with pinch aren't too bad vs infantry, especially damaged infantry).

 

[huh?]

Threads like these inspire me to play other map types.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

@huh?:
What maps do you usually play?

@TMIT:

Spoiler :

You're right about the GLH. It seems I have this weird wonder fetish whenever I play...

I'm just so used to using Frigates merely as escorts that I missed it. BTW, do airships really work well enough to be reason enough to build more than a couple of recon troops?

Your invasion force was better than the one I used. I'll post my report in a while. (Unlike you I take a long time to play my games, ) I thought first of attacking Asoka, but then changed my route to Carthage (already had Astro). After vassalizing them I went to Auggie, who had just completed Combustion and was the strongest in the game. Do you think it's a bad idea to go for the top dogs first?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@huh?:
What maps do you usually play?

@TMIT:

Spoiler :

You're right about the GLH. It seems I have this weird wonder fetish whenever I play...

I'm just so used to using Frigates merely as escorts that I missed it. BTW, do airships really work well enough to be reason enough to build more than a couple of recon troops?

Your invasion force was better than the one I used. I'll post my report in a while. (Unlike you I take a long time to play my games, ) I thought first of attacking Asoka, but then changed my route to Carthage (already had Astro). After vassalizing them I went to Auggie, who had just completed Combustion and was the strongest in the game. Do you think it's a bad idea to go for the top dogs first?

Are airships worthy in a renaissance support role?

Spoiler :

Combat II rifle @ 11.2 str vs combat/pinch cavalry @ 15 str:

Pinch and the rifle bonus cancel out. That leaves us with 13.44 vs 16.5 in cavalry favor. So rifles won't threaten you in the field.

What about a CG I rifle fortified in a city?

16.5 vs 16.24...still a slight favorite for the cavalry. If the rifle is CG II AND fortified or better, the cavalry has losing odds...BUT we haven't factored in withdraws yet.

Now, without the airship damage an UNFORTIFIED CG I rifle wins 16.8 to 16.5. With CG II and fortification the rifle gets a big advantage it doesn't have if hit by airships. The airships are very material for a unit you can produce late, rebase, and attack at range 8.

They're also pretty good for knocking those offending enemy frigates from 8 str to 6.4 str. It's hard for the AI to attack your ships then too. Definitely a worthy build, especially if you can just trade for physics like I did. A set of 4 airships upgrades to fighters @ 320 gold too, so you'll be ready when you get flight...

And for your 2nd question

Spoiler :

If you can hit the top dog first w/o major concessions, it makes sense to do so because then they can't threaten you directly later or near a victory condition. Zara was top dog (having killed sumeria) in my game so I hit him first. After that, Augustus was top dog but my tech lead expired so I worked over some of the lesser civs first, allowing my production base to give me an opportunity to just overwhelm AC.

Actually, my fight with AC was pretty rough. I didn't get initiative with my cavalry so artillery damaged them badly (if a mass of fighters hits an industrial stack first, enough to drag its troops to 50%, cavalry can actually attack everything with winning odds...even tanks). But he got my stack when I wasn't ready, so I only was able to take one city. His navy was better than expected too. This is why I took capitulation from ragnar ----> I needed the reinforcements.

While I was waiting for help, I used my fighters to pillage most of AC's improvements, severely nerfing his ability to produce new troops (this included his oil, so no tanks or metal navy any more). Even against infantry and machine guns in cities, cavalry aren't bad with fighter support. Those defenders are 10 str and 9 str respectively, and lack the auto anti-mounted, making them weaker defenders than the airship damaged rifles above! This is why other than my final assault I just stuck with cavs. The need for metal navies pushed me to ASAP combustion, and then flight...as you can see a fairly dominating tech...was only one more tech away. It was the first time I actively tested cavalry + fighters though, but I was pleasantly surprised. If not for that botched stack placement in AC's territory, I'd have made out well. As it stands, my cavs already had a favorable (about 2:1) K/D in the later wars...most of my attrition was actually from zara and Qin since they were protective and Qin declaring cut my reinforcements temporarily ).

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

@TMIT:
Will try using the Airships sometime and see what they can do.

Where I am in the game:

Spoiler :

So, for those who don't know, I first started a thread asking for advice on what to do when I saw the land I was in. Then I saw some people were interested in playing this map and made this an open challenge. That means that this game started offline and then became online. Thus I don't have descriptive screenshots of what happened during most of the game so far, but I guess that won't be a problem.

This is where I was then.

Had built the Great Lighthouse, but that was all. Settled two prophets in the capital and tried to squeeze the land dry.

After a while I was found by Gilgamesh who was eras ahead of me:

I traded maps and built some carracks to meet the rest of the world. Then I decided to invade Asoka but for some reason, changed my mind and attacked Hannibal instead.

Took two cities and lost all the siege so I had to accept his capitulation. Kept only Carthage, which has been almost permanently revolting.

When I got kind of close to tech parity, I decided to attack Augustus Caesar because he had the lead in pretty much everything but had moved his stack to attack Ragnar (that's what I thought). I could easily take Rome because for sheer luck none of his Cavalries could do any damage to my cannons. Check what a nice city he built for me:

I'm thinking of putting Wall Street here because of the Hindu shrine. This is also another reason to change to Rep when I can deal with the unhappiness. I captured all his cities in the island (except for one that I foolishly razed), but couldn't get him to cap because he had these beasts cutting my communication with my new land and upping his power level:

Now I'm going to get some more troops (will try to build an airforce because of TMIT's game) and take somebody else, still not sure if it's going to be Hatty, Ragnar or Zara. Hatty because she will gladly jump on me in any war I take part and it will be a beachhead on SB's land. And the others because they could be useful.

I'm still not sure I can win this. I just couldn't get a good tech rate yet. Fortunately now I have some nice land that will work for me.

The next one will be more detailed.