I sneaked one away from Sid, w/Byzantines against the Mongols, Zulu, and Arabs. Lots of Dromons. Not much else to say.
Marsden's HoF Attempts
- Thread starter Marsden
- Start date
Bartleby
Remembers laughter
A Sid win is not to be sneezed at...well done! 
Thanks Bartelby! I just feel like I squeeked by on mostly luck. Tone told me to shut up and be happy, but being the compulsive sort that I am, I always blame mistakes on me and good things on luck, rather than bad things on luck and good things to skill. I also tend to make run on sentences.
It was great! I never even met Arabia, the Mongols killed them in 1400(?)BC! The Zulu had the biggest island to themselves, but never got saltpeter. Did you know Dromons can kill galleons? Well, they DO! Wouldn't want to try against ironclads, but I took their iron well ahead of that. After stripping all their resources, it was very satisfying to see my industrial age opponent spit out a warrior in 1500AD!
It was great! I never even met Arabia, the Mongols killed them in 1400(?)BC! The Zulu had the biggest island to themselves, but never got saltpeter. Did you know Dromons can kill galleons? Well, they DO! Wouldn't want to try against ironclads, but I took their iron well ahead of that. After stripping all their resources, it was very satisfying to see my industrial age opponent spit out a warrior in 1500AD!
You can't trust the Mongols. EVER. Trust me.
Congratulations on your Sid win! I have yet to do that myself.
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
Well done, Marsden! what was it? 20K? conquest? SS?
It's an accomplishment to beat Sid!! One thing I want to do is actually try to beat sid in a random start game, but I'm not close to that...
It's an accomplishment to beat Sid!! One thing I want to do is actually try to beat sid in a random start game, but I'm not close to that...
I think what I actually said was that you should bask in the glory and stop saying that you were lucky!
Let me add my congrats to this thread too.
I'm sorry superslug, I trusted the Mongols many times in this game. I trusted them to die when I crushed them and I trusted them to be good slaves when I captured their workers. 
Actually, the Mongols weren't even that tough. The Zulu were the tough ones, they had tons of units.
And this was a conquest victory. Killed the Mongols in 1050, finished in 1520.
Sorry, I misquoted you. Actually, I Marsdenized TM your quote
Actually, the Mongols weren't even that tough. The Zulu were the tough ones, they had tons of units. And this was a conquest victory. Killed the Mongols in 1050, finished in 1520.
Tone said:
Sorry, I misquoted you. Actually, I Marsdenized TM your quote
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
wow. that's even better, Marsden. Mine are 20K victories - I managed to knock off the mongols, but never could get a landing to survive against either arabia or japan in my games - even with multiple armies and barricades, their hordes and hordes of archers/longbows would wipe out my infantry... then guerillas started showing up... it was sad 
Scratcher
Emperor
@ Marsden. A Sid conquest. Impressive. Well done.
wow. that's even better, Marsden. Mine are 20K victories - I managed to knock off the mongols, but never could get a landing to survive against either arabia or japan in my games - even with multiple armies and barricades, their hordes and hordes of archers/longbows would wipe out my infantry... then guerillas started showing up... it was sad
I never got to Mil. Trad. I was about 4 turns away from it when the game ended. The Zulu just entered the industrial, but lucky for me they never finished nationalism, I'm absolutely sure that's what they were researching. I was very afraid of getting astronomy becuase I would loose the ability to build Dromons, they are the reason I was able to make it. Lots of amphibious assaults and retreats. I destroyed half of their cities without trying to hold anything. Then the turning point came when I founded a town on a one tile penninsula with only a mountain the way in. I managed to get a leader and make an army, I only had 2 Knights left so I stuck a musketman in there so it could defend better. They would not attack the army on the mountain so I built a barricade under it and rested my surviving troops in the town, always with reinforcements coming in and Dromons bombarding everything I could. The best thing I could say is once almost every road tile was gone, I could then "evacuate" the barricade to make the town a desireable target, let the enemy stack get one turn away and then reoccupy the barricade. They would then turn around to go where my current attack would be happening, but with no roads it would take them 3 or 4 turns to get to me, at which point I'd be back in the Dromons. They had one stack of over 45 units running around in the mountains yet while I took their last city.
Thanks, Scratcher!
BTW, I forgot to mention, my key to getting philosophy first has been not to contact anyone, I can just about get writing philo lit every time. In this one I actually got an SGL for writting and rushed the Glib. The whole rest of the game I was in Monarchy with one scientist research. I got up to gunpowder before it died on me, and went 50 turns on chemistry and metalurgy, trying to get Mit. Trad. Didn't need it though.
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
why go for philosphy at all, though? Why not just go for literature?
Scratcher
Emperor
I think I read about this tactic in the Stories and Tales forums. It was called something like the "Byzantian Bikini Babe Tactic". A funny read IIRC.
I completely forgot about that! Yes, almost just like that, but I think they were using a worker as the "bikini babe" I did that too on occasion to draw off a couple local units.
Here's a question/comment that I'd zerkzees to comment on since I partially followed his sid conquest: I was able to capture workers from a ship, IOW attack them on land right from a ship. I thought only marines and berserkers could do that, but I did it twice. The last time was especially a good one because I razed the road to the enemies horses and they had a stack of 9(!) workers moving to reroad them, I think it was worth a MI to capture them. Plus after that I never saw another Zulu worker again, so none of those roads got rebuilt. It's a good thing the Sid AI don't have workers that do their jobs in 40% of the time as well.
Here's a question/comment that I'd zerkzees to comment on since I partially followed his sid conquest: I was able to capture workers from a ship, IOW attack them on land right from a ship. I thought only marines and berserkers could do that, but I did it twice. The last time was especially a good one because I razed the road to the enemies horses and they had a stack of 9(!) workers moving to reroad them, I think it was worth a MI to capture them. Plus after that I never saw another Zulu worker again, so none of those roads got rebuilt. It's a good thing the Sid AI don't have workers that do their jobs in 40% of the time as well.
Scratcher
Emperor
Do I understand you correctly? You could attack and capture stacks of workers from a ship using a Med Infantry? I have been playing this game for years and never knew this was possible!
Yes! I couldn't believe it either! In one of my failed attempts previous to this one the AI attacked me that way and took one of my workers. Then there was a 2 tile island the Zulu had in this game, they had a worker mining the hill the city was next to, and I was tired of waiting for him to finish, so I tried to land anyway and was able to capture him from the ship! Once I did that I knew I could do that other later. Normally for one worker I wouldn't sacrifice a unit, but 9, I thought it was worth it. Sad thing is 9 workers cost them less shields than my one MI, but the pop loss and worker turns lost more than makes up for it.
Bartleby
Remembers laughter
You can capture any zero defence unit "amphibiously" -- I think it was introduced in C3C or one of the patches. The AI seems to be unaware of this, because I have used worker blockades many times.
PrinceMyshkin
King
Awesome conquest victory on Sid, Marsden!
I started a Sid game the other day. It got really ugly, really quick.
I started a Sid game the other day. It got really ugly, really quick.
Scratcher
Emperor
I have never heard of this. Even with C3C I occaisonally use workers to block landing sites and coastal tiles outside of my territory. It is a tactic from my distant Vanilla days. I am glad the workers were never pilfered!
I just want to say thanks everyone for the congratualtions, and I am sure it was just luck because I just tried the deity level gauntlet and I couldn't even kill off the weakest AI using my same method.
I guess it proves it's better to be lucky than good.
I guess it proves it's better to be lucky than good.
One more thing I forgot to mention was that I kept the AI at war with each other constantly by making the alliance part of the peace treaty negotiations. I know it sounds weird but it kept them busy. That's something I wasn't able to do in my gauntlet attempts because it was on arch and they didn't know each other.
