mm21-The Art of War-Always

[Mark1031]

It's been a while but I used to do a lot of Always War SGs back a few years. CivV looks quite interesting in the warmongering regard and I can’t figure out what cooperation pacts do anyway so we’ll forget cooperation and just go for Always War. I have tried it out a bit on king and steamrolled the first 2 civs with 4 warriors (cheaply upgraded to swordsmen)-note cheap upgrades and immediate healing are unbalanced.

So.

Civ-Wu Zetian
Map-Standard Continents
Level-Emperor
Always War-As soon as you meet a playable civ you hit the declare button and no peace ever.-Not For City States, we need some friends.

So it is victory or death for the great Chinese Empire. Should really help hone the war fighting skills, which seem to be the main changes in this version, but will also provide a lesson in large empire economic management-if we get that far.


Mark1031
Methos
Ozbenno
Arathorn
ThERat

 

[Methos]

I suck at war, so why not, consider me in.

 

[Ozbenno]

AW is the finest of civ past-times, I'd be up for it!!

Is there not an always war option as default???

 

[Arathorn]

Always war was listed as an option in the pictures of the manual, but it's not actually available in the game.

I'm going to be overcommitted soon, but... Sign me up.

Arathorn

 

[ThERat]

Mark, you know I am currently playing an AW game in the stories section. Without city states though.

Have fun with this!

 

[Methos]

When I saw that ThERat had posted here I started laughing, as I realized this was going to be a very impressive game with the current players. I'm sorry to see that ThERat won't be joining us.

Mark, you know I am currently playing an AW game in the stories section. Without city states though.

For those interested, here's the thread he is talking about. Excellent read and something I'll be following as we play this game.

 

[Mark1031]

Mark, you know I am currently playing an AW game in the stories section. Without city states though.

Have fun with this!

Hey there Rat I did see your AW thread. I didn't think about nerfing city states as they are so powerful (and I didn’t realize you had the option). I will be following your exploits. I suspect no city states is like a 1x level boost in difficulty from my brief trials.

We have quite an illustrious team forming. We could use 1 more but certainly with this group we can stick to emperor level. I’d like to keep City States as they are an interesting addition that I’d like to learn more about.

I hope we can get one more player by tomorrow and we can begin.

Chime in with thoughts on strat. As I said the warrior to sword upgrade was overpowering in a couple of king trials I did but it is clear that economic and happy management will be one of our biggest problems.

My guess is the way to go is to beeline to swords and wipe out the closest 1-2 civs and then depending on the lay of the land work out a kill zone to hold off any other civs on the continent until you can efficiently incorporate the remaining territory. With no stacking of units and strong ranged weapons no one is getting through a well defended choke.

 

[Ozbenno]

I haven't tried out much in the way of warfare in my one game yet but did notice that upgrading old units was much more efficient than building them.

Would have to bee-line to Iron Working, build tonnes of warriors then upgrade and head for the closest civs. Has anyone seen how the AI handles city attacks? It seems hard (as a player) to lose a city unless you are overpowered with much advanced units. UU seems pretty good, so Machinery looks another good bee-line.

The honour policy tree seems to have some good options for AW (Discipline, Military Caste, Military Tradition and Professional Army).

 

[Mark1031]

Has anyone seen how the AI handles city attacks?

Poorly. I took out 2 civs with literally just 4 swords and no cat/archer support. Basically just move 3 up to the city and 1 round of attacks takes them out or redlines the city so 1 weakened sword takes it out the next turn. Save all upgrades as the big one is immediate healing. After the attack just immediately heal your swords and move on to the next city-boom 1 civ gone that early in the game.

 

[Methos]

I just played a test game and got lucky with the map. Ocean on three sides with a mountain range to the north and a one tile choke point. I didn't have the strength yet to go attacking, so I manned the choke point with a warrior and archer (scout gained an upgrade through a hut) and nothing could come through. I had two cities up and was debating a third when I got the pop up saying I had the lowest amount of 'pointy things'. I'm guessing I waited too long to act and spent too much time building. I need to restart another test game and make sure to get a map that isn't so lucky/defensive.

 

[ThERat]

OK guys, going to join you (if you want me)... should be strong game with this lineup

will write some more comments tonight

 

[Arathorn]

Ranged units rock. yeah, you can take cities with swords, but I had better luck with catapults. I conquered the entire world with a sword, a longsword, and 2 catapults. OK, it was prince, but.... It's definitely doable.

We don't want to fall into the trap of completely neglecting policies/culture. Honor is really extremely useful for combat and the other policies are valuable, too.

Happiness can be an issue. Policies can help. I've had some good luck with puppeting some cities and using workers to force them to be gold cities (by building trading posts on every tile they can work, so they have minimal production but good gold production). Up to half my cities work this way and it actually saves time on not trying to bring them into our empire.

BTW, Methos, being last in pointy things is no sure indication of being in trouble, even in always war. As always, the human has a huge advantage over the AI in combat. Intelligent ranged combat and flanking can let us win, even if (realistically, WHEN) we are outnumbered. We can use city's bombardments to help with that, too.

Thinking of city bombards, I would tentatively recommend building our cities closer together than seems common in Civ5. Being able to bombard incoming units with two cities is a tremendous asset, if we are fighting on our own territory (and with the ease of embarkation and such, that seems reasonably likely). It's impossible to cover all approaches, but we can limit the efficacy of flanking.

I am excited to see how this will play out.

Arathorn

 

[Mark1031]

And so we begin as Empress Wu whose beauty makes the flowers bloom and the rivers flow and….. whatever.



You will note we have some very nice traits. Our generals rock @ +45% rather than +25%. We also generate them at 2x the rate. Combine that with a great early UB to spam-the paper maker, a library that generates +4 base gold, and we should be an unstoppable force.


4000 B. C. We have an excellent starting spot 2 food 2 luxuries a river-settle in place. Warrior heads SE sees ocean-good. Research started on animal husbandry for the cow.

Spoiler :

3840 BC Ruin gives us a survivor +1 population. Also Queen Elisabeth appears from the NE with a scout. She will not be happy to meet us. Declare war.

3720 BC Beat Lizzie to a ruin and get archery. Nice.

3640 BC Lizzie shows up with a warrior and attacks my warrior in the woods. We each lose 7HP. Ouch. AH in start pottery. Second warrior finished and I go with a worker.

3600 BC Lizzie injured warrior attacks my injured warrior at what must have been very poor odds and loses dropping my guy to 1 HP.-very aggressive.

3560 BC Find Lizzie's borders very close to the N.

Spoiler :

3480 BC Lizzie wants peace Ha!

3400 BC Liz attacks across a river warrior to warrior and loses 8 HP. In a terribly weedy move I finish her off and dropped to 1HP near her border and get arrowed to death. Damn that was stupid. Sorry we now have one injured warrior near home and a nearly completed worker.

3360 BC pottery-> calendar.

3280 BC Passive aggressive Gandhi shows up from the West with an archer sorry Gandhi no peace for you.

3160 BC In my second less important weed move I go one turn more than I was supposed to. In summary, found two ruins that worked out well, archery and a pop. Met Elizabeth and Gandhi, declared war. Lost one exploring warrior and started a worker second instead of a third warrior so have not explored nearly enough, met no city states and found no wonders.

Spoiler :

Not the best of openings but not disastrous. With the worker about to complete you can start cranking warriors and exploring. I would keep one warrior close to home or you will get pillaged a lot which is a real pain.

Next up Methos take 20 turns.

On Deck Ozbenno take 10-15 what ever feels right

 

[Methos]

Should we try and get a second city out before massing against Liz? We seem way too weak at this point. I'm at work and using my phone so I can't see the resources, but I'm considering archery next, followed by the iron working path. Thoughts?

 

[Mark1031]

I got archery from a ruin. I would get out 2-3 more warriors to explore and harass and then 2 settlers. I think we probably want writing and wheel before IW. Our UB is a gold producing library that we can spam. Should have 1 settler ready for when IW comes in though.

 

[Ozbenno]

Liz is close be interesting to see what she throws at us. Archery and increase pop is nice as well.

Writing and Wheel before IW seem right as well. Look like good city sites to the west of the river but might need Lizzie out of the way first, maybe some good production sites east of the capital. Maybe throw a scout or two into the mix as well, and hope for a ruin upgrade to archer (or better).

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

lurker's comment: If there is any chance you'd take me, I'd love to play this.

3600 BC Lizzie injured warrior attacks my injured warrior at what must have been very poor odds and loses dropping my guy to 1 HP.-very aggressive.

She's quite the b**** in civ5.

Also, exploring in AW is always risky business. City-states rock but more enemies get tough to chew.

 

[Mark1031]

lurker's comment: If there is any chance you'd take me, I'd love to play this.

I'd be happy to have you but a six man rotation is a bit too much. I can put you on standby if we lose a player and of course lurker comments are always welcome.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

lurker's comment: Sounds good. At the moment I need to play with audio disabled due to crashing issues and somehow, disabling audio also means you cannot promote units (!!?!%$!), so AW gets complicated anyways. Will lurk with interest.

 

[ThERat]

@BeF disabling audio means upgrading is disabled? why is that so?

Ok, people let me chip in a bit of findings from my own AW game.

1. Happiness is an issue all the way throughout the game so far. I have to limit my expansion in order not to get too unhappy. We need those happy luxuries, maybe those city states can help? We will need to spend money/production on colloseums, circuses etc. There is a social policy in the honor branch that gives +1 happiness for garrisons. We need that too I think

2. Upgrading of units is THE way to go. It is way cheaper to build a unit and upgrade it later on than building a new better unit from scratch. Also, promotions and experience are NOT lost when upgrading a unit. Beating up barbarians brings your unit to 30xp only, that's 2 promotions. Hence, we need to beat up the enemy. It might be wise to keep someone alive on our continent to 'train our units' while we bring up happiness etc.

3. Naval units rock. Even caravels can have deadly impact on foes. You can upgrade them to blitz even. (You will see soon in my solo game). Our invasion that will follow sooner or later MUST be accompanied by some naval units. Hence we need 1 -2 coastal cities.

4. Harbors could connect our empire at a much cheaper rate than roads due to maintenance.

5. We should decide beforehand where we go with our social policy since expansion will kill our social policy achievements drastically.