Divaythsarmour
Adventurer
I'm one of those people who has been struggling at Noble level in BTS for months now. I'm probably making the same mistakes over and over again, somehow expecting different results.
So I was surprised when about a month ago I had my first win on Prince level playing as Boudica, Marathon speed, tiny balanced map. It was a conquest victory at 180 B.C.
So more recently I wanted to try the same thing at Monarch level. My AI opponents ended up being Mansa and Hannibal. I didn't begin my wars until after I completed Stonehenge, the Great Wall and the Oracle.
I foolishly chose Horseback Riding as my free tech. At the time, I thought that the horsemen would help me in my war. But there were elephants in Mansa's capitol, and I should have gone for mathematics or something to get to construction more quickly.
So I took Mansa's capitol, burned two cities but kept two others. Then I immediately re-grouped and went after Hannibal. Eventually I got to construction and was able to build a pretty good army of catapults, elephants and galic warriors.
When I popped great generals, I used them for building armies (specifically a lot of medic promotions). That way I could keep a good offensive stack going.
The teching was very slow, not just for me, but for the AI too. My most advanced unit at the end of the game (1380 A.D.) was macemen. And a funny thing about that, was that my gallic warriors were much more likely to survive attacks against cities then the macemen were. It's true that the gallic warriors had more promotions than the macemen, but I still expected the macemen to do better.
It ended up being a domination victory. Hannibal still had one city left at the end.
I know that the combination of variables, i.e. tiny map, marathon speed, playing an aggressive, charismatic leader like Boudica.. probably doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to some. To me it represents the first win at Monarch (without having to reload). It gives me a little more confidence.
I would say that my greatest obstacle continues to be a tendency to fail to think ahead. I'm often realizing after the fact that I would have been better off doing this, or not doing that etc.
So I was surprised when about a month ago I had my first win on Prince level playing as Boudica, Marathon speed, tiny balanced map. It was a conquest victory at 180 B.C.
So more recently I wanted to try the same thing at Monarch level. My AI opponents ended up being Mansa and Hannibal. I didn't begin my wars until after I completed Stonehenge, the Great Wall and the Oracle.
I foolishly chose Horseback Riding as my free tech. At the time, I thought that the horsemen would help me in my war. But there were elephants in Mansa's capitol, and I should have gone for mathematics or something to get to construction more quickly.
So I took Mansa's capitol, burned two cities but kept two others. Then I immediately re-grouped and went after Hannibal. Eventually I got to construction and was able to build a pretty good army of catapults, elephants and galic warriors.
When I popped great generals, I used them for building armies (specifically a lot of medic promotions). That way I could keep a good offensive stack going.
The teching was very slow, not just for me, but for the AI too. My most advanced unit at the end of the game (1380 A.D.) was macemen. And a funny thing about that, was that my gallic warriors were much more likely to survive attacks against cities then the macemen were. It's true that the gallic warriors had more promotions than the macemen, but I still expected the macemen to do better.
It ended up being a domination victory. Hannibal still had one city left at the end.
I know that the combination of variables, i.e. tiny map, marathon speed, playing an aggressive, charismatic leader like Boudica.. probably doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to some. To me it represents the first win at Monarch (without having to reload). It gives me a little more confidence.
I would say that my greatest obstacle continues to be a tendency to fail to think ahead. I'm often realizing after the fact that I would have been better off doing this, or not doing that etc.