NC CLXXII - Wang Kon of Korea

[Gumbolt]

@ Bdubbs

Spoiler :

You really didn't need all those 5 cities. Pyong and city south of your capital were really not needed. Ignore the ice and desert and grab the Ai land asap.

The reasons for the heavy losses could be Mansa cultural defences. Did you fully bombard? Or perhaps his Skirmishers with 2-3 first strikes. Mansa is quite harmless there was no need to attack him first.

It would of been better to attack the Greeks here. Melee unit spammers and weaker archers. Always pick your battles.

Overall I think you could of started this war nearly 700-1000 years sooner. With all those juicy commerce tiles getting to construction should of been much quicker. Then a case of whipping Hwachas. Always scout out your target before you attack.

 

[Gumbolt]

I played until just before Liberalism on Emperor.

Spoiler :

The local land is really nice, lots of happy and lots of commerce. I did get quite boxed in. I didn't manage to get the horses, so Rifling break-out looks like the best option, but I don't think I'll play it out. I have paper and Education and Liberalism 90% on all AI.

Spoiler :

To miss out on the horse is strange. What did you do wrong? Even on the immortal map I got the horse.

Even if you didn't get the horse you got the copper. You have the UU too. No reason to let yourself get boxed in here. If you are struggling on 4-5 cities come liberalism something has gone very wrong given the strong start here.

 

[dutchfire]

Spoiler :

To miss out on the horse is strange. What did you do wrong? Even on the immortal map I got the horse.

Even if you didn't get the horse you got the copper. You have the UU too. No reason to let yourself get boxed in here. If you are struggling on 4-5 cities come liberalism something has gone very wrong given the strong start here.

Spoiler :

I only got Animal Husbandry from Alphabet, since I didn't need it originally. By that time, I had planted my closest city just a bit too much to the east, and Greece then took the horse spot.

From the top of my head, I had the capital (settled in place), one city to the west that got pigs, fur and shared the capitals corn, then one city to the east of the capital that grabbed silver+gold, one city south of there on the desert hill to grab all the flood plains, another city to the sw of the capital with wheat+oasis (got a library there and ran 2 scientists), one city further se grabbing iron+wine+cow (at that point, I was starting to get boxed in and this was the only spot left), and finally a city to the far north with fish+2 silver. So 7 cities in total, not too bad, but the spots were a bit weird. I think I'm definitely in a winning position if I pull of a Lib in the direction of Rifling, but I'm not sure I'm very interested in playing out the entire Rifle war.

 

[elitetroops]

@bdubbs, it's better to make new posts for updates instead of editing old. At least I didn't notice those updates until now.

Spoiler :

Overall I agree with Gumbolt. The choice of 2nd city location is not good. Capital doesn't need help with working cottages, because it has double corn to grow large quickly, and with fur+gold+silver+forge you have enough happiness to grow it large enough to work them all. There is also so much forests around capital that not much whipping is needed. Either Pusan or Wonsan would have been better choices for 2nd city. Pusan if you plan to tech far, Wonsan if you just want to chop an army asap and start taking out AI.

I also think Mansa is a bad choice for first target. Your unique unit comes with bonus against melee units. Mansa is usually spamming skirmishers, which are the worst possible opponents at this stage of the game for Hwachas. Pericles, on the other hand, is likely to spam Phalanxes. They go down like flies when you hit them with a Hwacha stack. Also, Pericles' capital is quite awesome.

When you go for an early war, you should do everything in your power to start it as soon as possible. You will be up against a lot less units if you can attack 700 years earlier. In this scenario, you could build enough axes while teching to construction. When construction is in, it should take you no more than 3 turns to get 2 Hwachas/city (1st turn hammers into Hwacha, 2nd turn 2 pop whip 3rd turn add chop), then attack immediately when the first 4 are in place to move across the border. The rest follow behind and make it to the attack on the next city. With forests prechopped, you can continue to produce Hwachas at lightning speed for a while and run over a couple of opponents before they get to the stage when they start building more units. At the time when you produce your initial stack, other builds like libraries, and in some cases even barracks, can wait. For a construction rush there is time enough to build barracks though.

Another thing to keep in mind with a construction rush is that expanding is likely to delay your attack date. To expand you need to build more settlers and workers, your workers need to be building improvements for new cities instead of prechopping and roading to your target, and the increased maintenance makes it slower to get to construction. If you had skipped the cities east and south of capital and instead focused on attacking earlier, you could have way more than 5 cities by now and at least one of those an awesome captured capital.

As for your attack on Mansa, I'm still surprised if it was heavy losses. What defenders did he have and how much cultural defense? Was it a hill city? How did you go about with the attack? How do you promote your army?

 

[yyeah]

A query about one of the AIs in the game, whose behaviour surprised me.

Spoiler :

Think somebody above mentioned that Boudica is a unit spammer. Not really sure that is the case, maybe she is lumped in with Brennus? According to the Civ Illustrated guide (from my signature), Boudica has 6/10 for unit building. In the game she quite frankly looked freakishly weak. Cities were inhabited by archers, and eventually the odd chariot (behind walls), but not in great numbers. Suppose she never got metals, but I was surprised at how easy it was to crush her. I don't often play with her, but she was very weak in this instance.

Thing is about unit spam notes in "Know your enemy" regardelss its awsome guilde, is

Spoiler :

a lot of this notes doesnt match with my expirience on diety. Iam not saying that about all, but just some leaders comparatively to others.
I dont know what it comes from maybe dificulty, maybe in lower dif it is closer to this notes but for sure not on diety.
Theres a lot of examples i was cheking it once and yea it just ... some of them doesnt mach with my expirience.

 

[bdubbs]

@Gumbolt / Elite

Spoiler :

You're both right, my problem has been that monarch difficulty is easy enough for me that even without being able to spot great city locations or do this efficiently I can still get an early enough tech lead to basically win any way I want, but that's led to me doing the same things over and over again and its stagnating my game.

Specifically about the placement of the second city, it ended up being a terrible idea. I should have realized the capitol needed that second corn tile, and that city didn't develop nearly as well as I'd hoped, where Wonsan was much more useful than I expected.

I'm not sure what happened with Mansa that night, but I played a couple turns quick before posting and I took out his first city on a hill and only lost two hwatchas in the process. My only excuse for targetting him first was I was already dissatisfied with making my first attack with hwatchas / axes so late, and he stole a city spot I wanted and I took it a little personally. My plan was to target Pericles before I made that decision on a whim.

I could probably cap Mansa when feud finishes from the looks of things, maybe even scrape out a win if things play out right, but I really hate how limited the capitol and the second city have become because there's not enough food for both of them to continue to grow, and neither can provide any value at all without at least 1 of the corn tiles. So I'm probably going to try this map over from turn 1.

I've never done early wars too much so I want to try that again, so I'll be trying to oracle mc and go for hwatcha and most likely target pericles so I can get elephants, and because Athens is a power house if the game goes through lib.

Because I have so little experience being an Ancient war monger though a couple bench marks would really help me out. How many axes is enough for the first stack? (I know the answer is as many as you can, but I mean more like a minimum) Does it usually make more sense to just found 3 cities and start building the army? I'm definitely excited to try this again now

 

[Gumbolt]

@bdubbs

Spoiler :

First stack?? Overall you need enough axes to actually take the first few cities. So 8-9? With 6 or so Hwachas? With the plan not to any axes if possible. Let the UU do it's job.

I had a stack ready for 650bc on Greeks border. 7 Hawcha and 9 axes. At time of DOW Greeks had 3 units in their capital. By time you bombard expect 6-7. This is why the Hwaacha are so good. All those melee units can't fight off a catapult with +50% vs melee. Notice I have follow up units on the way on my save.

I founded 4 cities but probably could of done it with 3. To be fair I could of done better on tech order and stealing more workers. I prechopped a lot of the forest around capital. Whipped units in the 3 cities outside my capital.

Overall my DOW date was average. A smaller stack could of started sooner. I lost 8 Hwacha and 2 axes during my first war. Captured 4 cities and razed 1. This is why the bulk of follow up units should be Hwacha. The axes are only there to mop up weak defenders hopefully at odds of 94-99%.

Have a look at the saves.

Elites saves would be better to view.

 

[elitetroops]

@bdubbs

Spoiler :

"How many axes is enough for the first stack? (I know the answer is as many as you can, but I mean more like a minimum)"

For early rushes the correct answer would be as many as you need to take the first city. As long as you have more following behind, there's no point delaying the attack to build units that won't be needed immediately. This construction rush is a bit different though, as you can build the axes before construction and building more doesn't really delay the attack. Just bring as many as you can build.

My initial stack was 8 axes and 4 hwachas, with 2 more hwachas following one turn behind. Athens is on a hill, so I bombarded one turn and the 2 extra Hwachas caught up for the attack. If you attack the city with 4-5 CR Hwachas first, all your axes will have well over 90% odds for their attacks, so you only really need as many as he will have defenders plus maybe one extra. I'd feel quite confident going in with 4 Hwachas and 6 axes as well if you attack before 700BC. You should of course scout him well in advance so you know what to expect, but I'm pretty sure he won't have more than 3-4 defenders in Athens by the time you get there.

"Does it usually make more sense to just found 3 cities and start building the army?"

Unless you have really good city sites to grab, then yes, fewer cities is often better. If you build 2 more cities and 2 more workers for those, that's 320 hammers that instead could have been 9 axes. Make sure you have enough workers though. You need the chopping power when construction is in. Preferably long before that so that you have many prechopped forests. Roads to your target are also good to have in place by the time your Hwachas are arriving to the front line.

"I'm definitely excited to try this again now"

Go for it!

Edit: xpost with gumby. I didn't post saves this time as I was playing with Buffy. I just can't live without workers automatically stopping after prechopping anymore.

 

[Gumbolt]

Buffy has it's uses with workers. Do you just load the save with buffy?? Never really considered how to get normal games to use Buffy. Load mod and start game I guess?

Good to see were giving similar advice Elite. You must be slipping.

Spoiler :

I may for fun see if I can improve on my war start date.

BTW results page is up for SGOTM.

 

[elitetroops]

@Gumbolt, if you don't mind me commenting on your save:

Spoiler :

I think you could work on war strategy a bit to speed up conquest a lot. You declared only 3 turns later than me, but in 150BC you are only just finished with the Greek war, while I had already killed Boudi by then and taken cities from both Shaka and Gilgamesh. Okay, I had stolen 8 workers from Pericles earlier, so he was without doubt an easier target in my game, but I think you could have moved on to the next war by this date as well.

I see you took Argos very late. It's the closest city to your core and on the way to Sparta and Thebes. You should have been able to take it much earlier with all new units after the initial stack. What took you so long? I think one reason is that it seems you immediately stopped building axes and only built Hwachas while waiting for elephants to come online. You said it yourself, axes have 94%-99% odds, so why do you need 60h elephants instead of 35h axes at this time? Get a big army asap, later you can add war elephants for tougher targets. With a few more axes produced, Argos would have fallen around the same time as Sparta and Thebes.

You took Sparta and Thebes by 400BC. Why did you continue from there to Corinth? It is a really crappy city for you to have, it seems it was heavily defended as you lost 3 Hwachas over there, it took you almost 10 turns to get it, and now your army is very far from the next potential target. When you took Sparta and Thebes, your army was in perfect position to move on Boudica immediately. You should have had her scouted by then and known she was an easy target. Pericles was already beaten up enough so that he would never bother you again and you could take him out later at some suitable opportunity.

In general, try to plan your attack route so that your army ends up where you want it to be at the end of the war. If some city requires a significant detour, it's often better to leave it for later. In the BCs every turn counts, as they will have lighter defenses everywhere the sooner you get there.

To play with Buffy, load Buffy then start the game from WB save through "play a scenario" as usual. These instructions are also in the OP of every NC thread.

 

[lymond]

Gumbo - You can load the save normally and create a WB save in worldbuilder. Play as scenario in whatever mod. Just add the techs to the barbs.

I'd highly recommend using BAT instead of BUFFY. BAT has the Bull features too. BAT is basically BUFFY without the hof mod, but has the latest BUG/BULL versions and nice graphic candy

BUFFY is terrible to use if you don't have to. Hopefully, the new BUFFY - soon to be released (cross fingers) - will change that.

Still, BAT is a fabulous mod and I'm surprise more people don't use it.

(if you do have BuLL installed with your regular BUG in custom assets, your supposed to be able to make some xml changes to get the prechops and unit healing to work, but I could not make it work..there are instructions though with the files)

 

[Gumbolt]

Oh I made loads of mistakes Elite. I was playing for fun.

Spoiler :

3 turns behind you but you managed Oracle too. MC and on road to enginerring too. Good stuff.

 

[Gumbolt]

Looking at my own stats.

Spoiler :

at 150bc.
I built 12 axes and only lost 2.
I built 20 Hwacha and lost 8.
I built 12 WE and lost 0.

Corinth had 6 defenders and RNG hit me badly.

I left Argos to last as there was no road and my units headed directly towards his old capital.

Would axes over phants have speeded me up? Probably. I was 2 pop whipping phants. So not sure what a big difference it might of made. I guess 12 phants = 20-21 axes.

Interesting. Did I need to fully bombard each city??

 

[Pangaea]

Immortal Conquest win in 1140AD

Spoiler :

In the last update Gilgamesh had suddenly declared on me, and I had to move the army all the way from the south-west, where it was mopping up Boudica, to the north-east, where Gilga was invading. We survived the initial assault on the Gold city and went on the offense with Hwachas, elephants, axes and soon enough some mixed in maces and crossbows from the emergency self-teching of Machinery (can't recall last time I did this, as the AI always favour it).

He'd had enough after I'd taken 3-4 cities. Mansa invading held up a decent sized army, which gave me more of a free hand. I gave back his cities and moved down to Toku. It was a long march because I didn't want to initially assault a hill-city with 3-4 protected longbows. Protected hill-archers are OP, but protected hill-longbows.... He folded after I took one city. What a pussy.

Had kept Shaka busy by bribing him into all these wars. He was technically pleased (which doesn't protect you from Dows from him), but since I had vassals he didn't like, he was probably at best cautious. His army changed course in my territory from marching towards the east, to move north towards a crap barb city. I had already built up a decent second stack during the previous wars, preparing for the final assault on Shaka.

Decided to hit his pretty big stack in the open, outside the gates of Barbistan. The RNG was not kind, not amusing to lose 98.5% and then a 99% fight, plus several other high 90%, but we wiped most of it. By now I had Libbed MT, and Mansa and Gilga had teched Guilds and Gunpowder for me, so we had access to a few Cuirs. They did some damage to his 10 or so catapults, making for easy mopping up the next turn, plus his remaining HAs and swords.

Spoiler :

The east army arrived on Shaka's border after I had taken some workers to build a new route from Mansa, and soon enough both companies merged for an unstoppable force. Shaka was sooooo close to cap when I took the cities he had captured from Boudica - he was willing to give away a city and all gold and gpt, but not capitulate. Splitting up the army in four different directions meant he lost 2 cities and his capital a few turns later, though I failed on the 6 Cuirs vs 4 defenders attack on the 4th city, which he gave me anyway when he finally capped.

Spoiler :

A fun game, thanks for hosting it

 

[Gumbolt]

Nice game pangea.

Spoiler :

It's strange the dates for this game. Intrigued to know why you went for cuirs?? I didn't need more than pults, axes and phants. What date did you start your first war??

Bit confused why in your 1ad save you are building missionary and religious buildings. Why didn't you go full out for the kill here??

 

[Pangaea]

Nice game pangea.

Spoiler :

It's strange the dates for this game. Intrigued to know why you went for cuirs?? I didn't need more than pults, axes and phants. What date did you start your first war??

Bit confused why in your 1ad save you are building missionary and religious buildings. Why didn't you go full out for the kill here??

Thanks.

Spoiler :

Just checked out your saves, and it's very similar to me actually, except I only bothered with 2 extra cities, and never got the fish up there. Attacked in 650BC, same turn as you, with 6 Hwachas, 5 Axes and a Chariot, and 2 more Axes coming a turn behind.

I played this game for fun, and I've been on hiatus for several months, so didn't necessarily play as 'effective' as I could (eg, see I was building a library in the capital, to get a GS by 1AD-ish). To answer your questions..

Could perhaps have beat everybody with a phants army, but I kept teching and it's easy to go for Cuirs. They helped in the final war against Shaka. He had some maces then, and longbows, plus Itza.

The Jew missionary was to convert the capital to Judaism, so I could convert to that. Most Greek cities were Jewish, he had built the Shrine, and I wanted the OR bonus for the capital. Later on I switched Shaka to Judaism too. Like to get up monasteries for the 10% bonus in the capital. +30% certainly helps with a Buro capital.

Of course I could have gone more 100% for war, though there's no chance I could have come close to elite's very impressive win (nice trick btw); but then I didn't workersteal either. +8 workers helps! It was a fun game played a bit more casual than is the norm, and I do like to focus a bit on the economy too, instead of full on whipping reign. It's one of the reasons I've grown fond of space games, although the end game micro is nightmarish. You get to build more than barracks + units, and can get involved with proper empire management.

Like elitetroops wrote to you, I'm sure I could have moved on to Boudica sooner, as I saw she was hilariously weak.

Looking at some savefile names:
650BC - DoW Pericles
75AD - Pericles dead (don't recall why it took so long, possibly a far-off city somewhere), DoW Boudica next turn
150AD - 10 cities
450AD - Mansa peace vassaled
740AD - Capped Gilga
940AD - Capped Toku (long march)
1030AD - Dow Shaka
1140AD - Conquest

(edit): No, I wasn't building a library in the capital to get a GS from there, was already running two scientists in Gold city, and had Oracle pollution in the capital, but simply wanted it for teching. Spear was because I saw Pericles had horses, though I hopefully put something else in the queue this turn and 2-pop whipped it.

Have attached my 650BC attack date save, in case somebody want to have a gander. Hopefully it doesn't look too disastrous


Btw, workers stopping for chops works fine in BUG. I'm using BULL though. A little pain to need to rename the .dll files between BUG and BUFFY games, but it takes 10 seconds, so is hardly a big deal. Mostly play BUFFY now anyway, but needed BUG for this game (though I now see you could convert it somehow).

 

[Gumbolt]

Spoiler :

I really got to get more peace vassels. If I could of peace vasselled 1-2 Ai here it would of speeded up my game greatly. I don't think on my game Mansa would of peacve vasselled.

I am not much in the loop either. Hadn't fully completed a game in months since this game. SGOTM does kind of eat up your playing time. Plus real life.

I also really lacked engineering on my game. Elite had a plan for this. I was losing 50-60 gold a turn so had no plan.

Elites date was even more impressive.

 

[Pangaea]

Please start writing "would have". "Would of" is wrong on so many levels. Sorry, but I've been reading that error for years, and it's doing my head in

Spoiler :

SGOTM must have been a nightmare. It looked very difficult.

I missed Engineering too, for the faster movement, but Hwachas are pretty decent until Longbows are everywhere. Thankfully I didn't come up against the dreaded Walls+Castles cities everywhere, making warfare in that era viciously slow.

My economy was in tatters too, but because I focused on early cottages in the capital and developing the economy, it gradually improved, and capturing the Mids from Pericles' wonderwhoring helped to slowly tech while at 0%. It was never as bad as -50-60 though; that sounds pretty bad, and tough to get out of.

Winning so early in the ADs is definitely impressive stuff by elitetroops, with a very apt name Doubt I could have done that, even if I tried to shadow his moves.

Several people chose to Oracle MC. In this game I got MC pretty late (often a weakness of mine), at the end of the Celtic war, because I don't like to tech it myself. Didn't seriously consider picking it with the Oracle, as that decision was between Currency or Construction. I went with Construction to get the war started a little earlier, and then teched Currency at full pelt with capture gold. Reasonably well developed cottages, with library in the gold city and capital helped. Wasn't far off 300 by 1AD, which I think is pretty decent. I usually try to get to 200.

 

[Pangaea]

To add a little to the above, writing without spoilers as it's a more general point. Perhaps I underestimate early forges, but it tends to come at an awkward time. Especially when making some kind of early war, I'm usually busy building units and early infrastructure like granaries and the odd library. Cities aren't huge, so the 25% boost from the Forge isn't great. They're also expensive, and I feel those hammers can be better spent into units. They're good for getting more bang for your whips, but the fact they cost so much make them a bit awkward to build in the BCs.

 

[lymond]

Pangaea -

Attaching a DLL switcher tool I've been using for some years. Actually, got these from Dhoom, but all they are are just .bat files.

Really simple:

1) open each file in notepad
2) create a copy of each dll and rename as it is in the .bat file
3) adjust the path - to civ - near the top to match your own path

Again, with BAT you don't need to do all this (and you can even run BAT with the BULL DLL active), but you can't play every forum game in BAT unless it is used or you convert it. Ha..people continue to still ignore BAT.