No ranged units challenge, masochistic version

[sufficiency]

Sufficiency, did you ever finish your game? You seemed to be in a relatively good position with no major AI runaways.

I didn't play it these days, but I do plan to continue once I get some time to sit down and duke it out with the Arabs. Real life OP.

 

[Old Peter]

In my second attemt at this I am massing cavalry again, used these to knock out the Netherlands. Uppgraded these to Landships and later tanks to conquer Siam.

Used my 3 saved GS for Laser now! Just uppgraded all those tanks to modern armor. Most of them have March.

Backed by some anti aircraft guns, I hope they will be enough this time for Arabia.

This challenge proved to be tougher than I thought. Remember this map has a very very good starting location etc.

In my second attemt I focused much more on science for quicker tanks. I went Rationalism this time, not Honor. The units have fewer uppgrades, but I think it was worth it. Laser at turn 200 must be quick right?!

 

[Old Peter]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=490271&page=5

 

[Deau]

The answer depends on you personal goal.
It's not an official competition and there is no way (and no reason) to impose rules on players who don't want to follow them. Thus you can do whatever you feel is fair if all you want is to win. Reload, cook the map and use all available exploits. For me personally these challenges are about learning and comparing different strategies, i.e. figuring out which ones are viable and which aren't in different circumstances. Everything stated above defeats the purpose. I only play on random maps, random opponents and standard settings. No policy/promotion savings.

I guess my question should've been: Have people been selecting oponents with flat lands bias and if not, have the people who succeeded a game faced such a setup out of shear luck?

It just doesn't sound worth the challenge to play 250-300 turns of warmongering to wind up against a runaway pacacuti with a capital+2-3 other cities in a mountain ridge corner with at best 3 neighboring tiles to attack from, one or two of which are river crossings

 

[Grendeldef]

I guess my question should've been: Have people been selecting oponents with flat lands bias and if not, have the people who succeeded a game faced such a setup out of shear luck?

In this particular case I can say no; no selected opponents nor cooking with options of any sort apart from raging barbs seemed to on by accident. I often play with raging barbs & didn't notice it was ticked so I didn't take of. I hate to call selecting opponents, saving policies or promotions cheating but cheezy at least but everyone for their taste; it doesn't affect my games so it doesn't bother me.
I pretty much share the opinion of The Pilgrim word by word on this one.

And bloody excellent job Old Peter; never mind it wasn't a virgin run. I'm so happy that people have the patience to keep on shooting stuff every turn. I get so pissed on the unit selection system that I'd like to either disband all my units or just kill everything & everyone but that'd require using units so I live in a constant catch-22.

 

[sufficiency]

I think I am going to fail at the challenge in that Carthage game. I chose to beeline to Rifles to kill Arabia after Korea, but it didn't work out because I couldn't get my happiness to above -10 for like 20 turns. Now Arabia is in modern era and I am like 20-turns behind in tech. If I backtrack to an earlier save I might be able to save my game, but right now I am debating if I should just start over.

I guess my question should've been: Have people been selecting oponents with flat lands bias and if not, have the people who succeeded a game faced such a setup out of shear luck?

It just doesn't sound worth the challenge to play 250-300 turns of warmongering to wind up against a runaway pacacuti with a capital+2-3 other cities in a mountain ridge corner with at best 3 neighboring tiles to attack from, one or two of which are river crossings

5 mil yr world age will certain make the challenge easier, but I didn't play that way.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I guess my question should've been: Have people been selecting oponents with flat lands bias and if not, have the people who succeeded a game faced such a setup out of shear luck?

Other than Peter nobody really submitted a winning save. Peter's game is on randomly generated map. So success rate may be not as high as we hoped it would. Although I'm really not surprised.

If I were submitting this game to HoF, I would cook the map to the max. But since the point is to find out how viable non ranged approach is, that's not very useful here.

It just doesn't sound worth the challenge to play 250-300 turns of warmongering to wind up against a runaway pacacuti with a capital+2-3 other cities in a mountain ridge corner with at best 3 neighboring tiles to attack from, one or two of which are river crossings

Yeah. Btw, in my game (which I hopefully finish one day ) one half of the pangaea is almost totally flat and second half is all hills. I'm in the middle of cleaning out the first, however the runaways Napoleon and William are (of course) well hidden behind the mountains. I'll have to wait for modern era units, probably, to take care of them. I can't amass second army that is big enough for now. And while limited in quantity unpromoted manducavs won't cut it.

I pretty much share the opinion of The Pilgrim word by word on this one.

Shocking!

Btw, I had no idea raging barbs were on! I noticed at some point they're spawning too fast, but thought it's me not paying attention as usual. Never occurred to me to check the settings.
Oh my... Had I known that, I would've been farming cams for CS influence much more aggressively.

I get so pissed on the unit selection system that I'd like to either disband all my units or just kill everything & everyone but that'd require using units so I live in a constant catch-22.

Same here. I hate moving large armies and often try to do more with less. Another shocker.

 

[Grendeldef]

Btw, I had no idea raging barbs were on! I noticed at some point they're spawning too fast, but thought it's me not paying attention as usual. Never occurred to me to check the settings.
Oh my... Had I known that, I would've been farming cams for CS influence much more aggressively.

Like I said it was accidental though in my game I didn't notice any difference but I often play with raging barbs anyway.
I corrected the original post few minutes after I presented the game as I noticed those barbs but I didn't make a number out of it as I thought perhaps nobody had already started. Besides, usually the difference is immediately noticeable.

Same here. I hate moving large armies and often try to do more with less. Another shocker.

One of the reasons why I got customed to using artillery & SBs back in vanilla while mostly ignoring other ground troops - convenience ftw - and adopted again the same practice shortly after G&K.

 

[BlackWizard]

Has anyone tried this on Water heavy maps? Might be much more challenging compared to other water maps. Even more challenging than pangaea because you cant move your boats after attacking before enough promotions are gained?

 

[sufficiency]

Alright I am going to attempt this again. No Carthage this time... Debating between Germany, Japan, Ethiopeia, and Songhai right now.

EDIT: I guess if I take Spain and find an natural wonder early this will probably be much, MUCH easier. But that's kind of cheating.

 

[smallfish]

I would say go for Nippon and put folks like Monty, Nappy, Wu Zetian, Biz, Hiawatha etc.

Spoiler :

Be careful though, some of the AI ranged units might get Logistics promo

Spoiler :

 

[sufficiency]

Alright. Attempt #2 on Immortal.

Previously I have always used the full Honor + Oligarchy approach. However, after my last serious attempt with Carthage which I grew (semi-)tall and suffered a lot of happiness and bpt issues, I decided to just go Liberty ICS (with Messenger to the Gods) instead. I think I am at a much better position now.

Lots of pics:

Spoiler :

The starting point was pretty nice. River, 2 stone 1 marble (although I failed to get Stone Circle).

I settled my first city near Uluru, founded my religion on Turn 65. My neighbours are Askia, Lizzy, and Ramky. Ramky hates me to the guts (why? It might have to do with me stealing a worker from a CS under his protection ), but he is playing very passively and pretty much never expanded. Yes that Atlatist was my first scout - I forgot to disband him because after playing Honor starts so many times I got into the bad habit of staffing useless units in my cities.

There were plenty of luxuries around and I hit a natural golden age. As I was taking advantage of it to get my Oracle (because why not), I was pondering who I should attack first. Then Askia helped me in my decision process by expanding into my face and building the Petra.

Unfortunately my land has absolutely ZERO horses and iron, so I had to get pikes. Almost ready...

Arabia immediately became Guarded after I upgraded to pikes even though I did nothing to piss him off, which was funny. Anyway, Askia didn't really offer any resistances beside some warriors and chariot archers D), so I easily crushed him. I captured Gao, got his Petra, ToA, and STATUE OF ZEUS, then he surrendered to me offering Jeane as tribute.

Fast forward ~30ish turns, I am currently the tech leader and the only one in renaissance (~150 bpt without NC!). Crushing England will be merely a matter of time (I am pretty sure those are the only units Lizzy got, but I probably can't capture London with pikes only so I will wait for some muskets. The only "runaway" is Pachi; I am not too familiar with his flavours, but he is going Honor so I assume he is pretty aggressive. Other than that, Arabia is pretty much dead, Spain is very passive, and Siam is too isolated and probably can't get very far to hurt me. Most likely I will wipe out Lizzy and get some of her wonders then go after Pachi (might need to go through Arabia first).

Things are looking great. Hopefully I will beat this on Immortal.

 

[sufficiency]

Alrighty. Here's part 2.

Spoiler :

London fell surprisingly easily. I grossly underestimated the damage of my pikes and muskets + Statue of Zeus. Lizzy has some wonders (SH and Mosque), but nothing remarkable. I don't think I built anymore missionaries this game.

Arabia was next. Harun had a lot of Camel Archers. Unfortunately for him, I had a lot of Lancers (from my pikes).... but oh wait, Lancers suck. Fortunately my rifles were enough to take out Arabia.

That Tyre worker was originally the one I stole at the beginning of the game(which pissed Siam off). While fighting Arabia I used that worker to build some roads, but Arabia stole him... then I stole him back and returned to Tyre for 45 Influence

Alberti's report at turn 200, however, shows that I have pretty much won and I was just dicking around at that point.

Yay culture!

At that point, Pachi was around 11k sticks, I was 8k, and the rest were < 5k. Pachi, however, had the Great Wall. So I figured I would deal with Siam first (with a sneak attack!) and hopefully Pachi would finish Dynamite by then (or even better, take Spain out).

After messing around a bit to convince Siam to surrender, focus shifted to Pachi... unfortunately even at Turn 250, for some reason he still didn't have Dynamite, which made the whole thing really painful. However, it was Mech Infantry + Tanks vs Rifles, so it wasn't really much of a fight.

Meanwhile I sent a few tanks across the ocean to deal with Isabella. For some reason, I often take on Isabella last when I try to play for domination victory. I guess it's because she doesn't hate warmongers and do not do annoying things that want me to prioritize her. Pic taken after "One more turn..."

Yes I actually finished Autocracy that game. I finally got the achievement for it.

Unit List:

I probably had 40ish units. Overall that game was really easy, because all my neighbours were playing for culture and let me ICS for free (as far as I can tell, Lizzy, Askia, and Harun were going culture, Ramky and Isabella were going diplomatic, and Pachi was going for domination but didn't snowball very hard even though he wiped Rome out); after turn 150ish I was basically walking into other people's capital with units 1 or 2 eras ahead. If this was on Deity it would have been a lot harder because I can't even imagine being able to get a tech lead in Deity.

Furthermore, I would have easily and quickly won by science that game (probably sub 250) if I opened Order and staffed more science specialists. Overall it wasn't a very satisfactory game.

One thing I did learn, however, is that melee units can actually do damage to cities.

 

[Matthew.]

Nice game

Yeah, melee can attack cities all right, as long as you keep up with city defense (or equivalent to it through bonuses). I run melee/siege games fairly often--that is starting at trebs/cannon, and my infantry will usually help bring down weaker cities.

Seems like the best way is to (as usual) ignore the warrior line and just go straight to pikes and transition into cav/tanks. At tanks, I'm assuming it is nearly as easy as any other strategy, since moving after attack allows you to attack with a crap ton of tanks in a single turn.

I may give this challenge another try, if only so I can play with super tanks.

 

[sufficiency]

Nice game

Yeah, melee can attack cities all right, as long as you keep up with city defense (or equivalent to it through bonuses). I run melee/siege games fairly often--that is starting at trebs/cannon, and my infantry will usually help bring down weaker cities.

Seems like the best way is to (as usual) ignore the warrior line and just go straight to pikes and transition into cav/tanks. At tanks, I'm assuming it is nearly as easy as any other strategy, since moving after attack allows you to attack with a crap ton of tanks in a single turn.

I may give this challenge another try, if only so I can play with super tanks.

So I decided to try to see how fact I can win by science that game. I couldn't find a good save point, but there was one right after I took over Mecca (looted 700 culture that went toward my next SP). I had to anarchy myself from Autocracy to Order, but I still managed to win by turn 257. There were some small mess-ups and one point of SP I wasted into autocracy, so I think if I fix those I can get a science victory sub-250.

One very interesting thing was that on my science victory game, Pachi went Order (in the original playthrough he went for Autocracy) and managed to crush Isabella very quickly. I am really curious as to what influenced his decision. In fact, on the 225 Alberti report, the Order Pachi had 20k sticks, up from Autocracy Pachi's 11k sticks.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Nicely done, Sufficiency. If anyone wants another proof that science wins the game regardless VC type, you've got it.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I decided to give it another try as well. I loved Songhai in vanilla but pretty much forgot about them since G&K until Light Cleric mentioned it in the context of this challenge.
So I started a game a while ago, almost didn't expect to finish it and then an argument in "Playing Askia" thread got me in the mood again.

Immortal, pangaea, everything standard. No promotion savings, no reloads.

Spoiler :

Pretty ordinary start. I rerolled only once, the previous start had no horses at all. Plains are good for horses. I settled in place, went 2 cities NC Liberty, with Honor as second tree. After NC settled 2 more cities to grab 8 horses in total and started spamming horsemen and CA.
Babylon was to my right, with Ottomans further to the East, France and the Dutch, the two strongest civs, to my left well protected by endless hills and more importantly huge impassable mountain chain. Pacal, aka the dead man, on the coast south of France. Moving East first was a no brainer. I didn't push too hard towards Chivalry, since I wanted to have semi decent science, growth and religion first. Wasn't sure how deep into tech tree I'll have to go. I picked Holy Warriors mainly to check it out. I barely use it if ever.

Spoiler :

I attacked Babylon at ~t100, walked into garbage city and upgraded all horses. However, Babylon City with its walls and tons of pikes was somewhat a pain. Only strength 26 but I lost 2 guys, I think. It finally fell on t109.

Spoiler :

From that point on things went pretty smoothly. I took a detour to liberate Singapore, captured Akkad and got Edrine, which is conveniently next to Istanbul, for peace without any further losses. I kept buying new manducavs from conquest money and faith non stop and started amassing second army to go after Maya, Netherlands and France.

Spoiler :

10 turns later Istanbul and Ankara were down, leaving Sully with Bursa. 10 more turns later Palengue and Delhi fell.

Spoiler :

In the meanwhile Darius decided to troll me with GW. Not that it matters. Fail gold means more manducavs. I have ~25 by now.

Spoiler :

My next steps:
Eastern army will heal a little and take GW soon. Western army will have to capture Chichen Itza - the only path to France and Holland - will raze soft french cities and charge on Paris and Amsterdam. Paris is NW of Chartres and Amsterdam is right above Rio. I'm ~20 turns away from Military Tradition. GS is cooking and will speed it up. Not sure I'll need it. French army is not bigger than mine and dutch is non existent. The only annoyance is Amsterdam which at 46 and William hit Industrial already. But I have spare GG, so I'm not too worried.