Nobles' Club 196 - Lincoln of America

[Fish Man]

That's the point - by 800ad the game has already been won using worker stealing and early war.

Very very often not possible on deity. You can HA at most 2 civs and then longbows appear which are a brick wall for any ancient/classical unit. Medieval warfare is a slog with castles and whatnot and very often completely ruins your economy. And workerstealing - the AI usually protects its workers with archers so unless you have t30 chariots or quechas good luck. Even if not, declaring war early causes them to spam archers, making killing them that much more a PITA.

EDIT: I see what you mean by “won” as in winning position. I’m still not sold - early war is very costly and can set you back in development by over 500 years. They also have a chance of failing especially if enemy is agg and/or has metal. Forget about lib or keeping in the tech race at least until the renaissance. Finally the point about workerstealing stands - they guard their workers almost always IIRC. There *are* cases where early wars are immensely helpful or even needed; however they are far from the revolutionary find you describe them as.

 

[Swordnboard]

Undefeatable brings up some important caveats, but I really do agree and resonate with Hankinsohl's observations. Early warfare can be REALLY good, even on deity. The main difference is that with a deity AI you probably won't be able to take everything in one go. Yes, the AI do build archers while you are at war, but with careful timing of declarations, opportunistic unit killing, and ceasefires, you can often get them to switch back to building more workers and settlers for you to take rather than more archers for you to kill. Plus archers can be lured and caught outside of cities, sometimes even without city gifting. Also the deity AI only start with 2 archers per city (this is less than immortal where they get 3 archers for their single city) so an escorted worker is probably less likely on deity if anything.

I think early warfare is really good, and I'm still practicing and developing my own techniques, so I can't even imagine what the very best deity players are able to do with it.

Undefeatable, you seem to have quite a strong focus on the long game/staying in the tech race, but honestly in these "early warfare" type games it doesn't really matter, and a different mindset is needed if one's goal is fast conquest or domination. Even if your economy is in STRIKE mode and you are an era behind in tech, a victory is a victory. Even starting warfare at elephants and finishing with medieval units can often lead to domination victories around 1000 AD (or even sooner if you're willing to manipulate the capitulation system), and using an earlier unit like axes or HA's to begin with can be even better, as long as you can find a metalless AI to attack.

Edit: I'll add a caveat of my own. I really don't like playing super-poor starts, so I tend not to, and I think this probably colors my opinion of early warfare, since the advantages of a relatively rich start are incredibly important for early rushes but less so for, say, a cuirassier rush.

 

[Fish Man]

Undefeatable brings up some important caveats, but I really do agree and resonate with Hankinsohl's observations. Early warfare can be REALLY good, even on deity. The main difference is that with a deity AI you probably won't be able to take everything in one go. Yes, the AI do build archers while you are at war, but with careful timing of declarations, opportunistic unit killing, and ceasefires, you can often get them to switch back to building more workers and settlers for you to take rather than more archers for you to kill. Plus archers can be lured and caught outside of cities, sometimes even without city gifting. Also the deity AI only start with 2 archers per city (this is less than immortal where they get 3 archers for their single city) so an escorted worker is probably less likely on deity if anything.

I think early warfare is really good, and I'm still practicing and developing my own techniques, so I can't even imagine what the very best deity players are able to do with it.

Undefeatable, you seem to have quite a strong focus on the long game/staying in the tech race, but honestly in these "early warfare" type games it doesn't really matter, and a different mindset is needed if one's goal is fast conquest or domination. Even if your economy is in STRIKE mode and you are an era behind in tech, a victory is a victory. Even starting warfare at elephants and finishing with medieval units can often lead to domination victories around 1000 AD (or even sooner if you're willing to manipulate the capitulation system), and using an earlier unit like axes or HA's to begin with can be even better, as long as you can find a metalless AI to attack.

Edit: I'll add a caveat of my own. I really don't like playing super-poor starts, so I tend not to, and I think this probably colors my opinion of early warfare, since the advantages of a relatively rich start are incredibly important for early rushes but less so for, say, a cuirassier rush.

Well said. I might be overestimating the AI, then; I usually build deity AIs up as some unassailable monolith that can only be cracked open with cuirs, cannons, or tanks but sometimes they *do* forget to watch their backs and beeline alpha or build 7 cities and only 5 archers or something.

That being said, HAs vs spears is still supremely painful and should not be attempted unless you have like 10 forests you can chop or quite a bit of food to whip from.

 

[Gumbolt]

By won he means conquest or domination win.

Going early HA/plants/axes on immortal or below can allow you to limit or take out 2-3 AI. Meaning on a pangea map you can easily take down the entire map. Even with longbows, knights can still be effective. Castles can be a pain.

Cuirs are good on pangea maps as you can chain vassel all the ai. On these maps I turn off research after engineering.

If you play the game well you will have ai peace vassel to you. You will also keep the ai busy with war.

Really pends on the map. If a second ai only has archers it makes further wars very possible. Spears can be a pain. If you start near warmongers then this can add some caution to early warfare. Overall play the map.

 

[yyeah]

Hi all,
Thanks for posting looks like nice start . Lets c can i handle deity after such a long break . Wish me luck.

 

[hankinsohl]

Very very often not possible on deity. You can HA at most 2 civs and then longbows appear which are a brick wall for any ancient/classical unit. Medieval warfare is a slog with castles and whatnot and very often completely ruins your economy. And workerstealing - the AI usually protects its workers with archers so unless you have t30 chariots or quechas good luck. Even if not, declaring war early causes them to spam archers, making killing them that much more a PITA.

EDIT: I see what you mean by “won” as in winning position. I’m still not sold - early war is very costly and can set you back in development by over 500 years. They also have a chance of failing especially if enemy is agg and/or has metal. Forget about lib or keeping in the tech race at least until the renaissance. Finally the point about workerstealing stands - they guard their workers almost always IIRC. There *are* cases where early wars are immensely helpful or even needed; however they are far from the revolutionary find you describe them as.

Actually by "won" I mean that the game has completely finished.

There used to be two excellent playthroughs illustrating the early war strategy uploaded by CSeanNY but unfortunately all his youtube content has been deleted.

 

[Fish Man]

Actually by "won" I mean that the game has completely finished.

There used to be two excellent playthroughs illustrating the early war strategy uploaded by CSeanNY but unfortunately all his youtube content has been deleted.

Actually, you know what, I can see that being the case. After medieval era units the AI doesn't get anything really better for at least 1000 years so if you hit'em with cats and trebs you can brute-force your way through anyone on a pangaea by 4-2 whipping and sacking legions of siege units upon the enemy's walls. On continents, fractal, or iso however things can be different...

 

[yyeah]

975 BC Zara Owned me . Damn i just started to produce HA's.

 

[Gumbolt]

Welcome back Yyeah!

Yeah Zara can be very unpredictable. Especially if he starts with metals. Declares at pleased too.

On Deity you are pretty much gone if an Ai attacks you early. Is 975bc too late for HA on Deity?

 

[Fish Man]

Welcome back Yyeah!

Yeah Zara can be very unpredictable. Especially if he starts with metals. Declares at pleased too.

On Deity you are pretty much gone if an Ai attacks you early. Is 975bc too late for HA on Deity?

I’d say kinda, yeah. 1000BC is the guideline I use for HAs, but I use that as the rush *start* mark. Assuming you rush in 500BC that is probably too late, considering the AI would’ve built up a large amount of swords/spears by then, or worse, teched feuda.

 

[yyeah]

Welcome back Yyeah!

Yeah Zara can be very unpredictable. Especially if he starts with metals. Declares at pleased too.

On Deity you are pretty much gone if an Ai attacks you early. Is 975bc too late for HA on Deity?

Hi Gumbolt

I agree with Undefeatable, but i would say that 1000BC its a rush with gold definetly doable, but i went for writing be4 hbr - that was bad. at 975bc i had like 4 HAs ?? that wasnt enough.
I was planning to attack like ~~800BC but yeah better idea was just rush hbr.

 

[Gumbolt]

There are many who advise library before rushes. It is a 25% bonus once you have built the library. Of course on deity each tech takes that little bit longer to reach.

I have a deity game I need to play on at some point here. Been away for a week.

 

[Fish Man]

There are many who advise library before rushes. It is a 25% bonus once you have built the library. Of course on deity each tech takes that little bit longer to reach.

I have a deity game I need to play on at some point here. Been away for a week.

Hmm, interesting. Unless I’m waiting for cities to develop or have a cap worth a library so early (gold, etc.) I prefer HBR first. On deity writing IS a significant beaker sink that you can instead use to tech to archery. Also a library is 90h which is mighty expensive this stage of the game; that could go towards 2 HA or 3 chariots. 25% bonus sounds nice but if you have like a 20 commerce cap that’s, what, 5 extra science? Takes a while to pay off IMO.

You can usually get writing + sailing by pawning HBR after the war. Also could get it for free if you beat the snot out of the enemy AI hard enough and they happen to have alpha. While I’m waiting for HBR I build barracks and then chariots to sack into the first few cities to soften defenders, increasing the chance that my newly made HAs will survive and get promoted.

 

[Fippy]

Writing before hbr is good if you bulb maths

Or if you can get foreign trade routes fast (close AI and connections ready),
and high base hammers for building a library & not sure on what to spend them otherwise..
certainly need some stronger reasons than 25% research alone.

 

[Fish Man]

Writing before hbr is good if you bulb maths

Or if you can get foreign trade routes fast (close AI and connections ready),
and high base hammers for building a library & not sure on what to spend them otherwise..
certainly need some stronger reasons than 25% research alone.

Another reason: for some reason you placed a city in a stupid location and now you need a border pop to get your only horse. Should've thought things through, but you didn't, and now you're forced to tech either mysticism or the vastly more useful writing. Two guesses as to which I'd pick...

And yes, ah, the math bulb. I've always been sqeamish about "wasting" beakers on a bulb, but it isn't really wasted if you get 50% more horse archer for your chops, now is it?

 

[sampsa]

Good comments. Mostly writing is a distraction when HA-rushing, but with low commerce you sometimes run into "I have nothing useful to build" if beelining HBR. Thus pottery or writing becomes an option and the choice is dictated by land available and traits.

very slightly spoily about this map

Spoiler :

Since we have capital gold (i.e. fast "natural" teching), I see no reason for writing. Maybe pottery, since there are tiles to cottage and early granaries gain value with charismatic (extra happiness).

 

[Gumbolt]

Hmmm

Spoiler My game :

Perhaps I should of skipped writing then. 1000bc I had a library in my capital. Could I of reach HBR/hunting and archery sooner. I had no foreign trade routes. The AI was building swords/spears by 1000bc. Apart from Germans who had 5 archers with a wall in nearby city.

Which makes my 700ad finish look rather poor given issues I had with Mansa near the end. So maybe a 300-400ad or earlier finish is possible if you play perfectly. Without using gifting cities to get an earlier vassel chain here.

 

[sampsa]

You managed to bait me into playing.

Deity/normal/NHNE

T66

Spoiler :

T0 check SW with warrior, lose only plains wine so settling on the ivory is obvious for a much faster start. Mining-BW obv too IMO, lots of chops available to accelerate the start. 2nd city 3SE of capital, floodplain/cow/gold-area is a bit too far for my taste on deity. Maybe if go mining-hunting-archery, but that also leads to a slower, unconnected 2nd city. We have ways to take the city later (we know we have phants) if Zara beats us to it. And he does, so 3rd city to the south. Nice spot with two decent -resources and many forests.

Deity barbarians need to be respected, especially with the tundra area in the south (and jungly NE). So after BW, went hunting-archery-AH-wheel-pottery. Still they caused much inconvenience as I needed an emergency whip archer to be safe and it lost with good odds and it was hard to improve some tiles. Southern city archer harvested 8xp with no problems though. With the huge -cap granaries are awesome and got them up in every city asap.

T66 HBR in, so should be easy to chop+whip a decent army by T75 (1000 BC).... except that Zara pops 3rd border and we lose the horse. I saw the possibility of this coming (hence the text "get monum") but the speed with which he got to 100 surprised me (stele obv, duh). So, no interest in continuing, even though there are still many ways to make things happen. Whip settler, settle 3E of cap, get cottages up and tech towards elepult for example. Getting a monument up and the horse back takes a while so I wouldn't insist on making HA-rush work anymore.

edit: Oh, settling 2nd 1E seems just better in hindsight and incidentally would avoid all these troubles...

 

[Gumbolt]

Glad to see I tempted you.

Spoiler Thoughts :

Unlucky on the horse. 1350bc and AI already have 7-8 cities. Betting Zara would of already had metal connected here.

Settling on the horse would of speeded up any rush.

Land to south barb wise is and was annoying.

 

[sampsa]

@Gumbolt

Spoiler :

Yes, creative deity AI close to 100% has metal by T75, but it doesn't matter that much. Them having 7-8 cities also means that they are lightly defended all over the place. A spear here and there doesn't stop the attack. I'm sure with the amount of chops+whips we have available here taking Z out with HAs would be more or less a technicality.