OCC Always War

[nishant1911]

@kidR
you were right ,i played again from 990 ad save and readying commando morale march infantries. now i am taking one city every turn

 

[Kid R]

@kidR
you were right ,i played again from 990 ad save and readying commando morale march infantries. now i am taking one city every turn

woohoo!

Problem I had in my last try with a small attacking stack was the number of defenders in some cities was so great it took several turns to kill them all, even if they were crappy 0.1 health horse archers. Presumably they have less defenders if you go early though.

How are the tanks working out? I thought I'd throw a bunch of them into the mix next time, purely because of blitz. But in other respects I thought they might be too easy to kill, or at least freeze into uselessness from having to heal all the time. What with the huge numbers of AI units attacking them and all.

 

[nishant1911]

woohoo!

Problem I had in my last try with a small attacking stack was the number of defenders in some cities was so great it took several turns to kill them all, even if they were crappy 0.1 health horse archers. Presumably they have less defenders if you go early though.

How are the tanks working out? I thought I'd throw a bunch of them into the mix next time, purely because of blitz. But in other respects I thought they might be too easy to kill, or at least freeze into uselessness from having to heal all the time. What with the huge numbers of AI units attacking them and all.

every AI city has at average 5 defenders (at the least with occasional SODs) with lots of troops shuffling between the cities. the key is to take a city , then explore a bit with one infantry through the hills, then place all the infantries in the striking distance of atleast three cities.next turn simply raze the city with least defenders.AI is stupid, it doesn't know we have commando units
i haven't reached tanks right now in my commando try.
and yeah blitz is nice.
frankly, it is getting a bit boring and frustrating seeing AI just resettling the land.
so i am going obsolete's style and declaring my victory at this point

 

[vanatteveldt]

Grrrr just tried again.

I think I played pretty well, got GW, oracle->MC, mids, held the pass without too many axemen (which I find to be a drag on the economy) until CS+machinery, then beelined liberalism->biology and then to rifling.

Got judaism as there was an opportunity and I figured razing two holies is easier than one, plus early OR is quite nice. Stayed in OR except for one stint in pacifism while doing the "long beeline".

By the time I got rifles, however, I was facing cuirassiers and grenadiers. I broke out nonetheless with a group of C6+D4+march+morale riflemen (no commando since I didn't research miltrad yet). They were destroyed before razing the first city.

It seems that the beeline to bio was too much, although the growth you get from bio is fantastic, especially with all farms on the FP's. Nishant, others: Which of the following did you do?

1) just got to bio+rifles earlier (eg with a CS slingshot (which I think is a CS crapshot...))
2) beeline rifling before bio (with lib?)
3) breakout later?

Also, at the points where you don't have anything useful to build, do you build units anyway for later upgrade fodder, or build research? I find the former is not so useful, as upgrades are horribly expensive and research seems most important to survive the numerical onslaught. Or do you all do the chariots -> overflow trick?

 

[Kid R]

Which of the following did you do?

1) just got to bio+rifles earlier (eg with a CS slingshot (which I think is a CS crapshot...))
2) beeline rifling before bio (with lib?)
3) breakout later?

Also, at the points where you don't have anything useful to build, do you build units anyway for later upgrade fodder, or build research? I find the former is not so useful, as upgrades are horribly expensive and research seems most important to survive the numerical onslaught. Or do you all do the chariots -> overflow trick?

1. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get CS from the oracle, even if you could work all the high tiles right from the start to get the prereqs. An AI will build it at turn 70-something, certainly before T80. I took COL the first two times and was happy with it, so also in the 3rd run-through (in progress) which I *WILL* win!

2, 3. Gotta breakout later. It seems rifles are too weak around that time - I had the same pathetic results when I tried it with them. The AI cuirassiers are too good vs all the first strikes we've been loading onto our units! Even getting to rifling considerably earlier so the rifles could make it further than the river just outside the door, and raze a few cities, they definitely couldn't clear the whole map.

4. Without deviating too much from the military beelines you can usually slip some wonder techs into the schedule, so that's something useful to build (IMO). Otherwise I built .

 

[nishant1911]

1. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get CS from the oracle, even if you could work all the high tiles right from the start to get the prereqs.

i got cs from oracle in my both second and third try (1575 and 1675 bc) WITHOUT BULBING mathematics. so atleast i won't agree with that.
maybe it has to do something with how fast you meet the AIs.

 

[Kid R]

Interesting - I tried the slingshot a couple of times, and the oracle went before 2100. Just RNG stuff going on there I suppose.

No big deal - I was happy to go aesthetics -> literature instead of COL anyway. I love my shiny stuff

 

[vanatteveldt]

Hmmm I'll reload before the breakout and plan a new try at commando infantry. These should eat pretty much whatever the computer has at that point, assuming it's not going to outrun me anytime soon.

I've been attaching all my GG's now, leading to around 10-15 superunits by the time I got rifling (+/-- 1000 AD? (from memory)). I could also have settled all these, getting units out of the gate with say 30XP. = 6 promos. That means that we could get C4+commando+march units out of the door. Wouldn't it make sense to use say 50 or 100 of these rather than 6 super-super units? Did anyone try?

Probably, the first 2-4 GG's should be attached anyway to hold the pass initially, but the rest can be settled. Or would we lose the pass too easily?

Also, I find that I need to rotate the GG's that are "done trainig" (120-something XP) away from the pass to allow the GG recruits to soak up some XP, but that is a very dicey affair as I think it is difficult to judge how much damage an AI stack will do. I ended up reloading a couple times to put the 4-star generals back in position, but that doesn't feel right...

 

[cripp7]

Hmmm I'll reload before the breakout and plan a new try at commando infantry. These should eat pretty much whatever the computer has at that point, assuming it's not going to outrun me anytime soon.

I've been attaching all my GG's now, leading to around 10-15 superunits by the time I got rifling (+/-- 1000 AD? (from memory)). I could also have settled all these, getting units out of the gate with say 30XP. = 6 promos. That means that we could get C4+commando+march units out of the door. Wouldn't it make sense to use say 50 or 100 of these rather than 6 super-super units? Did anyone try?

That's what I did, the first 4 I attached to axes. Went straight to Mech bypassing rifling until the end. plus having a 30XP tanks will clean up everything.

Probably, the first 2-4 GG's should be attached anyway to hold the pass initially, but the rest can be settled. Or would we lose the pass too easily?

No, It would be best having 4 GGs plus about 4-5 reserve units.

Also, I find that I need to rotate the GG's that are "done trainig" (120-something XP) away from the pass to allow the GG recruits to soak up some XP, but that is a very dicey affair as I think it is difficult to judge how much damage an AI stack will do. I ended up reloading a couple times to put the 4-star generals back in position, but that doesn't feel right...

yes you have to rotate them out periodically so that everyone will get the same amount of XP.

 

[Kid R]

Good thing about waiting till mech infantry is it gives 3 points (samurai, rifle, infantry) at which to upgrade a couple of the lowest-XP units first so they can step forward and do some defending, without moving too many units away from the hill altogether.

 

[Calouste]

That's what I did, the first 4 I attached to axes. Went straight to Mech bypassing rifling until the end.

How did you manage that? In one of my tries I beelined Biology before Rifling and Shaka came around with a stack of Cuirassiers and just smashed straight through my 8 GG Samurai defending the hill.

 

[cripp7]

How did you manage that? In one of my tries I beelined Biology before Rifling and Shaka came around with a stack of Cuirassiers and just smashed straight through my 8 GG Samurai defending the hill.

Luck really, I had a fort/forest promoted up the Woody line then combat. once samurais went Drill. I can you post a save?

 

[Calouste]

Luck really, I had a fort/forest promoted up the Woody line then combat. once samurais went Drill. I can you post a save?

Went the same promotion line. I didn't have a fort, but I tried a reload and gave a few of my top guys who has spare promos formation, but that didn't help either. I was probably just teching too slowly.

 

[Kid R]

I can't decide if a fort (+25%) is a good idea, or if it is, at what stage to put it there. The strongest attackers for quite a while are the AI melee, and most of them are CR1 (+20% making the fort almost irrelevant) and soon CR2 (45% making the fort a liability, at least for defending melee). Later on there are lots more strong horse units and I think the fort is good on the whole then. What do you think?

 

[cripp7]

Yes the fort gives an extra 25% defense, I know it makes a difference. Once Math is in, build it immediately.

 

[vanatteveldt]

@cripp

What Kid is saying is that even though a fort adds +25% defense it also activates the CR promotions of the AI, which are quickly more than 25%. I guess once you have rifles you can give them CG promo, which will even things out...

However, I think that the cuirassiers and knights are the most high-damage defenders due to ignoring the drill first strikes, so probably on balance forts will do good?

 

[Calouste]

For the people having problems, here's a little cheat from the original thread that might help you:

Spoiler :

Research Hunting then Agriculture. Pop the huts around Tokyo by going for them immediately with your Warrior in the following order: NE, SE, NNW, and you will get Mining, Masonry and Bronze Working in that order.

 

[vanatteveldt]

@Calouste
Now that *is* cheating . I actuallly let my city pop these huts in the hope of getting a good later-game tech out of it, and have gotten lucky. It is a good idea to research some backfill techs before the relevant cultural growth. Nothing sucks like getting archery in 500AD

What might be fun is to create a new version, disabling huts and events, and getting some comparisons/benchmarks out?

 

[UWHabs]

@Calouste
Now that *is* cheating . I actuallly let my city pop these huts in the hope of getting a good later-game tech out of it, and have gotten lucky. It is a good idea to research some backfill techs before the relevant cultural growth. Nothing sucks like getting archery in 500AD

What might be fun is to create a new version, disabling huts and events, and getting some comparisons/benchmarks out?

I played a bit, my events sucked. I've never seen so many great mediator events in all my civ-playing in the past.

 

[vanatteveldt]

I will upload a no-events, no-huts version tonight for better comparisons. I propose that people specify:

date of oracle (+which tech), pyramids, liberalism, biology, rifling, assembly line
city size, max prod/bpt, #units, #GGs (settled+attached) at 1AD, 1000AD, 1500AD

Does that make sense?

What is the vote on espionage? I don't like it as it is mainly annoying to repair improvements all the time, but I guess disabling it will make the game slightly easier (also by not getting early GSpy that is not so useful)