OCC: Conquest

[Doshin]

My victory date was late, so I feel a little embarrassed offering my thoughts. Still...

It also helps, I think, to have an early means to generate one or more GGs before pushing out. As with the AW games, it seems that the pre-Catapult era is the easiest in which to defend with a bare minimum of investment. Monty is terrible at using the Jaguar Warrior, so he's as good a target as any to provoke.

Three settled GGs and Theo lets you build triple promoted units out of the gate. They also let you draft level two units, which allows them to be specialized immediately (Shock/Pinch) or heal after mopping up an attack. That's a huge deal if you're only facing medieval defenders and want to move quickly from city to city.

 

[Grashopa]

ABCF -

[Edit] 150BC, he is willing to trade horse for copper

I saw horse available from China at 1500 BC or so... but I needed iron!!! Unfortunately the offer went away before I finished CS and tried getting IW.

I held off on adopting a religion this time. spread confu to Ottoman to spice things up a bit.

I spread confu as well, but unfortunately due to the AIs in the game the religion didn't matter. Without a religion I happened to be worst enemy with 1 or 2 AIs until I got alphabet and set people on each other.

 

[Grashopa]

Might try Scientist bulbing of Machinery and Engineering for early Crossbowmen and Trebuchets. Later Macemen with Civil Service (remote chance of Great Prophet partial bulb with Code of Laws and Theology).

I thought of the bulbing, but my approach with the cottages actually gets you there faster and you have a size 15 city to whip down in 800 BC after getting macemen.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

I'm not sure I'll play it out so I'd be curious if someone tried a similar strategy.

Well, that just might be me.
I've indulged in a replay spree after quitting first try on 325AD "because Fishing". Went with a plan close to that outlined in ABCF's first post.
(heavy on hammers: late Oracle->CS, Mids, G Lib, Globe, Education/Philosophy but no Music/Calendar/Metal Casting, size 15, NE in process, lucky Academy (60%), weak cottage base as I worked mines and did switch into Caste System (ironically had HR/Caste into Rep/Slavery)).

However, I don't think I could resolve myself to beeline as hard as you do, nor to avoid mines as much as you do.
Oracle->Monarchy is fine with me but (but! ) I find a missing element of your plan are the Pyramids to unlock Universal Suffrage w/o Democracy. Hence a detour to Masonry after Priesthood. Being there a detour to Monotheism is also in order. You just might found Judaism that way and get the dominant religion (not a big deal but Org Religion is)...

Oracle 1920BC. Screenshot @Monotheism:

Spoiler :

"Replay spree" mentioned above means one can get extremely lucky: Isabella has researched Alphabet already. Traded for AH. Will probably get Sailing and 3rd worker.
Sheep pastured next turn. Then start roading to AIs to save forests as much as possible while waiting on Mathematics.

 

[Grashopa]

However, I don't think I could resolve myself to beeline as hard as you do, nor to avoid mines as much as you do.
Oracle->Monarchy is fine with me but (but! ) I find a missing element of your plan are the Pyramids to unlock Universal Suffrage w/o Democracy. Hence a detour to Masonry after Priesthood. Being there a detour to Monotheism is also in order. You just might found Judaism that way and get the dominant religion (not a big deal but Org Religion is)...

In my playthrough I forgot about monotheism since I get it in trade from AIs on deity so not used to thinking about it. If you go granary, library, oracle, 4 macemen (unlock HE), great library, university, oxford like I did the hammers aren't the limiting factor - all that matters is how fast you grow into your cottages post oracle monarchy.

After that you switch to caste and build 4 workshops over 4 of your towns. That gives you enough hammers with HE to 1 turn cannons, grens, or riflemen while still having almost 300 beakers a turn. But as noted by others its probably better to hit machinery at 500 BC and go *macemen? Whip an army then chop Globe Theatre get engineering farm everything and just whip until game over??

 

[King Pluto]

The first time I tried this I left the Oracle for CS and grabbed it around 1000 BC. I got tied up in early Cat/Mace wars and gave up, feeling I was too bogged down.

The next time I tried it the Oracle went at 2000 BC.

That alone tells me how difficult it will be to compare strats here.

My latest try was going SSE/cottage combo. I Oracled Math to be safe and used boosted chops for SH/Mids/GLib/Hanging Gardens. I was running Rep and had settled GPriests to finance buying resources. I was trying to stay out of trouble until late, but I got daggered by Ragnar.

I'm certainly not going to be competitive with finish dates, but this game is certainly interesting food for thought. I'm leaning towards a late push (aka post Gunpowder) because I was having trouble producing enough units to eliminate multiple AIs before that. Letting my city mature with boosted Workshops/Watermills and running over the Monarch AI with a big tech lead seems easier than an earlier slog at closer to parity and fewer units.

 

[ABigCivFan]

If you have Forge, CS and HE in capital you need:

1. 37 base for 1-turn Cannon
2. 40 base for 1-turn Rifleman
3. 44 base for 1-turn Cavalry

I think warring with anything less than cannons/Cuir/Rifles/Cav will be too slow and too costly. That is why my initial thought is to get to Steam Power ASAP and set up Levee (+16 base ) to solve prod issues. Being financial and food rich, cottages are the best means to get there quickly. And once you get there you need the population to work each river tiles. And Universal suffrage gives +1 hammer to each town, so these combined factors making cottages here very attractive.

Levee+Univ Suff can give you ~26 base hammers, with mods about 72 hammers.

In my own game, I lib->steam power at 1030AD, and I could finish around mid 1600ADs with mostly Cavs and Infantry. The problem was Mao's horse city was taken by Monty with my negligence (I could have bribed peace between them and did not pay enough attention). So I had to get horse from Ottoman who was the strongest and having large number of cities to pump good units (with settled GGs and Janis). This means delay waring again him which cost more time and heavy loses.

This makes me think that a cannon base war could be more efficient. Cannons unlike other prior siege units can actually defend themselves given our tech advantage. And they bombard down city defenses so much faster. It take 5 cannons with accuracy promo to bring a city with 100% defense with walls and castles down to 0. And you just need to bring any units along (axe, swords, archers, mace, Pike, knights) and they can mob up with ease after CR/Barrage cannon attacks. Just need enough cannon battle groups to attack multiple cities at once.

We should attack the strongest AI first, raze those holy cities and wonder cities to slow their tech pace.

In any case, I would be thrilled if anyone manage to finish this prior to 1600AD.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Cannons ignore Walls and Castles.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Grashopa]

Which is why I always wondered why it says bombarding 125% down to 118% (or whatever) when doing so with cannons.

 

[Jet]

I tried to get the earliest possible draft Rifles by maximizing bulbing, IIRC Philo, Paper, 1xEdu, Lib, PP, Lib RR, Gunpowder, Engineering.

I went Monarchy, Warriors, Oracle CS, Bur+OR chop Forge/GL/3xMonastery/NE, then Caste+Pac and slow build Globe. At max size I worked 4 food, 5 cottages, and 4 specialists.

My Rifling date was 1130. There was a little room for better micro, but not a lot. I can't think of a way to make a bulbing approach do better than the Snaaty way or the Grashopa way.

 

[GKey]

Well I've tried different approach. After discovering how poor on production we are going to be, decided to go after forest preserves rather then cottages. The reasoning: I'd rather Oracle CS instead of Monarchy, so happiness is going to be a problem, means I going to need Mids for happy, so forget our Fin trait and go Specialists.

Went Pottery - mining - Myst - BW - Math - Med Priesthood - CoL. Beside hills did not chop a single forest in BFC, but cleaned everything out of it. After Math chopped Mids, beeline Drama and rushed Globe to get rid of unhappiness. Honestly, I am not sure if any other approach without earliest possible Monarchy would work here at all. Micro could be a lot better, that's for sure, but oh well.

Spoiler :

Yes, finally farmed that rice around 100 BC.

Well, I've learned it's not very good approach without couple of wet corns paired with couple of gold mines in BFC. Or may be I just did it not very efficiently.


Finish date going to be late, I am not 100% sure I am going to win TBH. Are you sure it's monarch? All these 30 units sods I have to deal with... Lost quite a lot of units and now AI's got rifling, so...

Spoiler :

Main problem, forest preserves+Nat Park come late. But once you finally get them...

Before:

Spoiler :

After:

Spoiler :

I don't think you can beat this with cottages, at least not versatility.

Was it worth avoiding cottages for quite long and making detour into Chemistry, SM, Bio? I say no. Chemistry actually payed off: Mil Science is right there and Military Academy is very very handy for us. But rest of stuff... only for comparison sake may be.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@GKey
With the early cottage approach, I got Steam power (levee) in 1030AD, Democracy (Univ Suff) in the 1100ADs, building 1 cavalry per turn in the 1200ADs (with 500+ bpt and 120 per turn) and finishing the conquest mid 1600ADs.

will post some pics later.

 

[GKey]

^^ I would like to know what did you build in the city and when started producing units.

I built Henge, Oracle, Mids, Granary, Lib, GL, NE, theater, Globe, Uni, Oxford, Barracks, Stable, 8 Cuirs (from ~1150AD), HE (once unlocked), *Cuirs/Cannons. Where to get all these hammers? Priests helped me somehow. Have not ever switch into slavery (that could be a mistake, but felt lazy for microing).

Bulbed Philo, 1 Edu, took MT from Lib (steel would be better, as I see it now),1 PP, 1 Chemistry, 2 Shrines with G priests, rushed Taj with GE. Civics were Rep/Police State, OR/Pacifism, now run Rep/Nationhood/Theo.

Beakers were ~250 most of the game. What were yours?
1 unit per 1.5 turn until Military Academy, 1 per turn after it. It seem I over traded/over bribed. AI's are a bit advanced with too many units.

I am quite sure cottages beat Forest Preserves due to be available much sooner, just wanted to try something different.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Will post some pics later.

I also built a shrine but it was a mistake since all cities will get razed . Settling GPriests would have been much better as the added base hammers are much more important in this game. And there is never a shortage of cash...

 

[GKey]

Agreed regarding settling priests (wish I had hammers for Angkor Wat ). But in my game with shrine Tao become dominant religion for some time and helped to bribe AI's on each other.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Attached 2 pics:

The Oracle was the only World wonder I built.

1160AD 1 turn build Cuirs

Spoiler :

1290AD after adopting univ suff.

Spoiler :

 

[Grashopa]

The US capital pic might make me retry my game but with pyramids delaying Oxford a bit (Oxford needs the second GS for edu bulb + the forests). I just have to check what year I was getting all towns.

And for those thinking about oracle - CS don't! My capital was size 15 at 1000 BC with oracle - monarchy. You would be far behind that with oracle - CS.

How about a BC maceman choke on all the AIs? Just pillage them all. Whip 7 out at 500 BC then continue to trebs/cannons and whatever you need to get 100+ hammers a turn.

 

[GKey]

@ABigCivFan your force is pretty much like mine at the same era. Could you please post a screeny of tech trade, and or a save?

 

[ABigCivFan]

The main thing I am showing here is that I had the capability of building 1 Cuir/Cav/rifle/cannon every single turn for the rest of the game since 1160AD. This allows a much earlier starting date of constant warring of taking over the world. Imagine my army size if i continue til 1715AD (compare to your 1715AD army shown in your picture).

Attached 1290AD save.

 

[Manco Capac]

Terrible and terrible, but I'm glad I've gone for it as a learning tool.
Indeed, Grashopa's, ABCF's and Gkey's strategies are without doubt infallible

Sadly, on my side, I had to reload at critical points where RNG got my pants down. 96% here and there...I mean my enslaver axemen. Pwueh, it could be my main stack's units (less grave), but it had to be individually those axes.
So, bad strategy and invalidated with such actions.

That was interesting that the AI has a ceiling in the number of archers they can build. Charlemagne stopped producing them at 11 archers in the capital. Then, even being choked, he started weird things I never thought could happened in a endangered city. He built the ToA and then the Mids. When I saw the Mids, I had to rush at him, knowing its a tech capacity burst, thus faster feudalism. Only Izzy managed to Feud.

1590 AD Conquest.
Ridiculous.