Please help me beat this map.

[Angst]

I loaded up what seems to be the "official" Erebus map and included the Naval AI update... Which has bettered the AI tremendously. I play on Noble in this map - I'm not that great a Civ player - and haven't played it seriously for a long time. I mostly play vanilla on Prince and I only micro very little and only until the rennaissence or so when I'm usually set to win. I'm not making this thread to be taught how to micro that much or to be made fun of for not doing so; if Naval AI Noble requires tedious microing, I'm simply going to bow out and go down a level. I simply find that aspect of the game tedious and unfun. That said, there's obviously something really wrong with my game and the AI has seemed to juggernaut tremendously into a disturbing snowball which I just never managed quite as fast. So I'm jumping to this forum to be told how to do this properly. Because I obviously suck.

I played Amurites on the Erebus scenario. The game was early on dominated locally by a powerful Hippus and a less powerfuss Calabim and Elohim whom I conquered to eventually overshadow Hippus. I had production issues for a long time because I did not realize that forests should be preserved more conservatively in FFH. However, I expanded aggressively as I noted that numerous civilizations were destroyed during the early game, so I had to keep tempo.

The Illians had a great score so I assumed it was them, but eventually it turned out to be the Khazad. I shared religions with them to try preserving myself and got Friendly with them, carefully invade other nations while trying to stay on their friendly side, but to much avail, they eventually backstabbed me (While warring against several other civs! They were that powerful) and almost destroyed my army. However I did manage to beat the odds with Firebows and powerful mages and overcome their armies, conquering a few of their cities and making peace. I actually won the first war.

However they were still quite powerful, and now they hated me (not that liking me would make a difference apparently) and I realized it was me or them. But they were much more powerful with me, with more land, greater production, Mercurians (my units were of course of the Kilmorph faith, granting the sucker free units), I teched and militarized like a maniac and prepared the construction of armies to conquer minor civs and eventually end them, but whenever I was ready to conquer some civ, they randomly vassalized that civ! That crap happened thrice before I bit the dust and attempted to secure victory through raw strength straight on rather than longterm planning - because I had been warring them, everyone hated me. I despise some of the Civ AI mechanics, don't know how to work it I guess... I managed to vassalize some weak civs and gifted them all I had - including metals - to make them capable of battle.

So I prepared a little longer. They even got Blood of the Phoenix before me, a few turns before I was done, which made me heart drop all hope.

So the matchup was now:

Khazad (With BotP)
Mercurians
Hippus
Malakim (One-city)
Svartalfar (too far to matter though)

vs

me (Amurites)
Clan of Embers (Three cities, poor)
Bannor

Eventually I did declare war, but I had no other opportunities. I was surrounded by them or their vassals. The first turns went well according to plan, me taking out the Hippus' capacity to fight by conquering two of their cities while simultaneously taking out the Malakim completely. The north was quickly invaded by a doomstack of strength 40 Angels much to my despair basically unaffected by my reliance on Fireballs due to their huge bulk. I managed to hold them, however, while simultanously holding the West and picking of the main Khazad army. I managed to get two turns where I cursed the RNG - basically I had half of one of my armies wiped out at 80%+ - but that happens and I'm not going to bicker about that beyond this paragraph. I could manage the whole deal beside the Angel stack which I simply shook off, hoping to manage with some solution to the Angels after losing 2-3 cities. The rest was evenly matched after all, and if anything, I'm apparently much better than the AI on CIV tactics - why the hell would I manage to win the first one or at least moderately succeed with this one anyways.

And then the Lanun surprise attacked my capital with a naval invasion. asdjoisjfoaijsfaosdijasodl. . I do not have a navy and now I have war on all fronts with no capacity to defend myself in the south.

I did ragequit and prepare the posting of this thread ( ), but I refuse to say it was the game mechanics that got the better of me. I realize that I'm not that great a player. I'm going to ask whether any of you can solve the situation; I'm going to attach two saves, one from 414 and one from 419 I think, the game session today which was basically the major events of the war. I realize I should probably not attack them yet. What's your solution to this?

For I'm apparently really bad at this game and it saddens me that I will probably have to give up the game I've attached myself so much to.

 

[doktarr]

Without reviewing the savegames, my guess is that it's probably a lost cause, or close to it, at the stage of the game where you are posting. However, looking back on the rest of the post, here are my thoughts:

When you had the chance to press the advantage against the Khazad in the first war, you should have kept going, unless your army was spent and war exhaustion was killing you. At that point, as you later acknowledge, it was you or them. Try to break them as much as possible before ending that war. If you have to break off for peace early, then I'd still suggest going back against them as soon as possible as long as you feel you have the advantage. Unless there is a large natural barrier like water or mountains that pushes you another way, you should generally deal with the biggest threat first.

In the second war, it sounds like you were outmanned, but with the Amurites this should be manageable as long as you are properly taking advantage of magic. As you say, it appears you are overly reliant on fireball. The power of the Amurites is their ability to easily diversify over a broad range of magic. Against the AI in particular, the right magic combinations are basically an automatic win.

Firebows are a fantastic unit, but you need to be using other spheres of magic. A couple mages (or firebows, assuming you have Govannion teaching a ton of sphere 1 spells) each with Blinding Light and Maelstrom, for instance, could wound all those angels while freezing the stack in its tracks. Six or seven mages/firebows with the right combination of spells could handle a stack of 40 angels on your home turf with no problem.

(A human player would overwhelm you with those angels by breaking up the stack and attacking you more places than the mages could respond, or by using their own magic. But against the AI, it's not too hard.)

 

[Angst]

I'll look over the rest of your post later, but I have these two questions:

Didn't Maelstrom damage your own units too? How do you play around that?

Govannon sadly died in the first war.

 

[doktarr]

Maelstrom damages units within 2 spaces that are not on the same space as the mage. Figures on the same space are safe.

Govannon should never be on the front lines. He should be back at your production area, teaching level 1 magic to all your units as they come off the line. Really, you should never give Govannon a promotion other than a level 1 magic sphere. (The same is generally true of Barnaxus once he's reached combat 5, too. I admit to using Basium a bit more agressively but that's because he can hit a ridiculous level of toughness that can justify putting him in the vanguard, at least at a certain stretch of the game.)

 

[Bad Player]

One thing about micromanagement that annoys me is constantly having to check if your city is at its happy cap. Has anyone done anything to automate this so that you can allow te city to grow as long as it doesn't go over the happy cap?

 

[Qgqqqqq]

This is included in MNAI 2.5.