Primitive Conquest Challenge

[Peaster]

Sharkbait - Thanks. According to that thread, the AI science rate depends on the human science rate (the percentage). Not the human's advancement rate (total number of techs, from huts, trade, etc) ? If that is correct, the human might be able to deter Feudalism for a long long time and maybe even get to Espionage before then.

In my current game, I keep science at 10%, since I'm getting loads of beakers just from trade. But with "investigate city" I've found that my AI's have science rates are around 50%. They are not progressing very fast -probably because they are small civs, and Englishmen are standing on lots of their specials.

Magic - I guess the Aztecs got Feudalism the normal way (not from a hut). It took me by surprise, but I don't see how I could have stopped it. In my horseman game, it was possible to rush an invasion before any pikemen appeared, or the new ideas were spread around. But warriors just can't be rushed.

Ali - That makes me feel better about my memory, but for the purposes of this thread, Ace is right.

Ace - I've checked on Espionage. It seems quite possible to get there without taking Feudalism first - even though Feudalism seems to be my "joker tech". I may have to avoid new techs by conquest.

About starvation (any experts on this out there?): I have reduced Moscow to size 2 and expect LBH to follow soon. Both are on plains. Problems:

1) I have forced LBH workers away from all grass, forests, etc, onto sea tiles (and the city square of course). They will shrink from size 3 to 2 soon. But I can't force them off the sea tiles, to get them down to size 1. Probably, I can lure them back onto grass tiles, then seize the seas with my own workers, and then take the grass back.

2) But Tenochxxxxx might be impossible. It is on grass, with fish nearby. How can I lure its' workers away from those fish?

Tentative conclusions:

Conquest by warriors seems possible. Invade the suburbs of each capitol ASAP with phalanxes, settlers and dips. Take over all specials there, and begin starvation + sabotage. Demand tribute. The swarms of vet warriors can come much later.

Starvation down to size 1 or 2 should usually be possible, if you need to raze a city, to avoid Feudalism. I think spies/poisoning should also be possible, but I'm nowhere near that phase in my game.

It might be OK if several AI's eventually get Feudalism, but then you'd probably need Espionage, since starvation may not always work.

Managing hundreds of vet warriors will probably be a nightmare. You (probably) can't have SunTzu, so you have to make them slowly using barracks, and rehome them frequently. This is already a problem in my game, even in monarchy. I doubt I could switch to republic/demo anymore, but maybe Fundy will be possible later.

I think the human loses if an AI gets gunpowder, or if there is an AI capitol on a river. Dunno... maybe if the human has infinite patience, to make a stack of 200+ warriors... ? I don't have any feel for this kind of combat yet.

 

[Ace]

My point on being "forced" to research Feudalism was that the computer "hides" some of the possible advances each turn so that sometimes you only have one possible tech to choose from...and if its feudalism....

Regarding forcing workers off sea hexes, I believe it is impossible. I have tried it many times but have never been able to do it. Unlike land hexes, sea hexes are not effected by "enemy" units displacing workers. No matter how many Battleships you stack on that fish, the AI just keeps on working it. The only thing I have not tried is coaxing the AI off by improving one of his city hexes so that it provides more food than the fish. That would require 4+ food since the AI will build a harbor to get 4 food off the fish. (And the lucky placement of a food special....)

 

[Peaster]

Ace: I understood your point about Feudalism. But the tech choices at each stage are completely predictable - see Solo's ELG. So, it was possible to completely plan out my choices in advance. I checked that I can get to Espionage (and Explosives, Corporation, etc) without accepting Feudalism. This assumes no surprises, such as techs from tribute or conquest or huts.

I agree that you can't force the AI off a fish diet. But I expect you can coax workers off a non-special sea tile, just by offering them grass/etc. Actually, I've been trying that now at LBH for a couple turns, and it hasn't worked yet, but I think it should eventually. Don't worry about harbors - they can always be sabotaged.

I am not sure what to do about the fish tile. Of course, I just need ONE chance to take it away, and the Aztecs will never eat fish again!

This fish thing is probably not TOO important, unless it happens in several capitols of civs with Fedualism - and the human never get spies. The capitol(s) with grass+fish+feud must be saved for last, but it shouldn't make the conquest much harder.

In my practice game, I just accepted Nav (major trade/science penalty) and am planning a spurt of WoWs such as GW, Mike's, Mag's and probably AS, DV later. I've sabotaged one GL attempt, by the US, and am uncertain whether to sabotage a 2nd one (Aztecs, peace, they already have Feud). I probably won't play this game out all the way, mainly because a I "cheated" at the start, but I'd like to mount at least one major campaign, and check that warriors can actually take a defended capitol.

 

[Peaster]

I'm attaching a screenshot of a successful siege of Moscow, from my practice game. The city has been reduced from size 3 to size 1. Also, it seems one of the two archers inside was disbanded from lack of shield support (Russia is still in despotism). This kind of seige seemed fairly easy to set up, maybe because the AI was reluctant to unfortify and attack.

But it takes lots of time to get all these slow units into place - I haven't managed it for any other capitol yet. My seige of LBH has still not succeeded, since the AI persists in placing workers on sea tiles (even with no specials there). But I've learned a lesson from that. It seems there are at least two kinds of seige:

a) A starvation seige, aimed at reducing the city size. Then you can hope to raze the city, rather than capture it, and avoid getting any bad techs such as Feudalism. Also, a smaller city will produce fewer arrows and shields, and provide less unit support under despotism.

First build some cities nearby, to grab the sea tiles. Then, send in troops to take away the land tiles. I doubt this can work if the city already has workers on a fish and it is beyond despotism.

b) A production seige, aimed at taking away all the city's shields, except the +1 from the city tile itself. This seems easier than a starvation seige since you don't have to control sea tiles (unless the city has a whale nearby) or hills, or normal grass. One purpose is to minimize the costs of frequent sabotage. Secondly, under despotism/republic, you might combine this plan with a starvation seige and reduce the city to just one defender, without firing a shot, as happened to Moscow.

I'm not sure sieges are really necessary for primitive conquest, but they seem easier/quicker to set up than the alternatives, such as getting to espionage, or amassing enough vet warriors to attack a city containing several defenders. [But these might become easy too, if I can ever get to Fundy]

My game has gotten painfully slow after Navigation - not much income, nor much science, lots of rioting. I should have researched monotheism before nav, I guess, to allow MIke's.

 

[rysingsun]

Did I miss something? Seems to me if you can use espionage and trade then you don't need warriors to win. You can do it with settlers. All you have to do is nuke the capitals with the spies. Occupy with the settlers. Or is that not allowed?

 

[Peaster]

@rysingsun: Good question.... the main rule I had in mind was that you can't attack with anything except warriors. Maybe attacks by a phalanx or trireme could also be allowed, since they have the same weak attack factor. At first thought, I'd call a suitcase bomb an attack, with a very high attack factor, so it should probably be illegal. If we decide it IS legal, I'd agree that it should make conquest pretty easy, even with just settlers. Might still be interesting to see someone actually do it, though - sometime these things are a lot harder than they sound.

I guess you could say that bribery, sabotage and poisoning are also attacks, which could trigger a war, so maybe they should be illegal, too. But they seem much less violent, and are not directed at AI units (except perhaps bribery of units, which I have mostly avoided) so I had planned to allow those actions. I think pillaging is OK using any unit, though I haven't done it in my games. Of course, a victory totally without dips would be even more impressive. But I still haven't managed to conquer a single civ with just warriors + dips. So, I'm not ready to "raise the bar" just yet.

What do other civvers think about the rules?

 

[Banach]

My two cents - the entire point of what you're doing, Peaster, is to challenge yourself in a new way by adding a restriction to the game. Obviously, the more restrictions, the more difficult it will be for you, so I'm with you in the sense that you should add them one at a time. I actually think that suitcase nukes wouldn't necessarily make the game "easy", I think you'd still have an enormous challenge to get to that point in the game. Stick with what you were trying for now. It doesn't really matter too much that anyone agree unless you are actually competing against each other (compare to the rules that are followed in Early Landing comparison games). I'd be impressed either with or without suticase nukes. Now if you wanted to start some threads for primitive conquest comparison games. . . that might be VERY interesting. I say that even though I'm trying to recruit interest in early landing again. Good luck on your continued work!

 

[Peaster]

Thanks, Banach! I'd love to play a comparison game. Anybody else interested ?

I've more-or-less finished my practice game at 1600BC (warlord level). I recently conquered the Sioux and Russians, and just took the Viking capitol. I think I could conquer the Vikings and the US pretty soon. I screwed up my seige of Kyoto, but I don't see any huge problem remaining, with them or the Aztecs. I just switched to Fundy, which solves many problems. Also, I'd expect espionage within about 5 more turns, but probably don't really need it. Though it might help a lot against the Aztecs (feudalism, big capitol with fish, no seige yet). Reports from the battlefield:

1) My seige of Little Big Horn was not very effective, because I pushed the Sioux workers onto sea tiles and then could not get them off. I could have reduced the city to size 2, but probably not size 1. Not enough to reduce their two-phalanx-defense, even under despotism. I attacked in 1640BC with about 15 vet warriors, and the 10th warrior won. Then, I bribed Wounded Knee, of course, and the Sioux were history.

In hindsight, warriors are not as feeble as I expected, and I could have gone for a simple direct attack earlier. Invest in more barracks and vet warriors - not so much in phalanxes and seige cities. I wanted to experiment with seiges, which might be needed when an AI has Feudalism, or a capitol on rough terrain, for example. But now, I think a direct attack will usually be easier.

2) My seige of Moscow was very effective, since it reduced the defense to one phalanx. I attacked in 1620BC, and won with the third warrior! Bribed St Pete, Russians down (I had bribed/won a couple other Russian cities earlier, but only the capitol is relevant in this kind of game).

3) I had just put the squeeze on Tronheim in 1620BC, with all sea tiles covered, and all but one land tile. They had some units fortified on good tiles, and it cost me about 800g to bribe a nearby city and an archer, to take those tiles away. Tronhiem had three good defenders (A,A,ph) but was in a republic, and couldn't support them all. The Vikings struck out in 1600BC, and lost all three units to my unfortified Archer on grass. I was having great defensive luck like that all game. So, I entered the empty city, and can easily buy up the rest of Vikingland later.

4) My siege of Kyoto was semi-effective. They were losing 5 food sheaves per turn. But their food box was pretty full, so I tried to speed things up by sending them a food van, to make the city grow, and empty the food box. This did fill their box (I think), but for some reason the city did not grow, so my food van just made things worse.

5) I'm ready to squeeze Washington, but they're a monarchy, so the seige may do nothing. There is no hurry, though - the city is weakly defended (w,ph) and has been building the Great Library for hundreds of years. I sabotage that every 5-10 turns but it keeps trying again. Probably a direct attack shoud win in about 5 more turns.

6) I have a city in the middle of AztecLand where I keep about 10 Hides vans on reserve, and make vet warriors. But we are not at war ("contact" only) and I haven't bothered them yet. They could be tough to beat, but once the other civs are gone, I'll have lots of spare warriors (and probably espionage too). I don't plan to play it out that far though.

Summary: Winning with warriors is very possible. My practice game included an artificially good start, warlord level, very good luck on defense, no AI capitols on rivers, no Great Wall, and fairly poor AI tech progress (only one got Feudalism, three never got monarchy). Not typical, I guess. But with practice and reasonable luck, I think a strong player could win a game like this even at a higher level, such as King. Anybody wanna try?

 

[Banach]

Thanks, Banach! I'd love to play a comparison game. Anybody else interested ?

I've more-or-less finished my practice game at 1600BC (warlord level). I recently conquered the Sioux and Russians, and just took the Viking capitol. I think I could conquer the Vikings and the US pretty soon. I screwed up my seige of Kyoto, but I don't see any huge problem remaining, with them or the Aztecs. I just switched to Fundy, which solves many problems. Also, I'd expect espionage within about 5 more turns, but probably don't really need it. Though it might help a lot against the Aztecs (feudalism, big capitol with fish, no seige yet). Reports from the battlefield:

Summary: Winning with warriors is very possible. My practice game included an artificially good start, warlord level, very good luck on defense, no AI capitols on rivers, no Great Wall, and fairly poor AI tech progress (only one got Feudalism, three never got monarchy). Not typical, I guess. But with practice and reasonable luck, I think a strong player could win a game like this even at a higher level, such as King. Anybody wanna try?

If you gather more interest I think this would be a lot of fun. My caveat - I'm not an early conquest player, so I'd be much more comfortable with trying this at something well below Deity to start with. Very impressive results, even for warlord - I was skeptical. I guess you should just think about what the rules are, we'll hash them out, then pick somewhere to start from. I think that this would be a great way to bring some new excitement to the forums (even though I'd personally prefer EL comparisons). Of course, although I'd want to start at a lower difficulty level, that can change the strategy. However, that must be balanced against the possibility that you won't get a useful comparison at all if I (and possibly others) fail to win on Deity with just warriors. I'll start thinking about how I would like to play that kind of game. I'm beginning to get excited about it myself. I think it's just the idea of a new intellectual challenge that attracts me - pondering a strategy for a new situation, which WOW might best suit this new situation, what path on the tech tree, etc. Kudos to you for pushing the envelope in a new way.

BTW: You must be somewhere significantly into the math field to recognize my screen name - complete normed vector spaces aren't exactly something that's in everyone's casual knowledge. I'm glad to see another mathematician on the boards.

 

[Magic_gorter]

I like to do a comparison game also. Because I play most of the times EL I agree with Banach first to try at lower levels. It sounds very interesting because it's an whole different game then normal (even for a conquest game).

 

[rysingsun]

I will throw out a ruleset for a challenge. Consider this just talk for now since I know all these games take time and I don't have the time at this moment to compete even on my own rules. But I think some will find these rules interesting:

1. Large earth map and 7 opponents. Deity level.
2. On turn one put your settlers to sleep and keep them that way as many turns as you dare. If an enemy civ walks up to you and wakes you up put the settlers back to sleep again. Refuse all negotiations. Needless to say if they attack you then you lose and get to start over.
3. After however many turns of not doing anything you begin. Your goal is to win by conquest.
4. Report to us what year you started. The goal to get a win with the latest start date possible.
5. All exploits allowed except reloading. You will need them.

For veterans I will recommend waiting at least 200 turns to start. It's been done.

 

[Peaster]

@Banach and Magic Gorter - Great!! I don't remember seeing a comparison game in the forums for at least a year. I guess we could wait a few days to see if anyone else wants to join in. Any level is OK with me, though I'd prefer not to revert to Chieftain. How about Warlord, since it seems possible to win there, but it hasn't really been done ?

I suggest a large random unknown map, 7 civs, with restarts OFF! I'd prefer a start with two settlers, and several grass tiles in sight. I don't care much about color/civ, but maybe we'll avoid purple. If an AI capitol is on a river, for example, it might make our game even more difficult. We could ask someone to check that for us, but I think we can just risk it.

I guess the main rule is - you can only attack with warriors. You can use any other units for defense/trade/ZOC etc. I guess we should include the usual GOTM rules, too. If you think of some weird exploit (especially any that use modern units) let's talk ASAP about whether it should be legal. For example, I think you can provoke the AI into a bad attack by marching an Archer up to it capitol. I'd prefer that we do not do this kind of thing intentionally, since it is against the spirit of the challenge, but I'm not sure we should make a rule against it (yet). I'd prefer not to allow suitcase bombs, but to allow any other dip/spy activity, such as sabotage of city walls. I think bribery should be allowed (for now at least). Explorers, trade, boats, etc, are all OK. These are just my suggestions and we can discuss anything.

@Banach - I don't study general Banach spaces, but I use certain ones quite often (Lebesgue spaces, Sobolev spaces, etc). Ali Ardavan, one of our best GOTM players, is also a mathematician. BTW ... "Banach" is just your screen name, right ?

@rysingsun - That challenge sounds like fun, too. I'd be up for that, maybe after this one, especially if there other players interested. I'm surprised someone managed it after 200 turns. Is that the record? Is there a thread about this somewhere ?

 

[Banach]

@Banach and Magic Gorter - Great!! I don't remember seeing a comparison game in the forums for at least a year. I guess we could wait a few days to see if anyone else wants to join in. Any level is OK with me, though I'd prefer not to revert to Chieftain. How about Warlord, since it seems possible to win there, but it hasn't really been done ?

I suggest a large random unknown map, 7 civs, with restarts OFF! I'd prefer a start with two settlers, and several grass tiles in sight. I don't care much about color/civ, but maybe we'll avoid purple. If an AI capitol is on a river, for example, it might make our game even more difficult. We could ask someone to check that for us, but I think we can just risk it.

I guess the main rule is - you can only attack with warriors. You can use any other units for defense/trade/ZOC etc. I guess we should include the usual GOTM rules, too. If you think of some weird exploit (especially any that use modern units) let's talk ASAP about whether it should be legal. For example, I think you can provoke the AI into a bad attack by marching an Archer up to it capitol. I'd prefer that we do not do this kind of thing intentionally, since it is against the spirit of the challenge, but I'm not sure we should make a rule against it (yet). I'd prefer not to allow suitcase bombs, but to allow any other dip/spy activity, such as sabotage of city walls. I think bribery should be allowed (for now at least). Explorers, trade, boats, etc, are all OK. These are just my suggestions and we can discuss anything.

That all seems fine with me, including the Warlord setting. I'll have to bone up on my ICS to make a decent showing here, but I guess we'll see how it goes. It'll make for an interesting game, anyway. Allowing phalanxes will help out an awful lot, as I find this idea somewhat daunting, even on warlord. As soon as we get more interest I guess you should start a thread with the random start saved and we'll go from there. Standard log keeping and comparison after everyone's had a chance to play. I guess I'll have to be very careful to not discover feudalism - because at that point I'll be stuck with whatever vet warriors I have. Prediction of this is possible ala Solo, but I've never done this before.

 

[Magic_gorter]

Lets wait a few days and then lets give it a go. At the moment I can think of one thing which perhaps will give a to big advantage. When bribing a enemy unit wiht good defencive score it is easier to win an attack when it's fortified next to a city. Perhaps that should not be allowed...just you're own units.

 

[Sharkbait]

If time allows, I'll join the comparison

 

[Peaster]

Welcome, Sharkbait!!

Banach - I didn't have too much trouble avoiding Feudalism from my own scientists, even though I erred by accepting Warrior Code. I think you can get to Espionage, Corporation, etc with a little planning, and I'd be happy to help if you need it. It becomes harder to avoid if an AI gets it, of course, and you should think twice about building Leo's in that case.

Magic - I didn't understand. Could you rephrase that?

 

[Magic_gorter]

Peaster - I'll try it (it's difficult because I don't know all english words).

When we can bribe an enemy unit which is good in defence (pikemen, musketeer,etc) we shouldn't use it for defence (for example fortified near one of the AI capitals). We try to win with warriors not with better units.

I mayby missed this point but I think hut popping should not be allowed too if you want a good comparison.

 

[Peaster]

Magic: Thanks. I think I understand now. I wouldn't mind a rule against bribing AI units. What about making a phalanx and using it the same way ? I don't see much difference. But a rule against phalanxes seems pretty tough, maybe like playing at Diety. Also, "no huts" raises the bar - maybe too high ? A possible compromise would be "no huts in the first 30 turns", for example.

 

[Banach]

I'm with Peaster - one restriction at a time. Too many may make it prohibitively difficult. We can always add more in another comparison game.

 

[Magic_gorter]

The problem with huts is that in a game you can be very lucky and the other not. To compare the games is then difficult. But first to see that we really can achieve our goal (victory with just warriors) is most important. So then it's ok with me to pop huts. One problem is when popping a hut and getting Feudalism...in that case we should be allowed to reload.

We might be allowed to bribe a unit (barbs), but it should be used to disband in a city. Phalanx in defence is ok with me. It's a unit which comes available very quickly in the game. But no attacks with it.

I agree with you Banach. Not to much rules in the beginning and if we can succeed mayby more restrictions (if needed).