Quartermaster

[Elear]

This thread outlines the games I need to obtain Quartermaster status.

The first game I'll outline was going to be a Tiny Sid 20k, but I was unhappy with how slow the tech pace was, so I was going to fall quite short of my goal date and thus I warped it into a Tiny Sid Histographic.

It's almost finished, so I'll be able to get full pictures/write-up when I get the final score, but it seems like I will place #2 on the list...#1 is impossible considering I played until the early ADs for 20k (wasting time on Colossus, Oracle, TGL instead of expanding).

Here's a little sneak peek...

Even the units listed are a fraction of the 1000+ units I suspect the Mongols have (AI suicide by unit excess -- the Mongols are stagnant in technology in the middle ages). The Zulu I already fought back to just their capital, so they are a non-threat.

For the record, I ended up fleeing my position two turns later after obtaining an army, due to the sheer numbers of attacking Mongol units. I returned shortly later with a better tactical strategy and a stronger force.

Pretty happy, since it seems I'll finally have victory over Sid level.

-Elear

 

[Calis]

Another interesting thread to follow

 

[Spoonwood]

Marines, maybe?

 

[Elear]

The first game is finished but in the most unanticipated and perhaps, dissapointing manner.

The good news is that I learned a lot from my first true win on Sid.

The bad news is that I did not get the Histographic victory that I wanted; even if I had, I probably would have fallen short by about 200 points of the #2 slot, due to the huge amount of mistakes I made along the slow path to the domination limit.

Difficulty: Sid!
Size: Tiny
Wet, Warm, 5 billion, 80% Archipelago
No Barbarians, Standard Ruleset
AI: Zulu, Mongols (Least Aggressive)

Start position:

After a number of rolls, I chose this one as a solid location for a 20k city. I stuck with it due to the two luxuries on my island, especially the Ivory as I was going for a 20k win.

Initial exploration revealed a decently promising map.

I quickly drew a dot map, though initial expansion was much slower than normal due to building wonders in my capital (ultimately four in all: Colossus, Oracle, Great Library, Statue of Zeus).

My rivals, the Mongols and the Zulu, had island to the west and south of me, respectively:

The game went smoothly for awhile, but around 800 BC the Zulu seemed to get aggressive with their settling; my slow expansion easily allowed them to gain a foothold on my lands...

The problem did not improve at all as 10 AD came around, but the Statue of Zeus was nigh.

I hooked up my iron, built some swords, and combining them with Ancient Cavalry, launched an assualt. Around 200 AD, my island looked like this. My general war strategy is visible. Note the dromon stacks I'm beginning to develop; these would be the key to the rest of my game.

The map looked something like this:

My military was enough to drive the Zulu off my lands, but is pretty much insignificant.

 

[Elear]

With the Zulu soon expelled from my island, I was able to focus my efforts on building more dromons and bombarding Zulu coasts to slow them down, as they were the tech leaders. At some point, the Great Library took me into the Medieval Age, where the Zulu were perhaps two or three technologies ahead of me.

My bombardment strategy was fairly mundane, and in some cases, likely a waste of time, but it was good enough to keep the Zulu busy and slowed down.

Over time, I built up a tiny bit of offensive forces (14-16 units, namely swordsmen and ancient cavalry), but mainly more Dromons (20-25), and suddenly I had amateurish visions of crushing the Zulu and taking their mainland for myself. I switched to Republic around this time (though I would become a Monarchy later when I couldn't deal with unit costs in my lengthy wars).

After a bit of planning and bombardment, it was no problem to get myself a foothold on Zulu lands and attempt to start my assault. Here I developed a beachhead, but it really wasn't much of a help:

I ended up abandoning my beachhead to prevent Zulu overrun:

Despite the failure of my beachhead, I brought my dromons back around to the other side, and used all 26 to bombard them into kingdom come, allowing my little stack to maintain a fair position in the battlefield.

I captured Ulundi the next turn (700 AD or so) and managed to gain a leader in the process. I built an invaluable Ancient Cavalry army, which ended up doing me a lot of good, but was always too weak to be able to smash the Zulu apart.

Elated with my success, I devised a rather complicated and probably somewhat unrealistic plan, considering the state of my military.

At first, I surprisingly followed through fairly nicely with that plan, and soon I was ready to continue, or so I thought.

I seemed to be doing decently ("strong" versus the Zulu...but that was because of my dromons; they had far too many defenders for my 14 offensive units to deal with), but it wasn't long before my feeble military faltered and the Zulu came with fresh re-enforcements, crushing most everything in their path and taking back their whole island.

I tried desperately to make something happen to the Zulu, but the whole attack had been doomed to failure from the start due to insufficient forces. A quick check of my military status proves this. I fall just short of taking Ulundi, which may have helped me to establish a base of attack.

 

[Elear]

I ended up gaining a few cities in the north through persistance, but I had no choice but to sign for peace and wait it out while I built my military, because there was no chance of overcoming the final Zulu defenses at this point in time.

The Zulu mainland looked like this:

With slightly better troops at the ready, I again thought up battle plans:

By redirecting and continuing to pour units into the Zulu lands, I pushed them back to just Zimbabwe. But I still had no cannons, so my apparent "final stand" against the Zulu defenses ended up failing. I simply did not have enough power in the battlefield to overcome their 12-15 defenders.

A little while later at 1800 AD, I wasn't a total joke anymore in terms of my military (cannons were at least online, and I had many), but it needed more offensive prowess; musketmen were helpful, but it appeared I had built them to excess (later I would find this to be true, disbanding many perfectly good units once I had armies, simply because I did not need those units -- it helped me save on unit maintenance, certainly).

The Zulu had now obtained Riflemen, easily making it too difficult to use mere Ancient Cavalry, MDI, and Musketmen to attack an inland city. I had some cannons, sure, but it wasn't enough. Zimbabwe had both barracks and walls; I had no hope of defeating 2 hp riflemen on a consistent basis. Well, I thought of a work around, using the inland lake. I'm even surprised it took me as long as it did to think of it, but there you are.

Soon, all their units were perpetually at 1 hp and I triumphed.

The Zulu were dead after 1500 years of war.

The glorious 1820 AD minimap. One can see the colonization efforts I had put in place, as well.

 

[Elear]

Now, sometime just before my final assualt on the Zulu, I had created what I felt was a decent force to begin working on the Mongols. Big mistake on two parts: first, it would have been better to focus on defeating the Zulu sooner, two, the concept of my attack was so ridiculous that it was certain to fail (and it did).

Here we can see the battlefield...

Simply put, a stack of 26 is not sufficient against hundreds and hundreds of enemy troops, even with 50 dromons to support you. I soon fled with the few survivors after a few fairly long (5+ minute) interturns. I had a few elites, but no armies to my name (the Ancient Cavalry armies were not only useless, but stuck down in the Zulu lands as Galleons had not arrived yet).

My second effort against the Mongols occured around 1800 AD, when I was about to take Zimbabwe. Again, it seemed like a good idea to land a bunch of defenders on a mountain and watch the enemy suicide on them, and this time I brought cannons. The only trouble was that eventually you'd have some of their troops win, and with 100s of longbowmen, they could just crush you by sheer numbers (while still building yet more troops). So, I again got no leaders out of this, but I got perhaps two dozen elite muskets out of it, who fled along with my cannons in my Dromon fleet.

It was time for rebuilding my army, but more importantly, a new beachhead. I established this in 1964 AD. The following screenshot shows my intended location (incense hill). It's too bad the Mongol troops were crowding he seashores (1960 AD) but by 1963 my bombardment...coerced them...to leave me a spot on the hill.

I spent about five turns in my beachhead, continually healing with the barracks I bought, while bombarding with my 50 dromons and 50 cannons. It's quite amusing how effective Musketmen work on the offensive when they have "1 hp units". This gained me many leaders in a short period of time. I managed to get nine armies out of the possible ten (I had 43 cities).

I immediately launched an offensive in 1970 AD.

1971 AD (Kazan - top) and 1972 AD (Almarikh - bottom):

The Mongols were doomed, and sure enough, it all came to an end by 1981 AD, just a short 16 turns after I made my beachhead. A far more efficient war, but it was too little, too late.

I was the ruler of the world after so much grief.

By this point, I had little chance of gaining enough points per turn to have the #2 Tiny Sid Histographic game, and indeed, I maxed out at 10 PPT, whereas I needed 11 to have gained the #2 slot. I did my best, however, and let the game slide to its end.

Big mistake.

After putting so many hours and turns into the game, fate (and perhaps pure stupidity) drove a nail into my histographic hopes once again. I could scarcely believe it.

At least I won.

That's right, my capital with its four AA wonders...eventually pulled out a "victory" for me.

2045 AD, Sid 20k...fourth and obviously last place, but it will still count towards Quartermasters as my Sid and 20k games. I find it highly ironic, considering that I would have a much faster time if I had just not bothered with all that war at all.

But it wouldn't be any fun if it were easy.

-Elear

 

[Spoonwood]

*laughs while eating his dinner*. That's perhaps the best thread I've read in several months. You didn't even enter the industrial ages! I guess things go so boring in the end that you missed that you could disband Constantinople.

 

[Elear]

Spoonwood,

I'm glad I entertained you with the account of this game; I always like to detail games like this as hopefully others can learn from my failures.

Indeed, as you said, I could have always abandoned Constantinople, but you see, I was so eager to get to the end by this point, I forgot to check on my culture (which was pure stupidity on my part, as I noted). The moral of the story is ALWAYS check, even if you've smoothed other factors out.

You also observed the tech pace; my cash was always being used to rush units or improvements, nor did I ever earn much due to the amount of warfare + Monarchy. With the AIs locked in war all game (and thus in Monarchy and Feudalism, respectively), there was hardly any technological advancement other than self-research (often on 30+ turn paces). I couldn't be bothered by the end to try to do anything or grow my population more, since the defeat of Mongolia felt like the real victory to me, so I let the game fizzle out to its conclusion.

-Elear

 

[Tone]

I like it! Good write up, Elear. Normally if culture is a problem for me on Sid level it's the AI that wins it by surprise.

BTW if you were going for a Sid Histo win why not try a Small map? That table is empty at the moment.

 

[Elear]

Thank you Tone.

Perhaps you missed it (I don't blame you) but the whole point of the game summary was that I initially wanted 20k victory, and thus why I was playing on a Tiny map and didn't start at all like I would for a Histographic win. The decision to go Histographic was born out of the mistakes I made in the course of setting up my 20k city, as well as an unusually sluggish tech pace, even for 80 percent archipelago on Sid. Then, after all that effort to dominate the world, I was denied by my own 20k city, which I had neglected to watch and thus it came as a dissapointing surprise.

 

[Tone]

Perhaps you missed it (I don't blame you) but the whole point of the game summary was that I initially wanted 20k victory

No I didn't miss it but maybe I got caught up in the story of conquest that I forgot about your original aim. You certainly made it clear enough. My mistake. I'm looking forward to the next one now.

 

[Spoonwood]

Still laughing at the "I'll go for the 20k. No forget that, now it's histographic. Whoops, it's a 20k!"

 

[AutomatedTeller]

So, I'm no expert on Sid invasions, other than to say "be dutch and use superpikes vs. archers on a hill with walls and barracks".

it's funny - I read all about how many unit's Sid AI's had... it wasn't until I landed a stack of 20 rifles on a hill and had it slaughtered in 2 turns with archers and horse and some longbows that I really understood it... cause, even though my rifles had killed a ton of units... there seemed no end to them!!

if i do a SID histo game, it will almost certainly be with the dutch, for just that reason.

 

[Elear]

I've been working on a Standard Deity Conquest game, but I admit I'm finding it quite difficult.

It's not winning, persay, but the fact that it's difficult to get the right circumstances to beat what shouldn't beat an extremely difficult date (610 AD).

Been trying as the Iroquois on 80% pangaea, pretty standard 4 civs: America, Spain, France, Arabia.

My opening is simple enough: find a start with a cow and decent food/shields mix around, then set up a 4 turn factory and get about 8 to 10 cities, build up a dozen MW, attack (trigger GA), build MW up to 50, and rampage all the while.

I've had three or four very strong attempts thus far, one each of the last couple of nights, but I find they tend to end in failure usually due to AI getting too many MDI and pikes (it's scarily quite common to see this by 500 BC). The amount of MW required to defeat such armies, even if I'm rated "strong", becomes more overwhelming since MW have little capability.

The other problem is not one I've often thought about since this sort of game is a bit unusual for me. Raze or capture? If I raze, until I get the remaining # of AI down to 1 or 2, I will be plagued with settler pairs coming to fill up the new land, making new conquests more tedious and often getting in the way of my established supply lines. But if I capture, I have to hold the cities, which is equally annoying, because most of the civs have remote jungle towns to hunt down somewhere and thus their cities start flipping back. On this note, in one game, I lost 2 MW armies + 17 MW in two separate flips; neither city had great odds to flip and I was only resting my troops in them for a turn or two.

Resources rarely seem to be a problem; iron hardly matters until Knights come around, and by then, the game is won or lost already. Horses seem to be easily available and I was only lacking them in one or two attempts.

I find it often helps to get the SoZ since they're essentially better MWs. Ivory is easy to find and often very nearby -- SGLs are possible with Writing and HBR, and even building from scratch is doable (though I'm still debating if it's not more worth it to expend the shields on 7-8 more MW instead).

I feel like if I get the right game with the right circumstances, I won't get hung up on the 3rd AI and therefore get a finish date of ~300 AD.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I think you should just try, from very early on, to make the AI fight amongst each other. Works miracles on the AI 'standing militaries' and the tech pace in the mid to long run. Maybe even place one or two more civs than you have now, just to have more options. Sure, with more civs there'll be more AI cores, but the easiest kills are those that happen from AI to AI.

 

[Spoonwood]

I think getting the AIs to war amongst each other as Emsworth suggests comes as a darn good idea. What climate settings do you have the game on? You might want a dry map since you play as agricultural and they don't. Industrious tribes also seem to develop fairly fast... so do you want France and America in there?

 

[Elear]

Emsworth: I agree with what you've said and I've made some use of alliances. I'll try adding 1 or 2 more civs and see what happens.

Spoonwood: I liked France and America since neither of them have terribly undesirable traits -- Industrious is probably the least of my concerns. There seems to be no consistency in Industrious civs developing faster. In my last two games, Spain and Arabia were the "big" civs on the block. In every single game, I've destroyed France first.

Also, I've been using these settings:

Standard, No Barbarians, default rules
Dry, Cool, 5 billion

 

[Marsden]

Maybe Arabia would be a good choice? Expansionist to find the enemy and Ansars to kill them. But maybe chivalry is too late for your plans.

 

[Elear]

It's a good thought but indeed, probably too late.

Expansionist is pretty much meaningless anyway since I have no trouble finding the civs; 80 percent water means they are all cramming me soon enough.