Kylearan
compound eye
Congratulations, guys! Very well played, and a very exciting and close finish. Well done! 
RBC13A - Middle Ages - Byzantium, Sid
- Thread starter T-hawk
- Start date
Doc Tsiolkovski
Deity
Congrats. This was the one game I didn't gave a chance to win (and a few more Swedish Berserk would have proven me right).
What a great historical accuracy btw - Byzantium needs to pay other Vikings to fight the Swedish....
Justus II
General Staff
Definitely, great game, and a good story! Exciting right to the end!
T-hawk
Transcend
Thanks for the good words, everyone, and congrats again to the team. Especially Arathorn, who had some great war turns saving us from Swedish doom, and to Charis who woke us all up with "hey, we're going to LOSE unless we get going on getting VPs!"
Quite an experience, to be sure - Sid difficulty is a whole different ballgame than even Deity. One hidden aspect of Sid difficulty is that it's more prone to dogpiles. Because your military will never be stronger than the AIs', it's cheaper for them to buy allies and more expensive for you to do so. We got smacked around by that, hard.
In the beginning, I was wondering what the downsides of the Byzantines were. Well, one big one is that they're pretty much the only player on their tech tree, so they can't broker for the techs. The Rus can get them, but you can't broker for monopoly techs of course. As a result, Cataphracts come much later than one might expect - and they really are weak in the endgame against pikemen and Swiss Mercs. On lower difficulties, the Byzantines can beeline to Heavy Cavalry right away with their own research and dish out some pain, but not up here in the Sid stratosphere.
Also, we were enormously helped by the apparent bug with tech costs on other branches. Getting up to Smithing on the Norse branch early was critical, as was getting to build our own assassins to see the Abbasids' units. Paying full cost for those techs would've made this much harder.
That said, the Byzantines definitely are one of the strongest nations in the scenario, mostly because they start in the lead and have a weak neighbor to blitz. Other candidates for Sid difficulty would be the Abbasids tucked in their corner of the map, Turks with deadly Sipahi, and any Viking civ that could blitz out the other Viking civs with quick regicide and take over the land. Any of the other Christian or Arab nations would be pretty hard-pressed to even survive on Sid.
So, time to start planning for Age of Discovery, I guess. I'll certainly be heading up a team on Sid yet again
Quite an experience, to be sure - Sid difficulty is a whole different ballgame than even Deity. One hidden aspect of Sid difficulty is that it's more prone to dogpiles. Because your military will never be stronger than the AIs', it's cheaper for them to buy allies and more expensive for you to do so. We got smacked around by that, hard.
In the beginning, I was wondering what the downsides of the Byzantines were. Well, one big one is that they're pretty much the only player on their tech tree, so they can't broker for the techs. The Rus can get them, but you can't broker for monopoly techs of course. As a result, Cataphracts come much later than one might expect - and they really are weak in the endgame against pikemen and Swiss Mercs. On lower difficulties, the Byzantines can beeline to Heavy Cavalry right away with their own research and dish out some pain, but not up here in the Sid stratosphere.
Also, we were enormously helped by the apparent bug with tech costs on other branches. Getting up to Smithing on the Norse branch early was critical, as was getting to build our own assassins to see the Abbasids' units. Paying full cost for those techs would've made this much harder.
That said, the Byzantines definitely are one of the strongest nations in the scenario, mostly because they start in the lead and have a weak neighbor to blitz. Other candidates for Sid difficulty would be the Abbasids tucked in their corner of the map, Turks with deadly Sipahi, and any Viking civ that could blitz out the other Viking civs with quick regicide and take over the land. Any of the other Christian or Arab nations would be pretty hard-pressed to even survive on Sid.
So, time to start planning for Age of Discovery, I guess. I'll certainly be heading up a team on Sid yet again
Trying to beat all the conquests at Sid, are you, T-hawk?
At least Age of Discovery is a smaller map and with not as many civilizations, so most of us can play only one civ....
Meanwhile, somebody needs to grab RBC13K (Faithful Fatimids) and get that finished up, so we cn start berating Charis to get RBC14 organized!
Arathorn
T-hawk
Transcend
Trying to beat all the conquests at Sid, are you, T-hawk?
Three down, six to go. 
Been trying to find time to take a crack at Mesopotamia on my own, which is probably going to be the toughest, trying to build wonders against that AI cost discount...
Three down, six to go. Been trying to find time to take a crack at Mesopotamia on my own, which is probably going to be the toughest, trying to build wonders against that AI cost discount...Don't build wonders, just get VPs for unit kills. The game ends when all the wonders are built, but you can easily win without ever building a wonder.
I think it can be done, but it will be at least as dicey/close as this one was.
Arathorn
P.S. Wanna sign up for LotR13 in the LotR discussions thread?
I think it can be done, but it will be at least as dicey/close as this one was.
Arathorn
P.S. Wanna sign up for LotR13 in the LotR discussions thread?
Charis
Realms Beyond
Way to go Jabah!! 
Excellent finish, and great game. This is very definitely a "feel good" win for me
Oh no, gonna berate poor Charis on AoD scenario?!
I guess I'll stir the embers on that. I did start writing some notes on it, so I'm almost ready to do that. A few games that I thought would drag on longer are actually close to finishing (eg Fatimids)
Charis
Excellent finish, and great game. This is very definitely a "feel good" win for me
Oh no, gonna berate poor Charis on AoD scenario?!
I guess I'll stir the embers on that. I did start writing some notes on it, so I'm almost ready to do that. A few games that I thought would drag on longer are actually close to finishing (eg Fatimids)
Charis
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