So I'm playing the Huge World Map (with minor tweaks), 3.72c (hotfixed from 3.72 with the loose files Walter provided, not the new full DL) + my own little tweaks. Mainly I've reduced the unit cost scaling to 10% of the default (quick and dirty removal of a "0" from all unit roles costs). So far I'm liking it, makes the early game playable, still has a noticeable effect later on when garrison and army numbers need to increase substantially. Plus I just like great field battles and sieges and feeling the approaching doom of an AI invading doomstack.
Egypt, Emperor, Realistic speed. Revolutions on but nothing of note happened yet. Leader change active. AI Plays to Win active. Victories active: Conquest, Space, Time.
Up to Medieval era it has been a terrible struggle!
Ancient Era of constant invasions and massive devastation of almost all my improvements, always woefully behind the AI in tech, indeed my only progress was thanks to open borders and prioritising techs already so commonplace they had +100% and higher bonus. Barely managed to build the Great Bath, and then all the wonders got built before I could even research their tech...
Classical Era the situation stabilised somewhat, as AIs began fighting among themselves more than invading me.
Exploration and contact with as many empires as possible has been fundamental, to get as much tech diffusion as possible. Outright begging regularly for money is what kept the economy going.
The AIs have been extremely active in fighting each other, invading and counter invading, some cities have changed multiple owners, surprisingly very few have been razed (mostly by me!).
Main highlights:
Africa is quite stable, took me the whole Classical era just to conquer Israel, Nubia and Ethiopia-Eritrea. Only way I've managed to conquer anything was to focus all I had towards 1 single city, have a core of about 10 city raider axemen, and spam at least 3 times the number of defenders in warbands (being Egypt, at least those got churned out quickly enough, anything else was sloooow). And those warbands were still being recruited while the battering rams were slowly, slowly, slowly reducing city defenses. Special mention to Israel with extra high defense %, and super archers in hill cities! 20+ turns of just sitting there, costing money, and waiting for 1% reduction for each ram.
Then a single turn of massive bloodbath, can't let the defenders heal! 99% casualties for the warbands, but who cares?
All this while at 0% research or near there, always in the red to pay for those masses of sacrificial warbands.
When I finally got to horse archers, their withdrawal helped a lot with initial injuring of defenders. Still a bloodbath for warbands.
After each city, call for ceasefire, regroup, heal, restock the treasury, maybe work on a tech, beg more money. And spam new warbands.
Relations with Carthage are suprisingly friendly, guess after a couple of failed Ancient era invasions, they realized it was better to trade.
Mali and South Africa are cautious to annoyed, they also attempted some invasions early on, then never bothered again, I guess they were mostly busy fighting each other and Carthage. Decently sized regional empires, though geography keeps them isolated.
In Europe, beyond "core areas", there's plenty of disjointed cities and the borders are all a mess.
Rome built and conquered a solid empire, mainly in central Europe. Portugal is a tech leader though with very few cities. Celts eliminated England early on, Greece initially expanded really well into Anatolia and Ukraine, then got conquered by suddenly aggressive and effective Hungarians. Armenia and Babylon expanded together, almost completely destroyed Persia, then in the early Medieval era Babylon got devastated by Rome and finally eliminated by the Arabs, who up to that point had been sitting quiet and teching like crazy. At some point they had 3 holy cities! Though 2 of them later migrated elsewere, as the Arabs kept Islam as their state religion.
Here I come in, having barely gotten some lebensraum in Africa. After the elimination of my southern neighbours, had to also raze a few "tribal" settlements that were denying me some resource tiles with their culture. Assaulting tribal forts on hills was an even worse bloodbath than Israeli archers on hills. At this time, my surviving horse archers reached Flanking III and got to the maximum 90% retreat odds possible (incl. stack aid bonuses).
So here I was, barely into Land Tenure, when I discover that the Egyptian levy, the Harafisha, has a bonus against other levies and, even more suprisingly, against archers!
The Arabs were very suprised when backwards and weak Egypt, who they so graciously sent so many imams to spread Islam to all my cities for free, "suddenly" (still took some turns of defense bombarding, got catapults now) conquered their capital with an army composed mainly of untrained peasants!
Perfect moment for me, as the massive Arabian armies had been whittled down during the conquest of Babylonian lands, and dispersed to hold onto their cities.
In a relatively quick war, Arabia fell, and half of Mesopotamia too, though I've only kept Babylon , the rest of the cities were horribly placed.
Meanwhile, luckily for me, Rome and Armenia went to war against each other, keeping them busy and reducing their armies. Anatolia was devastated, though only one Armenian city fell (placed where Costantinople would be).
Elsewhere in the world, Austronesia is probably the biggest and richest empire in the world, one of the main donors to poor beggar Egypt. Japan is up there with the tech leaders. Siam, Korea, and the Chinas are kept backwards by constant warfare and pillaging, same for India. There's still plenty of original barbarian cities around, which quite suprises me.
The central Asian empires seem to have expanded enough to survive, though news are scarce and they're consistently in the lower middle of the scoreboard. Good targets for money shakedowns though, since they're so distant I don't care about their opinions of me. And after the conquest of Arabia, I've got a decent military power score!
So now Egypt has its own religion with holy city and shrine (thanks, Arabia!), a solid empire with 12 cities, most of them in very good places, a decently sized army (though needing to heal for several turns) economy and research rate finally rising, thanks to newly acquired luxury resources (and finally having a religion) allowing an almost explosive growth of the population (some luxuries have constantly been imported as well).
Rome is the closest danger: though they're currently busy conquering Russia, already with Knights, Trebuchets and massive numbers of Crossbowmen, previously cordial relations have cooled due to having different religions, so a war is quite possible now.
Plus, a couple of former Babylonian cities in Lebanon-Syria, right on my new borders, are currently in Roman hands, and if the Armenians keep up the war, their garrisons might become weakened enough to become... interesting.
I've really enjoyed the leader switch at each era! Both for my own gameplay and for the feeling of historical and societal changes in different eras. Plus, relations with new leaders get partially reset, diplomacy has been quite engaging.
Performance has been fantastic, no crashes so far, turn times really fast for the size of map and number of units!
Once again, my profound gratitude to Walter for a masterpiece.
Egypt, Emperor, Realistic speed. Revolutions on but nothing of note happened yet. Leader change active. AI Plays to Win active. Victories active: Conquest, Space, Time.
Up to Medieval era it has been a terrible struggle!
Ancient Era of constant invasions and massive devastation of almost all my improvements, always woefully behind the AI in tech, indeed my only progress was thanks to open borders and prioritising techs already so commonplace they had +100% and higher bonus. Barely managed to build the Great Bath, and then all the wonders got built before I could even research their tech...
Classical Era the situation stabilised somewhat, as AIs began fighting among themselves more than invading me.
Exploration and contact with as many empires as possible has been fundamental, to get as much tech diffusion as possible. Outright begging regularly for money is what kept the economy going.
The AIs have been extremely active in fighting each other, invading and counter invading, some cities have changed multiple owners, surprisingly very few have been razed (mostly by me!).
Main highlights:
Africa is quite stable, took me the whole Classical era just to conquer Israel, Nubia and Ethiopia-Eritrea. Only way I've managed to conquer anything was to focus all I had towards 1 single city, have a core of about 10 city raider axemen, and spam at least 3 times the number of defenders in warbands (being Egypt, at least those got churned out quickly enough, anything else was sloooow). And those warbands were still being recruited while the battering rams were slowly, slowly, slowly reducing city defenses. Special mention to Israel with extra high defense %, and super archers in hill cities! 20+ turns of just sitting there, costing money, and waiting for 1% reduction for each ram.
Then a single turn of massive bloodbath, can't let the defenders heal! 99% casualties for the warbands, but who cares?
All this while at 0% research or near there, always in the red to pay for those masses of sacrificial warbands.
When I finally got to horse archers, their withdrawal helped a lot with initial injuring of defenders. Still a bloodbath for warbands.
After each city, call for ceasefire, regroup, heal, restock the treasury, maybe work on a tech, beg more money. And spam new warbands.
Relations with Carthage are suprisingly friendly, guess after a couple of failed Ancient era invasions, they realized it was better to trade.
Mali and South Africa are cautious to annoyed, they also attempted some invasions early on, then never bothered again, I guess they were mostly busy fighting each other and Carthage. Decently sized regional empires, though geography keeps them isolated.
In Europe, beyond "core areas", there's plenty of disjointed cities and the borders are all a mess.
Rome built and conquered a solid empire, mainly in central Europe. Portugal is a tech leader though with very few cities. Celts eliminated England early on, Greece initially expanded really well into Anatolia and Ukraine, then got conquered by suddenly aggressive and effective Hungarians. Armenia and Babylon expanded together, almost completely destroyed Persia, then in the early Medieval era Babylon got devastated by Rome and finally eliminated by the Arabs, who up to that point had been sitting quiet and teching like crazy. At some point they had 3 holy cities! Though 2 of them later migrated elsewere, as the Arabs kept Islam as their state religion.
Here I come in, having barely gotten some lebensraum in Africa. After the elimination of my southern neighbours, had to also raze a few "tribal" settlements that were denying me some resource tiles with their culture. Assaulting tribal forts on hills was an even worse bloodbath than Israeli archers on hills. At this time, my surviving horse archers reached Flanking III and got to the maximum 90% retreat odds possible (incl. stack aid bonuses).
So here I was, barely into Land Tenure, when I discover that the Egyptian levy, the Harafisha, has a bonus against other levies and, even more suprisingly, against archers!
The Arabs were very suprised when backwards and weak Egypt, who they so graciously sent so many imams to spread Islam to all my cities for free, "suddenly" (still took some turns of defense bombarding, got catapults now) conquered their capital with an army composed mainly of untrained peasants!
Perfect moment for me, as the massive Arabian armies had been whittled down during the conquest of Babylonian lands, and dispersed to hold onto their cities.
In a relatively quick war, Arabia fell, and half of Mesopotamia too, though I've only kept Babylon , the rest of the cities were horribly placed.
Meanwhile, luckily for me, Rome and Armenia went to war against each other, keeping them busy and reducing their armies. Anatolia was devastated, though only one Armenian city fell (placed where Costantinople would be).
Elsewhere in the world, Austronesia is probably the biggest and richest empire in the world, one of the main donors to poor beggar Egypt. Japan is up there with the tech leaders. Siam, Korea, and the Chinas are kept backwards by constant warfare and pillaging, same for India. There's still plenty of original barbarian cities around, which quite suprises me.
The central Asian empires seem to have expanded enough to survive, though news are scarce and they're consistently in the lower middle of the scoreboard. Good targets for money shakedowns though, since they're so distant I don't care about their opinions of me. And after the conquest of Arabia, I've got a decent military power score!
So now Egypt has its own religion with holy city and shrine (thanks, Arabia!), a solid empire with 12 cities, most of them in very good places, a decently sized army (though needing to heal for several turns) economy and research rate finally rising, thanks to newly acquired luxury resources (and finally having a religion) allowing an almost explosive growth of the population (some luxuries have constantly been imported as well).
Rome is the closest danger: though they're currently busy conquering Russia, already with Knights, Trebuchets and massive numbers of Crossbowmen, previously cordial relations have cooled due to having different religions, so a war is quite possible now.
Plus, a couple of former Babylonian cities in Lebanon-Syria, right on my new borders, are currently in Roman hands, and if the Armenians keep up the war, their garrisons might become weakened enough to become... interesting.
I've really enjoyed the leader switch at each era! Both for my own gameplay and for the feeling of historical and societal changes in different eras. Plus, relations with new leaders get partially reset, diplomacy has been quite engaging.
Performance has been fantastic, no crashes so far, turn times really fast for the size of map and number of units!
Once again, my profound gratitude to Walter for a masterpiece.
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