Role Play Challenge: Pollution Bull

[madscientist]

Pollution Bull: Part I

Well, anyone who shadowed the game ahead of me is probably laughing at SB's wonderfull neighbor's! The land is not so bad though.

We start by immediately moving south and find

Damned, one very annoying leader! OK let's see what else is out there to do.

Without a second thought I settled in place

In hindsight I really would have preferred to settle ontop of the hill because....

Meet AI #2

And AI #3

Well now, aint this cozy...

So some housekeeping items for the beginning of an RPC

Techpath: Mining/Bronze Working/Mysticism/Hunting/Archery/Wheel/Pottery/Writing/Animal Husbandry. Yeah we got alot, see what fishing can do for the early game!

Scouting: 126 gold, 2 warriors, and a poor map. We missed 2 huts by 1 turn, but oh well.

Build order in the captial: Workboat/workboat/worker/barracks/dog/dog/Stonhenge/archer/dog/dog/etc... You get the idea. Why so many dogs?

Well, because the idiot, I mean Monty is due North

Shaka is due west

And copper looks accessible to both

And Napolean is Southeast

And thanks to VERY agressive chopping of our forrests (in fact our worker has done NOTHING else

SO we can pop out CG III archers from the capital right away.

I was rather disappointed to find the next Leader

Tell the truth I expected someone like Boudica or Ghengis the way things are going.

So our worker has been busy, getting us

A nice stack of 10 Dog Soldiers.

A look at the capital

2 forrests left. Enough to chop out the first Settler.

So what do we doo with all our Dog Soldiers..

OK, I do/did have a plan

1) Fast charge at Monty (it's not really a rush as we went after Stonehenge first) to take him out. He is the Buddhist founder.

2) WHy the hell did I build Stonehenge??? Free UB in each city! Also the first GP for Philosophical Bull will be a Prophet to shrine the Buddhist Holy city.

SO I have heard people say Dogs are terrible units to rush with. Let's see if that is true!

By the Way, Monty's power numbers are less than half ours and he just adopted slavery!

 

[bestje]

dogs are terrible to rush with, they are Strength 4 and ony get bonuses against melee defenders when ideally you want to rush the AI when they have only archers.

hitting Monty early is always a good plan, he does like founding an early religion

I'd try to kill Shaka early on as well, hoping he has spammed just impis as your dogs are pretty good against them but not so good against chariots.

there are some very nice city sites about you can settle so I think just about any victory is possible from here

 

[Joshua368]

While they are almost as strong as macemen against melee units, against archers dogs will be as great as a spearman rush. Fortunately it looks like you have the numbers to counteract this, so good luck. (Some neighbors for a sitting bull start! Fortunately SB is virtually un-rushable, so you're safe until the medieval era.)

 

[futurehermit]

The strength of a dog rush is its resourceless-ness thus allowing an EARLY rush

 

[UWHabs]

A dog rush is like a chariot rush but without the mobility. Good luck!

 

[apenpaap]

Wow, the random map generator really screwed you by giving you these neighbours. Rushing Monty is certainly a great idea.

 

[nbcman]

Since monty is close and he probably won't get jags soon (since he just probably got BW and changed into slavery), take him out. Any game without monty is a good game-plus the Buddhist holy city is a good bonus.

Do any of your potential targets have chariots? They would make mincemeat of your dogs....

 

[madscientist]

To answer a few Questions

1) Yes, the Dog Rush should have been earlier. A big gamble on my part to go after Stonehenge first. No guts, no Glory and Sitting Bull always struck me as a risk taker!

2) Monty JUST swapped into slavery, thus I assume he does not have spears yet.

3) Dogs are slower than chariots but I have 10 unpromoted Dogs which have the CR option! Chariots cannot get the CR promotion.

 

[Stewie0416]

I think this article should help you with your Dog rush. I've tried it a few times and it went well, although i play noble so i never went up against archers...

 

[cripp7]

A dog rush is like a chariot rush but without the mobility. Good luck!

good point but without the withdrawl chance. I still like dogs and those protective CGIII archers/longbows/xbows are great!

 

[CCRunner]

Monty is the closest and so Monty is the one that should die.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Hmmm . . . Monty and Shaka as neighbors -- this is a situation where I enjoy having Protective as a trait.

 

[carl corey]

Just a reminder that archery units with Barracks, UB, Theocracy and Vassalage come out with 10XP, enough for Drill IV.

 

[madscientist]

Pollution Bull: Part II

Bull looks pleased as his lands are cleared arround the capital. No stupid trees to get in the way of his view of the insane Aztec.

Yes, Old Monty has been busy spamming settlers!

But don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the Aztec efforts to expand the Native Americans lands. Also, Bull is a stubborn man and he did see that Aztec Holy City so he continues to send his Dogs off in that direction.

10 Dogs versus 4 archers. A little close there.

Add one Holy City to the Native Americans!

While our fine Dog Soldiers regroup, let's look at the techpath

Animal Husbandry/Masonry/Sailing/start Meditation. And after AH

My oh my, Monty has horses within one of his cities borders. Yet I have not seen a chariot! Poor Monty, never too high up on the intelligence scale was he.

The horse city was poorly defended so we sent a smaller stack there

Allowing us to build chariots in the Holy City. We have yet to connect the capital to our "NEW" Native American cities.

And thanks to our risk of taking Stonehenge and the Philosphical trait we popped.

Which we used for

Not much gold so far, but soon we shall have some Native American diplomacy via religion I hope.

Meanwhile we built/healed/chopped a few more Dogs and brought another 10-mer stack to the last Aztec city

Sitting Bull has kept the Aztec scalp mounted over his bed as a reminder!.

But all the fun with Aztecia has finished and there is much to do!

The landscape

And our cities

OK, we have some work to do!

1) Chop out alot of forrests to get some fast libraries before our treasury runs dry.

2) Settle a few more cities to the west, especially along that jungle river with the 2 gems.

3) Will all those rivers I think cottaging may be the wisest choice. Teh capital can be the GP farms for now.

4) Techpath?? Once we finish meditation for monestaries the choices are either

IW/HBR to prepare for the inevitable Zulu Stack of Doom.

Priesthood/Monarchy for ALOT of excess happiness AND access to Fuedalism.

Math/Currency/Col earlier.

5) What to do with our neighbors? I think all will agree getting the other 2 morons into a war is best. But which to back??? Both are hard but NOT impossible to permanently befriend.


6) Lastly, I expect the next GP to be a prophet. I am thinking of Bulbing theology if I can get polytheims and monotheims in the tech queue soon. If I am lucky enough to get there first eprhaps we will have 2 shrined holy cities.

So what do you all think???

 

[UWHabs]

SB is the best defender against opposing stacks, since you get strong archers and dogs are great against axes. To defend from Shaka, you just need a few spearmen to keep away his mounted units. Or make a run for Feudalism, and put your strong longbows to use.

 

[apenpaap]

You should ally with Napoleon, he is much less dangerous then Shaka. Just look at how many RPC's you lost to Shaka.

 

[bestje]

shaka doesn't really backstab as far as i'm aware, he is the more dangerous of the two however so eliminating one more now would probably be a good idea, getting the other AI to DoW first is a good idea as it gets you diplo bonuses which last quite a while

apenpaap makes a good point shaka is a noted RPC sabouteur

 

[nbcman]

Take out the worst current and future threat = Shaka. Napoleon can either be contained or befriended while you are dealing with Shaka.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

In my last game Shaka sailed 3 galleys with 6 swordsmen in them from his base far up north to mine near the southern pole to invade me when he was at +7 pleased in about 300BC. So I would say he can backstab unless you get him up to friendly which is difficult since his favourite civic is police state.

 

[carl corey]

A bit of an off topic question: what happens if you lose the Pyramids city while you are in Police State and don't have Fascism yet? Is it an automatic civic change? To what? And is there a revolution or not?