SM1 - Sid challenge

[Smart]

Ok, we are officially lose this game :shakehead
Whomp, you can post the save, but we will play from nero's start.
I think we don't need a new thread, so I will post game settings here.

 

[Smart]

Settings:

Version: v1.22
Variant: Always War
Difficulty: SID
Civilization: Greece

Size: Tiny
Landmass: Continents, 70% water
Climate: Wet, Temperate
Age: 3 Billions
Barbarians: Disabled
Opponents: Egypt, America and Japan


Starting position:

Save:

SM1b_3000 BC.SAV


Roster:
Smart
Beorn-eL-Feared
Own
nerovats - started the game
zerksees - UP
Whomp - on deck

 

[zerksees]

Please skip me this time guys. I am going to recommend a city 3NW of Athens on the hill. If I learned anything from attempt #1, the AI likes a safe approach to attack our city, and those mountains look safe for them. I am not sure if it will work if they come from the east. With hoplites we are going to win on defense anyway, so let them come.

It may be possible that the AI may not attack our hoplites in the open until they get swords. They will attack them in the cities.

Whomp, at what point did the immortals start attacking someplace other than SDC? It will be real helpful to know what changed their program. I suspect there may have been some encroachment on Sardis. I believe the AI will feel threatened by moving any unit into a tile on the border of Sardis, not just into their territory. If there was some other trigger I would like to know it so we can avoid it in the next game.

Sometime I will play 10 more of the old game to see if I get the same results.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Whomp up, and indeed it's agood Q: when did the start/stop attacking SDC ...

 

[Whomp]

First of all, I reloaded after the first IT. The army was killed. So after reloading I moved the army to the capital to heel but SDC took its lumps from there. I did make the mistake of moving towards Sardis due to the numbers headed towards SDC. I will try again tomorrow without doing this and it will probably help as Zerksees has pointed out.

 

[zerksees]

The army was killed.

I was afraid of this. Since I saw the army redline twice I thought this was a distinct possibility. Short of realoading, the only contingency plan I can think of is to build as many EW as possible, put them in SDC and try to get another one.

Since a lot of them are coming from the east, any incursion on Sardis will cause them to come north, shortening their trip, and basically doubling the amount of immortals coming at us for a short time. The path to winning on Sid AW is very narrow indeed.

There may be another reason for the problem. I probably should not have attacked that spear with the army. If I had not it would have been up to 100% at the start of the turn, no? (SDC has a barracks)

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Whomp]

Yes Zerksees attacking with the army was a critical piece of that. EW's are not good at much of anything other than defending or pillaging.

Even the few times where the odds were even and I attacked immortals stacks on a desert tile with archers the RNG was not very kind and I wasn't attacking individual ones where I was uncovered for a counter.

IW may have been the better tech route, in the short run, versus maths. Cats helped to pling the immortals but ultimately they didn't help too against massive stacks. The only way to combat this would be to get swords. At least, tactically swords would bring the advantage of a counterattack, at least until the persians upgraded to pikes. Even still cranking out 20 (cats) or 30 shields (swords) would be difficult. This is a big "if" since our workers would likely have to link up iron unless we were so lucky to have it under SDC.

 

[zerksees]

In our situation at SDC swords would be bad since we would be attacking on a hill. The swords would definitely help cut down the supply of pillaging spears though. And what the immortals would do once we had iron hooked up is anoyone's guess.

I attacked with the army since I was getting beat up on the spears, and knew I would not have enough cats to make a difference for several turns. Since there were two spears I knew I would still be in SDC and fortified for the IBT, there were not many Persians near SDC and figured the army would get healed up in time and finally there were some EWs with it too and thought they would carry the weight. Just got a bad draw with RNG.

 

[Own]

Sid Without military

Here's that link

 

[Whomp]

I think the swords would help with the wandering pillaging spears and flatland immortals. Of course, the additional cost of 30s vs. 10s would be an enormous opportunity cost and we would need to control the iron. However, if a sword promoted and made an army it would give us the greatest chance of turning the tide and countering their onslaught. Cats, afterwards, could help underneath a sword army.

 

[Smart]

@Own: very good story. But one point:

Cultural Victory is not allowed and cultural linked starting location is off.

And this screen:

 

[Own]

My point was about AI attacking with max aggression, that had nothing to do with not getting attacked. I agree that the game was a little unfair in his favor.

 

[Smart]

Whomp, do you know that you is UP?
If you can't play a turnset, I will do it tonight

 

[Whomp]

My fault everyone. I thought it was my turn to pick up the save from Zerksees not the Nero save.

Smart go ahead and play now since I'm up in another SG and I will pick up this one afterwards.

 

[Smart]

Zerksees was swapped, and it made you up
Got it.

 

[Smart]

Turn 1
Athens grows to size 3.
Worker irrigates cow.

Turn 2
Hoplite > hoplite.

Turn 5
Worker roads cow.

Turn 8
Move worker to BG.

Turn 9
Athens grows to size 4 and completes hoplite. Start working on another one (3 turns).
Worker mines BG.

Turn 10
Check F3, we can support only four units. I put settler to the queue, and we should build it on growth, after fifth hoplite.

 

[Whomp]

OK I will try to hit it tonight.

PS Smart did you get my pm?

 

[Smart]

Yes, but I was too late to grab the MTDG save, because Daghdha have posted a "Got it" one hour after post in Turn tracker thread
I will play turn 87 when we will get the save...

After all swaps roster looks so:

Smart
Whomp - playing tonight
zerksees - on deck
Beorn
Own
nerovats

 

[Whomp]

Pre-turn: Hit enter
2510 Switch a tile for extra commerce on the lake.

IT Hop--> settler
2470 Send out two hops to scout new city sites and see some wheat. Re mm to shield tiles.

IT
2430 Some tundra north

IT Egyptian warrior appears. They are building the Oracle (and Pyramids).
2390 Sheez....she's loaded.

I can't see giving up alpha for any of these techs. She won't give up IW and the others I simply don't think we absolutely need with hops.

IT
2350

IT settler --> hop
2310 move Settler to mountain with hop that's there.

IT Americans finish Oracle
2270 move into place

IT
2230 Spartan Quarters established. Start a curragh which can be changed.

IT warrior/settler comes by. hop--> hop
2190 Warrior attacks Spartan Q. yeah right....(1-0)

IT
2150 Nice! We have a two tile choke!! We can expand and let them send in warriors when we please for farming.

 

[Own]

Looks good, great map. We do need some archers though, and we need to send every elite hoplite we get to pillage them, because they're slow pillagers. If we get iron and an army, we have a chance.