danaphanous
religious fanatic
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2013
- Messages
- 1,501
Just played the Aztecs again for the first time (on epic/immortal for better wars) and rolled Alex as my next-door neighbor. It's been a while since I've seen him and I'm having a blast! He has a wonderfully tuned AI and is at least decently challenging early game on immortal.
It is a small Pangea map with Carthage, Greece, Songhai, Denmark, and Ottomans as opponents. I added an extra civ just to crowd things and further facilitate violence. My plan is actually not to conquest the world though but to play it by ear and get attacked a lot. I'll try to make friends as I go and not really play optimally but just what seems most fun at the moment.
Part 1: Alex is an Ass
I start by pumping out 2 extra jags. Barbs are on raging and already tearing up the countryside. I quickly level my jags up to 2 promotions each with the barbs and DOW Carthage to steal their worker.
She follows me across the countryside but is no match for my guerilla tactics and in the end is left with no worker and no army. Having already started near half-tundra this begins a downhill slide and she is nerfed and disadvantaged for much of the early game. Meanwhile, my founding area luckily includes 2 rivers, a mountain-start and 2 lake tiles for quick growth and many resources and I now have 2 free workers to work it! 
For my religion I pick tithes, & pagodas. No good faith options on pantheon so I'm slow getting the upgrade so settle for religious community and the extra pressure range. Not bad. My capital has many lakeside hills, plains, marble, horses, iron, and religious community so quickly becomes a production powerhouse. Epic is making improvements slow but I compensate by overbuilding my workforce and soon get ahead of my growth in improvements and am busy building buildings and then national college.
I settle my second city south in a beautiful partial-jungle/river area near truffles, extra citrus, and cocoa! I filled out tradition first then opened liberty, which I realize isn't a great choice on a small map but I was trying out different ideas to make it less formulaic this game and intend to settle more than 4 cities.
True to form, as I've been expected of Alex he becomes jealous of my land immediately and after the founding of my 2nd city (on his general direction) shows up on my frontier with an enormous hoplite army (approximately 10 hops, 5 warrior, 5 archer). I've found AI generally suck at war but he did great for once. The flanking and hill defense bonuses on the hoplites were difficult to counteract with the ancient archer units and my jags were no match for them and he did a LOT of smart pillaging--more effectively then I've ever seen an AI fight. In fact his very first turn 2 move after declaring war was to go for and cut off my iron sources which was incredibly smart if he did it on purpose as I'd been watching him and was literally 2 turns from iron working ready to upgrade my experienced jags to counteract him! This single move turned a winnable, though difficult-looking war into my first scary war experience.
Usually I rebuff AI on immortal easily as I prepare, have a midsized force half range half melee and quickly make more, and have gold on hand ready to upgrade. This leaves me free to not upgrade immediately as I have the gold to do it whenever and can instead be cash-buying buildings up to the point I actually get attacked. But alex's dick move pillaging my iron and horses made me unable to upgrade my jags which though they had powerful upgrades were no match for hoplites face to face. So I took to bombarding with range from the safety of cities and used the woody terrain around my cities for guerilla attacks from my disadvantaged jags but was pushed back steadily. I did not have the gold to cash-buy walls on epic (oversight) but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. My new colony fell very quickly to an onslaught from all directions and the carpet proceeded north. He then sieged my capital continuing to pillage every tile he could.
I made a desperate stand with jags on hills (against hoplites!) and chariot archers fortified my rough terrain upgrades from all the barb fighting is literally the only reason this had a chance of working. The mountain helped as a screen and I had walls and was pumping out spearmen and chariot archers since I no longer could make swordsmen. Finally after a 15-turn stalemate I killed most of the invading force and pushed him back from battle of attrition (you know general AI slip-ups in war that add up over time). But it was slow because Alex used the terrain very well jumping from hill to hill and going after my support troops and pillaging resource tiles. He asked for peace but I was determined to get my city back as it's the first one I've lost in many games. I repaired my iron, upgraded my jags and sent some swordsmen with city-taking upgrades to take back my land. Only to meet the reinforcements...pikemen backed by archers. My new horse unit was useless against pikes and cities so I decided if he was going to be an ass I would too and sent it all the way around the front lines to his home cities where I proceeded to raid border tiles, pillage, and steal workers which I mercifully executed rather than force them to march north through barb-infested land (and they costed gold so...yeah). The free gold helped my upgrade--it would have been slow getting the funds otherwise on epic difficulty as they were expensive.
Again I had to fall back and build my forces as they were still outperforming my swordsmen. There was a 20-turn standoff where I had fortified a line of hills and rivers to stop any further invasion but couldn't push in without losing my troops to city fire and pikemen and he would no longer come to me now but was just waiting to defend the city. So, I beelined pikemen myself, built siege, an extra chariot archer, and finally after 1000 years recaptured my city but it had lost its free buildings and perks.
I pushed on and punished Alex by sniping workers and pillaging his borders. I xp farmed him at some chokepoints and kept killing his military until finally he was willing to give me all his extra luxes and resources which was the boost I needed to rebuild my economy.
20 turns later I had planted 3 new cities claiming many of the best surrounding spots and was successfully able to trap Greece from further expansion. I am now well on my way to recovering my science position and winning again due to the fertile area and insane growth boosts from floating gardens and my religion, but man Alex nearly lost me the game there! Even knowing he was invading I could not rebuff him due to his perfectly timed attacks and smart pillaging. This was by far the most fun ancient war I've ever had where I was completely out-teched. The only thing I can think I could have done better would have been to halt libraries/granaries and build walls and a bigger force first while beelining military techs but I rarely go this way as it puts me significantly behind on growth/science and Aztecs needed to get their floating gardens up.
Regardless, I'm sure he's taken 50 turns off my victory time but I'm confident I'll win yet! Anyone else have any fun stories with war? This game has been an amazing breath of fresh air from my normal play and it was fun to see my usual trim but well-upgraded army and rapid science strategy be almost beat by such an effective ancient era rush. Funny enough right after my victory as if they were waiting to see who came out on top both Carthage and Denmark wanted to be friends and started trading with all my new cities. Not long after, Greece asked to enter my league of friends after the war and we have been seemingly good friends ever since except for his incessant attempts to steal my CS allies of course.
I had so much fun during the war I accepted and am kind of fond of him now. Let me know if you want me to post pics or keep this thread updated! Interested to see how this immortal game goes given how off my strategy has gone!
I'm actually BEHIND on tech now though I'm sure I can fix it due to my superior growth as Aztecs and religion and I managed to claim 4 really good city spots for growth and science. I may have raging barbs to incidentally thank for that. After expansion I quickly claimed the wonders 3 the AI had ignored (apparently none went liberty so I had even MORE workers I was drowining in workers but this actually worked out majorly in my favor since it was epic and improvements were so slow). Liberty bonuses were a HUGE advantage making improvements almost normal speed. 
