maltz
King
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2006
- Messages
- 967
Chapter 16. Operation Canada
Alexander chased Washington out of South America. One last continent to go, but also the toughest. Will the Greek Pikeman hold their ground when Knights, Crossbowman, and soon Cannons, dispatched the uncontested Indian carpet of doom?
274. Turn 340. With the declaration of war from India imminent, Alexander decided to occupy some important strategic locations of the American Rockies. The Greek army will quickly take over Chicago from both sides, and use it as a base of operation against Gandhi's soldiers. The hilly terrain of the Rockie mountain will stop the Indian units, while our ranged units water it down and our Knights (with superior movement points of 5 from its Companion Cavalry ancestors) mop them up. I should have shipped a settler here just to setup a base in present day Los Angeles, since I saw the west coast unclaimed dozens of turns ago.
Chicago fell as soon as the Peace Treaty expired. Just when Alexander was ready to take Washington's last city Atlanta...
275. Indeed, almost immediately after we took possession of Chicago, Gandhi declared war. I guess Gandhi was waiting for a target to attack. Without a Greek city in North America, Gandhi , who had not research Astronomy, had no direction to march his army to. It has been a long time since I was declared war by an AI Civ.
I usually like to be the war declarer to be able to act first.
I was surprised that Wu Zetian did not declare war on us together. From the global policy summary, China had absolutely nothing to do with India - not a friendship declaration, no denouncement. At the time I have pulled back the Trebuchet stationed in Guangzhou, leaving the city completely defenseless. Is China really that peace loving? (But I could always purchase another trebuchet and maybe another unit when the Chinese army comes to to reclaim Guangzhou. I should be able to hold the city.
276. Backed up by ranged units, our Knights occupied the high ground (the Rockie Mountain) and charged the weakened Indian units on the plain. Our crossbowman was also able to fire on enemies that walked into their range. Most of Gandhi's units were pre-Renaissance (Swordsman, Archer, Elephant Archer). We were holding the line very well.
Since our battle line was narrow, we had some spare untis to finish off Washington first. Not that Washington will pose any threat before the end of game. I want the city Atlanta - for it can act as a gateway of the Pacific and Atlantic ocean for Greek Caravels to sail across without having to circle from the tip of South America. A Panama Canel.
277. Washington had his entire continent and more cities than Gandhi and Wu Zetian, but performed really poorly here. I did not see even one unit of American Crossbowmen, Knights, even Pikeman and Catapult. Washington even failed to take over a lowly City State, while he was always willing to be bribed to war another Civ... not a very powerful AI.
278. Only two Civs left - the two most populous countries in the world. India still led us in the number of soldiers. Although Gandhi always had more population than Wu, India performed poorly in tech. (China seems be really technology minded. Is it one of the few Civ in Civ5 that aims for a technology victory?) Alexander must eliminate as many low-level Indian units as possible before they tech up - which should happen fairly soon.
279. The Indian units came wave after wave only to be slaughtered on the bottom of the hill, or on top of the hill if they actually made it that far! The relatively narrowed landmass that leads to Chicago (northern Mexico) allowed the Greek units to face only two Indian units at the time, and kill one or two units every turn. As I gained more confidence, I started to move more and more units to the hills northwest of Chicago to accelerate the killing.
280. Since I was only a few turns away from Chemistry, I bought another Trebuchet to be ready to upgrade it to Cannon. Since the Greek army's backbone - Pikeman and Crossbowman - will not receive another upgrade until Rifleman (Strength 25), Alexander has to rely on Cannons (Strength 26). The one-tile-one-unit system heavily favors ranged units, since there is limited melee.
281. Chemistry! The Greece counterstrike shall begin!
282. Two more techs till the upgrade Rifleman - 31 turns countdown!
283. Under the coverage of Cannon fire, the Greek units advanced further into the Indian territory. Although Delhi was in sight, it was a massive city with a very high city defense of 33, plus a Trebuchet defending it. In addition, the city is located on the other side of the Mississippi River, making the siege extremely difficult. Each Trebuchet shot would take away half of the hit points of my melee units. So there is no way that I can use melee units to assault the city and see them live through the end turn. Two Cannons are not enough. We need a lot more. By looking at the map, there are four viable tiles to setup Cannons. Each Cannon costs 1800+ gold. I was about (1800x2-1200)/170 = 14 turns away from two more Cannons.
Note: In my previous game, the Roman army was able to conquer cities of 30+ city defense because it had a powerful Navy (5 Frigates and 3 Caravels) to bombard the city defense down. And at then I had Long Swordsman (Strength 18), not Pikeman (Strength 10) and Knights (Strength 18 but with 33% City combat penalty).
The early advantage of Greece's Hoplite had shown up here - there is a window of weakness until Pikeman can be further upgraded to Rifleman.
284. In the meantime, I discovered a magnificent Civ5 feature that most of you probably already knew - our ships don't have to SHOOT at embarked units to kill them. We only have to RUN OVER the unit to make it magically disappear. (No fancy ship sinking animation or scream. Just disappear. I would love to hear some scream.) I discovered that because I accidentally let me Caravel to move over this injured Horseman unit. I could have saved so many turns if I know I could kill units this easily. The only drawback of this is that we only get 1 EXP from this, instead of 2 EXP from every arrow attack.
By the way, the massive "We love the king day" celebration once we have gathered all of the world's luxurious resource is plain silly. All cities just randomly demand ONE resource that you already have, and then on the next turn realized that "now we have it!", and all went home in a frenzy to breed more efficiently. Silly citizens.
285. There was no way for the Greek army to take Delhi at the moment, so Alexander had a few options at the time. (1) Sit and wait for the Cannons, while killing a few more Indian units that came forward; (2) Shift the focus to the east coast to take Mumbai, which also has a high defense (31); (3) Find something that is easier to conquer. I decided to go with (3), since I had some interesting ideas of how to advance next. Also, I could again trade with Gandhi for his cash, which allows me to purchase two more Cannons a lot sooner.
I think human players would win a lot faster on Deity than on lower difficulties, since most of their Empire actually come from the fast-growing AI Civs.
286. So what's was my interesting idea? You probably haved guessed it - China. What else could it be, really. Since every war-peace cycle is a net gain for us, and India could not attack us for 10 turns, there were a lot of possible next steps.
Sure there was still limited things I could do in Guangzhou, since there is only a narrow passage to Beijing. But there is an alternative way! At this point Alexander divided his army in half. The two Cannons and most of the other units went on the alternative way - let's call it the "A team". The two Crossbows and a couple of melee units came back to Guangzhou, ready to chew up a few more Chinese defenders in Alaska. This is "B team".
My hope was that the AI doesn't learn from lessons. Wu Zetian will just keep sending their extra units over to Alaska to be slaughtered. This will leave China's back much less defended and my A team's secret operation a lot easier. Well, at least that was the hope at the time.
My new discovery about the Navy soon paid off - I immediately sank a Chinese unit of with a weak Trireme. It would take the Trireme 3 turns to shoot it down, but only 1 turn to run it over. Nice!
287. And indeed the Chinese units came forward to welcome their doom. At this point both of my crossbow have been upgraded with double attacks (which is exactly like the Chinese special Crossbow Cho-Ku Nu, but without the diminished strength). Adding the city bombardment, five attacks could almost kill anything that came into their range. The knight hidden behind the mountain also made a fair share of carnage.
At the time, Chinese already upgraded their Archers to Cho-Ku Nu (double attack Crossbow), and were making more of them in the Deity speed. I once read that the Deity AI produces everything with 60% of the human player's requirement. For example, if it takes 10 turns for a human player city to make a Cho-Ku Nu, the Deity AI also needs 6 turns. But this does not take into account that the Deity AI also runs a massive happiness bonus and is therefore mostly in Golden Age, which gives 1 extra hammer in every worked tile that already produces hammer. So that 6 turn could be further shortened to 3-4 turn. And then the AI must have a discount in upgrading units, because I saw all of AI's units upgraded even though it had NO cash.
Anyway, we will beat the AI because we exploits its predictability and vulnerability.
288. 19 turns to Rifling!
289. Our A team had successfully landed on eastern Canada, marched on the northern snow and discovered Chinese units! Nothing survives the bombardment of Cannons!
290. There must be a Chinese city covered by the fog of war (Shanghai, we later learned). We killed a few more defenders when they came into range.
291. Finally the defenders stopped showing up. In patch .141, this means that the AI still has a small number of defenders, probably 1-2 per city. At this point Alexander had a choice - he could skip Shanghai and continue west to attack Beijing, or try to steal Shanghai while the B team distracts the Chinese army in Beijing. At this point I like to play things safe until I get the Rifleman upgrade, and Shanghai should easier to steal than Beijing, since it had a good number of tiles for the siege.
292. Turn 361 is probably the most exciting turn of this entire game - I got a FREE Great Person from the City States! I loaded the auto-save at the end of Turn 360 and found that there is ALWAYS a Great Person generated, but the offering CS and the type of offering CS is completely random. That means with Random Seed upon reload, the player can get whatever Great Person desired.
I tested every kind of Great Person (except Great General). Great Merchants can be consumed by a City State (must be in its territory) to generate 1500 gold of profit and a lowly 30 points of influence. Not very useful unless you really need to purchase something in a hurry.
Great Artist can drop a culture bomb in the heart of enemy territory to eliminate their homeland fighting bonus (and accelerate our March healing). This could make a huge difference in the siege of a difficult city, or an one city challenge (OCC) to instantly cover important strategic resources.
Great Engineers can be used to rush difficult wonders. And some wonders gives a free tech, social policy, or another free Great person.
Great Scientist gives free tech. Most people think Great Scientist is the best type of Great Person since they can be saved and used up in a huge succession for the player to instantly jump to a very advanced tech. Combined with Research Agreement, this could mean a complete era ahead of the AI Civs (for example, construction of the United Nations for Diplomatic Victory).
293. Since I wanted to win this game as soon as possible and move on, I chose Great Scientist and instantly finish Rifling. I wasted a few turns of beakers that I already put into Rifling. But at this point I don't care about hardcore optimizing anymore.
294. This is my first Civ5 game to actually see Rifleman! Before I always lost or won too quickly. Actually I think I will win even more quickly than before this time... just that the accelerated research by the Patronage tree allowed me to see Rifleman walk the earth in 140AD!
(to be continued...)
Alexander chased Washington out of South America. One last continent to go, but also the toughest. Will the Greek Pikeman hold their ground when Knights, Crossbowman, and soon Cannons, dispatched the uncontested Indian carpet of doom?
Spoiler :
274. Turn 340. With the declaration of war from India imminent, Alexander decided to occupy some important strategic locations of the American Rockies. The Greek army will quickly take over Chicago from both sides, and use it as a base of operation against Gandhi's soldiers. The hilly terrain of the Rockie mountain will stop the Indian units, while our ranged units water it down and our Knights (with superior movement points of 5 from its Companion Cavalry ancestors) mop them up. I should have shipped a settler here just to setup a base in present day Los Angeles, since I saw the west coast unclaimed dozens of turns ago.
Chicago fell as soon as the Peace Treaty expired. Just when Alexander was ready to take Washington's last city Atlanta...
Spoiler :
275. Indeed, almost immediately after we took possession of Chicago, Gandhi declared war. I guess Gandhi was waiting for a target to attack. Without a Greek city in North America, Gandhi , who had not research Astronomy, had no direction to march his army to. It has been a long time since I was declared war by an AI Civ.
I usually like to be the war declarer to be able to act first.I was surprised that Wu Zetian did not declare war on us together. From the global policy summary, China had absolutely nothing to do with India - not a friendship declaration, no denouncement. At the time I have pulled back the Trebuchet stationed in Guangzhou, leaving the city completely defenseless. Is China really that peace loving? (But I could always purchase another trebuchet and maybe another unit when the Chinese army comes to to reclaim Guangzhou. I should be able to hold the city.
Spoiler :
276. Backed up by ranged units, our Knights occupied the high ground (the Rockie Mountain) and charged the weakened Indian units on the plain. Our crossbowman was also able to fire on enemies that walked into their range. Most of Gandhi's units were pre-Renaissance (Swordsman, Archer, Elephant Archer). We were holding the line very well.
Since our battle line was narrow, we had some spare untis to finish off Washington first. Not that Washington will pose any threat before the end of game. I want the city Atlanta - for it can act as a gateway of the Pacific and Atlantic ocean for Greek Caravels to sail across without having to circle from the tip of South America. A Panama Canel.
Spoiler :
277. Washington had his entire continent and more cities than Gandhi and Wu Zetian, but performed really poorly here. I did not see even one unit of American Crossbowmen, Knights, even Pikeman and Catapult. Washington even failed to take over a lowly City State, while he was always willing to be bribed to war another Civ... not a very powerful AI.
Spoiler :
278. Only two Civs left - the two most populous countries in the world. India still led us in the number of soldiers. Although Gandhi always had more population than Wu, India performed poorly in tech. (China seems be really technology minded. Is it one of the few Civ in Civ5 that aims for a technology victory?) Alexander must eliminate as many low-level Indian units as possible before they tech up - which should happen fairly soon.
Spoiler :
279. The Indian units came wave after wave only to be slaughtered on the bottom of the hill, or on top of the hill if they actually made it that far! The relatively narrowed landmass that leads to Chicago (northern Mexico) allowed the Greek units to face only two Indian units at the time, and kill one or two units every turn. As I gained more confidence, I started to move more and more units to the hills northwest of Chicago to accelerate the killing.
Spoiler :
280. Since I was only a few turns away from Chemistry, I bought another Trebuchet to be ready to upgrade it to Cannon. Since the Greek army's backbone - Pikeman and Crossbowman - will not receive another upgrade until Rifleman (Strength 25), Alexander has to rely on Cannons (Strength 26). The one-tile-one-unit system heavily favors ranged units, since there is limited melee.
Spoiler :
281. Chemistry! The Greece counterstrike shall begin!
Spoiler :
282. Two more techs till the upgrade Rifleman - 31 turns countdown!
Spoiler :
283. Under the coverage of Cannon fire, the Greek units advanced further into the Indian territory. Although Delhi was in sight, it was a massive city with a very high city defense of 33, plus a Trebuchet defending it. In addition, the city is located on the other side of the Mississippi River, making the siege extremely difficult. Each Trebuchet shot would take away half of the hit points of my melee units. So there is no way that I can use melee units to assault the city and see them live through the end turn. Two Cannons are not enough. We need a lot more. By looking at the map, there are four viable tiles to setup Cannons. Each Cannon costs 1800+ gold. I was about (1800x2-1200)/170 = 14 turns away from two more Cannons.
Note: In my previous game, the Roman army was able to conquer cities of 30+ city defense because it had a powerful Navy (5 Frigates and 3 Caravels) to bombard the city defense down. And at then I had Long Swordsman (Strength 18), not Pikeman (Strength 10) and Knights (Strength 18 but with 33% City combat penalty).
The early advantage of Greece's Hoplite had shown up here - there is a window of weakness until Pikeman can be further upgraded to Rifleman.
Spoiler :
284. In the meantime, I discovered a magnificent Civ5 feature that most of you probably already knew - our ships don't have to SHOOT at embarked units to kill them. We only have to RUN OVER the unit to make it magically disappear. (No fancy ship sinking animation or scream. Just disappear. I would love to hear some scream.) I discovered that because I accidentally let me Caravel to move over this injured Horseman unit. I could have saved so many turns if I know I could kill units this easily. The only drawback of this is that we only get 1 EXP from this, instead of 2 EXP from every arrow attack.
By the way, the massive "We love the king day" celebration once we have gathered all of the world's luxurious resource is plain silly. All cities just randomly demand ONE resource that you already have, and then on the next turn realized that "now we have it!", and all went home in a frenzy to breed more efficiently. Silly citizens.
Spoiler :
285. There was no way for the Greek army to take Delhi at the moment, so Alexander had a few options at the time. (1) Sit and wait for the Cannons, while killing a few more Indian units that came forward; (2) Shift the focus to the east coast to take Mumbai, which also has a high defense (31); (3) Find something that is easier to conquer. I decided to go with (3), since I had some interesting ideas of how to advance next. Also, I could again trade with Gandhi for his cash, which allows me to purchase two more Cannons a lot sooner.
I think human players would win a lot faster on Deity than on lower difficulties, since most of their Empire actually come from the fast-growing AI Civs.
Spoiler :
286. So what's was my interesting idea? You probably haved guessed it - China. What else could it be, really. Since every war-peace cycle is a net gain for us, and India could not attack us for 10 turns, there were a lot of possible next steps.
Sure there was still limited things I could do in Guangzhou, since there is only a narrow passage to Beijing. But there is an alternative way! At this point Alexander divided his army in half. The two Cannons and most of the other units went on the alternative way - let's call it the "A team". The two Crossbows and a couple of melee units came back to Guangzhou, ready to chew up a few more Chinese defenders in Alaska. This is "B team".
My hope was that the AI doesn't learn from lessons. Wu Zetian will just keep sending their extra units over to Alaska to be slaughtered. This will leave China's back much less defended and my A team's secret operation a lot easier. Well, at least that was the hope at the time.
My new discovery about the Navy soon paid off - I immediately sank a Chinese unit of with a weak Trireme. It would take the Trireme 3 turns to shoot it down, but only 1 turn to run it over. Nice!
Spoiler :
287. And indeed the Chinese units came forward to welcome their doom. At this point both of my crossbow have been upgraded with double attacks (which is exactly like the Chinese special Crossbow Cho-Ku Nu, but without the diminished strength). Adding the city bombardment, five attacks could almost kill anything that came into their range. The knight hidden behind the mountain also made a fair share of carnage.
At the time, Chinese already upgraded their Archers to Cho-Ku Nu (double attack Crossbow), and were making more of them in the Deity speed. I once read that the Deity AI produces everything with 60% of the human player's requirement. For example, if it takes 10 turns for a human player city to make a Cho-Ku Nu, the Deity AI also needs 6 turns. But this does not take into account that the Deity AI also runs a massive happiness bonus and is therefore mostly in Golden Age, which gives 1 extra hammer in every worked tile that already produces hammer. So that 6 turn could be further shortened to 3-4 turn. And then the AI must have a discount in upgrading units, because I saw all of AI's units upgraded even though it had NO cash.
Anyway, we will beat the AI because we exploits its predictability and vulnerability.
Spoiler :
288. 19 turns to Rifling!
Spoiler :
289. Our A team had successfully landed on eastern Canada, marched on the northern snow and discovered Chinese units! Nothing survives the bombardment of Cannons!
Spoiler :
290. There must be a Chinese city covered by the fog of war (Shanghai, we later learned). We killed a few more defenders when they came into range.
Spoiler :
291. Finally the defenders stopped showing up. In patch .141, this means that the AI still has a small number of defenders, probably 1-2 per city. At this point Alexander had a choice - he could skip Shanghai and continue west to attack Beijing, or try to steal Shanghai while the B team distracts the Chinese army in Beijing. At this point I like to play things safe until I get the Rifleman upgrade, and Shanghai should easier to steal than Beijing, since it had a good number of tiles for the siege.
Spoiler :
292. Turn 361 is probably the most exciting turn of this entire game - I got a FREE Great Person from the City States! I loaded the auto-save at the end of Turn 360 and found that there is ALWAYS a Great Person generated, but the offering CS and the type of offering CS is completely random. That means with Random Seed upon reload, the player can get whatever Great Person desired.
I tested every kind of Great Person (except Great General). Great Merchants can be consumed by a City State (must be in its territory) to generate 1500 gold of profit and a lowly 30 points of influence. Not very useful unless you really need to purchase something in a hurry.
Great Artist can drop a culture bomb in the heart of enemy territory to eliminate their homeland fighting bonus (and accelerate our March healing). This could make a huge difference in the siege of a difficult city, or an one city challenge (OCC) to instantly cover important strategic resources.
Great Engineers can be used to rush difficult wonders. And some wonders gives a free tech, social policy, or another free Great person.
Great Scientist gives free tech. Most people think Great Scientist is the best type of Great Person since they can be saved and used up in a huge succession for the player to instantly jump to a very advanced tech. Combined with Research Agreement, this could mean a complete era ahead of the AI Civs (for example, construction of the United Nations for Diplomatic Victory).
Spoiler :
293. Since I wanted to win this game as soon as possible and move on, I chose Great Scientist and instantly finish Rifling. I wasted a few turns of beakers that I already put into Rifling. But at this point I don't care about hardcore optimizing anymore.
Spoiler :
294. This is my first Civ5 game to actually see Rifleman! Before I always lost or won too quickly. Actually I think I will win even more quickly than before this time... just that the accelerated research by the Patronage tree allowed me to see Rifleman walk the earth in 140AD!
(to be continued...)
But it is OK - I had more Cannons!
