The Ultimate Evil Cooked Maps: Prepare to DIE!

[shakabrade]

Although I am officially in hiatus, the title attracted me and I played this out a bit, until 7th century:



My view on the general strategy for winning this map:

Spoiler :

Three warmongers:

Monty: I was sure he'd get a religion. He is almost always Buddhist, but he got to Hindu this time. I settled in a way to prevent me being his land target. That means you must position your city in a way that you two don't touch each other while also making any spot in between you undesirable. That + some luck should keep me safe. And it did.

Shaka: Shaka WILL attack you. He is that kind of a guy. I have settled aggressively on a Plains Hill for defensive bonus towards him.

Toku: Toku was relatively far and in expansion mode, so I thought I was reasonably safe from him for a while. Tried not becoming his land target early (sharing 7 land tiles with an AI).

After some scouting, I have gotten the idea of continent layout, except from tundra in the North I never managed to get a military unit to. Barb influx suggested there was more to it, but I have figured that it can't be too much since tips of the continents are typically narrower. I was very wrong. This was a weird map script.

With elephants below the city, the weapon of choice was obvious from the start.

Spoiler :

Strategy: The war must be as early as possible to prevent warmonger lovefest which would make all warmongers get to shiny weapons. Monty had great land and due to lack of free land got to just 8 (great) cities. That suggested his tech pace would be high and Longbows fast. So he was no target for early war.
Zulu were pretty stretched and had many crappy cities and great and close core cities. Toku was in a brown part of a map and was busy building Mids and also expanding. That hurt his tech pace.
So, what I figured out was that it is best to take Shaka's core cities before he gets to Longbows and then turn to Toku while he is still backward and his army stretched due to REX. Monty was busy spamming Hindu missionaries and was also Pleased.

Execution of the plan: Settled 5 cities, commerce cities first, to get to Phants earlier. Elepult was ready around T100. Shaka raised a fist and attacked my hill city. Later than expected. Good, I killed his stack with my SoD in an open field and have proceeded to his core cities.
Remember, in early wars you want to avoid Longbows so do everything you can to save a turn or two. Also, the swifter the war, the less defenders are whipped/produced.

First rule: Don't heal too much. Heal as much but to keep the ability to take cities.

Second rule: If a city has 2-3 defenders, don't lose turns bombarding. Sacrifice a Catapult or attack directly, whichever seems better. Once you take a city, move the rest of army forward. If you bombard a city, cats can't move.

Not following the rules above can add to war duration 2-3 times.

Shortly after I attacked Toku, he got to Longbows and a bit later, Samurai. If I had wasted 6 turns of Zulu war, he'd have an army full of Longbows and Samurai and it'd been good-bye for me.

One more thing about not attacking Monty: As he was the most advanced guy, he couldn't have been bribed. If I had attacked him, he'd bribe other guys in a dogpile. It can be important to get any monopoly tech the AI you are attacking has and trade/give it to other guys so they can't be bribed.

Figuring out the PrepareToDie concept:

Spoiler :

When Gandhi appeared with his caravel in early ADs + Mansa we could have seen in Demographics + 3 warmonger neighbours, I figured the evilness of this map. Duckweed's 10/10 difficulty level map.

Anyway, this is where I stopped playing:

Spoiler :

Regarding economy,research and plans for the future:

Spoiler :

Education, Oxford capital, Seowons (+35% research). And, yes, I have captured 4 Acadamies. Commerce cities weren't whipped and I preserved an economy. No GAges were triggered, and one Great Scientist is saved for a Golden Age when all cities come out of a revolt and grow a bit. With 3 GAges and cities I continue capturing from brutally weakened Shaka and Toku, and soon Friendly Monty (unlimited tech trade) who is plotting against Gandhi, I could get to Marines + Fighters and quickly vassalize the peaceful continent without nukes.

Anyway, I will not bring this one home since it'd be a bit wrong that a guy who left his SGOTM team in need spent more than 3 hours on a game, and also the next part of the game is even more tedious.

(And if my wife found out I was playing while she was handling a grumpy child, me'd be divorced soon...).

 

[shakabrade]

@drewisfat

One of the most fun and interesting write-ups ever.

And great and a fun game.

 

[soundjata]

Hello Shaka
Impressive play as expected.
Do you remember how you managed the early game.
Rex with chopping or whipping or both?
Archery or not?

 

[shakabrade]

Hello Shaka
Impressive play as expected.
Do you remember how you managed the early game.
Rex with chopping or whipping or both?
Archery or not?

Hello, jata
Well, I have founded 5 cities so there's no REX there. 2 settlers were produced in capital at size 3 and one whipped, and one was whipped in pig city. Focus was on commerce spots and improvements since I had low worker count. If I had gone for more workers, I'd lose a spot or two. Chops were saved for an army.
Archery, of course. For friendly neighbours and barbs.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Well played and well written drew, thanks for that.

 

[pomthom]

shakabrade, your game is impressive

 

[shakabrade]

shakabrade, your game is impressive

Well, thank you, but Snaaty (the best civvah evvah) would do much more better. 100% sure.

And, don't be fooled. There is still quite a bit of a luck in it. If your AIs go for 500BC Longbows, it is GG. Also, Toku did some stupid stuff like, moving defenders out of the threatened city because I was forking his cities with 1 movers, WTF? Only 2 mover was a Scout (I use him to reveal the surroundings when bombarding). And most importantly, Toku had an SoD I was following with a Scout, and he moved the 15 unit SoD to capture a barb city (no roads up to there). I didn't even heal before invading to abuse his foolishness as much as possible. When his SoD finally arrived to claim his land, I have already taken 8 of his cities and he gave me Feudalism for peace.

Shaka produced gazillion of HAs and catapults against my War Elephants. But almost no Impi. Ok, worst part is that AIs would act like this always. I know that, rely on that, and I am exploiting it. This is, unfortunately, game of many exploits. I feel like I am lens burning ants and it is no longer fun. Maybe some other mods are better choice for a game.

Anyway, you can see the lucky string above. But just capturing 3 core cities from both Toku and Shaka should make anyone sleep better. You take the commerce away from AIs who just got expanded. Then they produce obsolete units to retaliate and further cramp their economy while not doing any damage to you. That, on the other hand, is strategy, and I am proud of that.

 

[pomthom]

Well ok but you do make it sound a lot easier than it really is

 

[shakabrade]

Don't be intimidated by the game. Most stuff are being infamous just for other people constantly repeating that. Many winnable games are quit. Warmongers are PITA (better say Doom) if they attack you in worker/settler phase, otherwise, they are manageable.

AIs I really hate facing and find dangerous are: Sury, Justinian and Catherine. Good development, research and military. The worst warmonger to have around is Ragnar because he can also tech with warring and is also very aggressive. Maybe it is my subjective point of view but I do have almost 100 games on my count.

 

[Izuul]

If your AIs go for 500BC Longbows, it is GG.

This is pretty much what happened in my attempt that was looking promising. It wasn't quite 500BC, but quite close, and still early enough to completely screw me over. I had a warmonger + all same religion love fest going on and the tech pace was quite fast.

 

[dohh]

Holy christ! All tries that I more or less fail, Ai on the other island does reasonably good. All tries, when I do really well on my island, AI gets LiB 450AD. Is this a setup of some kind?

Spoiler :

Its reasonably doable to found 2 religions and make one of the warmongers to use different one from the others to make up difference in peace weight. Its doable to elepult 1 civ and cuirasser the others but holy crap... the other island is about to get cultural or space by that time!!!

 

[shakabrade]

This is pretty much what happened in my attempt that was looking promising. It wasn't quite 500BC, but quite close, and still early enough to completely screw me over. I had a warmonger + all same religion love fest going on and the tech pace was quite fast.

There is really not much you can do about it. You can cottage everything and beeline cannons. And pray Holy Mary that no one attacked you. Pray is the keyword.

Holy christ! All tries that I more or less fail, Ai on the other island does reasonably good. All tries, when I do really well on my island, AI gets LiB 450AD. Is this a setup of some kind?

Spoiler :

Its reasonably doable to found 2 religions and make one of the warmongers to use different one from the others to make up difference in peace weight. Its doable to elepult 1 civ and cuirasser the others but holy crap... the other island is about to get cultural or space by that time!!!

No, it is almost never good to found a religion on higher levels. The more individual AIs found the religion, the more hatred between them. Also, auto-spreading of religion exists. Let's say you found Buddhism and Confu. By the time you get the Confu religion will autospread and AIs will spread it to the rest of the cities. Also, if an AI founds the religion and you have the same religion, you get +1 more diplo from the founder. Monty almost always founds a religion, for example and values it high. Up to +7-8 diplo. Making him easily and early friendable. +You get a warmonger build missionaries instead of units.

Other island has Mansa Musa you can see on T0 demographics (soldiers). Nuff said.

 

[pomthom]

@shakabrade
I think dohh was trying the religions angle because attempting an AP diplo victory (we mentioned it earlier in the thread)

 

[Dirk1302]

Interesting map

Spoiler :

All warmongers on our continent and we're a bit boxed in as well. Peacemongers on the other continent by any chance?

I think this one needs a bit of luck. Pre 1500 BC declaration may not kill you but it will cripple you enough to make winning extremely hard. Didn't happen in my game, i got attacked but at a convenient moment.

 

[Gwaja]

GO Dirk! ^_^

------

Now that many people have seen and played the map, here is how the map was generated:

Spoiler :

The map script is Continents obviously. The continent where the player starts was initially the other continent, which had Shaka, Darius, the player, and Mansa. The current continent initially had Monty, Toku, and Gandhi.

The current continent where the player starts was obviously a bit cramped having to place 4 civs. If you thought that the west and northwest direction that Monty's relatively smaller starting area was a bit weird, then you were on the right track... that stretch of land was manually added.

Toku and Monty's starting locations were as is, but Shaka's location was changed.... the AI starting location was much further south, but to make it more difficult, his location was put much closer to the player, with some resources added in for a decent capital on a hill.

Player's starting location was just placed in the most undesirable location possible in an already cramped land, boxed in by 3 AIs. The large, massive ice and tundra lands to the north and northwest was actually there by default... I did NOT add that in at all. I know that Drew made a mention of it in his playthrough. Seeing that large stretch of land like that, it was a no brainer for me to force the player to start near there to make it even more difficult.

To make things a little bearable, rivers were added by the player's starting location. Quite a few plains tiles were changed into grassland tiles. By default, the starting location of the player did NOT have any iron, horses, or copper there. Jumbos were added near the starting location so that at least the player had the option of going elepult.

Due to the lack of resources and the aggressive warmongers boxing in the player, Wang was chosen due to his Protective trait that can be utilized with early Archery (from lack of strategic resources obviously) and his Financial trait that may help the player economically and to sort of keep up in tech.

The other continent, meanwhile, had the starting AIs reduced from 4 to 3. The starting location for the player was initially here, so that area had the resources replaced. Ghandi and Mansa's starting location were there by default, but Darius's starting location had to be moved to attempt to make it so that all 3 had enough space to expand peacefully and in relatively similar size. I ensured that at least 2 of these 3 guys had their capital inland, as to make it more difficult to locate and capture in the event of space race or culture race. Finally, a few more luxury resources were added on this continent, but not by the starting locations.

I am sure I might have missed out on a few minor adjustments I made to the map, but for the most part, this was how the map was created.

 

[Tobiyogi]

Sure. I just added starting save for both Immortal and Emperor levels. No need to fiddle with the World Builder Save. ^_^ Good luck!

As Wang has become more and more my favorite leader (easy one to oracle construction and then go for a hwacha/ archer attack) i would like to give this map a try one day. But I think there is a problem with the IMM save. Actually, all the AI's I have met at T10 already had a 2. city, so I looked in the WB and they all start with a 2. settler, what is a prerequisite only for deity games.

 

[drewisfat]

Just watched Lain's diplo win. I suppose he took the South Korean approach to my North Korea

 

[Gwaja]

Just watched Lain's diplo win. I suppose he took the South Korean approach to my North Korea

Lain's videos were awesome. I just finished watching them in its entirety.

Your approach was just as fun, and yes, the difference in style was massive.

I cannot believe this old joke of a map was still floating around in some people's minds.

 

[Gwaja]

As Wang has become more and more my favorite leader (easy one to oracle construction and then go for a hwacha/ archer attack) i would like to give this map a try one day. But I think there is a problem with the IMM save. Actually, all the AI's I have met at T10 already had a 2. city, so I looked in the WB and they all start with a 2. settler, what is a prerequisite only for deity games.

I may have overlooked a certain things when I converted saves to lower difficulty levels, so I apologize for that. ^_^

Like Lain said in his videos, the map is NOT a fair one, so even at immortal, it will probably be a tough and unfair challenge.

I would be interested in your updates if you do manage to slog through it.

 

[drewisfat]

Hey Gwaja!

I think we're in need of another ultimate evil cooked map