TSG 277 After Actions

[zxcvbob]

I wonder if a quinqui-only rush is doable. It would be tough since you can attack most capitals only from 2 hexes before the city heals and fires back. And with Palenque it would probably be impossible since you would only be able to attack once per turn, meanwhile the AI will build walls and archers.

If I can spare some time I will give it a try one of these days!

It's doable for Onandaga (I tried it in a replay) and maybe Beijing. Q-boats and catapults could probably take Kyoto. But I was racing towards Compass pretty fast so by the time I built a swarm of quinqueremes, it was time to build galleasses. Maybe take Onondaga first and get a couple of promotions on your fleet. Buy your first galleass and it can join them at Kyoto (or better yet, whatever trashy cities Oda builds on the way to Kyoto) while you build more.

 

[zxcvbob]

I've been able to speed up taking my first AI capital, but I have not been able to match the finish time of my first game. Nothing really bogs down, it just takes a while. Are those of you with sub-150 turn wins going Liberty? Because I've tried mixed Tradition, Honor, and Exploration, and pure Honor into Exploration. I think building one or two settlers is slowing me down the most, even if I chop forests to speed them up.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Turn 103 domination victory, out of competition.

Armed with:

• Full map knowledge (I created the map).
• The 'right' strategy whispered to me by @vadalaz : quinqueremes with Discipline (i.e., right-side honor) and Statue of Zeus are formidable against Prince-level cities. At his suggestion I actually altered the map to allow two-boat access to Onondaga and Bejing.
• All of your reports about how your games were going.
• Several attempts to get the game I wanted.

My final approach: Worker first, researching mining. Ruins: 95 gold, Culture, Pottery. I doubted between Liberty and Tradition here. I chose Tradition, but maybe Liberty would have been better because it took too long to get to the good stuff in Tradition. After worker I started on scout, but switched to shrine when I found the Pottery ruin, for early God-King. Since I was not going to build cities, I did not steal from Lhasa, instead waiting for it to target the barb camp, which it finally did (I got Tithe and Religious Community, though by that stage it was irrelevant).

After Pottery I went sailing and then started building and buying (with tribute gold) quinqueremes. In all of my attempts, Oda had been a right thorn in my side. He had the only hill capital, and he also expanded very quickly (to another annoying location, south on a hill against the mountain, which foiled one earlier attempt as I could not sail to Bejing directly from Osaka). So for my final attempt, I went Osaka first with 6 or 7 quincs. Then I sailed back for Iroquois, then to Bejing via Singapore. This CS I did not tribute. Instead, since they had a gold quest, I gave them 500 and later another 250 to sort my happiness.

Knowing Vienna and Palenque did not have two-boat access, I built three chariots and an archer and put them in the water, though even cycling quinqueremes might have worked, especially with an admiral (not sure though). Looking back at my game, I think sub-100 is possible if you go Japan - Austria - Maya, and then a second army for Iroquois and China. @ForkOfSpite did point that out, so I could have played better. Whether anyone can achieve the sub-100 on a first play without map knowledge is a tall order though.

 

[sebtanic]

I've been able to speed up taking my first AI capital, but I have not been able to match the finish time of my first game. Nothing really bogs down, it just takes a while. Are those of you with sub-150 turn wins going Liberty? Because I've tried mixed Tradition, Honor, and Exploration, and pure Honor into Exploration. I think building one or two settlers is slowing me down the most, even if I chop forests to speed them up.

I went Liberty. Then opened Honour (but I should have opened Explorarion instead to make my ships faster). Then as the last policy I took in my game I opened Exploration.

 

[nino_]

Long time GOTM lurker, first time posting here

Turn 125 domination victory with a score of 804.

Capitals went in the order of Onondaga (t77) > Beijing (t90) > Kyoto (t102) > Vienna (t?) > Palenque (t125).

During the early game I settled only one city (using settler from Liberty) before building military units, with the capital pumping out Quinqs for quite a few turns. Picked up Great Lighthouse and the Exploration opener policy to boost naval unit speed as much as possible and sent a couple of boats exploring to try and confirm whether all capitals were accessible without Astronomy. Didn't bother obtaining a religion this game (and went for extra production from fishing boats for my pantheon).

Military mainly consisted of a single fleet of Quinqueremes (3/4 units swelling up to 12+ by later capital captures) and a few comp bows. This was enough to easily cap the first three capitals. Vienna was harder to capture with only the 1 adjacent ocean tile and required sacrificing a lot of boats by slamming into the capital at low health to allow multiple attacks per turn.

The Maya had settled their second city (Tikal) on a tile that ZoC'd my boats and stopped them from passing effectively, so I was forced to capture that, choosing to annex it so I could buy 3 Galleasses (navy had been collecting tribute from a few city-states on its way around the world) and take Palenque.

 

[leif erikson]

Long time GOTM lurker, first time posting here

Welcome to the Game of the Month.

Thank you for sharing your game with us.

 

[vadalaz]

...quinqueremes with Discipline (i.e., right-side honor) and Statue of Zeus are formidable against Prince-level cities. At his suggestion I actually altered the map to allow two-boat access to Onondaga and Bejing.

There is a pretty fun tactic you can use to speed up conquest of one-tile access capitals - keep a few ships with very low HP, then suicide them by slamming into the city. The kamikaze ship won't take up the tile, allowing you to make multiple attacks in one turn. Potentially this shaves off a couple of turns, but it can only be done at the end of the game, when you don't care about losing a bunch of ships anymore.

I completely forgot about this trick myself - your screenshot with the red-HP quinqueremes reminded me of it. There were some old HoF games in which I attacked city-states just to get enough injured boats for this thing to work...

 

[Megalou]

I wonder if a quinqui-only rush is doable. It would be tough since you can attack most capitals only from 2 hexes before the city heals and fires back. And with Palenque it would probably be impossible since you would only be able to attack once per turn, meanwhile the AI will build walls and archers.

If I can spare some time I will give it a try one of these days!

I tried that, but with archers headed for Austria and the Mayans. For the other AIs it was okay to use quinqueremes only, especially since 1 per turn could be built in the capital during the golden age. Unfortunately, I misjudged the problem of getting past Tikal in order to get to Palenque, so that too few boats and archers (I actually had 2 CBs at this point too) got through in one piece. Only one quinquereme got through and when the Mayans aply built a trireme it was good night for my little army. But I believe that a finish date of 105-110 is possible. Is it possible without pre-knowledge of the map? Probably not, and that’s what makes this game so darn interesting, isn’t it? You never quite know what’s out there in the fog as you begin and you have to adapt as you go along.

 

[sebtanic]

Probably not, and that’s what makes this game so darn interesting, isn’t it? You never quite know what’s out there in the fog as you begin and you have to adapt as you go along.

Absolutely agree! I find the exploration/settling phase of each game to be the most interesting and fun. Late game is still fun, but can become a bit repetitive.

Which is what I loved about this map btw, it was all early game