Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,474
Summary
I went for a Domination Victory but ran out of time to complete it. 38% Land Area was about the highest amount of land that I was able to obtain.
The game really starts to chug in the late game with all of the units floating about, but I tried my best, regardless.
I made it until 1876 AD with no one reaching the stars, at which point, with the deadline looming, I decided I'd retire and submit.
Ragnar was close to the stars--but I managed to keep him from building the Engine while keeping him barely at bay during our war.
Early Game--Barbs Galore
I started the game off with a CS-slingshot, which meant that I was limitted to two cities for quite some time. When I finally got to expanding, the Barbs had impeded me with cities in locations that I did not want to keep. The fighting with Barbs lasted a good long time, while I was also having to fend off Saladin.
I lost an early city to the Barbs, too, but thanks to a nice capital (thank you, Leif!), I was able to pump out a replacement settler quickly enough. Having just completed a Work Boat with the city before it was razed by the Barbs, the new city at least got to start with an improved Clam tile!
Early War--Too Early meant that it dragged on for centuries
I'd had the bright idea of declaring war on Saladin, thinking that Shaka could be bribed to help out. Well, that part of the plan worked, but it wasn't until the 1500 ADs that I was finally able to mount a big enough force to bring the war to Saladin's cities. Too little, too late, I'm afraid, as it meant Cavalry against his hordes of Camel Archers and later Cavalry of his own. I pulled out the Machine guns and slowly took him on, as well as Shaka, who had vassalled to Saladin after about the 4th time that I bribed him to declare on Saladin.
I wiped out Shaka and vassallised Saladin, but Saladin was pretty much useless as a vassal--he sailed halfway across the world to help me out in a war by dropping off a couple of Crossbowmen to go up against Modern Armour. Sigh. His boats then got eaten up by Battleships that just got free promotions from the bargain.
I took too long taking my own continent, such that I was having to fight with modern units against modern units just to take on the other AI. I took out most of Ramesses, but Ragnar vassalised him first. Still, I at least took all of Ramesses' mainland and just left him with one city in the desert area on my continent.
Airports and Inter-continental Warfare
Airlifting was the name of the game and that's what kept me alive time and time again. I learned how airlifting works during this game, as well as the stats of most of the end-game units. Since I rarely have ever had a game get that far and when I have made it that far, I usually either don't build end-game units (due to racing for the stars) or it is usually Modern Armour against Riflemen or something easy, so I had never bothered to learn the unit counters.
Anyway, airlifting is pretty darn useful--build an airport in a city and you get a trade route. You also can send one unit per turn from that city to any other city that you control. The receiving city can only accept one unit per turn (no matter how many cities you have with an Airport in them), which is a shame but I suppose it is to prevent exploits such as taking over a marginal city on a neighbour's continent and then airlifting 40 units into the city in the same turn.
Further War
Hannibal was my next target, and with help from Genghis, things were going really well. Then Hannibal vassallised himself to Ragar, who was well into the Future Techs and had a massive standing army. Of course, that meant that Ragnar went to war against Genghis, myself, and my vassal Saladin (I'd wiped out Shaka early on so that no one could vassalise him). I played a war of attrition for about 10 turns that took too long--I kept trading cities with him on his continent and wasn't losing any cities on my continent and could keep it up indefinitely, thanks to my airlifting support. The submission deadline won't allow for that to happen, though.
Cyrus Twiddles his Thumbs
Cyrus pretty much kept his hands clean of the war, but while he finished off researching the Space Techs, he didn't seem to be building any parts. I don't really know what he was doing, but at least I could get a few resource trades out of him while the rest of the world was at war.
Spies
I am uncertain if I am going to try to finish the game--but I was happy to learn a lot about late-game war and game mechanics. In particular, non-BTS Spies are pretty awesome because they don't seem to get passively discovered. Does anyone else find it quite annoying in BTS to have your Spy discovered on the turn that it enters an AI's borders, especially if you're just trying to travel through one AI's territory in order to get to your real target AI? I know that I certainly find that game mechanic quite annoying--sure, it's realistic that a Spy can get caught even when they aren't up-to-no-good, but the way it happens isn't realistic--there is no evidence of police or counter-agents tracking down your Spy and getting a lead on who he or she is--instead, one turn the Spy is there and the next its gone. In Warlords, as I just found out (and likely Vanilla, as well), Spies only seem to get "caught" if they try and do something bad.
Spies in Warlords (at least on Immortal level) are expensive, though--with my huge empire, I was able to JUST BARELY afford enough cash to indefinitely keep Ragnar's Spaceship from being completed, assuming a 40% success rate in my missions. The downside to failing in your mission is that your money still gets spent, unlike you keeping your Espionage points in BTS, so mistakes are just as costly as successes. You just have to budget the failures into the cost of your espionage and you'll be okay. The caveat was that I was unable to finish teching the Space Race techs, as I needed to stay at a 100% Gold Rate just to afford the Spy Missions (since Gold, not Espionage points--which don't exist pre-BTS--gets used for Spy Missions).
Space Elevator but no Spaceship
I had The Space Elevator and the Apollo Program, but didn't bother to build any parts--if you don't have them all, having some of them doesn't really help you much, and with no way of getting the remaining techs (unless Ragnar started to die and I could lay off of the Gold spent on espionage), I felt it was more valuable to keep fielding units instead of building half of the Spaceship parts.
I went for a Domination Victory but ran out of time to complete it. 38% Land Area was about the highest amount of land that I was able to obtain.
The game really starts to chug in the late game with all of the units floating about, but I tried my best, regardless.
I made it until 1876 AD with no one reaching the stars, at which point, with the deadline looming, I decided I'd retire and submit.
Ragnar was close to the stars--but I managed to keep him from building the Engine while keeping him barely at bay during our war.
Early Game--Barbs Galore
I started the game off with a CS-slingshot, which meant that I was limitted to two cities for quite some time. When I finally got to expanding, the Barbs had impeded me with cities in locations that I did not want to keep. The fighting with Barbs lasted a good long time, while I was also having to fend off Saladin.
I lost an early city to the Barbs, too, but thanks to a nice capital (thank you, Leif!), I was able to pump out a replacement settler quickly enough. Having just completed a Work Boat with the city before it was razed by the Barbs, the new city at least got to start with an improved Clam tile!
Early War--Too Early meant that it dragged on for centuries
I'd had the bright idea of declaring war on Saladin, thinking that Shaka could be bribed to help out. Well, that part of the plan worked, but it wasn't until the 1500 ADs that I was finally able to mount a big enough force to bring the war to Saladin's cities. Too little, too late, I'm afraid, as it meant Cavalry against his hordes of Camel Archers and later Cavalry of his own. I pulled out the Machine guns and slowly took him on, as well as Shaka, who had vassalled to Saladin after about the 4th time that I bribed him to declare on Saladin.
I wiped out Shaka and vassallised Saladin, but Saladin was pretty much useless as a vassal--he sailed halfway across the world to help me out in a war by dropping off a couple of Crossbowmen to go up against Modern Armour. Sigh. His boats then got eaten up by Battleships that just got free promotions from the bargain.
I took too long taking my own continent, such that I was having to fight with modern units against modern units just to take on the other AI. I took out most of Ramesses, but Ragnar vassalised him first. Still, I at least took all of Ramesses' mainland and just left him with one city in the desert area on my continent.
Airports and Inter-continental Warfare
Airlifting was the name of the game and that's what kept me alive time and time again. I learned how airlifting works during this game, as well as the stats of most of the end-game units. Since I rarely have ever had a game get that far and when I have made it that far, I usually either don't build end-game units (due to racing for the stars) or it is usually Modern Armour against Riflemen or something easy, so I had never bothered to learn the unit counters.
Anyway, airlifting is pretty darn useful--build an airport in a city and you get a trade route. You also can send one unit per turn from that city to any other city that you control. The receiving city can only accept one unit per turn (no matter how many cities you have with an Airport in them), which is a shame but I suppose it is to prevent exploits such as taking over a marginal city on a neighbour's continent and then airlifting 40 units into the city in the same turn.
Further War
Hannibal was my next target, and with help from Genghis, things were going really well. Then Hannibal vassallised himself to Ragar, who was well into the Future Techs and had a massive standing army. Of course, that meant that Ragnar went to war against Genghis, myself, and my vassal Saladin (I'd wiped out Shaka early on so that no one could vassalise him). I played a war of attrition for about 10 turns that took too long--I kept trading cities with him on his continent and wasn't losing any cities on my continent and could keep it up indefinitely, thanks to my airlifting support. The submission deadline won't allow for that to happen, though.
Cyrus Twiddles his Thumbs
Cyrus pretty much kept his hands clean of the war, but while he finished off researching the Space Techs, he didn't seem to be building any parts. I don't really know what he was doing, but at least I could get a few resource trades out of him while the rest of the world was at war.
Spies
I am uncertain if I am going to try to finish the game--but I was happy to learn a lot about late-game war and game mechanics. In particular, non-BTS Spies are pretty awesome because they don't seem to get passively discovered. Does anyone else find it quite annoying in BTS to have your Spy discovered on the turn that it enters an AI's borders, especially if you're just trying to travel through one AI's territory in order to get to your real target AI? I know that I certainly find that game mechanic quite annoying--sure, it's realistic that a Spy can get caught even when they aren't up-to-no-good, but the way it happens isn't realistic--there is no evidence of police or counter-agents tracking down your Spy and getting a lead on who he or she is--instead, one turn the Spy is there and the next its gone. In Warlords, as I just found out (and likely Vanilla, as well), Spies only seem to get "caught" if they try and do something bad.
Spies in Warlords (at least on Immortal level) are expensive, though--with my huge empire, I was able to JUST BARELY afford enough cash to indefinitely keep Ragnar's Spaceship from being completed, assuming a 40% success rate in my missions. The downside to failing in your mission is that your money still gets spent, unlike you keeping your Espionage points in BTS, so mistakes are just as costly as successes. You just have to budget the failures into the cost of your espionage and you'll be okay. The caveat was that I was unable to finish teching the Space Race techs, as I needed to stay at a 100% Gold Rate just to afford the Spy Missions (since Gold, not Espionage points--which don't exist pre-BTS--gets used for Spy Missions).
Space Elevator but no Spaceship
I had The Space Elevator and the Apollo Program, but didn't bother to build any parts--if you don't have them all, having some of them doesn't really help you much, and with no way of getting the remaining techs (unless Ragnar started to die and I could lay off of the Gold spent on espionage), I felt it was more valuable to keep fielding units instead of building half of the Spaceship parts.
