Epic 14 - sooooo's report

[sooooo]

Epic 14 - Boudicca the Great

This game featured the Always War setting. It took place on a small doughnut with 5 AIs.

My apologies but this report will hopefully be rather brief. I spent so much time on this damned epic that I can't justify giving any more of my life to talking about it. I really enjoyed the first half of the game but the last half I really just played out of stubbornness. Each time I wanted to retire I would come to the RB forums, see blake's quote of the month and think "Oh go on then, I'll play a few more turns ..."

I settled on the spot and probably started with some worker techs. I built a worker first.

OK, time for some stratergery. You might remember me for leading the "Guerillas in the Mist" succesion game, possibly the most overambitious game ever attempted. We tried to play always war on a highlands map at emperor difficulty (yes, I know, I know). Despite getting crushed, I learnt a small thing - the benefit of pillaging parties. A pillaging party or two can really hinder a civilization, and is (almost) as good as razing their cities. A civ that had a pillaging party visit them would still send some (mostly resourceless) troops, but would not advance beyond the swords and cats era so as soon as you get macemen and pikemen the civ would no longer be a worry. What's more, that game was also played as the celts which showed me how useful guerilla 2 troops can be for pillaging. Thus I decided that this game I would have many more pillaging parties.

So I expanded fairly conservatively. The nearby territory was very nice, and my first two settlers went to cities with gold resources.



Then I built stonehenge. I think religion is a good thing to have in AW, but I didn't want to waste time at the start researching for the early ones. Stonehenge might seem silly, but it would save more hammers than every city would have to spend building a monument. Furthermore, being charismatic our monuments were also happy-giving and I get a source of prophet points for founding a later religion.

After the 1000BC threshold, a scouting chariot found a Khmer city defended by a singe axeman - buhbye!



My capital also built the Oracle to found Confucianism. This is the religion I would spread so the civics benefits. With 2 great prophet sources, I was able to build a shrine and settle multiple prophets in my capital.

Anwyay, I expanded a bit more. But more importantly I sent out some pillaging parties (PPs). Typically a pillaging party would consist of 2 gallic warriors, 1 axe, 1 spear and 2 chariots. The axe would get shock and then combat promotions. The spear got formation and combat. The gallics both got up to guerilla 2, then one would get guerilla 3 promotions and the other would get more rounded ones, including cover (anti-siege). One chariot got combat and a medic promotions to deal with stray axes and the other would get flanking and sentry. This configuration allowed me to move onto any tile, be it hill or flatland, and pillage its improvement and its road. The road is almost as important as the improvement, as it slows down the flow of troops. With specialised promotions, few troops would have odds good enough to attack me. Especially when I was on a hill. The sentry promotion let me know when it was safe to move onto flatland and pillage. If I saw a stack coming down from the north I would head into a forest hill and the troops would either bypass me or suicide themselves (I preferred the latter). My first 2 PPs went through Aztec and Khmer lands, pillaging most things. The Khmer one went straight through into Korean lands. The Aztec one had a bit more work to do and went into England later. They were backed up with 2 more PPs, who went back into Aztec and Khmer lands to deal with any improvements made since the last raid.

The only civ I wasn't able to hinder in this way were the Romans, who didn't really commit many troops to attacking my cities in the early game, but always had many siege weapons at home and killed off my PP that I sent up there.

So I decided I would just take on the Romans fairly and gimp the others. Later on Churchill managed to kill the PP in his lands. But I had 3 PPs between Korea and Khmer lands and managed to keep them in the classical era. Their troops they sent to my core cities were mainly cats and other resourceless troops. Monty was also hindered by 2 PPs wandering his lands. He wasn't an issue.

That's not to say that there weren't some hairy moments around - because there were. I was trying not to whip my cities as much as possible, instead trying to grow cottages. Sometimes I left it a bit too thin and had to emergency whip, but I didn't lose a city. Augustus was rather annoying sending down praet/HA/cat stacks but that's OK. Churchill also sent down some scary stacks of massed cats and longbows.

Heroic Epic went in the capital. I built the Statue of Zeus. Mainly because I didn't want to face it, but possibly it also hindered the AIs. I'm not sure what effect it had.



So my tech rate was pretty good. I didn't capture any AI cities until after I got knights, trebs and macemen. The first ones to go were Aztec and Khmer ones, who were defended by obsolete troops. The khmer at least had longbows, but not crossbows. As soon as I got nationalism (which I got before paper even) the game was won, since I could draft a lot of macemen. And I do mean a lot. I still had to fight the romans at tech parity, and the english and almost parity, but taking on 1 or 2 civs like that is OK.

Anyway, sorry for not giving the details of the attack stage of my game but I think the early part and planning is the more interesting. The latter half of the game consisted of assembling 2 massive stacks of doom and sending them each way around the doughnut. Oh, and drafting macemen. Once the cities started to fall I abandoned economy and just went all out military. I went from being the GNP leader to not being able to even finish gunpowder. But that's OK - drafted maces are about as good as drafted musketmen anyway. I got domination in 1665 AD.



First GG: 750 BC
Cities in 1500AD: 13
Highest promoted naval unit: None
Highest promoted gallic warrior: 30 (I kinda forgot about this one)
First Dun: Unknown.

[Zeviz]

Looks like your pillaging efforts payed off. Although I am curious: why did you restrict yourself to pillaging, rather than taking cities? (If your pillaging parties included half a dozen units each, two of such parties together would be as big as my main attack stack.)

[Jabah]

My observation with PP with the same size as sooooo's PP is that if you start attacking cities with them, you will have too many injured units at once which compromise the safety (defence ability) of your stack. And the AI is more aggressive if you go close (like just next to) to a city with a good stack of unit.

Also attacking even archer behind wall and/or on hill with units not city-raider is at not acceptable odds for Always war I guess.

Jabah

[sooooo]

Taking cities is certainly a valid choice, but with pillaging you lose far less troops and don't need siege. Also the money you get from it is very useful.