Adventure 51 Ronald's own Medicine

[Ronald]

Summary:

The scenario is scored according to these rules:

Fastest Victory: 10,7,3,1 (1st-4th date of conquest).
Most Elite Unit: 5,3,1 (1st-3rd most XP on one unit)
3pt for earliest Great General
1pt for completing Stonehenge
1pt for completing Eiffel Tower
2pt for using a Nuke
3pt for killing the last defender with a gunship

My achievements:
Victory: 960 AD
Most Elite Unit: 66p
Earliest Great General: 600 BC
Stonehenge completet: Yes (1920 BC)
Eiffel Tower: No
Nuke: No
Gunship: No

Details:

First task was to build Stonehenge:



It was not allowed to enter enemy culture before 1000 BC: Here is my attack force ready at 1000 BC:



After the first assault at 1000 BC, Suleiman didn't last very long:



I did not build much infra structure, the money of the captured cities took care of research. The conquest went smooth:











Victory came after almost 2000 years of always war:



My highest promoted units was: 66 points (I made a big mistake of not promoting it to the additional movement, so it did not see much fighting towards the end



Some statistics:





It was a very fun game. Thanks very much to the sponsor. Hopefully we will have another adventure soon. Ronald

[Ronald]

It is not at all clear which strategy is best given this scoring system:

Fastest Victory: 10,7,3,1 (1st-4th date of conquest).
Most Elite Unit: 5,3,1 (1st-3rd most XP on one unit)
3pt for earliest Great General
1pt for completing Stonehenge
1pt for completing Eiffel Tower
2pt for using a Nuke
3pt for killing the last defender with a gunship

There are two approaches possible:

1) going for fastest victory
2) going for slowest victory

Let's analyze fastest first:

Save points: 1 for stonehenge
competing for:

GG: 3p
Fastest victory: 10 p

Maximum possible: 14 p

Slowest:

save points:
Stonehenge: 1
Eiffel: 1
Nuke: 2
gunship: 3

competing for:
GG: 3
Elite unit: 5

Maximum possible: 15

So the best strategy would have been to go for the slowest victory time to ensure the best elite unit. Given my RL time constraints I went for the second best option (and the bragging rights to have the earliest victory).

I am curious if anybody went for the more time consuming but potentially better 2nd option.

[Ronald]

Suleiman is making the best of his only copper

[Ronald]

after I destroyed Suleyman, this stack is coming:
2 shock axes + 1 combat 2 axe



My defenses were:
1 shock phalanx, 1 C2 sword, 2 unpromoted swords



The outcome of the battle was luckily very positive for me. It could have been much worse.

[Ronald]

After reading compromises report I must admit, that even my pre game analysis was wrong. As Compromise stated, Stonehenge was a red herring which I did not realise. So in hindsight, optimal play would have been:

Go for earliest GG, than milk the game for Eiffel, nukes, gunship and most elite unit.

I am still curious if anybody took that route.

[Tatan]

Nice game, and interesting analysis!

After reading compromises report I must admit, that even my pre game analysis was wrong. As Compromise stated, Stonehenge was a red herring which I did not realise. So in hindsight, optimal play would have been:

Go for earliest GG, than milk the game for Eiffel, nukes, gunship and most elite unit.

I am still curious if anybody took that route.

I wasn't really playing for score, but I did sandbag the game to clean up 7 points from the various wonders and achievements. And had I been smart, I could have saved up all the Great Generals I got along the way (14 in all) and joined them to one unit at the end for +280 exp, for another 5 points for the most elite unit. However, that's still only 12 points, so in order for that strategy to work it seems that getting the first Great General is a must (something I missed doing by a longshot).

Come to think of it, whether you go for the sandbag or the fastest conquest, the Great General points are a must for maximizing the score. Whoever gets those will probably win.

[Ronald]

And had I been smart, I could have saved up all the Great Generals I got along the way (14 in all) and joined them to one unit at the end for +280 exp, for another 5 points for the most elite unit.

Can you add more than 1 GG to a single unit? I thought that is not possible

[NobleHelium]

You can't, but you can give 10 experience to a GGed unit by attaching it to a different unit.

[Ronald]

You can't, but you can give 10 experience to a GGed unit by attaching it to a different unit.

Have not even thought about this possibility

[Compromise]

Good writeup.

Did you get attacked on your home turf at all before 1000BC? I was surprised that the AI sent a couple of little stacks my way.

Good point about getting extra GG xp, NobleHelium.

Regarding score, I agree: it was not obvious at first look that the key to maximizing score was the "Earliest Great General" race. The tricky thing was that even with those points, you still had to win fastest victory or most elite unit, and those two are mutually exclusive.

What I didn't expect was what seems to have happened here: the top points for most-elite look like they're going to ironstar, who didn't get the late-game points.

Yes....much more meta-scoring analysis there than was obvious when first glancing at the game description.

I echo the call from here and in other threads: more Civ4 adventures and epics please!