Timmy's troops in Adv3

[timmy827]

OK here goes.  Following Sullla’s example/comment on my other writeups, mostly uncropped but shrunken screenshots (hopefully helps me finish faster).
Poked around a bit at start and settled here:

Started with warrior - just think slingers a little too fragile.  
Hut popped Writing boost, probably not helpful as AI’s not too far away.  I did get the bonus envoy at Hong Kong from first meeting, and a more useful Mysticism boost from another hut, and most important...

That’s really good, the +2 science is very noticeable early.  (+2 culture is even better since science costs and per-citizen production are more, but still this rocks).  

Yes!  Egypt always hates me and DOWs, good to see them busy.  Eventually I’d learn that Germany captured their 2nd city from the free settler in the war.  Oh and 2 more horses found, this is looking pretty straightforward now.  Was able to get two warriors near the camp, it spawned one horse but wasn’t a big problem and gave the boost for the horsebuilder civic.  Very nice.  

Did I mention Egypt always hates me?  This was madness, they were still fighting Germany I think and only sent a single warrior that was no threat.  
You can also see the only Kurgan - this was not used very much.  I did work it a bit to get out of God King earlier.  Took Reeds and Marshes (again!) for pantheon - it probably will do little outside the capital, but most snowbally for expansion/conquest plan.  Ignored faith/religion after that.  

2nd city.  Glad to get this as India not too far.  Was planning more cities before conquest, the other spots are good (and all on rivers!  Map was nice in this way) but not essential like the horses are.

Ugh (though the text is kinda funny).  2fer with Greece being the instigator.  

Fortunately the attack was not too threatening nor immediate from Greece.

Cleo nearly got killed but held out.  I signed white peace with her around this time too.  And Gandhi built Stonehenge for 1st religion.  

Got the Archer boost from helpful barb scout - yeah this war not very threatening so my warriors/slingers had time to go after a camp.  I think two peacefulish AI’s DOW’d me then realized “crap, we don’t build attacking units to prosecute this war”....white peaces soon after without any more serious action.  Started selling lux about now, and went into Colonization for settlers.  Did wind up rush buying monuments at this location (nice hilly spot)

Another one...

Not as promising but a few good tiles and 2 more lux.  

Greece took this spot from me

Considerably later but last self-founded city.  Nice 6-tile wonder with two lux, river, and hills tiles all in the first ring - didn’t ever build a monument here I think.

Jumping back in time -

Stuck with Autocracy for the mil slots (and lack of diplo slot).  
Also district wise - laid down early campus at capital but didn’t finish forever, now that cities can do monuments it didn’t seem worth doing one very early for State Workforce.  Other than that prioritized CH’s; in my unwritten partial Adv2 replay (stopped after conquering the starting continent) I had big cash crunch from skipping them and just doing units then capturing a bunch of money-sucking AI districts/buildings.  The river abundance was good for the CH’s too.  Laid down a couple IZ’s but don’t think ever finished them - expected to be building mostly units, they just don’t pay back very fast at all.  Did do one encampment + another campus at 2nd city mostly for the civic boosts.  Enough about building...

...time for revenge on that stupid impostor-pacifist!

Aw crud.  Didn’t have a ram yet, and Madras built its walls as soon as DOW.  Could do some pillage profit but he soon adopted the +city strength policy and suddenly this looked too hard.  Decided to retreat, denounce Greece and make them target in a few turns instead.  


Um, don’t know how they are so advanced to have that CB, but nice of them to save me the warmonger penalty regardless

My units return.  Got some use out of the UU but not much - think I just built 1 (2 with unique ability) of them.  The 1-range is big limitation; even against dumb AI they can often get counterattacked easily and hurt badly.  And means they get more in the way of your frontline units than normal archers.  

Yeah, these Varu are tough SOB’s.  He only sent one so it wasn’t too bad but would have been hard to conquer him with just horseman spam.  Wonder if any player pulled that off before he got too many walls and Varu?  Maybe I could have if I didn’t settle so many cities.  
Anyways, after that white peaced Gandhi.  Belatedly gifted him some gold too - I had sold him two lux for lump sums before the war that had 10-12 turns left when DOW’d.  I don’t know if we’ve done exploit rules yet but trying to track those cases and gift back proportionate gold if I DOW before 30 turns (should have done it before the war but forgot)

Rhodes - no walls so pretty easy mark.  

Next city pretty easy as well.  And good lord sending that naked settler right next to my army…

Side thread - I would eventually capture that builder + a barb settler in this region and plant a city 1W of the builder’s tile in the picture.  And completely forget to ever give it a trade route or improved tile.  Whoops.
Argos was tough to attack.  Those hoplites could have given me big issues with my all-horse army but they rarely attacked...still just having them occupy south of the river meant I couldn’t get a siege going.  Mostly had to exhaust my units health…

That was just enough, and this poofed two hoplites (Yes there were as many as 7 at one time earlier!  Capturing Argos killed one in city, one in encampment.  It seems kind of silly the 2nd one dies - I now own the encampment but w/o walls now so other Greek units could walk in…).  Also did one vet warrior->sword upgrade before getting Professional Army, it helped clear the rest of them a lot once it got to front.  

Athens wasn’t cakewalk either, the pike was a pain.  He also flipped Zanzibar (irritating, also irritating that its catapult never fired on athens despite several turns where it was positioned to do so while allied with me).  Fortunately I had saved an envoy, that plus the one from Mil Tradition about to finish got Zanzibar back on my side next turn.  But greece didn’t build any more units, so I could knock down the walls, then be patient for sword to advance, wound the pike, kill the hoplite after the pike burrows into the city, then surround for siege and take it.  Was able to run the pillage policy and got good science haul from the mines while this waiting was going on too.

[timmy827]

So that was one conquest completed a few turns after that picture ( I didn’t bother with the last Greek city, did screw up the peace treaty by not waiting a turn so didn’t Athens out of the occupied penalty ever, darn, though taking one Great Writing was nice), let’s step back for a moment and talk about general civ development.

Capital rocketed up to size 10 really quickly - the flood plains sugar + wheat rocked for that.  But it only had a few hills, so I didn’t prioritize much growth afterwards and think it stalled at 11 - always wanted something else more important than housing when the extra pop would only produce their innate bit of sci/culture + 1 more hammer.

Techwise did the usual early Apprenticeship, and got to 95% of stirrups then mostly focused bottom tree - eventual goal was Military Science for cavs.  Did some of those unboosted (not worth doing Math + Edu for the Printing boost, or the middle Gunpowder line for Siege Tactics boost).  Of course the reason to not quite finish Stirrups was to prebuild Chariots and mass upgrade to Knights once the policy for cheap upgrades was reached.  And this was other reason for mostly doing CH’s, and focused envoys on the Commercial city states (though I didn’t find Amsterdam in the far north until around end of Greek conquest).  For a military game that seems like way better way to tunnel hammers into future good units than IZ’s or encampments.  

I also did plant the colosseum about this time in a place that covered 5 cities of my core (2nd city built it, by this point it was my best city since it had many hills and a couple river-lumbermills.  Was able to use the policy + a few chops).  Not sure the amenities were that needed - lots of diverse lux nearby on this map - but didn’t have to think about happiness rest of the time and the culture was still noticeable.  

Those chariot->knights (only 90 gold each with policy!  Waaay too good…also xbow upgrades to only 100 gold) were stockpiled in my west for a different war.  Coincidentally that part of plan finished right about time of Greek war ending.

This was a lot faster than Greek war.  I’m still somewhat used to Civ4 strength (where ratio was the main thing) so surprised at how much more a 48-str knight is than 35-str horsemen.  For whatever reason, Rome did not stockpile Legions the way Greece did hoplites; they had fewer units total and some of them were much weaker catapults + chariots

Ravenna was easy with no walls, and nicely Rome was just one city deep in Trajan’s lands.  

Rome (city) had much better city strength, but was pretty easy to surround and all the farms were good for pillage-healing to continue assault

Result

Oops.  I had build HS + shrine in capital just for Divine Right (and thus Castles) boost, then stopped the temple after this triggered.  (Athens was the other temple).  We hadn’t hit 10 turns of war yet so peace wasn’t possible; captured Setia (the roman territory to SW in these pics, it was a small/easy target) just to clear road space.  

Gov’t once Monarchy available.  I didn’t change policies a whole lot more to the end.

Meanwhile the Army of Greece healed and headed towards next target.  (This was slow due to all the jungles in between.  One mistake that cost me was not having one or two traders making roads between the first greek captures while still fighting near Argos and Athens).  For first time I conquered a CS - both Egypt and Germany have 5 envoys in Hattusa, so this was a real nice chance to kill them alone.  Don’t like doing so, but if not surely at one point they would get one of those two as lords while at war further west and best to not have to worry about their units pillaging my core and blocking reinforcements.  This also bought time for a trader to go to Egypt’s capital for the road.  Since Hattusa didn’t have all its 2nd ring tiles I could pre-position catapults and actually get good use out of them here.  And milk pillaging a bit too

Onwards to Egypt

This was surprisingly slow.  They never really recovered from Germany taking their 2nd city and had only warriors/spears/their UU, but geography (one tile pass with that mountain and lots of jungle hills going around it) made it slow to kill all their old units.  The AI does a bit better with these UU chariot archers, they seem real expensive but 2 range meant they could cause some trouble and they are much stronger than my horse archers...not enough to be a real threat but take a few hits to kill them.  Still working on that after Thebes fell



Last gov’t change.  Theocracy was nice to be able to buy some units with the faith I wasn’t doing anything with.  And good ol’ Gandhi had converted just enough of my cities to Hindu that I could use Wars of Religion against Germany.  This was basically the last civic of any real meaning, rest of them were good just for policy changes.  (Logistics could have helped but didn’t get there.)  Would have gone back to Monarchy (room for both pillage policies, science and gold pillage still useful for the Cav upgrade) after spending my faith but didn’t realize this would happen

Ok, stick to Theo then.  (Not sure what I think of the anarchy as a concept yet).  

That war against Germany was with the Roman army group.  I hadn’t gotten to scout all of Germany before they started denouncing me (so no open borders).  But was pretty sure capital was SW of Dortmund - see the culture icons on the jungle from Chichen Itza, correctly guessed that was their capital.  


Sweet, I get Wars of Religion against Egypt too!

Germany was not very hard.  They were most advanced AI techwise (and 2nd in culture to Gandhi) but had very few units.  Also think that because they had 6 or so cities, they spread out forces more - Egypt actually tougher with only 2 cities (founded one more during the war) as it meant their whole army was in the path of mine.  Originally I thought these two armies would converge pincer like on Aachen, but just wasn’t needed, the northern group (aided by a couple of those new faith-bought catapults) were plenty.

[timmy827]

I’ve posted enough pictures so trust you’ll believe me that the takings of Egypt’s capital (T128) and Germany’s (T130) were just more of the same type of combat, little more to note.  Was interesting that everyone hated me so much that Egypt wouldn’t cede their cities for peace without *me* shelling over large GPT...I actually killed their last city out of annoyance.  Action at India was starting same time and no way these western armies could get over there in time to help.

India had taken Defender of the Faith and as you can see the Varu are really tough.  I had actually DOW’d several turns earlier - partly because his apostles were getting in the way in my lands, and hoping he would charge his army into my lands where they wouldn’t have DoF bonus or city/encampment support.  That he did not, though by showing that wounded xbow I could draw a couple of Varu out.  So had to wait for Mil Science to finish and the big mass cav upgrade FTW.  (Yes, these horsies were built while the western war still going, and sitting around for a while).

One other error - decided to bypass Madras and only attack Delhi, but should have moved the ram straight east while waiting for the tech.  That delayed me a bit

The mobility of cavs allowed me to surround and kill the elephants though they were still no pushovers in 1v1 fights.  

Dehli had great defensive terrain - only one non-river square to attack from! And the encampment fire killed one of my catapults there before it could fire - but cities don’t get DoF, and he kept a Varu in Madras (wrong spot…) so fell pretty easily to surrounding cavs.  India fell T134/450AD completing the Domination.  


So was pretty happy with my strategy despite the “beep beep beep” retreat from First (Offensive) Indian War, undoubtedly I build a bit too much and not willing to throw units away at the end but seemed pretty fast while still fulfilling the “use-upgraded-cavs” idea I pegged a long ways back.  Glad to see that Behrens did the endless horse spam for blowaway fastest date so far though.  

So general thoughts on state of combat?  There are some small things that could be improved (short of the hard project of drastically upgrading tactical AI in general)

-I think battering rams are too good; walls too easy to knock down with them.  And catapult line seems pretty bad as they are awkward to use in a traffic jam, too many squares they can’t shoot from due to hills/forest obstruction rules, and somewhat vulnerable to the city attacks.  Maybe melee units should only do 66% or so of normal damage (with rams against walls) not 100.  Or keep rams as they are, but have the city-with-wall ranged attacks do more damage.  
-horse units are just too good (even for non-Scythia).  Something like what they eventually did in Civ5 with a penalty for city attack might be a good idea (though not to point of total nerfing)  That, or need to make sword/musket line better some way; right now the horse units are so much easier to plan for since horses visible from start+seem a bit more common than other strategics, and bit stronger per hammer cost, and move faster, and get same defensive boni from terrain….
-slight simple AI tweak - have it try to keep ranged units as city garrisons so they can shoot out.  And don’t absolutely refuse to attack out of city with garrison unit.  
-its a little weird that we’ve gone back to civ3 rules (you can use roads in enemy territory just like your own).  
-but, roads are a little hard to build - wish there was some way to have traders choose different equivalent-length routes between cities, it seems you can try to run differnent routes but the code to choose actual path still tends to clump them together
-It seems like too many early DOWs on player (when still very cheap, where the AI free starting units put them way ahead in power) - don’t have them DOW player when they are losing a war to another AI!  And still would like to see it harder for the joint wars agreement - to my taste, too easy for player to get ganged up on this way, and too cheap to enlist help when DOW’ing yourself.
-maybe boosts (from whatever districts/buildings/tile improvements) shouldn’t trigger from conquered cities, only from self-building.  It’s a little too easy to rack them up.

Thanks Sullla!
I still had some fun with this (and could just barely finish), so want to temper my other post about “not as fun as Epic 1” - still worth playing one conquer game, though I think I have little appetite for another without major war AI improvements.