So, to test out the viability of the Armageddon Rush strategy, Selrahc challenged me a few days ago to a duel. The settings were stacked heavily in favor of enabling Selrahc to end of the world to arrive as quickly as possible, with several restrictions placed on what I could do to avert it. The final game options / rules were as follows:
* Selrahc had exclusive rights to the Clan & their leaders (we played with restricted leaders, so the latter wasn't a factor).
* I could not play as Charadon .
* The map was a duel size, with Last Days enabled, to ensure that the AC would increase as rapidly as possible.
* I could not build the Prophecy of Ragnarock for myself.
* I could not use the Seven Pines, should I end up controlling it.
* Our maps used the "Islands" script (one island per player), so that I could not rush the Clan.
We used EitB for the match, which meant Selrahc didn't have to research Way of the Wicked, but otherwise had little functional impact. Selrahc choose Jonas as his leader.
My mission was to see if I could survive or somehow neutralize the Armagedon Rush.
I considered a few different strategies. As Selrahc noted after the game had begun, the Ljo would have been a good choice, since their worldspell is capable of killing horsemen. Auric could halt the production of Prophecy units with his WS, and Einon could buy 14 turns of safety with his, although both civs would have still struggled to find reliable counters to the various unpleasantries of the AC after their WS ran out. I thought about using Varn to Cultist rush Selrahc's island, but that seemed too cheap (plus I wasn't convinced that I could kill off Selrahc before the horsemen tore my own civ apart).
In the end I decided to use Falamar to deploy the ultimate counter to Armagedon, the Barbarian, Demonic Hyborem
The game proceeded then as a race, with Selrahc trying to kill me off using the AC before I could escape to Hyborem and eliminate him using the Infernals. Both of us had excellent starts; Selrahc had the Mirror and Patria to produce some very early expansions, and I had a riverside gold which I worked as my first tile to grab fishing three turns early.
Selrahc landed Ragnarock on turn 57, and the AC rose rapidly every turn afterwards as he double-produced Prophecy marked goblins. Horsemen hit at turns 66, 67, and 68.
On turn 67 though I was able to bulb the Infernal Pact, finishing it three turns early- not a moment too soon, as three horsemen rapidly tore apart my warrior-defended empire. Once I reached Hyborem, the game was called; while there was some disagreement about whether I could successfully invade Selrahc's Cultist-defended island before he achieved an Altar or Culture win, the point was moot as my much lower score as Hyborem meant that the Horsemen would invade Selrahc as soon as the Lanun AI died.
Selrahc and I differed on our final conclusions as to what the game revealed about the viability of an Armagedon rush, but here's my opinion-
It isn't.
First off, the odds in this game were stacked so far in favor of Selrahc bringing about Armageddon as quickly as possible that it was almost silly. A real game will have more players (hence, more targets for the dumb Rider AI), no islands for the Clan to hide on, a larger map so the AC will increase more slowly, and a high likelihood of Charadon / the Ljo / the Lanun / the Illians showing up and putting a serious crimp in the Armageddon stratagem. And even with all his advantages, he still couldn't kill me off before I could get Hyborem out (granted I had advance warning of what was coming, but I believe that a game with a longer rise time for the AC will still provide sufficient delay for someone put on notice of the impending AC push to grab the Infernals before the worst events hit).
Second, the Armageddon strategy still puts far too much faith in the AI to do your killing for you. In a duel, it worked perfectly; the Horsemen had no other targets to attack, so they immediately ran roughshod over the poor Lanun. In an MP game with 4-5 players, there's a good chance that each horseman will pick a separate target and thus not kill anybody. And on a Standard or larger-sized map they're prone to flying into the poles and getting lost in the ice for dozens of turns.
Third, it's not actually clear how the Clan can really capitalize on bringing about Armageddon to win the game, even if they are successful in raising the AC to 100. So everyone loses most of their military- units can be rebuilt, replacements quickly drafted. Several large forces of Clan wolfriders might be able to sweep through the temporarily weakened opposition, but they'll suffer like any other living unit from engagement and death at AC 90 and 100. Drown are immune to the apocalypse, but they're very slow and a Clan player would be hard-pressed to put together enough of them to kill everyone suffering from the apocalypse quickly enough (especially while still paying for dozens of Prophecy units).
Finally, I'd wager that a determined assault from the combined forces of every other player would be enough to kill the Clan once they saw the Prophecy had been built- or, if not outright eliminate the Orcs, at least start killing off Marked units. As Ravus has learned in this game, deliberatly raising the AC to high levels antagonizes
everyone. Nobody wants to have to deal with blight or see their civ get wrecked by Buboes. Even if an alliance can't take out the Clan before the Horsemen hit, they might still be able to eliminate the civ before everyone else dies, rendering the entire gambit meaningless.
I do agree with Selrahc that an Armageddon rush is likely sufficient to kill off at least one competitor in a standard game; rare is the game where everyone is prepared to combat a horseman or two before turn 100. But I don't think that it is a strategy which can reliably win rounds, even with Last Days and when facing the "correct" opponents.
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0156%20%283%29.JPG]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17338994/Civ4ScreenShot0156%20%283%29.JPG)
