Epic 9 - Horse Feathers
Epic nine was the second Always War epic. it promised to be significantly different to Epic 6 due to the archipelago map and no-city-razing rule. The difficulty level was higher too - Prince and tech trading allowed (which adds on more than a difficulty level). However, we would be under less pressure from troops due to the map. The other variant rules were that we could not build a wonder that has a doubler resource without having said doubler connected. Also, half of an attacking stack must be mounted/armored/helicopter.
Sullla said after the last AW epic that it was foolish to start with a worker. He's right, but with a worker pre-selected by Sirian, I felt it would be OK. In fact, this was a clue that we were isolated on our own continent. I stayed with the worker and AH beginning. Early scouting revealed a small continent with not much production. No seafood either - but this was probably a blessing in AW because the AI boats love to pillage those nets.
So with no city razing, a strong enonomy will be needed. Otherwise, it just won't be possible to do much fighting. With always war, if you take one city on another continent, you pretty much have to take them all. Otherwise the attacks and culture won't let you make the captured cities productive. My plan was to keep a minimum defense until cavalry and astronomy, then go and take on the other civs.
Tech order was AH -> mining -> bronze working -> fishing -> pottery -> writing. I wanted to found a religion, but decided to go after one of the later ones. I was beaten to confucianism by 4 turns, but got Taoism in 95 AD.
I settled here:
![[Image: citysitesug1.jpg]](http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/7707/citysitesug1.jpg)
Looking back now I am writing my report, I should definitely squeezed a city in on the marked red dot to share Karakorum's cow. I went to organised religion and spread taoism. I also prioritised Calendar for the nice resources.
Anyway, I had a minimun garrison in most cities, with a few chariots and axemen around as a mobile response force. I had quite a few galleys though to sink invasion/settler parties. In fact, one settler party landed on the south of my land in a terrible place. I won a lucky dice role vs the final archer escort, which was really important. I could not have let the settler settle with NCR turned on.
So I cottaged Karakorum heavily even though I could never adopt bureucracy. There wasn't much food about, so I would never have a GP farm. In fact, I delayed the heroic epic for a very long time because I thought I couldn't build it without marble, being a wonder. It was only when Sirian said that national wonders were excempt from this in the info thread after my game had started that I built it in Beshbalik. I didn't build any world wonders the whole game, though I will be interested to see if anyone settled the stone early and built the pyramids.
Anyway, there was little excitement until I discovered liberalism in 1370 AD, taking military tradition. After getting gunpowder, HBR, feudalism and theology, I switched to vassalage and theocracy and started pumping out the cavalry.
![[Image: buildingcavalryyc6.jpg]](http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/2773/buildingcavalryyc6.jpg)
Well, maybe "pumping out" isn't the right verb because my cities were still production-poor. I couldn't workshop over the cottages because of the NCR rule. I would have to keep every crappy city my opponent had, otherwise I would keep the WW forever
One mistake I made was not to detour to optics, meaning I missed the circumnavigation bonus. Try as I did, I couldn't circumnavigate with galleys. Once astronomy was reached, I sunk all the enemy caravels around and went towards chemistry for frigates. Before that though, some galleons were whipped and my horsies went out to seek new civilisations, meet new people and kill them all.
I chose Russia first because its continent had better land than Japan. I didn't want to go after Cyrus and Qin, since they shared a continent and I would have to fight them both. Ideally I would attack Gandhi, since he built nearly all the wonders, but he was too far away. So Peter went down at the usual speed of cavalry vs longbow battles.
![[Image: russiacapturedrm4.jpg]](http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/1340/russiacapturedrm4.jpg)
Some of those cities were really bad. the NCR rule is quite interesting actually. Novgorod had the sistine chapel, which is really nice with mercantilism for getting quick border pops in new cities.
Anyway, Japan was next and still had longbows. The main continent was captured by 1766 AD, but I couldn't find the last city until later.
My finances were now poor, so I took the gamble of getting communism (state property) before rifling.
I went after Gandhi next despite his rifles, as I figured his continent would put me over domination. Also, he was tech leader and I didn't want him getting to combustion before me.
My cavalry took a back seat in this war, just hanging around to make up the minimum number of mounted units and killing weakened troops. The main fighting was done by cannon and grenadiers, and later infantry. This meant that my frigates could not bombard, because then they would count as troops attacking a city and I could not afford 1 cav for every frigate.
To cut a long story short, gandhi's continent and the outlying islands fell to the mongols, and after taking a few of cyrus' cities on his home continent, the domination limit was triggered in 1884 AD. Qin got destroyers towards the end, but by that time I was only 2% from winning.
![[Image: dominationwinon0.jpg]](http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/5948/dominationwinon0.jpg)
Interesting game. Always war on an archipelago is very different to pangaea. But the NCR rule added a level of difficulty, and having to research all techs by yourself while the AI trades between themselves mean you have to manage your economy well. I'm pretty sure most of the games will be fought mainly with cavalry. Keshiks and knights don't have good enough odds vs archers and longbows respectively, and astronomy and cavalry come near the same time. I can see tanks coming into some games, and I can even imagine someone (Zeviz?) teching to space without leaving the home continent. A Culture win should be possible too.
I don't know if it's possible to verify this, but here are my votes for which of the random personalities the AIs got:
Gandhi - Louis (built nearly all the wonders, was one of the more aggressive AIs in terms of sending out raiding parties, founded a religion, stayed in HR (louis' favourite civic) after building pyramids, gave me +ve for being in HR)
Peter - Victoria/Asoka (built loads of cottages)
Qin - [strike]Mao Zedong (pretty aggressive, not many wonders, teched well)[/strike] OK, can't be mao because he liked free religion. Must be Elizabeth.
Tokugawa - Hatshepsut (founded judiasm, built cottages, bonus for HR)
Cyrus - [strike]Saladin (did not send out long-distance invasion parties, founded 3 religions)[/strike] Can't be Saladin, he liked HR. Err maybe Kublai.
Epic nine was the second Always War epic. it promised to be significantly different to Epic 6 due to the archipelago map and no-city-razing rule. The difficulty level was higher too - Prince and tech trading allowed (which adds on more than a difficulty level). However, we would be under less pressure from troops due to the map. The other variant rules were that we could not build a wonder that has a doubler resource without having said doubler connected. Also, half of an attacking stack must be mounted/armored/helicopter.
Sullla said after the last AW epic that it was foolish to start with a worker. He's right, but with a worker pre-selected by Sirian, I felt it would be OK. In fact, this was a clue that we were isolated on our own continent. I stayed with the worker and AH beginning. Early scouting revealed a small continent with not much production. No seafood either - but this was probably a blessing in AW because the AI boats love to pillage those nets.
So with no city razing, a strong enonomy will be needed. Otherwise, it just won't be possible to do much fighting. With always war, if you take one city on another continent, you pretty much have to take them all. Otherwise the attacks and culture won't let you make the captured cities productive. My plan was to keep a minimum defense until cavalry and astronomy, then go and take on the other civs.
Tech order was AH -> mining -> bronze working -> fishing -> pottery -> writing. I wanted to found a religion, but decided to go after one of the later ones. I was beaten to confucianism by 4 turns, but got Taoism in 95 AD.
I settled here:
Looking back now I am writing my report, I should definitely squeezed a city in on the marked red dot to share Karakorum's cow. I went to organised religion and spread taoism. I also prioritised Calendar for the nice resources.
Anyway, I had a minimun garrison in most cities, with a few chariots and axemen around as a mobile response force. I had quite a few galleys though to sink invasion/settler parties. In fact, one settler party landed on the south of my land in a terrible place. I won a lucky dice role vs the final archer escort, which was really important. I could not have let the settler settle with NCR turned on.
So I cottaged Karakorum heavily even though I could never adopt bureucracy. There wasn't much food about, so I would never have a GP farm. In fact, I delayed the heroic epic for a very long time because I thought I couldn't build it without marble, being a wonder. It was only when Sirian said that national wonders were excempt from this in the info thread after my game had started that I built it in Beshbalik. I didn't build any world wonders the whole game, though I will be interested to see if anyone settled the stone early and built the pyramids.
Anyway, there was little excitement until I discovered liberalism in 1370 AD, taking military tradition. After getting gunpowder, HBR, feudalism and theology, I switched to vassalage and theocracy and started pumping out the cavalry.
Well, maybe "pumping out" isn't the right verb because my cities were still production-poor. I couldn't workshop over the cottages because of the NCR rule. I would have to keep every crappy city my opponent had, otherwise I would keep the WW forever
One mistake I made was not to detour to optics, meaning I missed the circumnavigation bonus. Try as I did, I couldn't circumnavigate with galleys. Once astronomy was reached, I sunk all the enemy caravels around and went towards chemistry for frigates. Before that though, some galleons were whipped and my horsies went out to seek new civilisations, meet new people and kill them all.
I chose Russia first because its continent had better land than Japan. I didn't want to go after Cyrus and Qin, since they shared a continent and I would have to fight them both. Ideally I would attack Gandhi, since he built nearly all the wonders, but he was too far away. So Peter went down at the usual speed of cavalry vs longbow battles.
Some of those cities were really bad. the NCR rule is quite interesting actually. Novgorod had the sistine chapel, which is really nice with mercantilism for getting quick border pops in new cities.
Anyway, Japan was next and still had longbows. The main continent was captured by 1766 AD, but I couldn't find the last city until later.
My finances were now poor, so I took the gamble of getting communism (state property) before rifling.
I went after Gandhi next despite his rifles, as I figured his continent would put me over domination. Also, he was tech leader and I didn't want him getting to combustion before me.
My cavalry took a back seat in this war, just hanging around to make up the minimum number of mounted units and killing weakened troops. The main fighting was done by cannon and grenadiers, and later infantry. This meant that my frigates could not bombard, because then they would count as troops attacking a city and I could not afford 1 cav for every frigate.
To cut a long story short, gandhi's continent and the outlying islands fell to the mongols, and after taking a few of cyrus' cities on his home continent, the domination limit was triggered in 1884 AD. Qin got destroyers towards the end, but by that time I was only 2% from winning.
Interesting game. Always war on an archipelago is very different to pangaea. But the NCR rule added a level of difficulty, and having to research all techs by yourself while the AI trades between themselves mean you have to manage your economy well. I'm pretty sure most of the games will be fought mainly with cavalry. Keshiks and knights don't have good enough odds vs archers and longbows respectively, and astronomy and cavalry come near the same time. I can see tanks coming into some games, and I can even imagine someone (Zeviz?) teching to space without leaving the home continent. A Culture win should be possible too.
I don't know if it's possible to verify this, but here are my votes for which of the random personalities the AIs got:
Gandhi - Louis (built nearly all the wonders, was one of the more aggressive AIs in terms of sending out raiding parties, founded a religion, stayed in HR (louis' favourite civic) after building pyramids, gave me +ve for being in HR)
Peter - Victoria/Asoka (built loads of cottages)
Qin - [strike]Mao Zedong (pretty aggressive, not many wonders, teched well)[/strike] OK, can't be mao because he liked free religion. Must be Elizabeth.
Tokugawa - Hatshepsut (founded judiasm, built cottages, bonus for HR)
Cyrus - [strike]Saladin (did not send out long-distance invasion parties, founded 3 religions)[/strike] Can't be Saladin, he liked HR. Err maybe Kublai.
