Adv50 - Timmy shakes off some rust

[timmy827]

Immediate thoughts before - must not be close, or game would be pretty dull, but on pangaea so reachable by land, probably on the far side. Thus the basic plan was attack around calendar change with catapults and horse archers primarily. Tech Construction first (since cats are slower, want them out the door first for a long overland trek) then HBR. Of course, will need to spare some worker labor to build roads along the way, and make sure to not annoy the in-between AIs to the point where they would might close borders.

I thought my "Rome on the far side" guess was right, (met JC scout last of all AI's) but then found he was west of spain, not close but not end of the world either. Dedicated axe rush just may have been possible.

Here you can see my settling pattern with dates of cities:

I think I had about the right number, and good choice on short-term over long-term sites (for example, never bothered with culture in the first two non-capital cities, although they eventually got Spain's Buddhism conveniently just in time to bring the outer ring of forests in.) But I waited too long on the last two. Thought was the 2 non-gold cities would be net loss on research but good for whipping units, but went too far on that delay.

Break #1 was Rome getting early Alpha, allowing these:


Break #2 (probably the bigger one) was this barb city close to Rome. (surprising this one spawned, even not counting the rice in the jungle, I would have thought Rome would have settled here, fish + cows + horse is good).

Really wanted to keep this out of Rome's hands as a quick place to attack from, didn't have enough units near to take it for a while. But lucked out as JC didn't move against it, and eventually Charlie knocked it down to one archer as seen above then I could grab it. Although in the end, Rome's borders hadn't expanded to fill the whole gap; even if Rome took that spot I could have probably found another camping/assembly spot outside their borders at the cost of maybe one extra turn.

Concurrently using JC's alphabet I traded around for IW, Monarchy, and Monotheism. These came too late to help much directly with the war buildup but allowed me to bribe Izzy to declare on JC a few turns before I did. Didn't see what fighting was on but basically guaranteed JC's main stack would not be at Rome. (I honestly have no idea what he would do otherwise, what does the AI do with its offensive stack if your homeland is really far away but you haven't taken one of their cities yet?)

Final battle

Pleasantly surprised. Knew JC had Feudalism for a while, very happy to see only one single-promoted longbow. My worker bait didn't draw anyone out of Rome though
No bombard, just throw the kitchen sink against the walls. Bloody but had a comfortable margin on attackers. Result:


Seeing size of defending stack, definintely could have been faster. Still I think my planning had been pretty good. I was sort of surprised at both Rome being medium-far, not real far, and having the barb city attack lane. And I couldn't really move the attack up much once I took the barb city - about half the total stack arrived in the last two turns before declaring. (there were still a few horse archers trailing, I pulled the trigger when the last catapult arrived. I didn't plot out all the unit completion + move dates but came reasonably close on getting the main army together.)
A faster victory would have needed more scouting earlier to see how close Rome was and adjust the buildup accordingly, though I was trying to push tech goals and had something like 2 axes and a few warriors only before Construction.

Thanks to sooooo, nice to have a quick fun scenario.

[Ronald]

We placed the first 2 cities almost identical to claim the gold. The difference afterwards was, that you took the more safe route to research construction for cats and I took the more gambling route of relying on horse archers only. If my attack would have not succeded I would be toast (Maybe you saw on my screenshots that Inca and Greece declared war on me!)

[Zalson]

Nice tech trading! Have you (or anyone else) found that the WFYABTA has decreased/increased in BTS/Warlords?

[timmy827]

I barely played at all before BTS so not really sure of the difference. Full details are here if you're interested.

Of course, the short nature of this game meant I didn't pay any heed, normally I would not trade for so many early techs.

[Lewwyn]

Did you need Alphabet? I don't think I would give Rome Construction. Getting the barb city was a real nice pick up. Good job.

[Square Leg]

Good game! Nice break on the barb city. JC was certainly very quick to expand and slogging through his culture would have been pretty difficult.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Agreed. I had to abuse the open borders to get to Charlemagne's territory before declaring, but then it was a four or five turn walk through Roman land to the capital with him attacking my stack on the way. Good thing I build WAAAAY too many units!

[T-hawk]

Did you need Alphabet? I don't think I would give Rome Construction.

Why not? The AIs almost always research Construction as soon as they can anyway. But they don't pose any threat with it, they don't build enough catapults quickly enough to matter.

Nice work Timmy. Your game was about how I might have expected it to go; didn't play it myself.

[haphazard1]

JC was certainly very quick to expand and slogging through his culture would have been pretty difficult.

Very true -- I ended up spending about a dozen turns walking through Roman culture, and got slammed by catapults for much of that trip. Fortunately elephants make good stack defenders against almost everything in their era, and with some axes along spears can't really threaten you. My elephants ended up too wounded to help in the assault on Rome but the damage to my other units was mild enough that they were able to heal with my medic spear's help during the bombardment.

[timmy827]

Why not? The AIs almost always research Construction as soon as they can anyway. But they don't pose any threat with it, they don't build enough catapults quickly enough to matter.

QFT. And since they usually don't have enough to matter, I'd much rather see a couple cats in Rome instead of another Praet or longbow.

Although I suppose it's possible my trading with Rome sped him to Feudalism, though soooo's edits surely played a part there.