Adventure 50 - Xenu Stops The Renaissance

[spacetyrantxenu]

OK, so we have Brennus and we're going to have to play catchup to kill Rome. On emperor. This will probably end poorly for me. Up to now the only Monarch game I've played is BTS SG 5 - The Greens, and I'm sure our success there has been a result of slow, deliberate, and thoughtful play. I'm not likely to get as much of that here. Here goes!

T6 My scout found Isabella, so that's a double-edged sword. Hopefully I'll end up with her religion and get her as an ally. If not she'll probably kill me.

T8 Buddhism is FIDL. I'm going to guess it was Isabella. Next turn confirms it was her.

T19 Saladin meets me, and he already founded Hinduism. So I'm probably going to get caught in a religious crossfire.

T28 I meet Charlemagne.

T37 what have we here?

T40 we meet Alexander. Either this is an all European cast or we're just waiting for Montezuma to show up to complete the set of warmongers.

T60 Caesar declares war on Charlemagne - good for me, this one lasted for the rest of the game, not that I took good advantage of it...

T77 Inca meets me. They're number two in score.

T123 I land a very late Great Lighthouse (why did I build that? I thought it would take a while on emperor to build up enough troops to bring the fight to Rome. I ended up totally overestimating the force I would need!)

T186 My stack is ready outside Roman territory. I declare war and move in.

T187 My immediate neighbor (and the score leader) Spain declares on me. I'm at war with the #1 and #2 powers now. Great.

Isabella sends a few small stacks of units into my territory, mostly WEs, HAs, and knights. So far I've held my cities off and been able to whip enough defenders to hold. I didn't leave a lot of units on defense when I sent my stack wandering off toward Rome. I sent the house since our game conditions give me a win if I can sack Rome.

The tactics on that end was fairly simple. I moved my units through Spanish and Roman territory while we were at peace, using their roads via our existing open border agreements. I parked my stack on a tile in HRE territory, ended turn, and then on the next turn declared on Rome. It was the turn after that when Spain declared on me. Anyway, I moved my stack through Roman land avoiding fights and heading straight to their capital. After fending off a few attacks and avoiding too much collateral damage from catapults my army was at the city (and castle) walls ready to attack. Catapults in first to die, great job guys. Then I just sent meat into the grinder. I actually had plenty of units left at the end of the attack. I could continue terrorizing and burning Roman cities except that I used up all the catapults. At that point, though, I'll just sent my stack back toward home and waited for them to offer terms. They never would, at least when I stopped playing that session.

I'm not terribly interested in finishing out this game. Eventually someone is going to out research me and get a space win, or maybe conquer me. I'm still at war with the top two teams and my most of my military power is over cut off in their territory far from home, doubtful to make it back intact, and doesn't have siege power to knock down any more cities. I don't have a good feel for how emperor level games go, but I know I'm in over my head and other than burning Rome this one feels like a loss in the making. I'll take my variant win and be happy with it.

For purposes of the adventure, Rome was razed in 1300 AD. Out of whoever submits a report for this event I'll probably have the latest city capture date. It was a fun ride preparing for it, thanks for the game!

T190 From the turn of capture:

Yeah this is going to be a loss!

[Zalson]

Thanks for posting.

I know that my first couple games on emperor, I behaved like a scared little lamb. Once you get used to the difficulty, it's not too much worse than emperor. The AI bonuses aren't that big.

Since I don't have BTS, you have beaten my latest Rome capture date.

[haphazard1]

Nice work, spacetyrantxenu! You got the variant win even though it was your first game at Emperor, good job.

My first game on Emperor (long time back now) went very, very badly. I was way too timid. I've learned since to be even more aggressive at Emperor, or you will not get enough land to stay in the game. But it took time to learn that. As Zalson said, Emperor turns out not to be so bad once you get used to it. Immortal and Deity, though...ouch.

[Square Leg]

I'll echo the other comments here - good job for your 1st game at Emporer! Play some more SP at Emp and you'll quickly get the hang of it. Just remember that tech trading is one of the best ways to reach parity at the higher levels if your economy isn't quite up to scratch. For example, once you have the key worker tech it is often a good choice to research Aesthetics as the AI often skips it. Once that is in you can put 1-2t of research into Alphabet and often get a Aesthetics-Alphabet trade, that then allows you to get techs like Maths, CoL, IW etc in trade for Aesthetics and minor stuff. It can be a real help early game.

Well done!

[spacetyrantxenu]

That's one of the problems I have with higher level difficulty, I usually like to play with tech trading off. But with the AI research bonuses it quickly becomes a losing proposition to try to just out research them so it almost forces me to play with a setting I don't care for. That's probably why I usually stay around prince, I know some of the settings still favor the player (maintenance for one), but mostly the AI gets a lot of fairly minor bonuses that don't punish the player too much. On prince I don't feel like the deck is stacked against me the way it is on higher levels. With that said, though, most of the time the game plays a bit too easily on Prince. I'd like to be able to play higher levels and have the AI challenge me, but not in a way that it feels like it's quasi-cheating.

I guess the bottom line is that I wish the AI played smarter so it didn't have to get so many bonuses to be competitive, but that ship sailed a long time ago.