Cornflakes' Epic 4

[Cornflakes]

[Cornflakes]

Continuing on ...

T101-150

T102 Japan coordinates a raiding party with the city state, but with walls in place the city is in no danger.



GEngineer Isidore lands T109 and rushes the rest of Petra T110



GMerchant Marcus Licinius lands about the same time, and I use him to claim a few 3rd ring desert hills for Petra

[screenshothttps://www.dropbox.com/s/u0z98t2s5yl0196/20170806081404_1.jpg?dl=1[/screenshot]
I assemble an army in the west, I can see French borders peeking out and given the French military strength of 40 I decide it's about time to move in. I decided to give Siege Towers a try. I don't think siege towers were used at all in PBEM2 and I haven't used them much, but I chose them here rather than battering rams. My thinking is that (1) they are classical so GGeneral works in giving +1 movement. (2) With a ram the first couple attacks take out the wall before chipping away at the city strength, so I think that the siege tower will allow city capture with a couple fewer melee attacks.



Brazil makes a raid out east, but I have sufficient force to repel the invaders. Out west I now have a 2nd GGeneral on scene. My core of my attack force will be knights. I have a half-dozen Heavy Chariots built ready for upgrade.



T129 I get Merchant Republic government, putting in Professional Army for the upgrades and Raid for pillaging. Turned out, the most valuable aspect of Raid was not in science or culture pillaged, but actually the ability to restore up to 100 HP from farms! Even though France's military was weak, the French core was heavily fortified with Camps. The knights with boosted movement from 2 GG's had enough movement that even a redlined knight could move to farm, pillage, and still attack full strength. Thus I was able to keep up momentum on the attack.



About 10 turns into the war I have 1 city captured, 2nd city under siege, Brazil tries another pitiful diversion in the east to no avail.



French cities are falling like dominoes! 4 turns later I have 2 more cities under control and the next under siege.



France eliminated T145. Spain is sending another raiding party, including another settler right up to my borders???



The settler actually entered my borders before getting captured! WHY AI?!?! The great person ready to claim is the GMerchant which gives 200g + 2 Envoys ... how useful are envoys in a game when we are at war with all city states? Not much, but I at least got some gpt out of them. Doesn't look like I have a screenshot of the city state screen, but I met two of the city states when declaring war on their suzerain major civ. Since they then declared war on me rather than me declaring war I was able to still place envoys with them, and then use the diplomatic policy card for +1 gpt/envoy. I just had to invest 1 less than the civs which had Suzerain status, if I tied or exceeded the number they would make peace and then I would have to declare war and loose the envoys. I think I ended up with about 10 envoys spread between the 2 city states for +10 gpt.



With France now eliminated, it's time to choose the next target. Reviewing the World Rankings screen, I see that Japan is the tech leader. I worry that Tokimune will get a generation up in military tech so I decide he is the best target. On the other hand, my current invasion force is clear on the other side of the map! I know Spain at least is to my west, and at this point I still have not even met Sumerian. I decide to fill out another invasion force in the east and push the army in France west to take out Spain.



Out east I locate another incoming Japanese raiding party. I have noticed from past experience in this game that the AI will build up some military, and then send the entire force at me. This is good timing then for a raiding party. Once I eliminate these units defensively in my territory, Japan should be nearly down to 0 military strength. Ballistics is the current research target, and once that is complete I will upgrade an army for field cannon and take out Japan



There are a few things noticeable in this screenshot. First of all, the active unit is a GGeneral. The "Transfer to another city" function allows him to jump from France over to the eastern front where Japanese forces are incoming. Also notice the Military Engineer just produced in Aachen. I was expecting to be able to build the 2 forts required for the Ballistics boost, unfortunately this isn't possible because forts require another tech which I can't remember at present but which was a couple out of reach. I'm therefore stuck hard researching Ballistics



Down in southern France, the city state is mounting a solid attack! I didn't expect a city state to prosecute an invasion, I expected them to remain basically defensive with their forces. I'm tempted to let them capture the city just to see what happens ... I expect that they would liberate it to bring France back into the game. I didn't want that, and I also couldn't send the army into Spain with a hostile state in my backlines. Therefore ...



Bye bye Preslave

T151-Victory

I'll start the T150 set a little early on T149 ... I located Spain, and unlike France, the Spanish capital is exposed as a front line city. This gives easy access for a strike to take out just the capital as part of domination victory



T156 I FINALLY meet Sumer. I don't see any units but clicking the button centers the view on this little outpost city (founded from the settler Spain wandered into my territory). I'm confused at first, then notice the religion present and have to assume I was met by a missionary. All I know at this point is that Sumer must be somewhere to my northwest.



Sumer shows up with a War Cart, confirming my strong suspicion that they are to our northwest.



Out east I begin my Japanese invasion with a T160 assault on Tokyo. As expected, Japan threw pretty much their entire military force at me in the raiding party and is now down to just 40 strength.



There's the Japanese capital! Also easy access for domination victory. At this point, I step back for a moment and take a look at the bigger picture. Rather than trying to eliminate everyone in turn, I decide at this point that I am going to try ending this ASAP by attacking all 4 remaining capitals approximately at the same time. By this time in real life I'm running out of time to complete the epic before reporting day, and I need to get this thing to a swift conclusion if I'm going to have time to report on this.



I send a small stack towards Madrid ... let's see if this is sufficient



Yes! It cost me a knight, but I've got Spain's capital!



Out east my main army smashes though Japan's capital in a single turn Now just 2 capitals to go.



When I made the decision about T160 to go for domination ASAP, I realized that the critical path is getting a siege tower to each capital. I had 2 when I invaded France just in case, one of them as seen above I sent to Madrid, the other up towards Sumer. In this screenshot you can see the force that I have assembled to send to the Sumerian capital. At this point I haven't even located it.

The yellow-lined horseman is tasked with locating the Sumerian capital. If it's front-line then I should be able to take it out with my current force here, plus a couple more knights sent up from Madrid. The two crossbows will be upgraded to Field Cannon and by that time hopefully I will have found Sumerian borders and can begin advancing.



On the Brazilian front, the critical path is again getting a siege tower in place. Unfortunately, siege towers are now obsolete so I can't build one for Brazil. Siege towers are however classical units and therefore boosted by our GG Hannibal. The moment I take out the Japanese capital I re-direct the Siege Tower south towards Brazil.



I find Sumerian borders, and it's the capital!



T171 the field cannon upgrades are complete and are en route along with the knights from Madrid



Out east on T171 I'm getting into position around the Brazilian buffer city. Timing-wise it appears at this point that I'll reach both remaining capitals about the same time, assuming Belem doesn't slow me down too much.



Brazilian cities have higher strength than the Japanese cities or Madrid so I take more damage than previously. Unfortunately there aren't many farms to heal up.



Brazil had landed the 3rd GGeneral, and since I had enough units at the front (and any new units wouldn't be able to reach the fronts) I ran a couple of Camp projects to land the 4th general in time to make a difference on the Brazil front. Due to the teleport ability, I was able to teleport him directly into the newly-captured Belem.



Brazil put up a decent resistance considering the invasion force. I sent a couple of field cannon and a musket at Salvador thinking that I could pick it off as well with some spare troops who couldn't reach the capital front. Up in Japan with city strengths in the 40's a single field cannon had been able to blast down the defenses at one of the outlying cities over the course of about 5 turns (only taking about 10 damage per turn in return fire from the walls, and able to promo-heal almost back to full health). Here in Brazil, the crossbow corps had increased the ranged strength of the walls. The crossbow corps itself in combination with the walls proved too much for the spare units to break through. They did however create an important diversion. And as see in the screenshot, the C-bow corps vacated the city in favor of the pike. I was therefore able to eliminate it with the healthy cannon + musket. Even though I was not able to capture this city by game-end, the diversion did prove helpful in that this pike and the corps were not able to participate in the defense of the capital.



I push on towards the Rio De Janeiro, and it is fortunate indeed the camp is on the far side. As it is, I lost several units on the east side trying to keep up the siege. But considering I didn't need to push further than the capital and wanting to get this over ASAP I kept throwing knights into the breach to the east.



Out west my strike force is converging on Uruk. The two injured knights in the south had tried to flank the city in advance, but encountered resistance from pikes and had to head back east and wait for the rest of the forces to arrive. At this point on T177 it's looking like both capitals are still on approximately the same timeline.



The next turn sees Rio down to about 50% health, but many of my units redlined.



T179 I capture Rio De Janeiro with 1HP remaining on the victorious units. I have another half-strength musket left so it would have fallen this turn in any case. ... what happened out west in Sumer, the last remaining capital? Would they be able to keep the game alive?



Nope! The last two capitals fall on the same turn T179, but before capture, let's take a look at my highest XP unit ...



This field cannon had spent about 10 turns single handedly bombarding down a Japanese city to farm XP at the end. As mentioned above, it was only taking about 10 damage from the walls on defense, and was able to promote heal. Before that it was around 200 XP. This had been an archer defending in the east against Stockholm/Japanese/Brazilian raiding parties. I'm curious to see if anybody tried to achieve a super-high XP unit, and if so whether it was a ranged or melee/mounted.

After recording the highest XP it's back to Uruk for victory!



Almost there ...



Victory!

Earliest city captured: Lisbon T34
Highest XP unit: 245 (level 7)
Turn of victory: T179
Number of cities at victory T179: 25

I enjoyed this game, although I played it very rushed. I started the game the weekend after it came out, and played it in a bunch of 1-2 hour sessions. There wasn't a whole lot of planning that went into it, until about T160 when I decided to make the push to the remaining 4 capitals. The AI kept up a continuous string of raiding parties trickling in, and this felt more like what I was expecting from the Rome Vs. The Barbarians epic previously. I struggled a bit with science, and if I had waited another 20 turns to begin the French invasion, and subsequently the Japanese & Brazilian invasion I think it would have been a lot more difficult since both were significantly out-teching me at that point. Thanks for setting this up Sullla!

[timmy827]

Neat point about siege towers being Classical so early GGs work on them - never realized that, have always used rams and occasionally had problems with them not keeping up with horse forces in other games.  

Yeah the ballistics boost is weird.  I did it in my game thinking that cavalry would get used (and they did) but Siege Tactics is almost as expensive as Ballistics so for a direct beeline probably not worth it. 

Interesting that you went 150 turns without meeting Gilg.  Reading the other reports I felt I was very lucky to stay isolated as long as I did, perhaps resulting in fewer actual attacks on me, but I guess your game shows it could be even sillier

Also didn't realize barb horsemen become 'real' horsemen and not the 20-str version once you finish HBR.  Where did you learn that?

[Cornflakes]

Also didn't realize barb horsemen become 'real' horsemen and not the 20-str version once you finish HBR.  Where did you learn that?

Learned that the hard way in this game ... I didn't think that would happen either, but I lost a couple of barb-busting warriors at first to the higher strength barbs. I don't know if it was a coincidence in timing with completion of HBR, but within 5 turns I encountered stronger horsemen. They also increased from 3 movement to 4 movement at the same time. The increased movement was just as damaging from my perspective, since previously I could retreat damaged warriors through defensive terrain without getting caught, luring the barb towards another healthy warrior or archer, but with 4 movement the could advance through 2 hills or forests.

[Ranamar]

I'm finally reading through this report, and it seems like your AIs put up a lot more of a fight than I remember mine putting up. It's possible I had a more overwhelming force so I could chew through entire armies in a couple turns, but I don't remember decently-sized attacks from anyone the way you got them from Spain or Brazil. (... and Preslav, for that matter)