Adv 44, Timmy

[timmy827]

Sorry, was not able to finish the report, hopefully tomorrow. Conquest in 700AD.

[timmy827]

Moving the warrior confirmed that there was no room at all (meeting AI korea before they put down their city was sure strange!), so settled in place.

Where I may have gained ground on the other players is that I went for HBR instead of iron after BW and finding no copper. At the time I really thought the non-forested tile 2W1N of the capital was iron, which it turned out not to be, but given the variant rules I figured horse archers would have a longer shelf life, and I thought that Stables for early 2-promo units may be key.

First victim in 1760BC:

Value of 2nd promo was pretty nice in this case, would have been ~35% odds without combat II. The 2 moves of horse archers were also invaluable, with this packed map you could use open borders to often be able to attack the capital the same turn as declaring. Besides not letting the AI whip defenders, frequently they would be doing weedy thing with their units:


Was lucky in these early fights, losing none against Wang and generally few. I always made sure I had two HA's per defender before pulling the trigger to make sure I would win, but of course the light casualties helped in that I didn't have to wait as long before moving on. After korea, order was Russia -> Spain -> Maya -> Babylon -> Byzantium -> France. The last two were on consecutive turns, taking advantage of the cultural borders delay in adjusting (I still can't believe that this hiccup still exists after 2 expansions and a dozen patches...):


This was in 825BC, now time to consolidate a bit. Until now I felt under pressure as many of my earlier acquistions were culturally crushed, and two cities had a first revolt. But this current layout was pretty good as Mutal was double-holy and quickly secured at least its first ring of tiles, and Madrid was offset a bit from Native America; for a while it would be not so useful with many tiles unworkable but at least not in flip danger. It was clear that the Celts were one of the "lucky" civs with room for a few cities, so I decided to leave them be. Focused on economy for a while, then at 350BC was ready for more one turn wars, first Monty:

You can see some Celts going to pile on Gandhi; Cyrus had just declared on him as well. They had a few cats but took them a while to bomb down Delhi's culture, giving me another easy mark (Thanks Gandhi for injuring that axe!):

You can see I had one Vulture at Cyrus's other city; this wasn't a one turn war but was able to end it before Cy could move his more-formidable stack back. Game was obviously already in the mopping up stage; economy isn't great but with Currency in some foward progress on tech is assured. It's clear by now that Astro is needed to end this, so that was the main goal; was researching to Lit to get TGL+National Epic up in Moscow for great scientists; completed in the early AD's. HE in Paris was also quite useful. But before that flood started I let Constantinople pop a Prophet (Oracle or something) for first golden age started in 1AD as I needed to manually tech to Optics to bulb Astro. Due to the tiny map tech discount, it really made sense to use only 1 GS on Astro. Sadly I could not get Moscow to produce anything but Scientists, so no 2nd golden age. Astro in 200AD, after which I backfilled CS (maces) and Engineering (road bonus).

Of course I was continuing home continent cleanup during this process. There was an amusing sequence where Persepolis flipped to Gandhi, followed by Boudica taking it immediately (her 2nd stack was going thru my land at the time and was in perfect position), followed by her liberating it to me a few turns later Now that I was adding cats into the mix, killing off my remaining neighbors was easy, although on a tiny map WW still caused some problems with the 3-city empires of Bull and Boudica.

I began the other continent with more all-HA armies, catching Kublai with most of his army out of position in 400AD:

Don't know what was with that hill tile, Hannibal was also warring Mansa and had some units there the entire time I knew about the other continent...
I was also able to jump Ragnar with HA's but after that I was out of open borders to abuse (Sury wouldn't open his). But I had been whipping out a bunch of Galleons, so it was pretty easy to pick up the maces+cats from my Celtic campaign, land them next to a capital, then take it the next turn. During this closing phase I actually ran some Espionage slider to get research visibility on everyone, which paid off as I got Hannibal just before he reached Feudalism, and had plenty of time to do the same to Sury and Mansa to wrap things up for a 680/700AD conquest.

Thanks to Ruff, a pretty easy game but something different. However, the unit restriction didn't seem to matter as much as I feared - I correctly guessed HA's would have a long life (especially due to no iron anywhere, which was actually somewhat useful as I could still build archers to the end of the game for garrisons). I've previously written about how trebs aren't that great so it was easy to just stick with cats and I didn't need any ships before Galleons. The only thing that affected me really was melee units, scrapping a couple of early police warriors. I built 4 vultures, and delayed CS a bit to save cash to upgrade the CRIII ones and scrapped the other two.

[T-hawk]

Great work. Your game was mine played correctly and with the RNG luck I lacked. Twice I followed but lost on your "2 HA per 1 archer" rule, 2:1 at Sitting Bull and 4:2 at Korea. Those setbacks meant I had to start slow siege as soon as Constantinople, netting just 1 conquest with solo HAs (Moscow flipped away) to your 7.

The HBR rush was obvious. Nice touch by Ruff planting the cow to make sure the player got to AH to find the horses. I never considered going for iron (although that's because I wrongly expected to claim Moscow's copper vs Byzantine culture.)

Other similarities: TGL+NE for Great Person autopilot; recognizing early that Astro was the limiting factor rather than military techs; using galleons to speed conquest within one landmass.

You don't like trebs? I don't recall reading that before. I like them. Their biggest downside is coming in lockstep with Castles. But if you get Engineering ahead of the AIs, they do just fine vs longbows. +100% city attack is really more like +150% when you consider that it subtracts from a defending longbow's 6 strength rather than adding to the treb's 4.

[novice]

Nice work Timmy! Although the map looks awfully messy with all those cities still around.

I agree with T-hawk on trebs; I built them instead of catapults, but after my initial treb stack was dead I just went without siege until Artillery, which was probably a move.

[The Reverend Doctor]

I knew while I was slowly advancing through the modern era that people were going to come along and show us how it was done with simply horse archers.

Good read and a well played game.

[timmy827]

Thanks. I'll get around to commenting on the other reports soon hopefully. Just some quick explanation of my treb comments.
If you have 2 promotions available for Accuracy (I did for basically the whole part where I built 1-movers), the bombard power between cats and trebs is a wash (50 hammers for 16%/turn, 80 hammers for 24%/turn, assume the cat being slightly cheaper in hammers more or less offsets the gold for carrying more of them around). Obviously cats are far better outside cities, and even when attacking cities their collateral is 2x as effective as trebs (the +100% to cities doesn't apply to collateral, only base strength matters).

In SP I suppose they do fine against contemporary units when you're dealing with the AI's 3-5 units per city garrison (thus collateral isn't as useful). And the treb->cannon prebuild/upgrade is great if you Lib or beeline Steel.

[pocketbeetle]

Obviously cats are far better outside cities, and even when attacking cities their collateral is 2x as effective as trebs

?
Do they target more units or something?

[novice]

?
Do they target more units or something?

Better strength. 5 > 4.

[pocketbeetle]

Better strength. 5 > 4.

Sorry my fault for being unclear, I was questioning the second part.

Obviously cats are far better outside cities, and even when attacking cities their collateral is 2x as effective as trebs

Or is collateral dmg dealt also related to strength?
Even so, still doesn't explain the 2x figure.

[timmy827]

OK, I typed up my previous response quickly, happy to clarify. So, collateral damage only takes the base strength of the attacking and defending units; trebs's big city attack bonus doesn't count; defensive bonuses don't count whether from culture/fortify/CG/whatever. The only promotions that matter are Barrage on your siege unit and the higher-level Drill on the defender (and the AI never really does that, maybe aside from UU's that start with Drill promotions like Oromos).

When I say cats are twice as good I was talking in collateral terms, 5 strength vs. 4 and cheaper hammer cost (50 vs. 80); you get 1 "strength" collateral for 10 hammers instead of 20.

As a more general strategy, as soon as the AI's start having walls in their cities I often prefer to throw some catapults away on the first attacking turn rather than waiting to bombard - you're guaranteed some damage on all but the top defender, and you don't give the AI time to whip more units, research military techs, etc while waiting to bombard. Also, you get the benefits of bringing the city out of resistance sooner.