Epic 6 - Always War
This game was a standard sized panagea, always war, noble, no tech trading. It was also no barbarians but I did not realise while I was playing
.
A few points about AW:
(1) The AI builds a lot of military, very little infrastructure (libraries etc). This, combined with the low difficulty level means that it is not hard to outtech them.
(2) The classical era is the hardest part of an AW game. You and the AI have tech parity (almost, you will probably have a slight edge and get cats first) but the AI builds a ton of units and will send them at you. With 7 opponents, this can be very difficult to defend against. You have to get units to the front line ASAP or you won't have a front line. This is probably the era where most of the time you will be defending with no chance to send out an attacking stack. Horse archers are the worst, because they don't care about your axes (which will make up the bulk of your army) and love to pillage. Spears are very useful.
Therefore there are 2 strategies in my mind:
(a) Take out your nearest civ before the classical age with swords, then defend your new territory until you can eek out a tech advantage, then go and hammer home with your superior maces and knights.
(b) Kill everyone before the classical age. No need to worry about horse archers or even swordsmen. The scariest thing you will see is a couple of axes from civs who have copper.
I kind of like plan (b). There's no WW to worry about and you don't get bogged down defending against a larger army.
Let's go! I settle on the spot - this is a great location for an early military campaign. I start with a worker and animal husbandry because a plains cow is the best tile in the game for AW. 3/3/0 - yummy.
I've decided recently that the location of copper isn't good enough. It's iron you need because swordsmen have much better odds vs archers than axes do. Therefore I've stopped timing my first settler for BW and instead get him out to coincide with IW. After AH I researched BW and IW. I built 2 warriors, another worker and a barracks, pastured the cows and mined the hills. The settler came out the same turn as IW completed, but Iron was present in the capital. I should probably have disbanded the settler but I settled the spot north to get the 2 seafood and 2 hills. In the end it took so long to build the 2 workboats and barracks that the military this city did produce was largely irrelevant. Maybe I should have settled to get the horses in the south but that would have meant researching HBR. I think disbanding it would have been the best option.
Anyway, I mined the grassland iron (2/4/0 - another great tile!) and researched The Wheel. Once this was done and the iron hooked up the capital built nothing but swordsmen for the rest of the game. Most of the capital's forests were chopped to speed up the first few guys. After fishing, agriculture and mysticism I turned off research. Unlike Epic 5, military costs were not that bad (noble level after all).
Gandhi's first city (also jewish holy city) was still defended by warriors. Someone should tell Gandhi that founding 2 early religions in an always war game is a bit silly. You've got to be cruel to be kind so I taught him this lesson by capturing his 2 cities with the loss of 1 sword. That'll learn him. For the possiblity of an honorable mention, I captured my first city in 1360 BC and wiped out the first civ in 1150 BC:
![[Image: ep6indiansdestroyedar0.jpg]](http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/1334/ep6indiansdestroyedar0.jpg)
Now onto Japan. This guy had the right idea - he had discovered bronze working and had hooked up copper. Well done Toku! I lost a couple of swords to his axeman but his 3 cites fell quite quickly. I kept Kyoto and raze other two. Japan was no more by 775 BC. Kyoto was quite nice with its plains cow and 2 elephant camps. I wouldn't keep any more cities.
![[Image: 585bcna2.jpg]](http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/6264/585bcna2.jpg)
Next I split up my attack force. Half of it headed towards greece in the south and half north towards Saladin. Damascus (670 BC) and Sparta (640 BC) fell first. Medina (550 BC), Thermoplye (520 BC) and Baghdad (490 BC) all fell quickly because neither of these civs had copper. I did not send enough swords to finish off Mecca, so Saladin's capital was spared until 370 BC. Corinth and Athens were then razed to finish off the Greeks in 295 BC.
3 capitals under attack:
![[Image: ep6385bcso9.jpg]](http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/4591/ep6385bcso9.jpg)
The Americans and Russians were next in line for my northern and southern taskforces. The southern one did better because they wiped out the Americans by 100 BC, with the northern force languishing behind, not finishing off the Russians until 55 BC.
![[Image: ep6160bcun9.jpg]](http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/47/ep6160bcun9.jpg)
Finally the spanish. They were slightly trickier because they had axemen, but with overwhelming numbers their cities did not last long. The final city on the map Seville was wiped out to give a conquest victory in 80 AD. Phew!
![[Image: ep6conquestvictorytx3.jpg]](http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7760/ep6conquestvictorytx3.jpg)
Here's the info screen, showing the 60 swordsmen built!
![[Image: ep6infoscreenoy1.jpg]](http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/4080/ep6infoscreenoy1.jpg)
That was fun, although a little similar to my epic 5 game. Didn't take more than a few hours. I think I'll have to try some always war games on harder difficulties. My thanks to the sponsor, Sirian.
This game was a standard sized panagea, always war, noble, no tech trading. It was also no barbarians but I did not realise while I was playing
.A few points about AW:
(1) The AI builds a lot of military, very little infrastructure (libraries etc). This, combined with the low difficulty level means that it is not hard to outtech them.
(2) The classical era is the hardest part of an AW game. You and the AI have tech parity (almost, you will probably have a slight edge and get cats first) but the AI builds a ton of units and will send them at you. With 7 opponents, this can be very difficult to defend against. You have to get units to the front line ASAP or you won't have a front line. This is probably the era where most of the time you will be defending with no chance to send out an attacking stack. Horse archers are the worst, because they don't care about your axes (which will make up the bulk of your army) and love to pillage. Spears are very useful.
Therefore there are 2 strategies in my mind:
(a) Take out your nearest civ before the classical age with swords, then defend your new territory until you can eek out a tech advantage, then go and hammer home with your superior maces and knights.
(b) Kill everyone before the classical age. No need to worry about horse archers or even swordsmen. The scariest thing you will see is a couple of axes from civs who have copper.
I kind of like plan (b). There's no WW to worry about and you don't get bogged down defending against a larger army.
Let's go! I settle on the spot - this is a great location for an early military campaign. I start with a worker and animal husbandry because a plains cow is the best tile in the game for AW. 3/3/0 - yummy.
I've decided recently that the location of copper isn't good enough. It's iron you need because swordsmen have much better odds vs archers than axes do. Therefore I've stopped timing my first settler for BW and instead get him out to coincide with IW. After AH I researched BW and IW. I built 2 warriors, another worker and a barracks, pastured the cows and mined the hills. The settler came out the same turn as IW completed, but Iron was present in the capital. I should probably have disbanded the settler but I settled the spot north to get the 2 seafood and 2 hills. In the end it took so long to build the 2 workboats and barracks that the military this city did produce was largely irrelevant. Maybe I should have settled to get the horses in the south but that would have meant researching HBR. I think disbanding it would have been the best option.
Anyway, I mined the grassland iron (2/4/0 - another great tile!) and researched The Wheel. Once this was done and the iron hooked up the capital built nothing but swordsmen for the rest of the game. Most of the capital's forests were chopped to speed up the first few guys. After fishing, agriculture and mysticism I turned off research. Unlike Epic 5, military costs were not that bad (noble level after all).
Gandhi's first city (also jewish holy city) was still defended by warriors. Someone should tell Gandhi that founding 2 early religions in an always war game is a bit silly. You've got to be cruel to be kind so I taught him this lesson by capturing his 2 cities with the loss of 1 sword. That'll learn him. For the possiblity of an honorable mention, I captured my first city in 1360 BC and wiped out the first civ in 1150 BC:
Now onto Japan. This guy had the right idea - he had discovered bronze working and had hooked up copper. Well done Toku! I lost a couple of swords to his axeman but his 3 cites fell quite quickly. I kept Kyoto and raze other two. Japan was no more by 775 BC. Kyoto was quite nice with its plains cow and 2 elephant camps. I wouldn't keep any more cities.
Next I split up my attack force. Half of it headed towards greece in the south and half north towards Saladin. Damascus (670 BC) and Sparta (640 BC) fell first. Medina (550 BC), Thermoplye (520 BC) and Baghdad (490 BC) all fell quickly because neither of these civs had copper. I did not send enough swords to finish off Mecca, so Saladin's capital was spared until 370 BC. Corinth and Athens were then razed to finish off the Greeks in 295 BC.
3 capitals under attack:
The Americans and Russians were next in line for my northern and southern taskforces. The southern one did better because they wiped out the Americans by 100 BC, with the northern force languishing behind, not finishing off the Russians until 55 BC.
Finally the spanish. They were slightly trickier because they had axemen, but with overwhelming numbers their cities did not last long. The final city on the map Seville was wiped out to give a conquest victory in 80 AD. Phew!
Here's the info screen, showing the 60 swordsmen built!
That was fun, although a little similar to my epic 5 game. Didn't take more than a few hours. I think I'll have to try some always war games on harder difficulties. My thanks to the sponsor, Sirian.
. Most people usually go with the Axe rush, but you correctly concluded that Archers would be your main opponent, and it sure worked out.
taking the world by 50AD, amazing 
. Gotta love that nod smiley!
