Epic 23 - Militaristic Munching

[Olodune]

Part I

(I didn't see a "closing day" thread or I would have posted sooner. Part II will be up this evening.)

Focal Discovery

I spent more time staring at the start than at any other point in the game. As I see it there are three good choices:

1) Settle in place for an extra shield.
2) Settle on the sugar for an extra food.
3) Use our two scouts to find alternate locations – very risky but potentially game breaking.

I decided on 1) partly because it’s immediately clear that this is a very carefully crafted map and I didn’t want to screw it up too badly.

Having two scouts is fun It doesn’t take too many turns to find that we are at the very center of a disc shaped landmass, with pie shaped wedges, delineated by mountain ranges such that Mutal is a true “focal point” of land access. We are Mao of the Maya (Pro, Exp) based on Ruff_Hi’s description I won’t be surprised if the Mayan UU (resourceless) proves quite valuable.

Isabella of Spain: Known religious zealot and the only default leader/civ combo.

Alexander of Russia: Very aggressive early, potentially a good mercenary. Could be dangerous with his Cossacks down the road. (The color scheme suits him too, somehow)

Louis XIV of China: Who’s your culture daddy?

Montezuma of Rome: Yikes! Aggressive Praets in the hands of a pure psychotic who builds mass ground assault forces.

Mansa Musa of America: A bit of a throwback to vanilla Washington – not really an early game worry, but a potential source of technology, both for us and our enemies.

Boudica of Holy Rome: A really dangerous combination. Boudica has the perfect combination of massive (char) + cheap (rathaus) cities, and a propensity to build large stacks of highly promoted troops.

Julius Caesar of India: More of a builder in the early game. Fast Workers should fit in nicely.

Sitting Bull of England: Not a threat, without his Totem Pole and Dog Soldiers his early defenses will be much weaker than usual. I’d be hugely surprised if he can field protective redcoats in any sort of timely fashion.

While scouting early research went like this:
Wheel->Pottery->AH->BW

Being Expansive + having a large food surplus + a nice river + no early commerce tiles to work suggests pottery for cheap granaries and cottage spam. The two sugar tiles north of Mutal can mimic flood plains (I would never connect the sugar at any point in the game).
The next tricky decision is which direction to expand into. Whichever we choose its likely some hostilities will eventually follow. (Actually I think a non-aggressive game is entirely possible here – I was considering trying to do so, but was paranoid that the AIs had massively boosted “super-capitals” so I went immediately on a course for war. Hopefully someone will play a passive game. Culture would be fun to watch. ) After weighing my options I choose to head into the Spanish pie slice, for their gold and marble.



We are researching masonry, timed with the border expansion in Lakamha. Notice that there is a source of copper that we could have tried to ninja from the Spanish. However at this point I expected that we would have no metals in our starting area (I gambled and skipped IW, since I was fairly certain no iron was to be found). Therefore, I had already made plans to deal with a “no metal” start.

First I need larger cities:



Before I was ready for her, Boudica shows the first signs of aggression:



At this point my military consists of large number of warriors and a few Holkans, so while I’m confident we can hold off the Fanatic Aachenese Queen -- she could draw me into a dangerous quagmire. Luckily I opened borders with everyone as soon as writing came in, and she peacefully entered Mayan lands – heading towards Sitting Bull.

So I could focus on prepping for a Spanish war:



And soon after:



The Spanish war was quick and easy with Catapults far superior to Archer groups. After she was dead I didn’t even get a great general nor enable the heroic epic! Ouch!

So at 10 AD the Mao/Mayan hegemony is leading in land area, tech, and score. Our Spanish Lands:



Focal Zone:



In the screen of Madrid you see that Isabella (unsurprisingly) founded Buddhism, so my first GP (generated by the oracle) built a shrine:



Mutal is a commerce beast, developing as well as I could have hoped:



The Era of Diplomacy and Intrigue, to follow.

[Olodune]

After assimilating the Spanish I can access the diplomatic situation.

Louis is Pleased, diplomatically (still not completely safe)
Alex is in WHEOOH mode ....
Monty has Praets running around
Boudica is beating on Sitting Bull
Julius Caesar is a religious outcast
Mansa is Mansa

Essentially the only two AIs that worry me at the moment are Alex and Monty, so its time to play the consular diplomat:



That worked very nicely as both wasted units on each other. After the second wave Mao was brave enough:



Alex also fell reasonably quickly giving more resources and land to the Mayan lands. Financing our empire is beginning to strain our gold income so I started selling obsolete techs for cash.

Boudica asked us to join in on everyone's favorite punching bag. I was happy to comply:



A Holy Roman (via England) city got swamped by Barb spearmen (it was later captured by Monty):



Time to trim the next civilization down to size (I now have a nice medieval army produced by the HE city Lakamha, and Feudalism to facilitate some vassalization).



After three cities Caesar bent his knee.

With a large Empire and the march towards domination commencing, I decided to ignore Paper, and head down the "bottom" part of the technology tree, targeting Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder, and Steel -- so there is no need to run scientists.

I did build the Great Library, Parthenon, Statue of Zeus, and Schwedagon Paya during the early ADs, mostly for AI denial and access to the Free Religion civic.

Into Chinese lands so Mao can claim his own:



You can see I'm building my first knight in Lakamha and soon will add several, followed by muskets, to the main Mayan army.

Sometime around now Mansa finally saw the "one true path":



The Chinese conquest took more time as I wanted all Louis' land.

Finally a juicy, tech is finished (none of the AI's even has guilds yet ... )



The End is in sight, as I attack the Roman (whose armies are largely the same as they were a thousand years ago):



Two cities and he's done. Finally I'm ready to take down the Celtic Queen (who just vassalized SB after a very long war).

The main stack:



And the Backside Battle of Boudica's Rearguard:



The world in it's final war:



Thanks lass:



And we are now the proud owners of Pie Island:



Mao is a happy man:



This was a fun game, especially in the early stages. Once the domination machine gets rolling its hard to stop. Congrats to Sitting Bull, the last free civilization (with two cities).

A surprising and interesting factoid:

AI DoWs on Mao: 0 :neenernee

Aggressive gameplay is very strong on Epic speed and a crowded map, regardless of strategic resources.

[invy]

Congrats, you make it look easy. I like your offensive army, holkans and catas . Nice use of Elephants later on also. And Mutal warriors

[Olodune]

Congrats, you make it look easy.

There was a period between 500-150bc where I couldn't influence the AIs. If several had attacked me (as they did in other games) progress would have been much slower. Boudica in particular was dangerous, but an early attack by Monty's praets would also have been problematic (I did get construction at 485bc, but catapults cost a lot of hammers when attacking smaller stacks).

[T-hawk]

Very nicely done. The scenario key was twofold: find a resourceless unit for offense, and conquer one pie slice ASAP to claim resources and create a sheltered back line. I did that with longbowmen against Alexander (but only because he declared on me first; Isabella was indeed a softer target.) Catapults are fun, and I've always wanted to do some catapult-oriented conquering, but it seems like enemy longbowmen and elephants always appear too soon. In this game, the large map, epic speed, and delayed contacts all slowed the tech pace to make that nicely possible.

Nobody played culture or space turtle; the map layout was too favorable to warring. invy tried but the AIs decided to make it a warring game for him. :neenernee

In your 10 AD screenshot, Mutal is size 16? That's tremendous - how did you get that much happiness and health in the city that soon? And you must have seriously restrained any whipping to grow that fast. Good point about the sugar mimicking flood plains. I'm also learning that the best thing to do with weak resource yields is often to just cottage them along with everything else. 1f 1c from a sugar plantation is actually pretty weak, same as an unboosted windmill which is junk if the city has enough food.

[Olodune]

Very nicely done. The scenario key was twofold: find a resourceless unit for offense, and conquer one pie slice ASAP to claim resources and create a sheltered back line. I did that with longbowmen against Alexander (but only because he declared on me first; Isabella was indeed a softer target.)

The offensive minded start did pay off -- your game was a better read, however. Early longbows have the same sort of all-around utility as rifles. Did you find vassalage and/or serfdom useful at all?

In your 10 AD screenshot, Mutal is size 16? That's tremendous - how did you get that much happiness and health in the city that soon? And you must have seriously restrained any whipping to grow that fast. Good point about the sugar mimicking flood plains. I'm also learning that the best thing to do with weak resource yields is often to just cottage them along with everything else. 1f 1c from a sugar plantation is actually pretty weak, same as an unboosted windmill which is junk if the city has enough food.

I teched straight for pottery when I saw all the food + a wandering river by Mutal. Being expansive + easy access to corn and rice + fresh water start gave a high health cap. The Oracle->Monarchy grab solved the happy problems.

I actually will only use slavery heavily when I have a high happy cap, but low health -- generally I prefer to grow cities over building infrastructure quickly. I did whip out a couple of catapults for the Spanish war, IIRC -- but Mutal was never whipped.

[T-hawk]

Yes, Vassalage was hugely useful. The extra unit support was the only thing saving me from strikes and bankruptcy. In fact, I never even used Bureaucracy since the free unit support was more than the B commerce bonus. And the second promotion for the longbows was huge, Shock or Cover out of the box. I'm starting to think Vassalage is underrated and Feudalism is worth prioritizing for the civic as well as the longbows.

Serfdom didn't do anything, since I switched right back out of it to Slavery right away.

Ok, Mutal's happiness was from Hereditary Rule. Did you have any problems with unit costs from all that?

[Olodune]

Ok, Mutal's happiness was from Hereditary Rule. Did you have any problems with unit costs from all that?

I was running at 60% science with -31gpt in 10ad, that was fairly representative. Extra gold came from conquest and selling old techs (I probably got 3-4k gold over the course of the game from things like literature and drama). Extra troop costs are a concern, but in the beginning (when inflation is low) working cottages more than makes up the difference (at least I've always assumed so ).

Large obsolete garrisons also provide some power, and a means to turn gold->hammers (through upgrades) later in the game, which can be useful on occasion. Once I shut down tech (after steel) excess gold was partially used in this manner.

[Ruff_Hi]

nice report - very quick victory. Thanks for reporting.