Adventure 51: Compromise's report

[Compromise]

First of all, let me say thank you to Ceiliazul. This was just like old times. Loved it.

Scoring Analysis

First order of business was to look at the scoring. Basically it seemed to break down into two possibilities: quick play or long play. Point possibilities:

Quick:
+10 Fastest victory

Long:
+5 Most elite
+1 Eiffel
+2 Nuke
+3 Gunship end
----
+11 Total

Stonehenge seemed like a red herring, and the only other points were a possible +3 for earliest Great General.

Being impatient, and somewhat lactose intolerant these days, I decided to go for both fastest victory and earliest GGeneral. Those may be conflicting goals, but we'll see.

Demographic information

Next, I opened up the save and noticed something on the Demographics screen:

My "soldiers" rating is 2000. Max AI is 6000, Mid AI 4500, low AI 2000.

Did a little research: Archer is 6000, Archery is also 6000. Hmmm....the AI is starting with only a warrior! Nice edit from the traditional Monarch start. That'll give us a bit of breathing room at the beginning. Basically, I think that means "Worker first!"

Map Analysis

I think I spent about as much time plotting where to put my cities as I did playing the game. It was pretty clear where the AI's would start: on the same hill I had access to. The start was pretty good, but Copper was 3rd ring and no Iron was revealed on the spoiler images.

There weren't that many great no-border-pop city sites around, and the starting site would work well with just its first-ring tiles. Hmmm. Maybe we need to move the capital....

Horse locations were known to us. (Not that they were in very nice places!) I figured it would be almost impossible to get a GGeneral before attacking a city, which meant 1000BC (Edit: Not 1000AD). It would be a minimum of two turns to get to any city center with non-mounted units, so I figured the best chance of "Earliest Great General" would be to beat everyone by one turn and have a bunch of mounted units that could attack cities immediately in 1000BC. I might still get beaten by someone who manages to lure a bunch of AI troops into the open, but that 1000BC invasion limits seems like it will really limit the opportunity for early GG points. It also gives the AIs enough time that I don't think a straight Swordrush will work, especially with 25T guaranteed access to copper.

AI choking

All the AIs have access to copper in their third ring, accessible to them on turn 50, well before the 1000BC no-enter-their-culture date. Metal troops will significantly spoil my devious mounted plan. I'd rather be fighting archers than axes, spears and swords.

The AI is usually terrible about breaking a choke.... Could it be possible to send a troop to each AI's copper location and "guard" it by hovering near it, thus preventing it from getting improved? Hmmmm.

Fastest Victory plan:

Horses, Axes, Catapults. The plan is simple: Oracle Construction.

After hours of poring over the spoiler maps, it was time to begin....

Capital relocation:



I found this screenshot. It's a few turns in. Shows a worker start then growth on barracks. AnimHusb first tech, Archery second. And I've put the capital on the dry rice west of the start. Sheep, Pigs, Fur, and Copper all in the second ring, which the capital gets without a monument. Nice place!

Also, you can see from the minimap that I sent my scout to meet (and hate) the neighbors. Verified the warrior start too. May as well get the AI to concentrate on building units rather than expansion. Especially since some of those units will be...warriors!

Built worker, barracks (partial...until Archery is in), then 4 x Archers. Archers were immediately dispatched to far away locations.

I send my first archer clockwise, the second counterclockwise, the third clockwise, the fourth counterclockwise.

I am too late to stop Japan from founding its second city NE of copy. Rats--no denying copper there.

On the way to choke Hammurabi, I see this golden opportunity:



Can't pass that up! Win at 92% odds, get free worker. Other warrior doesn't counterattack. Very convenient....

Of course, by the time that archer does make it to Hammurabi, it is too late to choke out copper access.

Sigh...my plan to choke the far AIs has failed. But I am able to choke both of my religious neighbors, so...I guess that's good.

Second city is back at the starting place:



Not a bad city site. Capital will expand to three rings in a couple turns and bring the forested plains hill into range for Sparta.

Ten turns later, my workers have timed this pretty well:



Corinth is the last city I will settle. Its only purpose is to give me horses. Didn't need sailing to connect--used roads instead. An archer and an axe kept Suleiman from getting any settlers out. They keep dancing back into his territory when they see my defense. I may need to let them out soon so they can found cities that I can destroy in 1000BC!

Over in the east, two archers parked on hills similarly terrify the AI and hamper its settling plans:



You can see there my two archers on defense on hills. Brennus and occasionally Rammesses would suicide an archer against the eastern archer. But the archer near the copper never got attacked. He just scared away the settler.

I have literally just built my first horse archer with a 2-pop whip and a forest chop when the AI decides to strike my till-then-undefended capital:



I love it! I let this stack into my territory and two horse archers (one from Athens, one from Sparta) and a phalanx each get archer kills. Then, the surviving warrior--I had no troops to take it--didn't pillage the Sheep. Very nice!

Especially nice is that the Great General bar is at 26/30 after this encounter. Hmmm.... Maybe I have misplayed the "Earliest Great General" hand? Maybe it was possible to simply seek the AI in the field. Well, okay...oops.

In fact, I beat my own estimate as two horse archers sent to bother Brennus run into an archer+warrior stack and:



Scoring entry: First Great General in 1120BC

Now, I don't need to pull off to let any settlers out, though I may still want to if only to give those many AI archers somewhere to go...away from a 60% cultural defense hill.

Rammesses builds Stonehenge in 1080BC. I will be curious to see if any players attempt it.

When 1000BC comes and it's time to move into AI territory, we are ready:



Moving my archer/axe choke into position to march on Mecca has allowed a Settler to escape. This leads Suleiman to split his forces in the face of his adversary's superior numbers. Suleiman fails Tactics 101.

We lose one HA to the archer on the hill, and three more in the assault on Mecca. Ouch. But Mecca is ours in 975BC.

Priesthood discovered in 825BC.

In 725BC, we are ready to assault Madrid:



That's *my* archer outside Madrid. No more watching the copper. We've picked off a few archers, there are now 4 in the city and I'm sure another will be whipped. I have 10 HAs (2 of whom are slightly wounded) plus my archer. At just over 2-to-1 units, it'll be close....

Our prayers to mighty Athena bring glory the Greeks: No interturn archer whip by Brennus! We get a two withdrawals among the initial attackers, and while I was prepared to lose 5 or 6 horse archers, I don't think we lost more than two or three.

But the age of the horse archer is over, especially against civs with known copper reserves. Now, it's all about getting catapults and City Raider phalanxes to the fronts.

Oracle is delayed a couple turns to finish hand-researching Mathematics:



We chose option 2, and can now build catapults. After I learn Ironworking to know where to pillage mines, we'll go all cash.

For those who would like a timeline:

525BC: Construction via Oracle
475BC: First catapult (whipped)
400BC: Always War turns to Almost Always War:



That is funny: an "End the War" event in an "Always War" game. Kindness by soldiers is overruled by the rules of the universe, but I think we were actually at peace with Suleiman for the briefest of moments.

250BC: Suleiman is eliminated when we take Medina
- Also, we repel Rammesses' axe/spear/archer assault on Madrid with horse archers/phalanxes/catapults
225BC: Ironworking in. Research funding is cut forever.
1AD: Lalibela is our first spoil of war from a metal-laden AI. Catapults weaken the many spear defenders such that even some horse archers get some wins. Here's the defense one turn before capture. I forget how many cats/HAs/axes I had. Plenty though.



At the same time, on the other side of the world, we raze the gateway to Japan:



Our forces march on. In 125AD, both AI capitals--Aksum and Kyoto--are taken and kept.

It's now a mop-up operation, the only question being how quickly we can get to all the cities. Let's just say that I wasn't very troop-efficient in razing the rest of the cities. I lost my one and only Great Medic because I'd left him exposed in the assault on Gondar. Oops.

325AD: Hammurabi is eliminated. Everyone from the western campaigns except surviving horse archers are put to sleep.

450AD: This coup-de-gras picture shows what I think is my most experienced troop executing the final attack:



475AD: Conquest victory is declared.


Final thoughts:

Most of the plan went well. I was just a bit too slow to choke the distant AIs with archers. Maybe if I'd started in the original capital, I would have been able to stop Rammesses from founding Osaka near the copper?

I do think that choking the nearby AIs went well though. Extremely well, in fact. Eliminating two civs with only three city captures certainly helped improve the finish date.

Also, I'm no longer convinced that a Great General was unobtainable by poaching AI stacks before the 1000BC invasion could commence. That may make the entire horse archer strategy unnecessary and less competitive against a straightforward traditional buildup with quicker catapults.

Scoring entries:
Earliest GG: 1120BC
Finish date: 475AD
Most experienced unit: 32xp Booyah!

I had a great time with this. All the information available before the first turn was played gave me lots of time to think and plot out various attack strategies. And well-seperated early vs late scoring opportunities forced some compromises about how to plan the overall approach to the game.

Thank you Ceiliazul!

[Ronald]

Great Game!
Before I read your write up I thought I played I good game, but you really nailed it! This victory is much earlier than I ever thought possible. I have sooooo much to learn. Congratulations.
Now we have to find out if somebody gets a better score with the slowest victory (see my post about the possible points for the slowest victory). But your early GG is so good, I doubt anybody can best that.
Very well played!

[Tatan]

Yeah, I think the only way someone could beat that score would be by getting a super early Great General and then sandbagging the game to pick up all the late game stuff. Great game!

[timski]

Great scoring analysis. Personally I fell through the middle - neither managing the fastest victory, nor delaying long enough to pick up the late-game scores. Stonehenge makes perfect sense if one plans to "just play", but I agree is something of a Red Herring if one is chasing early Great Generals and victory, since it inevitably delays the start in favour of a stronger economy by the mid-game.

Likewise, your decision to move was fascinating. It fits well with what is essentially a huge Horse Archer rush. But most importantly it put you in Suleiman's sights immediately, which meant he sent military towards you much earlier than he did for me.