AU 101: Crowding & War

Theseus · July 15, 2002, 20:00

Goal: Psychotic bastards, here's your chance!! At least 1 city must be captured in each aggressive phase (with some crossover allowed): Archer, Horseman, Swordsman, Knight, Cavalry, Tanks, MA... however far you get before the win. Gold star for Warrior too. Must win owning all GWs.

Settings: Standard, continents, 80% water, 8 civs, warm, normal, 3B, raging, Emperor. Not culturally linked. Conquest and domination wins.

Civ: Japan

Notes: Can we say Caravels and Galleons?
__________________________

Here ya go, boys and girls, the first day of classes. Now, remember, no fighting... errr, scratch that.

May the meanest mofo come forward, please.

(Wait'll you see the starting position!! First try, too.)

W4r_Machine · July 15, 2002, 20:28

What exactly must happen? Winning the game by conqest--that I got and geting all the wonders. What else?

Quote:

At least 1 city must be captured in each aggressive phase (with some crossover allowed): Archer, Horseman, Swordsman, Knight, Cavalry, Tanks, MA... however far you get before the win. Gold star for Warrior too.

Say what?

Sorry, I'm a idy0t

FrustratedPoet · July 15, 2002, 20:37

Most games we play as warmongers end up playing out in several phases.

First there is the early Archer rush to gain good expansion territory and early techs.
Second there is the Horseman attack. This also gets techs and creates a big army to upgrade to the big force of....
Knights. Lots of these will destroy enemy Civs.
Cavalry is next ... an extension of the Knight phase really, but if the other Civs are catching in tech you will need the extra firepower. You really should be in control of the game by now (but in an Emperor game I probably won't be

).
Then you will progress through Tanks and Modern Armour.

I think Theseus just wants us to follow the warmonger opening right through the ages to it's logical (and bloody) conclusion while being very thorough along the way.

Correct? or not?

About the GW's: do you mean all the GW's currently in existence when you win the game, or ALL the GW's in ALL ages?? Clearly, if it is the latter then a few people might have to restrain their conquest instincts to avoid winning too early. I think some clarification on this point is needed.

W4r_Machine · July 15, 2002, 20:51

Thanks FP. Now I'm enlightened

FrustratedPoet · July 15, 2002, 20:53

If I was right

.... I'm often wrong.

Theseus · July 15, 2002, 21:26

Yep, FP got it. AGGRESSION, at each significant improvement in offensive military capabilities.

All GWs in existence at the date of winning... which can be either conquest (all AI civs destroyed) or domination (correct me if I'm wrong, but 2/3 of both total world population and land (don;t know if that includes coastal tiles).

I've just played a little of it... I feel like Conan the Barbarian.

nbarclay · July 15, 2002, 23:38

So much for the idea of trying the new patch shortly after it comes out. Between finishing the CivFanatics GOTM and playing this one, it looks like I'll be stuck at 1.21f for a while. And that's not even thinking about MT4 or the possibility of going back and finishing MT2 (which I interrupted to play MT3).

Are "horseman" and "swordsman" intended to be regarded as two separate eras? I've always regarded them as contemporaries to be mixed and matched as the mood and situation dictate. I think a single "horseman/swordsman" era makes more sense, leaving it up to the player to decide whether it makes more sense to use one, the other, or both during that era.

Nathan

Theseus · July 16, 2002, 00:01

Sorry, Nathan, couldn't help myself, even knowing the new patch was coming.

On the bright side, I think most are going to realize that the best way to play this out is with sheer aggression... the point of the trial is to test how quickly an 'unbalanced' approach can result in a win. Thus, this should be a shorter game than usual.

(Did I just tip my philosophical hand?)

Re aggressive eras: I already crossed the "Archer" and "Swordsman" eras... I purposely used an Archer for my second city capture, however, to stay true to the theme. Clearly there's crossover; I suggest everyone play to their optimum ability, with an effort towards respecting the theme.

First spoiler: First city taken in 2950BC.

nbarclay · July 16, 2002, 03:40

Quote:

Originally posted by Theseus
Sorry, Nathan, couldn't help myself, even knowing the new patch was coming.

On the bright side, I think most are going to realize that the best way to play this out is with sheer aggression... the point of the trial is to test how quickly an 'unbalanced' approach can result in a win. Thus, this

On Monarch and below, I've always been skeptical of the hypothesis that all-out aggression leads to faster wins. The times when a civ can really munch through opponents are when there's an imbalance between fast-moving offensive units and the defenders they face, such as knights against pikemen or cavalry against musketmen. By focusing on building and research early, I can get a tech lead and get to the key fast-mover techs faster, which I think can more than make up for a relative lack of early aggression.

Out of my last five Monarch-level games (two Apolyton tourneys, MT1, MT3, and the June CivFanatics GOTM), I've been in a position to dominate or conquer the world with cavalry in four of them using that approach. The only exception was the June GOTM, where I decided early that my focus would be an early space launch. (Note that in MT3, I didn't actually invade with cavalry, but if I hadn't been committed to wait, that game would almost certainly have smashed my record for earliest domination victory.)

On Emperor, there is a lot more merit to a militaristic early game since out-researching the AIs by any significant margin in the ancient era is next to impossible. But if the early warfare can be successfully concluded early enough to build up infrastructure, depending on the map, there can still be potential to create a research monster that can get Military Tradition and either Navigation or Magnetism a good bit before the AIs are ready for the industrial era.

My preliminary game plan for this game is

(1) Do an early archer strike to hurt a nearby opponent and satisfy the "one city captured in each phase" requirement, but don't go for a kill. Also build lots of temples for culture, and lots of barracks.

(2) Try to take out or all but take out an opponent with swordsmen and/or horsemen. If there's time, I might go for two, but I'm not really expecting it. (I might consider carving pieces out of two empires if we end up near cultural nobodies, but I don't like razing and I don't like having my cities flip.)

(3) Build up some infrastructure for a while toward the end of the ancient era.

(4) Conquer the remainder of the home continent, and possibly some nearby land, with samurai.

(5) Go for the Cavalry/Galleon combination to try to hit the rest of the world before they enter the industrial era.

Whether this preliminary plan will actually survive once I see the map and have to face my opponents, I don't know. But after MT2, I think it has promise.

By the way, with the goal of controlling all the wonders, I really wish domination victory were turned off. I hate razing, but the way the game is set up may not leave much choice. (Or would it be considered acceptable to win a domination victory but keep playing on to capture the remaining wonders, with the official year of victory for the purposes of this "class" coming when all the wonders are in my hands?)

Nathan

Theseus · July 16, 2002, 10:52

Sure, dominate and then capture the GWs.... for 'trial' purposes I think that's fine.

Tougher, and more elegant, I think, to capture the GWs and then dominate. I don;t intend to raze too much though... rather, capture city-pairs to fend of flips and have access to harbors. I envision a home continent, one or more captured continents, and patches of Japanese colonies across the map.

W4r_Machine · July 16, 2002, 14:13

So I guess we cant raze cities...

Is player re-start allowed/ON in this game? I mean, If you kill a civ too early...do they re-spawn?

[edit=forget the razing part of my post]

Theseus · July 16, 2002, 16:40

W4r,

No, it's OK to raze, I just meant that MY game strategy (for now) will be to avoid both over-razing and too much city capturing.

Player re-start is ON... does anyone know the mechanism for this? What's the latest an AI civ can re-spawn? (Very good question, W4r, given the point of this trial!)

Theseus · July 16, 2002, 17:30

SPOILERS BELOW

Theseus · July 16, 2002, 17:34

It just occurred to me that re-spawning is a SERIOUS issue here.

As I planned on using the Arrian Deception, I have been a TOTAL bastard to the two neighbors on the founding continent, having knocked them back to respectively 2 and 1 cities as of 800BC. Thus far, the waves of aggression have included Warrior, Archer, and Swordsman.

BUT, if I wipe them out, and they get re-spawned, will I have a rep problem when they meet other civs?

Do I need to trim them back to one city, and wait until re-spawning is no longer possible?

Or, do I say 'damn the torpedoes' and just go for it anyway?

W4r_Machine · July 16, 2002, 18:05

They shouldn't remember our previous transgression, but i'm betting they will.

I think I read somewhere here that they re-spawn even stronger.

I'm gonna wait till the whole island is colonized by me till I destroy both. Although they might re-spawn on another island which is very risky.

Spoiler:
Britain is great! I keep razing York but she still insist on re-building it.

nbarclay · July 17, 2002, 06:12

I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to have two spoiler threads for this, one early one while building on and (presumably) conquering the home continent and another one for once we know essentially the whole map. That way people can start discussing the early part of the game as soon as they've finished exploring the home continent instead of having to wait.

Nathan

Aeson · July 17, 2002, 06:26

Do you mean for the player's game logs to be posted here, or in a seperate spoilers thread? I've just played through most of the Ancient Era. I almost never use Archers and Warriors on the attack, it's lots of fun. Even took a city with a Chariot for good measure.

The AU is a great idea, good job!

Theseus · July 17, 2002, 12:55

I think that since the point here is no primarily competitive, but mutual learning, it's OK to just have the one thread.

I imagine we'll end up with one thread per trial, which'll be easier for latecomers to handle.

Anybody scoring early GLs? I've had dozens of elite battles, and nary a one.

nbarclay · July 17, 2002, 15:42

Okay, if the spoilers go here, I guess I may as well start. You can read the first part without finding out who the neighbors are, but later, it becomes more important.

In the early game, my northwestern neighbor founded a wine city so close to my capital that I couldn't resist going for a culture flip. That held back my archer supply a bit because I was busy building temples, and when I went for a second culture flip on another city, I added the complication of being so strung out that building up enough forces to attack and defend at the same time would be difficult. Then I got horses hooked up and it made more sense to prebuild chariots to turn into horsemen than to build more archers. (By the way, a civ that starts with Warrior Code would have been better for this type of game; China might be just about perfect.)

Finally, I got a golden opportunity to go to war. My northwestern neighbor decided to attack my northeastern neighbor, and I decided to see if they might be willing to give me something to join in an alliance. Sure enough, I was able to get iron working, horseback riding, and just a little gold. That let me start upgrading my chariots. Before too long, the two of us carved all but one city of the northeastern neighbor between us. (I got the better end of the partition, taking the ivory-rich lands near the enemy capital.) Interestingly, I also finally succeeded in flipping my ally's wine city about the first turn of the alliance.

Unfortunately for the spirit of the game, someone had to stay home and guard the fort, and it made more sense to use archers rather than horsemen for that. So my archers stayed out of most of the war, although they did recapture one city that I got a bit careless with.

The aftermath of the war also left a hole on the map where I was able to build another city next to my second culture flip target. That let me crowd it on three sides, and eventually, it decided that it might as well join the surrounding cities as a part of Japan.

Okay, here's where I have to start naming names, so stop here if you don't want to know.

The northwestern neighbors were the Iroquois, and I definitely did not want to tangle with them until I got a good force of samurai. They'd built up too many mounted warriors in the war with England and the golden age that no doubt went with it. So after the war with England (actually starting as the war was winding down), I went into builder mode for a while. I finally finished the Great Library and got caught up most of the way on tech, and then did some trading to get the techs that only one of my neighbors had (since they were still at war; England and the Iroquois each had one tech the other didn't). From that time on, I led my continent in technology quite easily, especially since one of my new discoveries was Republic.

Eventually, I got Chivalry and started building up a force of samurai. A little later, I got Engineering (so rivers wouldn't get in my way) and essentially stopped research for a while to get the gold needed to upgrade my horsemen. When I felt like I had enough forces ready, I struck.

The Iroquois war didn't go nearly as smoothly as I had hoped. The numbers of defenders were exceptionally high, and my initial attack force was split up enough that only one branch of the attack succeeded in its first attempt to capture a city. Nor did the effectiveness of mounted warriors in counterattacking help. Still, the sheer weight of a Japanese golden age eventually became too much, and the Iroquois nation collapsed. That just leaves the one city the Iroquois left the English with for me to take before I can claim to own the entire continent. And that's also my last chance to get a great leader before the era of transoceanic travel begins. My game's been completely dry so far. (I'm really, really glad I went ahead and built my Forbidden Palace the hard way instead of counting on a leader!)

I'll post a couple maps and maybe some other additional information later, but no promises regarding when.

Nathan

Aeson · July 17, 2002, 21:10

Well, my game has gone relatively smoothly so far, just about to research the last tech in the ancient era. Normally playing a warmonger game I don't do any research, but I decided to try and keep ahead of the AI with my own science for a change. I researched Mysticism first, keeping the science rate at the 40 turn rate, but after that, I usually had science at 70-100%.

My first build was a Barracks, 7 turns. Then I built several veteran Warriors, planning on a very early strike against whoever turned out to be my closest neighbors. One of my Warriors got barbarians out of the first and only hut I found, and ended up elite.

By this time I had made contact with both the Iroquois and English, and decided to make sure I could keep each captured city by only attacking capitols. I sent 3 Warriors up to London, and waited until the city size dropped to 1 (they built a Settler) to attack. They had one other city that I bypassed, wanting the Palace to jump to it, so my Archers would be able to take it and keep it at size 1 after the borders expanded. Between my elite Warrior, and the 1 other that had made it to London, I took London and 4 Workers (2 were as a Settler in the city), which was guarded by just 1 regular Warrior at that time. I quickly made peace with the English a few turns later, getting Bronze Working in the deal.

I wasn't worried about reputation, because by this time it was clear that I could take the entire continent before contact was made. So my first Archer broke the peace treaty, taking York, and destroying the English. I hooked up Horses to build a couple Chariots, and then turned my sights on the Iroquois, who had 3 cities by this time.

I fought a the first war solely outside of cities, working 2 of my archers up to elite status, and sending them towards the Iroquois capitol. I made peace for Masonry and a bit of gold, and then promptly broke it in taking Salmanaca.

I also disbanded my capitol, moving it to a city built near the Horses, Iron, and Flood plains to the North. This really helped my overall production and commerce. In the Iroquois counterattack (several Warriors), one of my elite Archers generated a GL, which was used to rush the FP in a city NW of London that had just been founded. I made peace again with the Iroquois finally, getting Iron Working in the deal. I upgraded a few Warriors after hooking up the Iron, and again broke the peace treaty. This time I was able to take a size 2 city (Niagra Falls) with a Chariot, because the movement doesn't allow them time to pop rush. A lone swordsman had moved in (the turn before starting the war) and killed the Spearman defender the first turn of the war, and the Chariot killed the Warrior that was left. 2 more Swordsmen took Grand River, leaving the Iroquois with just 2 remaining cities.

I had researched Horseback Riding, and upgraded my chariots to fulfill the Horseman part of the exersize. My Horseman took Allegheny, leaving just the lone remaining Iroquois city. I will just take it with combined forces, hopefully my remaining elite units can generate another GL, and I will extend the fighting as long as I can to do so. War weariness will be a problem pretty quickly though, as I just switched to a Republic.

The Great Lighthouse is my first priority now, as there are no Coastal crossings to other landmasses.

Aeson · July 17, 2002, 21:15

The light green dot is my capitol, the light blue dot my FP city. It's about as productive a setup as I could hope for.

Theseus · July 17, 2002, 23:36

What year is that?

Aeson · July 18, 2002, 04:32

That was 150BC IIRC. Ended up not getting another leader, even though I let the Iroquois send out Archers for quite a while. I've played up to the mid Industrial Era now.

I really ramped up my tech progress once I made it into a Republic. Since then only 1 tech has taken me longer than 4 turns, and that was because I wanted to time it so I'd have only 1 turn into a tech once I finished off ToE. I missed out on the Great Lighthouse by 3 turns, which ended up not being such a big problem. The French built it, and I met them on the small island to the SE once I had upgraded to Caravels. I sent a small force of Longbowmen to take their only city there, building a couple of my own as well, then made peace for contact with one of the remaining civs, trading maps for the other. Rome and Persia had both been eliminated earlier.

I decided that since there was nowhere to expand or fight after entering the Middle Ages, that I would try for every Middle Age wonder. I had built only the Great Library in the Ancient Era. I timed pre-builds as well as I could with the Palace and Universities for the most part, and did get every wonder built with plenty of time to spare.

I built up quite a fleet in anticipation of Navigation, and loaded my ships up with Pikemen, Samurai, Musketmen, and Cannon. The tech rate really picked up, and I wasn't able to land in Egypt until they had just gotten Nationalism. I had waited so long to let all my deals run out, I wanted to remain honorable through this war. The Egyptians had been giving me all their gold for luxuries and advances though, so they only had a couple Riflemen. My Cannon bombarded the defenders down, and then I took turns taking cities with each different middle age unit. Once I had Military Tradition, I upgraded all my Samurai to Cavalry, and they did the rest of the work. I did research Nationalism and Replacable Parts about halfway through the conquest, and took another city with a Rifleman and one with an Infantry.

My lone GL that showed up during the fighting was used to move the Palace to Thebes. I switched to Democracy, and just about all my cities are productive now.

It's 1340AD, I haven't been rushing to conquer at all. I figure it's more in the spirit of the game to save some fighting for the Modern Era as well. There is only 1 oil source that I don't control, so I'm not sure how interesting the Modern Era warfare would be, unless I spot the AI some.

W4r_Machine · July 18, 2002, 12:15

Quote:

Originally posted by Theseus
I think that since the point here is no primarily competitive, but mutual learning, it's OK to just have the one thread.

I imagine we'll end up with one thread per trial, which'll be easier for latecomers to handle.

Anybody scoring early GLs? I've had dozens of elite battles, and nary a one.

I had one GL for the early warrior rush and 2 GL for the Archer ruch. One died on it's way home. Someone should give this folks defense points.

W4r_Machine · July 18, 2002, 12:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Aeson
That was 150BC IIRC. Ended up not getting another leader, even though I let the Iroquois send out Archers for quite a while. I've played up to the mid Industrial Era now.

You're a bad mofo Aeson. At 150 BC I'm strugling to contain the Iroquois cuz they went on expanding spree while I destroyed the english. The greeks are running away with the GW in my game.

Theseus · July 18, 2002, 16:48

3500BC

I don;t know if anyone else did this, but I moved my settler 1 tile to the SW, as I could just see some Wheat... I also wanted Kyoto to be on the coast just in case I had to hardbuild the Great Lighthouse. What a great surprise!!

Theseus · July 18, 2002, 17:01

3500BC

I don;t know if anyone else did this, but I moved my settler 1 tile to the SW, as I could just see some Wheat... I also wanted Kyoto to be on the coast just in case I had to hardbuild the Great Lighthouse. What a great surprise!!

Edit: Sorry, double post and I can't delete it.

Theseus · July 18, 2002, 17:10

2950BC

An exploring reg Warrior meets the English... a Settler protected by 1 reg Warrior, on open plains. The "inner bastard" within convinces me to go for it...

Theseus · July 18, 2002, 17:15

1500BC

Classic oscillating war, working my way through Archers, Swordsmen, Chariots, and Horsemen. At this point, I knew I was going for the Arrian Deception, but was worried about re-spawing. So, rather than just going on a blindly furious death march, I resolved to slowly trim both the Iroquois and English, in a quest for GLs. Not knowing how late AI civs can respawn, I targeted destroying them both soon after 1AD. I also decided to focus on the Iroquois first, as I had already handed Cathy an early smack upside the head, and for fear of MWs.

Theseus · July 18, 2002, 17:18

70AD

For all of my painstakingly built elites, I only got 1 GL, which I used for the Lighthouse, and was thus able to do some very early exploration (I did lose some Galleys along the way). I was 4 techs behind the rest of the world, and very hesitant to sell maps before securing my continent. I had quite a large treasury for so early in the game, and had spent at a -30gpt deficit to get to Monarchy as quickly as possible. This is shortly after destroying the Iroquois, and on the eve of my final attacks on England. I got one more GL in the process, and built Sun Tzu. I planned to hardbuild the FP in the center of the continent.