The Devel's Workshop 1a - Beyond the Veil (After the Slingshot)

[Rebel Israel]

First I want to say that I couldn't possibly enjoy your posts more, Vel. I devour all the Civ knowledge I can get my head around (SGs, Tournament Games, Strat forums, etc) and your stuff teaches me more I think than any of them.

That said, I have a question. That first Spanish war struck me as coming at an inopportune time for you, you weren't in a military phase, and didn't have a lot of units or production capacity. So how did it turn into nothing so easily for you? I had a similar event in the last game I was playing, where I was first in GNP, and sort of in a earlier medieval infra stage, and just building my mace army, and the French just came in and whooped me. And I had a couple allies, which you sort of notoriously lacked throughout this game. So how did you handle that here?

Thanks again.

[Velociryx]

Hiyas Reb, and thank you! Knowing that you guys are getting something out of them gives me continuing incentive to do the next one!

And that's an excellent question. The observations you make are spot on. My production was still anemic, my army was barely a blip on the radar (and really not in the best of positions, being near the barbarian city of Khazak when the declaration of war occurred--a city that the Spanish later destroyed), and yet....we whooped them, and easily, to boot.

The reasons this was possible, even WITH a dismally small army have everything to do with understanding the adversary, and relatively little to do with the actual size of the force I had to work with (which was small, but growing).

The first key to victory was in understanding the way the AI wages war. The AI "wants" two things:

1) To pillage resources
and
2) To occupy cities

Given the opponent, and the general direction they lay from me, the only city that was ever really threatened was Rome herself. Protect Rome, and we protect the Empire.

Also given the direction of the Spanish approach, there were four resources I knew would be targets. The Ivory, the Stone, the Iron, and the Gold.

Of these, the Iron was the one I was most worried about (with the gold being a secondary concern), at least until we got the northern mine in operation, because that Iron Mine was in a horribly exposed position, and thus, needed a guard.

These conclusions were central to formulating my battle strategy (note the guards posted at both the Iron and the Gold).

Also, I knew that I wanted to forestall fighting on my turf for as long as possible, which was why our forces were originally sent into American territory. If we could fight there, and do a fighting withdrawl back to our own ground, the theory was that it would buy us sufficient time to get the war machine cranking.

I knew that the TROOPS we could field were superior because of our tech lead (and this, in fact, proved to be the case, with our Praetorians and Macemen squaring off against Archers, Horse Archers, and the odd spearman), so we didn't need NUMBERS as much as a solid core (and we already had a good start on that, with three Praetorians and 1 Axeman at the moment of Declaration).

This part....didn't work out as well as I had hoped. They pressed hard for Rome, and had gotten too close to the city to take the bait once I abandoned the Iron mine position, and, because of the relentless drive toward Rome, I was forced to pop rush one Mace for offense, so it wasn't without an element of danger, but I had already mapped out the basic plan, which meant that I was left with incremental modifications to it, rather than radical knee-jerk reactions to something unexpected (the closest I came to this was when the Spanish sacked Khazak...it appeared that the survivors from that battle group were bound for the Hunnish city, and I diverted a single Praetorian to meet them....as it turned out though, there was only a single survivor from that group (the HA that went to Murcia to heal), and we already had forces in place to deal with that.

Once Murcia grew to size two, the war was essentially over, and this was the plan from the start. I knew if I could hold the line at Rome until I could capture Murcia, then I could free up my Praetorians in that region, combine them with whatever I could put together from my cities, take one more from Spain, and then force a peace, and that's pretty much how it worked out.

In truth, I would love to have been in a position to snag yet one more city from the Spanish before suing for peace, but I wasn't strong enough at the time to press my attack beyond two cities. Had they NOT attacked me and let me build the army I WANTED, I would have snagged at least three cities from them, and then culture bombed BEHIND the American cities, such that at least two would have fallen into my hands via culture....no shots fired.

As it was, I had to use my artist in a less-than-optimal spot, which only netted me one city (the indian city of Kholpur). Not as good, but it's the way the game shook out.

-=Vel=-

[rguymon]

Thanks for the up date. You put a lot of work into it I learned alot. I would like to note though that I think getting bronze working from the hut kind or taints the overall slingshot tutorial. Getting bronze working like that makes completing the sling shot trival really.

[Velociryx]

Nahhh. Bronze is not pivotal TO the slingshot. In fact, the original recepie doesn't even make mention of that tech.

But, when you're handed it on a silver platter...

-=Vel=-

[The_Paladin]

Just wanted to add a hearty congrats on a great thread Vel!

I was around last night when this massive 50 post thread showed up. I thought geez where I have I been that this post just appeared out of no where ?

So just very impressive work and very informative. I'm sure it will help many (myself included) think up new ideas and be better players!

[Velociryx]

Thank ya, Paladin! And believe me....the Alt Slingshot is definitely on the list of upcoming workshops! Outstanding stuff in those threads as well!

-=Vel=-

[gus_smedstad]

I have to say I find this example game humiliating. I've never gotten Cavalry in 1170 AD on Monarch. There's clearly a reason I don't play on Emperor.

I'm currently exploring the Farseer -> Forge -> Pyramids strategy. It's interesting, and I've gotten a ton of wonders I normally don't touch through Great Engineers, but I'm far behind in GNP - let alone this kind of runaway tech lead so early.

- Gus

[Swiss Pauli]

Quality stuff, as always!

Having got the hang of the early-game strategy thanks to Devel's workshops and other related threads (slingshots, rushes/war, liberalism), I've been struggling to find the boost to speed the endgame. Looks like the buyrush-boost will be the pep up my game needs!

Looking at the detail, I'm not sure why you went for axes rather than spearmen when Izzy goes for a horse-based army (Roosy being irrelevant militarily), given that you had Praets already?

[Velociryx]

Hiyas Gus! Gonna have to give the GP stuff that's been talked about lately a go....right now, I use them as a supelmental package to the overall strategy, but the stuff that you and Paladin and Blake have been talking about sounds really intriguing. Will definitely have to test it after the bad starts workshops!

As for the runaway tech lead and the huge GNP...it is POSSIBLE to do at least some of that without USuf (you can build the foundation with pop and chop), but really, the only way to do a sustained growth burn is with usuf, because all your other options have costs associated with them (deforestation = health malus, and, at least until workshops come into their own, a long term drag to production), and the pop rush has an obvious downside, in the form of stalling growth and diminishing total population, but rushing with gold....only upsides. No downside.

Swiss: You just uncovered an error on my part. You're right. When I saw that my early rival had a primarily horse based military, spears would have been the way to go. As it was, I didn't build ANY. Should have. Good catch!

-=Vel=-

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Swiss: You just uncovered an error on my part. You're right. When I saw that my early rival had a primarily horse based military, spears would have been the way to go. As it was, I didn't build ANY. Should have. Good catch!

-=Vel=-

I picked this up as I had a very similar game. I was Rome and had Roosy sandwiched between me and Izzy with Viki making up the numbers on the far side of Spain.

Looking at the two games, it makes me wonder whether one can infer from a Civ's UU the composition of its pre-UU armies? I've not known a Civ be absolutely denied its UU-resource (if applicable) and the fact that the AI *loves* to pay to upgrade makes me wonder whether I can gamble on a 'made-to-measure' early army...

[Velociryx]

That's an excellent thought! I'll start paying more attention to that as I play some more games!



-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Interesting read, Vel. Impressive.

I am somewhat puzzled by your city placement (Antium one tile off the coast... no city on the river between Antium & Rome... stuff like that).

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Antium was my..."interesting thought" - In retrospect, I prolly should have just built it on the coast, but doing so, AND snagging the copper and the food resource (cattle, as I recall), would have meant buliding it on a floodplain, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. In the short run, it actually helped me...cottage on the floodplain and a extra cpt from the city site (for building on the wine), but long run, I would have been better off trading the one FP for all the coastal tiles.

And I always MEANT to put another city between Rome and the north, but I always kept getting distracted from it...LOL...one of those things that I just never quite got around to I guess....

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

I know that feeling well. The only other thing that made me scratch my head while reading was: why no spearmen? You countered Spanish HA's mostly with Praets/Maces. Spears are significantly cheaper (with a correspondingly narrower use). One or two spears, especially if you got them promoted up to combat II/formation, would've saved you some trouble, I think.

Not that it mattered.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Yeah....Swiss pointed that out too. Guess I got so focused on looking DOWN the tech tree that I didn't think about looking backwards. Would have made defense in Rome a lot cheaper, that's for sure.

Ah well....it turned out well, but I definitely went the more 'spensive route!

-=Vel=-