Being Financial on Marathon Game Speed

[Hauptman]

Against a landsknechten. A catapult is the best defender when it comes to ancient units. So he bypasses the swords, axes, archers, horsarchers and elephants. And kills the artillery. The trick is making sure you are building them long before your neighbors. can come up with modern units.

Against even technology, it just makes macemen less scary, and thats about it.

[Unimatrix11]

landsknecht (singular) - landsknechte (plural)

the -n only gets attached in gramatical situations pointless to explain (if plural in dativ and akkusativ case - i think, but i am not even sure about this myself)

[Nikomakkos]

Is knecht the same as knight?

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Nikomakkos
Is knecht the same as knight?

Literally:

knecht is a servant
landsknecht is a country servant

[Nikomakkos]

Servant of the land (country) or a servant in the countryside?

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Nikomakkos
Servant of the land (country) or a servant in the countryside?

Probably servant of the land (or his Feudal Lord) - so probably akin to a Knight.

[Blaupanzer]

Lande = feudal holding. So our servant of the countryside becomes a soldier of the Lord. Landsknecht were highly trained handlers of billed weapons (two handed with a big, axehead kind of thing on the end). Prior to guns, these soldiers in formation were very effective in combat, kind of a medieval phalanx. They were susceptible to cannons however, as their long wooden handles were way shorter than the spears of the Spanish turcios and couldn't absorb at least some of the effects of cannonfire.

[sowings]

Tried Darius on Marathon speed to test out this theory. Yep, significant tech lead. Though frankly, I'm not sure how much of that was due to the fact that the goody hut popped on turn *2* was a settler.

[Nikomakkos]

Originally posted by sowings
Tried Darius on Marathon speed to test out this theory. Yep, significant tech lead. Though frankly, I'm not sure how much of that was due to the fact that the goody hut popped on turn *2* was a settler.

Damn, that's an amazing hut. That'll win the game for you. What difficulty were you playing on?

[Theben]

I miss getting workers and settlers from huts...

[Nikomakkos]

Yeah, that did happen in Civ2. Never had it happen in civ4. They shouldn't implement it. It's too good. It leaves it too much to chance how well you do, because occasionally you can get a ridiculous boost really early.

[Unimatrix11]

Niko - it is difficulty level dependent. And i think i gathered, that you play well beyond the level, where you can pop settlers at all ever. To have it in the game on the lower levels is fine IMHO. BTW: Its a great feature, that each player can pick his/her own level in MP-games. When my brother is all jubilant about popping a settler in our games, i always think like ´cute...´and congratulate...

[Nikomakkos]

Oh, it's dependent on difficulty? Well, it's cool on the lower levels, I agree. They're made to be easy anyway.

I do love the way they changed the higher levels in BtS. It used to be such that the AI started the game with a worker and some other far out bonus at the start. It was really hard for the player to grab land and defend against opponents far ahead of you in production and tech. It was by far most difficult in the first stages of the game, then you had better chance later if you survived.

In BtS the starting boost for the AI has been toned down, and the game made harder in some other way. It's such an amazing improvement. I could never play on Emperor before without having to use the worldbuilder to give myself a worker at the start, in order to not be so far behind right at the start and then get attacked and annihilated. But the reason I did play on Emperor and give myself a worker was that on Monarch, the game got to be too easy in the later stages. Then it was just a question of in which order to steamroll over your opponents.

[sowings]

Originally posted by Nikomakkos
Damn, that's an amazing hut. That'll win the game for you. What difficulty were you playing on?

Yeah, just playing Warlord. I netted a domination victory out of it on turn 999 (1930-something). My highest score ever!

As a player who traditionally works in "normal" speed, I can start to now see the appeal of the longer game speeds. I see exactly what was meant by "technological unit advantage" and making better use of same. Knights and macemen dispatched two enemies, and we won't mention my successes with infantry!

I probably could have won earlier, but I was waiting on the various factions to declare war on me, instead of taking on a three-way alliance. Then a random event (jilted wedding or some such) came up and the last leader to declare war on me did so, and that netted the domination.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by sowings

[...]
I probably could have won earlier, but I was waiting on the various factions to declare war on me, instead of taking on a three-way alliance. Then a random event (jilted wedding or some such) came up and the last leader to declare war on me did so, and that netted the domination.

American diplomacy ...