Can You Survive the World's Greatest Conquerors?

[Robert]

I'm in my current game somewhere 1983, I'm doing great except that my enemies bombers are destroying all my improvements every turn which destroys my economy, I'm not going to make it

I also invested too much in my super-duper-luper medic (Woodman III, Medic III, Combat IV) I was heading towards Combat V, but I fear that I'm not going to make that (96 experience, I think. That should heal 60% per turn though )

[wodan11]

SOD is "stack of doom". Basically means a large group of AI units coming to your door.

Traianvs, make sure you look at the tiles your city is working. By default the citizen governor doesn't necessarily do a good job. I had to manually tell it to work coast tiles because otherwise it worked all the high food and high hammer land tiles pretty much exclusively. Without that, research and commerce income for that city will suck, and yeah the maint would have been a killer.

Also, I built the Pyramids and ran Rep. Settled all the great people that arrived (except the warlords).

From memory, here was my basic build order:
barracks
worker
dun
archer x4
worker
work boat x3
stonehenge
archer x4
great wall
spearman x2 (one for the west vs egypt and one for the east vs mongolia)
pyramids
archer x4
lighthouse
easter island
archer x4
library
archer x4
forge
colossus


something like that

[OzzyKP]

Yea, a specialist economy is key, and so is pyramids->representation. I settled all my GGs so that gave me extra science too.

[Robert]

I still believe that settling GG is better then attaching them.
I don't seem to be able to get pass the modern unit invasions
Failed again close to 1800, I'm losing the tech race, that's the main problem.

It's quite a cool challenge though!

[wodan11]

Well all I can say is that I warlorded the GGs and did not settle them. And, I did not get to the "modern unit invasions". I kilt the AIs before they got to that point.

OTOH, settling them gets 3 beakers from Rep. So you may have something there.

[wodan11]

Yea, a specialist economy is key, and so is pyramids->representation. I settled all my GGs so that gave me extra science too.

Aside: I ran Hereditary Rule in my conquest win, until I got Caste. By which time I had Colosseum, Theatre and other ameliorating benefits.

[Robert]

best attempt: 2006 AD
globe theater, national park, wall street, oxford and national epic
representation, bureaucratie,caste system, mercantilism and philosophy

I got about 900 beakers/turn near the end and 6 promotions per unit.
My city was pop size 36
Then the bastards made a wall in one of my 4 defences

My fighters weren't good enough, even with 6 promotions, to fight those many many bombers/fighers and mostly died within 1 or 2 turns. Even when I stacked 4-8 of them.

My sams/fighters kept shooting down those bastards but there were just too many
Ozzy, what did you do to survive till 2050?

[wodan11]

RP, I wonder if National Park, Wall Street, and NE might have been better to have other national wonders. Globe and Oxford I think are definite good choices.

[Robert]

Which ones are better then NP/WS and NE in your opinion?
WS helped a lot gaining much more money and thus science.
NP brought my unhealthyness down by 16!!!! which meant 8 more GP
NE boosted my GP rate, which was very good since I was at a GP strategy anyway.

[wodan11]

First off, I didn't mean to make you defensive... was just wondering out loud. Anyway I'll throw out some thoughts.

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WS isn't available until Corporation and thus you give up a large amount of the game with zero benefit. Plus, we have to consider that bonus earlier in the game is much more valuable than bonus later in the game. So, not only do you only get it for ~1/2 of the game, but it's the least valuable half.

Even after you get it, it only helps to % of gold. If you were running the slider at 70% with no merchant specalists and 100 commerce income then the WS benefit is only 30% * 100 + 100% = 30 gold / turn.

Rough numbers there. Feel free to critique.

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NP, likewise, is only good after Biology, thus, we are getting the benefit for only part of the game, the least valuable part. And, removes Coal, which is a production hit. Perhaps we should switch to Environmentalism? Plus note that we can make the Recycling Plant soon after, etc. Once healthiness is solved bonus health means nothing. So, claiming that the bonus 8 specialists doesn't admit that there are other ways to get those same specialists.

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I would rank the NE the best of the 3 choices. Certainly, valuable, and available early so you get the boost much of the game. However, it decreases in value as the game goes on... quite a bit, actually. Since each GP costs more than the previous one, the GP arrive slower and slower even with the NE.

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Looking at some other options....

Heroic Epic of course will be a huge help. In this particular game I found that hammers were so easy to get and science so hard to get (in comparison to the tech rate I saw from the AIs), that spending gold upgrading units had to be reserved for the highly experienced ones. (In fact, note that since I used the warlord strategy, I didn't even have to pay for most of them.) So, it is thus necessary to build new units as they become available, and to disband old weaker & unpromoted ones to save maintenance. HE is a huge benefit for this. HE is available early in the game and thus is a benefit ALL game. It also does not decrease in benefit... it retains its value.

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Moai statues are huge in this game, I found. So many of the available tiles are water. MS is also available very early, and beneficial all game. And it's not just limited to the hammer benefit. MS allows you to make buildings faster. University faster. Everything. So, the benefit of University (etc) comes X turns earlier, which is a real benefit.

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West Point is huge, since fighting is so big in this game. OTOH, if the player didn't use the warlord strategy (as I did), then WP's value goes down over the course of the game (because it gives a smaller percentage of the XP new units start out with).

[Blaupanzer]

Interesting discussion!

[OzzyKP]

In my games I considered National Epic, Oxford, Globe Theater, and Maoi Statues to be mandatory national wonders. I didn't put much thought into those, they all seemed to make sense. National Epic seems to be the only there is some dispute over, but running so many specialists as this start allows you to do, anything to boost GPP seems like a good idea. Plus, it comes early and is cheap to build.

My other two I have gone with Wall Street, National Park or West Point. For the game where I lasted till 2050 I built Wall Street and National Park. An earlier, less successful game, I went with West Point instead of National Park.

West Point is definitely alluring, part of the fun of this scenario (imho) and part of what I was going for in the design of it is to maximize your great generals and have huge amounts of XP and super units. So a bonus of 4XP on top of all the settled Great Generals just adds to the fun of having those instant super units. But... the tech for West Point in my opinion isn't essential, and to keep up with tech I tried to cut down on all the non-essential techs. Plus by the time it was an option to build, I already had so much XP from my GG's that an extra 4XP wouldn't have earned me an extra promotion. So I figured that national wonder slot was better spent elsewhere.

As for Heroic Epic, I never even considered building this one. Pretty much from early on in the game any unit I wanted to build was built in one turn, maybe two. Rarely anything longer than that. Heroic Epic doesn't provide any bonus when you are already building units every turn. You can't build two units a turn (wouldn't that be great!?),

Wall Street I think is also pretty important. In my games at least I needed to keep quite a lot of units to defend myself adequately. One of my biggest challenges then was supporting all those units. So more gold = more military = survival. Even if you have the slider up at 80 or 90%, having Wall Street allows you to get it that high. Plus income from any Great Prophets or Great Merchants gets doubled which helps a lot as well. I think Wall Street is a big help in the game.

National Park kills unhealthiness. I was definitely concerned about removing coal, but production was never a big issue for me. There wasn't much I couldn't build in the city. This is why I never seriously considered building the Iron Works. Production is never an issue. More people however equals more specialists and more science, which is critical.

[OzzyKP]

Aside: I ran Hereditary Rule in my conquest win, until I got Caste. By which time I had Colosseum, Theatre and other ameliorating benefits.

Pyramids also gives you access to Hereditary Rule much earlier too. I did generally the same thing, switched to HR as soon as I built the Pyramids and kept it until I built Globe Theater. Then I switched to Representation and stayed there the rest of the game.

[OzzyKP]

best attempt: 2006 AD
globe theater, national park, wall street, oxford and national epic
representation, bureaucratie,caste system, mercantilism and philosophy

I got about 900 beakers/turn near the end and 6 promotions per unit.
My city was pop size 36
Then the bastards made a wall in one of my 4 defences

My fighters weren't good enough, even with 6 promotions, to fight those many many bombers/fighers and mostly died within 1 or 2 turns. Even when I stacked 4-8 of them.

My sams/fighters kept shooting down those bastards but there were just too many
Ozzy, what did you do to survive till 2050?

2006 is good! Almost there! You'll get it next time.

One thing I tried to do is to go on the offensive as much as possible. Even if I didn't leave my borders. Killing a unit offensively gives more XP (and faster progressed to GGs) than killing a unit defensively. So I'd have a team of units (macemen, knights, tanks, etc) that would pass between the four barriers to kill enemy stacks sitting just outside.

When possible I'd send some well defended workers to the tiles just outside the four forts so I could chop the forest/jungle squares and put down roads/rail. That made it much easier to kill those stacks offensively. Especially if there are roads there I could get multiple kills every turn with my tanks. I'm not sure how much this helped, but I think it did.

And, as I mentioned, going on the offensive to raze enemy cities as important too. In the game I survived every AI except one had the same state religion, that religion had over 50% coverage. The top power, and top techer had the holy city for it. No doubt that shrine income helped a great deal. I was able to send out a stack to raze several of this civ's (damn Holy Romans) cities, including the holy city. I wasn't able to eliminate him, but razing half of his cities in the middle ages was a big blow to my biggest enemy at the time. Others quickly took his place, but I think that definitely bought me some time.

I made a few other expeditions. I fell far, far short of a conquest victory and never actually eliminated anyone, but each of those cities I razed bought me time.

As for the bombers, I had a SAM or two at each of the forts and in my city. that covered all the relevant squares. While not perfect, it helped a lot. Also helped defend against helicopters. Spies also sabotaged many squares. i just had a team of workers to rebuild everything they destroyed.

[OzzyKP]

wodan11, have you tried it again on Immortal? Did you get another Conquest Victory?