Can You Survive the World's Greatest Conquerors?

[wodan11]

Thanks for the encouragement. I was a bit discouraged yesterday.

This morning I played up till I got cannons and rifles. Several civs had grenadiers. IMO at this point it would be best to leaven my forces with either cavalry or infantry. Sending in cannons and rifles alone is very risky, even if my rifles include several warlords. Mulling it over. Will give another progress report when I continue. It's an interesting dilemma. Might be worth trying both ways to see what happens.

[OzzyKP]

Thanks for the update.

And good work CS.

[Robert]

My last attempt lasted till 2037, then Ceasar/Hannibal won a cultural victory.
I destroyed the Zulu and razed about 7 more cities, among which was Rome and the most important Egyptian city. I would have razed more if there wouldn't have been a cultural victory

Anyway, I don't see how I could ever raze all cities, there's just not enough time.
I know how to defend myself, surviving till the end is not really a problem anymore, but winning the game......

[Blaupanzer]

Trick to keeping cities razed on select areas of the map is to leave a little stack to patrol the roads and attack on spotting the reborn. If you kill as you explore, then leave regrowth blockers, it can be done in the time allotted. This does not mean that I can do it, only that it can be done.

[wodan11]

At the end, I just sent around my warlords. They were so buff by then they could just knock off piddly cities without any arty support.

[Blaupanzer]

Super-Units. Heroes for the modern age as Hong Kong conquers the world. Nice mental image.

[OzzyKP]

Nice.

[Theben]

I tried this on emperor, and with 22 turns left it looks like I'll win based on points.

[OzzyKP]

Good work.

Now try on Immortal.

[Theben]

It seems that the way to win isn't to quash any one civ early on but to keep them about equal footing. Then of course making certain you have all 4 entrances barricaded... the fun thing about last game (I did win on points) was that the GW on the map was in front of the fortified hills. It was a nice touch.

Now try on Immortal.

We'll see.

[Diadem]

I'm back to playing civ again after an absence (The game is just to great, i keep coming back to it occasionally) and since I love OCC I decided to give this game a shot.

First my thoughts on the game:
- The start is obviously awesome. The only drawback seems to be no access to horse early game. Unless there is something I'm missing, but it looks like resources on one-tile islands can't be hooked up until late in the game. Does anyone know exactly how this works, what tech unlocks it? Early game I did not have horse, late game I did. Before astronomy though.

- Cyrus is normally not someone you'd pick with OCC. Charismatic is ok, but not the best trait to have, and imperialistic is obviously sucky. However for this particular game it is pretty cool. Both his traits really shine on this map.

- Celtia however is extremely useless. You have the wrong starting techs (no fishing! An utterly useless UU for this map and an utterly useless UB. Good civs for this map would have been the Dutch (nice UB), the Greek (awesome UB and their UU allows you completely ignore spearmen), the japanese (Samurai are a very good UU for this map, though surviving until you get them is still a challenge), Native American (good early UU and UB) and of course the Romans (Praets obviously rule. And their UB is nice for OCC). All of these start with fishing, which I consider mandatory for this map. Those last two seem to be on the map already as enemies (and damn those dog soldiers are annoying!), but the first three would have been an option.

- There seem to be quite a lot of civs squeezed together on a relatively small land area. That is good for OCC.

- Always war seems to have some unexpected advantages. The AI seems to put much less priority on wonders.



Ok. I first tried a quick game speed game on prince to see how this played out, since I have no experience with 'always war'. Plus I wanted to test an idea I had with using great generals. I died the first time when I my single warrior got attacked by 5 stacks of 2-4 units each. Ah, so you actually need to build defence with always war. That is useful information My second attempt on prince went better. I abandoned the game somewhere around 1700 when it was clear that I was dominating.

Now I started my real attempt on immortal. On epic game speed, since militaristic games benefit from slow speeds (and I don't have the stamina to play marathon). I'm doing very well so far. It's 595 AD now. I seem to have a solid tech lead. My defence force is small, but effective, since I have macemen. I managed to grab Stonehenge, The Great Wall, Oracle, Pyramids, Colussus, Hanging Gardens, Great Library, Parthenon, even Chichen Itza (which is a useless wonder. But the AI never builds it either, so I build it a few years back for the GPP). In short all the key wonders. I was quite surprised at how easy this was, it must really be the always war option.

I don't see how I can fail to win this game. I got all the right wonders, I have a solid defence, and a comfortable tech lead. Oh and my main hero has 289 experience. He's a monster.

[OzzyKP]

I went with Celts for their UB mostly. The city and the four choke points are on hills. A free promotion in a game that is designed to get as many promotions as possible is effective. I've found the hill defense promotions are often more effective than the city defense ones because of this. I agree the UU isn't terribly useful, but more hill defense is never a bad thing.

As for the horse, you can get the resource from any one tile isle, as long as it is in your borders, if you build a fort on it. So don't build a pasture, build a fort instead, and you'll have horse.

[Diadem]

I did build a fort on the horse. I still did not immidiately have horse, but only later in the game. I'm not quite sure when it happened. It did not matter terribly, I went for elephants and only really needed horse by the time I upgraded them to cuirassiers. Maybe I was just looking wrong or something.

Regarding their UB: It would be an awesome UB if it gave Guerilla I to all units. But it only gives it to units that can naturally have it, which are archery units and gunpowder units. It's probably my peculiar strategy, but I don't use archers much. In fact I have not even invented archery yet! I probably won't, either. And since rifling obsolets the Dun I probably won't ever build a single unit that profits from this building (I see no reason to build muskets and grenadiers when i can build cuirassiers).

I suspect my strategy is quite radically different from what most people are doing. I don't use those chokepoints. I have all my units in my city.

You see, OCC is all about efficiency. Every turn I spend building units is a turn not spend building other stuff. So I build as few units as possible. This allows me to build more wonders and buildings. I don't defend those chokepoints, I let them come to me, and then kill them in the open. Because I have a techlead I have better units, which are much better promoted as well. So I can mob them up with barely any losses.

The downside is that I occasionally get pillaged. That is acceptable. And I have plenty of workers to quickly repair any damage. The AI only pillages when he has units with mixed movement speed though, so usually he doesn't. And if too many units come at once my weather it out in my city. It's untakeable with high cultural defence, a dun, a castle, etc.

I now have 3 heroes who each have the +1 move promotion. This allows them to do hit and run attacks on approaching stacks. Mounted units can do this too. My total military? 12 units! That's all.

Going through the tech tree very efficiently is vital in OCC. My strategy is well suited for this. The all-important bronze working gives you axes. Then pop CoL with the oracle and go for civil service (pick up worker techs and sailing too, of course. And monotheism for a religion and civic), which is a top priority tech in OCC (bureaucracy). Metalcasting for forge and colossus and then macemen are only one tech away. Construction and literature are next. Since I had a good techlead at this point I picked up some techs of lesser importance at this point, such as philosophy, theology and music, for the boons they give. But this is optional. The next mandatory tech is education, for oxford. After that I popped nationalism with liberalism and 2 techs (military tradition, gunpowder) I have cuirassiers. At this point I did not have archery, I did not have monarchy nor currency, and I certainly did not have knights

My next target was military science. I just got that, and now I am finally going to pick up techs such as monarchy and currency, because I want economics.

Military science is not for grenadiers by the way, but for the blitz upgrade. My two cuirassier heros will soon have 3 attacks per turn. Fear them.

[Theben]

You need to build a fort and then a road. I had horses early... I suspect you absent-mindedly built a road there much later.

As for the Celts and the traits: They're okay but I wound up skipping the hill promos in favor of drill pretty quickly. And IMO a better trait than Charismatic would've been Protective. City Def also works with forts and you get Drill I (with archer/gunpowder units only, I know) which outweighs the extra promotion you may get with CHA. Of course there's still the +2 happy faces but Drama and Globe theater isn't far off. As for Imperialistic, I hate not getting 1/2 its value but the bonus to GGs is nice. Still I have to wonder if another trait would be better... and it's not like you aren't going to get a lot of GGs.

Anyway, if I could I'd like to try Sitting Bull, Tokugawa, Burger King, or the Korean guy (?) as leaders of the Native Americans (good UU/UB) or Mali (maybe an early run at conquest with PRO UUs). And of course I've always wanted to play Tokugawa as leader of the Americans just so I could have COM I/CD I/ DRILL I/MARCH/ AMPH Lvl 1 Navy Seals.

[Diadem]

I never build globe theatre anymore with OCC. It poisons my GPP poule, and it since you're limited to 5 national wonder you'll miss out on another. In OCC National Epic, Oxford and Ironworks are always mandatory. That leaves just 2 more national wonders. On this map Moai Statues are clearly mandatory as well. That last slot I'd rather spend on West Point than the Globe Theatre.

Those 2 extra happiness are extremely useful. Even if you do build Globe, because they come much earlier in the game than Globe does.

This start in particular lends itself very well for skipping Globe. You can easily get all the late religions, giving a lot of happiness. And since you don't have cottages commerce is not a significant contribution to your science. So you can turn up that culture slider without any ill effects.