Can You Survive the World's Greatest Conquerors?

[Diadem]

One started out as an elephant, the other as a cuirassier. The rifleman as either a mace or an axe.

I fought almost all battles on the offensive, taking out enemy stacks as they approached my city. I cut the forests around my city of course, so that was open terrain without defensive bonusses. Attacking gives more exp than defending, and you can chose your odds.

With a lot of great generals all settled in my city my units already started quite good. Add a comfortable techlead and indeed most battles are in the 90+ regime. I gave all my units march quite early, allowing them to attack every turn. I created those heroes from units that had already racked up quite a lot of exp, so they started out quite strong.

With those heroes I did not do any battles below 98%. I lost a few, but with 90% retreat odds on cuirassiers and cavalry (which they were for most of their life) that is usually not the end. I suppose that with 300-400 battles on your hero you can lose it even at 98% attack chance and 90% retreat. But it's still not very likely. Easily below 50%.

I was a bit lucky early on in the game. Like I said before I was cutting it very close with building wonders instead of military. The first few waves of attacks were quite scary, and I had some luck in defeating them. But after that I was rolling.

[rah]

Agreed once you get rolling it just keeps rolling but I do have less luck early on. I lose that 98% when I try it. And for me it always seems to be the first attack against the city. I know people say "we'll it's the strongest defender and all that" but even when it's the same odds, I notice losing on the first attack more often.

[Diadem]

You're not supposed to attack cities in OCC until the very end of the game.

Killing one civ gives the others more land. So don't do that. I suppose you could take out a city or 2 of the strongest civ, but the number of units needed for that usually makes it not worth it.

By the time you do start attacking cities you should have a big techlead and you should be popping out one superior unit (like a tank with 30 experience) every turn. A few losses is fine then. (And in my case with those gunships: They just don't die.)

[#07]

I had my first attempt last night playing the settings laid out in the OP. I got to 75AD before being run down.

I built a few wonders in that time. I started by guarding the chokes points but once one of them was breached I fell back to the city where I absorbed wave after wave after wave until finally I was done. I thought I was going to make it for a while but there was just no letting up. All I needed was a couple of turns without attack to reconnect my copper! But no...

I'll give it another shot though, quite fun. I was thinking I need to build more military but after reading Diadems strategy I don't know...

What I want to know is, how do you go on the offensive so early when they have stacks coming from all sides of mixed forces? Before they had cats defending is easy. Did you settle your early GGs or attach?