RAH's Saturday games

[Dauphin]

Sorry I missed the game. Other things got in the way earlier in the day and I really needed to get straight to sleep.

[rah]

It's great to see a good number of people interested so even if a few can't make it, there are still enough to make it interesting. Yeah, snotty really slowed me down without attacking. His manufacturing base was considerable better than mine and I was playing catch up on units. I kept having fantasies about that city to the south since I didn't have horses. But for every unit I put down there, another one of his equal or better would appear. Quite the cold war. If we could have come to some agreement and used those troops else where maybe Dom wouldn't have kicked our asses again tech wise. Well, Ok, he would have anyway.

[Dominae]

Yes, fun game once again.

My starting location was average. I built a few Warriors to explore and saw that MasterDave had been dealt a wonderful start: multiple Flood Plains, a few Gold, and later I learned that had Rice to support it all and Copper to defend himself. I had to strategics within reach except for a Horse in the middle of the jungle, so I went all-in and build another Worker, chopped a Settler, then multiple Chariots. Initially I felt pretty confident that I could take him out, but my harassing Warriors were not enough to keep him off his Copper so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I decided to go with surprise value and kept all my Chariots just outside his borders, out of his sight. This was probably my main mistake; if I had just walked in I could have denied Copper and it would have been "easier" - he did have Protective Archers. Anyway, I felt like being a bleep and went straight for his capital. I got a little unlucky, but the odds were not in my favor: six Chariots across a river versus an Archer and a Spearman. Mission failed. I did nab a Worker though.

MasterDave counter-attacked with a couple of Axemen, which would have been easy as pie to counter myself if Gibsie's border had not engulfed my Horses. That was, um, unexpected! I'm just glad I brought my sole Chariot back, as somehow it was able to avert complete disaster; I really thought I was done for. MasterDave did take my Horse city, but only for one turn. His attacked repulsed, MasterDave was willing to negotiate so we entered a very long truce (up to 1000AD, I think). Had he or Gibsie decided to attack I was probably dead, since I had no Horses and had not research Iron Working yet (later I discovered that this resource was far away too!). Gibsie seemed content to Wonder-whore and try to culturally subvert me.

So I went into builder mode for a while, perhaps a little recklessly but that's what I needed to turn this around. Gibsie's culture kept on pressuring me, and eventually he "mistakenly" razed my city instead of rebuffing the rebels: yeah right! MasterDave seemed to be having the same problems because he built up to attack Gibsie. I supported Gibsie here but just a little bit - mostly advice on how best to defend (his army was very weak).

Fast forward and I rushed for Liberalism using Pacifism, took Nationalism for free, and used my Great Engineer to build the Taj Mahal (I did that in another one of rah's games, I hope I'm not falling into a rut). A few turns later I used a couple more GPs to trigger a second GA. My GNP was something like 250 while the "rival best" was around 180. With Cavalry I could have made a move on either MasterDave or Gibsie, but MasterDave was gearing up to attack him again so why would I bother? My plan was to backstab Gibsie's AI once he quit (MasterDave's army was much stronger) and take some land that way. Meanwhile I sent some troops through Gibsie's land to take a few of rah's cities, in order to start chipping away at what I thought was a Snotty-rah alliance. MasterDave and I had allied again until "revenge against Snotty", which to me meant the end of the game. Given my tech lead I think I was the primary benefactor of that deal.

At that point Gibsie quit (as expected) and we had a technical issue in starting up again. I was way too tired and the size of the map did not encourage me to keep playing. gg all.

As I said before: diplomacy rules.

[rah]

That's why the 6-10 player games are more entertaining. You would have found my cities reasonably prepared, but I doubt the my ele's and knights would have slowed down your calvary very much. I was way too far behind tech wise.

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by Dominae
...and eventually he "mistakenly" razed my city instead of rebuffing the rebels: yeah right! MasterDave seemed to be having the same problems because he built up to attack Gibsie. I supported Gibsie here but just a little bit - mostly advice on how best to defend (his army was very weak).

I was in the middle of a war with MasterDave, and the cultuleral city conversion pop-up does not wait until the end of the turn, even with the "minimise pop-ups" option ticked. In my haste to actually defend myself, I misread the second option as rebuffing the rebels, as Dominae had said was an option, and instead the city was razed. In fact there is no option to "rebuff" the rebels: you should have asked me nicely to simply return the city to you if it did revolt (Although it would have kept revolting).

My army at that point wasn't that weak, it's just I had no real way to defend against Hwachas. Put one spearman and one axeman onto a stack of Hwachas, and attack through jungles in the north, and there is absolutely no way to defend against them: even throwing catapults at the stack is useless as collateral damage has no effect on artillery

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Gibsie
I was in the middle of a war with MasterDave, and the cultuleral city conversion pop-up does not wait until the end of the turn, even with the "minimise pop-ups" option ticked. In my haste to actually defend myself, I misread the second option as rebuffing the rebels, as Dominae had said was an option, and instead the city was razed. In fact there is no option to "rebuff" the rebels: you should have asked me nicely to simply return the city to you if it did revolt (Although it would have kept revolting).

I was just kidding.

My army at that point wasn't that weak, it's just I had no real way to defend against Hwachas. Put one spearman and one axeman onto a stack of Hwachas, and attack through jungles in the north, and there is absolutely no way to defend against them: even throwing catapults at the stack is useless as collateral damage has no effect on artillery.

You can use a Catapult or two to weaken the escorts, then Horse Archers to mop up the Hwachas (as far as I recall, they do not get defensive bonuses).

[Gibsie]

Yeah, I knew you were messing around, just saying in case you thought there was a rebuff button...

Horse Archers (Which, admittedly, I did not have many of) would have been ideal, but even then, taking out three defenders on jungle would require about six units to be sacrificed to it. Any Axemen I might've tried to finish off the defenders would have been hit by the Hwachas with a defence of 7.5, i.e. I would lose every time...

[rah]

I had no horses, until Barono left
Snotty was protecting his.

[MasterDave]

Hwachas are very hard to counter without large numbers of horse archers (I know this from being on the wrong side of a Hwacha stack with no horses). Had Dominae not warrior rushed me in the very beginning and took away my first worker (a crippling blow indeed), I would have definitely had a huge economy that game. As it was, to me it made sense to make long term peace with Dom after our initial fracas (I really should have burned York when I had the chance ), especially in light of Snotty suddenly dominating the score race.


Even with the Hwacha advantage, I really did not make headway on Gibsie until I came in with Grenadiers, and cannon. It was mostly a big stalemate, with relentless French culture threatening two of my key cities despite my building theaters, and even planting a great artist super specialist in one border city. I also had no iron to speak of, so I had to take some from Baron O's AI after the Baron took an early exit from the game for health reasons.

After Dominae went to bed, I very quickly rolled up Gibsie's empire with a few stacks of grenadiers and cannon, and vassalized the last city. I was heading for Snotty through my open borders with Rah, but I really do not know how strong he was tech-wise or army wise (he was slightly ahead on the power chart). When snotty went to bed I was ahead on the scoreboard by 2 points, but since I have no idea how strong he was, and my score was inflated through a bunch of recent conquests, I have to consider the game a draw.

It was lots of fun, though, although I was convinced that I was dead from the beginning when Dom pulled off a double move to poach my worker...

[MasterDave]

Also, in last Saturday's game there was another first- a work boat rush pulled off by Snotty. He loves declaring war on everyone to keep religions out, so he used a workboat to crawl up the coast of the pangea and declare war on me as soon as he made contact.

[Gibsie]

Yes, once the Grenadiers turned up, I knew it was safe for me to call it a night. Even with my UU just researched (Musketeer), I stood no chance.

Fun fact: when you gift someone the regular version of their UU, it doesn't become the UU (i.e. I received a Musketman and it didn't become a Musketeer), even though when Indians steal workers they become Fast Workers. What a jip!

[MasterDave]

Gifts retain their UU-ness, often leading to traceability to the giver. I cannot count how many times players that made "peace" with me wind up supporting my overt enemies by giving them units. For example- when my Roman enemy brings in War Chariots, I know that I am being backstabbed by my Egyptian "friends".

When this happens I will typically seek peace with the active power I am at war with, and turn on the sneaky ones, now weakened by giving their units away, and thinking themselves safe through their "clever" diplomacy...

[Dominae]

I only gifted Gibsie an axe, a spear, and a Musketman to show him that it does not transform into a Musketeer. Even so, it was clear that you were committed to taking Gibsie out, so there was little chance of having those few units turn against me (plus, I was running Pacifism at the time).

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Gibsie
Horse Archers (Which, admittedly, I did not have many of) would have been ideal, but even then, taking out three defenders on jungle would require about six units to be sacrificed to it. Any Axemen I might've tried to finish off the defenders would have been hit by the Hwachas with a defence of 7.5, i.e. I would lose every time...

First, you hit the stack first with a bunch of Catapults. Since Hwacha do no receive defensive bonuses, the escorts will defend first (on Jungle). This weakens them considerably. Then you follow up with your Horse Archers. Even if he's got a Spearman or two in there, it's not much a defender anymore due to your Catapults. Once you get past those, the rest of your Horse Archer stack easily defeats his Hwachas. There's no need to ever attack with melee units, let alone build many (most Korea players will rely on Hwacha quite heavily).

[Gibsie]

So all I would have needed was a load of catapults and loads of Horse Archers... if I could have had 15 units directly suited to counter a Hwacha stack, I would have. You'll also note that I survived the Hwachas quite well without a mass of those units... I did actually work out the "build loads of units" idea all by myself, you know