Your SID level experiences

[vmxa1]

Still you have to be amazed at the number of units they can muster. I killed at least 30-40 to get the city.
They countered with 46 and then I killed 26 more on my turn.
They had 126 in sight after that. so that is over 200.

They attacked and I killed 64 more, losing only 8. I figured that puts it at about 170 or so dead for them.
They attack and I kill 33 with no loss. It never got past the three armies.

Next turn more of the same 39-0. They now have 132 in front of me. About 240 dead and 132 in view. I am only talking about the the ones near me. Who knows what else they have.

Aztec landed a few units. Funny, I bet they have 300-600, but sent a handful.

How they could even build that many, even with the big discount and all the free unit support. I see only 4 cities and maybe they have 4 more I have not seen.

If they even sent the whole 132, I would probably be toast.
I am not attacking them with my units much as it is too risky.
I had hoped to get them thinned a bt more by now, but they just send more and more. I am not sure if I should load up 6-7 galleys with berserkers or not. I do not want to prevent them from sacrificing more troops at my door. The armies are fully healed for each turn and they have not gotten into the muskets acking them, let alone the knights.

I am tring to get the Epic and Pentagon build in the mean time. I want one more MGL to get a knight army.

[vmxa1]

Oh it does look like they ran out of horses. I wonder if they have the resource or got a trade and cannot make more now?

[vmxa1]

Finally took Germany out of the game. I generated 9 MGL's. I could have had a few more, but I was not always able to use the leader right away.

It was lengthy due to the number of units, but not hard as they had no iron. So no pikes, no swords or anything better.

Berserks were used to take each coastal city and after the first two they did not have many defenders. Very weaks as I was capturing cities with 3 or 4 defenders, while they had 150 - 200 spears walking around?

Th captiol was taken with just one army and some elite knihts as they had lost all but a few units.

[vmxa1]

Map:

See all the armies:

[vmxa1]

Here is the unit standing:

[vmxa1]

F8 score:

[vmxa1]

I now have more land than anyone and just recently dropped an FP on my island. So I am within 100 points of the leader.

I will have astronomy in 1 or 2 turns and will upgrade all ships.
Then will locate Zululand. They are the smallest. I cannot load any of my armies as they are all 4 units. So it will be hard now to get any land and hold it.

[vmxa1]

Oh I ment to mention the strongest point about using Berserks in capturing a coastal city is that you can then sail all your ships into the city. If it was land and you took the city down with your last or nearly last unit, you would not be able to hold it.

Here you bring in your ships and have a bunch of troops that otherwise could not have moved.

[ErikM]

Looks like you are doing allright Vmxa. A bit hard to tell the standing of other civs since they are still covered in fog. Looks though as if you were the only civ with lots of land. What kind of map is it? Small continents or large archipelago?

BTW, just wondering how long does each turn take you now? Last turns I've been playing at, like, 1 turn = 1 hour with all this pushing units around and city micromanagement. And given that I can not usually spare more than a couple of hours at night, my game, needless to say, progresses very slowly. I'll post an update when I will finally move out of BC years.

[vmxa1]

Right now when I finish my action and hit the end of turn, it comes back instantly or nearly so. Once in a while some Russian ships show up, so I have to watch the movement.

No one else is doing anything.
Zulu are down to one tiney island city. Aztecs are maybe 8 cities on one island shared by Russia (4 cities?). I am doing this fom memory. Russia has anoher island with 5 or 6 I am guessing, can't see it all.

China has a large island, looks like it may be all theirs.

[vmxa1]

I am doing well am actually pulled out in front on the score. I won't win though. I just realized I probbaly will get bust in a bit.

I hit China and razed one city and smacked another one good. I am hoping to get them to give up a tech or two. I can't hold the city, even though I got my 10th leader and could make an army of muskets and drop maybe 30 units in the city.

It would still be over run. China has Calvs now. I am a whole age plus behind Russia. They have already build Hoovers and I have not gotten out of the middle ages yet. It won;t be all that long before carriers start paying a visit. If they have the resources they will be able to nuke soon. They have Tow and Missiles.

You just can't landed enough units to hold off the units they have at this point. Especially since your are obsolete. At least I pulled into the lead around 1700AD.

I just don't have the ambition to try to crank out enough ships/units to try to take down China, even if I could.

It looks like it is islands and water map (std size).

[Drachen]

At least you reached number one in score Vmxa1. I've never even come close to that. I tend to look ahead and if I can't see a way to win down the road I start over with what I've learned. Good game!

[Drachen]

Hey Erik:

I noticed that you got the GL in 825BC and I was wondering how you set it up for that to happen. Did you research Literature yourself or try to time your pre-build so that you could buy Literature when it became available and switch to GL.

[ErikM]

Hi Drachen:

Yes I researched Literature myself at something like 50-60% sci or whatever was necessary to ensure a healthy cash balance. In the end, It took me 21 turns. It is not a waste of money since AI never beelines to Literature before getting MapMaking, Philosophy, CoL etc. So you can sell it eventually.

GL costs 160 shields to the AI and it is uncommon for any city in the Ancient/Medieval era to generate more than 20 shields per turn. So it still takes at least 8 turns for AI to build it. Once I was 6 turns away from completion, I sold Literature to Celts & Mongols for a total of 40gpt (Celts were in Monarchy and Mongols - in Republic already). So they wasted some shields trying to build GL as well.

I traded for Masonry in 2390BC (it is in the log somewhere) and started a prebuild soon afterwards. Niagara Falls built two curragh and (iirc) two settlers before starting on a Palace. Maybe also a warrior. So in theory it should have been possible to build GL by 1000 BC (if I were to skip one of the settlers).

To build an expensive wonder early, you need basically three things:
(a) early second city. This is the reason I've built a settler before a granary in my capital. An ideal site would be on a river and should have a mixture of BGs and forests.
(b) early Masonry to avoid bottlenecks. This is relatively easy with an Alphabet as a starting tech.
(c) after you run out of space, have your settler pump to produce some workers to add to a Wonder city.

If the Wonder city site is good enough, 1000BC 400-shield wonder is definitely possible.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Drachen
At least you reached number one in score Vmxa1. I've never even come close to that. I tend to look ahead and if I can't see a way to win down the road I start over with what I've learned. Good game!

That is probably the best I can do with it. I now believe I could never win with an island start. Taking down civs from that position has a small window. The AI will soon have many hundreds of units and be a nightmare to take down.

I got the Germans because they had no Iron and were backward. This was due to them not having any contacts when I got to them. The other smaller civs were close to the big dog and got tech.

If I had the ambition, I probably could beat down a few cities of China's and maybe get them to give me some tech. I maybe able to steal a bit. I may even be able to hold my land as the AI is poor at invasion.

I just do not have the stomach for all the areial and ship bombardments that I will have to face.

Russia will pull back in the lead in the end as they will get more and more units and have all the culture. Frankly I am tired of the endless up hill battle and having nothing.

Maybe a pangea start could work, but I have felt all along it was the least doable. Maybe one of the master players will show us the way.