Sid games C3C: how to improve our skills

[Aeson]

I've built it. Had to trigger my GA to research fast enough and make sure I got the build before Egypt. They switched to JS Bachs (400 shields compared to 600) after I built it, and took 2 more turns to finish, so it wasn't necessary I guess. It cost me roughly 4k gold to research to, but with the numbers of units I'm pumping out now to upgrade it should pay off rather quickly.

I was able to successfully relocate Japan to a new island. I was going to settle it myself, but the Hittites kept sending units obviously meant to attack me. The first two went *poof* between turns, but then the third one forced me to gift the city to the Japanese. 2 turns later the Egyptians cleared the Japanese off their homeland, so it was good timing.

[Aeson]

As soon as Egypt got Astronomy, they sent off some Caravels with Pikes/Med Inf/Knights. They landed on the NE island, I demanded they withdraw (wanted negative war weariness), they declared war, and I gifted both the cities there to the Zulu. Then I traded Engineering to the Zulu for an alliance vs the Egyptians, and kept building up units. The Egyptians took both island cities from the Zulu, and then I took them both back about 20 turns later, as part of positioning my forces for an invasion of the Zulu.

Here's the state of my empire at 580AD. The Egyptians already have Gunpowder, and all the 'top' techs too. They've finished Copernicus, Magellans, and Smiths. No one else has Monotheism or Invention yet... so the Egyptians are the only real competition. They will have Riflemen by the time I can even safely navigate to them, and maybe even Infantry. This game would be much easier if there had been another strong AI to make the Great Library more useful.

The Zulu are still at war with Egypt, as am I. The Egyptians are willing to pay me a bit for peace, but negative war weariness is too valuable at this point. Between the GA and WW, I've been able to drop my lux rate from 40% to 20%. The alliance with the Zulu has run out, and I have about 2/3rds of my non-Horse troops on the NE island ready for the invasion. I guess I will rely on Swiss Mercs, Med Inf, and Trebs until I can get to Cavalry, as a second AI doesn't look to be anywhere near getting Chivalry.

As you can see, researching Engineering, Invention, and now Gunpowder has really taken a bite out of my treasury, even with Egypt getting each a few turns ahead of me and lowering the cost a bit. Leo's effectively doubles my treasury for upgrading purposes though, and at 80% tax I pull in +438 gpt in my GA. All the cities producing units can produce that unit in 2 turns. I had set up 2 20 shield producers (Rotterdam, The Hague), and had most of the other main cities at 15, a few at 10. With the GA that bumped the two main producers to 30, and most of the others to 20+. Most of my builds are overbuilding quite a few shields sadly, but I need those Swiss Mercs.

[Aeson]

Oh yah, notice the cheesy coastal blockade I'm setting up with fortresses. I've easily repelled the few Egyptian landings so far, but it's annoying to have to be moving 'non invasion' forces around on top of the logistics of transporting all those units accross to the Zulu. So I set all the corrupt cities to building 10 turn Workers, and 2 2 turn Worker factories, and will block off my coasts till Marines with them.

[Aeson]

Forgot to mention that I got Monarchy 4 turns into my Republic revolution (8 turns). So I never went to a Republic, just straight to Monarchy. Short term that means less gold and slower research for me, but I'm slightly past Monarchy's free support now, and my unit count is going to be climbing for the rest of the game (hopefully!). I think passing on Republic will have payed off on the first turn of warfare with the Zulu.

[nbarclay]

Do empty fortresses block invasions? If so, I need to start working on those myself because I'm tying up absurd numbers of troops making it impossible for Egypt to land. (They were acting like they wanted to invade, so I set up a blockade around my entire perimeter.

[Aeson]

Oops, not Fortresses. They are Outposts, which do block landings. I don't think Fortresses do, but not sure.

[Arrian]

Outposts block landings? News to me!

That's eating up a huge number of workers, though, obviously...

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

My story: From a Great Library perspective, I got lucky in having the Zulus beat Egypt to Sun Tsu's in spite of Egypt's huge head start. Since the Zulus had already built the Colossus, that triggered their GA, helping them research relatively quickly. Better, they prioritized the bottom of the tech tree.

When I was about three turns from finishing my research into Engineering, I suspended my research in order to build up cash for the run-up to Invention. (After researching Republic myself - unnecessarily, as it turned out - and then using most of my remaining cash rushing courthouses, my treasury was pretty thoroughly depleted.) In the meantime, the Zulus and Egypt got Engineering, so I ended up having to throw away the research I'd done. But at least I saved a little over if I'd done all the research myself. I tried to time Invention so I would waste as little research as possible if the AIs beat me there but still get Invention by the time my prebuild for Leo's was ready, and ended up only wasting a turn or two (and a few scientists at other times) researching it myself before I learned that I'd get it from the AIs.

While all this was going on, I signed a ROP with the Zulus and landed two Swiss Mercs as the beginning of staging a force to invade Egypt. But the Zulus apparently were itching to use their GA to do some fighting, and they attacked! That triggered my GA a bit ahead of schedule. I'd already had a few swordsmen near the Zulu city on my continent, mostly as MPs in my neighboring city, and was able to capture it almost immediately. Aside from that, the war just consisted of a few galley battles, all but one of which I won. (I lost a vet but had two vets promoted to elite.) With the help of trebuchets, I was able to rid myself of the second Zulu galley that had started the war on my side of the blockade, which had been sailing up my coast.

I seriously considered taking the Zulu islands in between our land masses, but I ultimately decided against it. With the Zulus' cultural advantage, I would have had to either raze and rebuild, making the Zulus angrier toward me, or tie up extra units to prevent flips. Since I was still hoping to target Egypt rather than the Zulus and to use Zulu lands as a staging area to do so, I decided against that course of action.

With my GA triggered, I started looking for places where I could plant forests to get better use from it. With where my palace and FP were located, I was able to get up to six cities that could produce a 30-shield unit every turn relatively quickly, and eventually to eight (one of them being the city that built Leo's and one of them requiring some tweaks I didn't see at first). My head start on Leo's proved sufficient, and I completed the wonder in 450 AD. (Officially, wonders complete at the end fo the old turn rather than the beginning of the new, something I didn't realize until I started matching dates on F7 against reports I was writing.)

The Zulu war ended just as Leo's was almost complete, and by that point, a trade route had opened with Egypt. I resumed trading horses and one of my luxuries for a Zulu luxury and discovered that I could give Egypt one of my luxuries, a world map, and a little gold for two of their luxuries. That, in a Republican GA, let me drop my luxury slider to 10%, letting me rake in over 700 gpt even after the cost of supporting my ever-growing military.

Since that time, I've been building up my forces and my treasury. Now, as of 530 AD, I have 10,682 gold and have gotten Gunpowder and and Monotheism from the Great Library. My forces consist of:

5 Settlers
56 Workers
5 Swordsmen (1 elite)
29 Horsemen
21 Galleys
23 MedInfs
56 Swiss Mercs
19 Trebuchets

Once my GA is over, I'll have the option of either pillaging my iron to continue building troops very quickly or proceeding at a slower pace and focusing more on mounted units.

Now I have to decide whether to make another attempt at staging through Zulu lands to attack Egypt or to take out the Zulus first. I probably need to go after the Zulus first and see if I can get both some armies to help in that war and some empty armies to send to Egypt; I can hope that even a Sid AI with a big tech lead will have some trouble against a mixture of Swiss Merc armies, cavalry armies, and cannons. But I haven't made my final decision yet.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Aeson
Oops, not Fortresses. They are Outposts, which do block landings. I don't think Fortresses do, but not sure.

Considering how much gold my 56 workers are costing me every turn, and how long it will probably be before I can start work on a rail network, that outpost trick is starting to look pretty good. Thanks for the idea! It should stretch out the useful life of Republic considerably.

[nbarclay]

Just to elaborate on the "empty armies" invasion strategy for anyone who might not have caught what I'm talking about, it goes something like this:

Turn 0: Land a settler. The AI shouldn't force you to leave or declare war over just a settler.

Turn 1: Build a city, move galleys or caravels into the city, and unload. Armies unloaded in that process can then be populated with troops (or additional troops).

From there, proceed normally.

Obviously, that strategy involves holding back armies that could be used to reduce losses in an earlier war. But on the other hand, the more use is made of armies in the first war, the fewer leaders will be generated for additional armies. If, as in this case, the first target isn't nearly as tough as the second, making minimal use of armies against the first target in order to maximize the number of armies available to deal with the second might be a very good investment.

In the context of this particular game, the "empty armies" invasion technique could potentially allow Aeson or me to mount an army-heavy invasion of Egypt using caravels, or me (using the Great Lighthouse) even to do it with galleys. That would give Egypt a lot less time to get gobs of advanced troops than if we'd wait for galleons that can transport loaded 3-unit armies. The only catch is, the Zulus (or some other reasonably vulnerable target) would have to be defeated first, and defeated in a manner that generates some spare leaders to build spare armies.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Does anyone have any idea how many attackers per turn the Zulus would be likely to be able to hit an invader with? I'm trying to figure out whether it would make more sense to land purely Swiss Mercs or to mix in some Trebuchets to ping down some of the attackers.

To go into more detail about what I'm planning if the Zulus cooperate, I'm thinking I'll borrow a page from Aeson's playbook. I should have a little over thrity galleys when I'm ready to strike. (Edit: I rearranged some production priorities to see if I can squeeze out a few more galleys.)

Turn 0: Land a settler.

Turn 1: Build a city (an act of war), rush a barracks (short rushing with a worker so I don't pay double cost on the full price), and unload and fortify my troops. Unfortunately, I'll be close enough to a Zulu city that there will be a direction the Zulus can attack from with slow-movers immediately before the walls are built, and that fast-movers can take advantage of to reach the city more quickly.

Turn 2: Rush a barracks to help units heal faster (again using a worker short rush to hold down the cost a little).

Unfortunately, since I didn't take the intermediate islands, I'm looking at about four or five turns between the landing and the time reinforcements arrive, so my initial stack has to hold out on its own for a while. Which raises the question of whether trebuchets would improve Swiss Merc survival enough to be worth displacing some of the Swiss Mercs in the stack, and I don't have Sid-level experience to know how quickly a healthy AI's counterattackers are likely to flow in.

There are also two ways the Zulus could mess up the battle plan. They could bop my settler before I can build my city, forcing me to use a conventional landing instead of having a ready-made city to unload in. (If that happens, I'll need to take the intermediate islands as a staging area assuming that's possible.) Or they could have troops on the hills where I want to land, forcing me to land and build my city on flat ground instead of on a hill (thereby greatly reducing my Swiss Mercs' defensive bonus).

Anyhow, I thought I'd see what Aeson and the other players with Sid-level experience think about an appropriate force mix for such an operation.

[Aeson]

I just landed on the Zulu mainland, and the first couple turns weren't very bad at all. My landing party was ~40 SM and 10 Trebs, with a few MI. Then the second turn another 10 SM and 30 MI.

First turn the Zulu hit me with about 30 units. I killed 12 MI, 4 Archers, 10 Swords. Losing 7 SM in the process. I couldn't build a city because of where I landed (on the Saltpeter), and had to take the city next to it first. Once I had an Elite SM fortified on the Hill they wouldn't attack me it seemed, and there were 2 almost peaceful turns as I landed the rest of my units building up to take the city. After taking the city (killed 3 Pikes, 4 Impi, 4 Swords, and 1 Archer to do so) I got a Leader from a MI attack, but the Zulu didn't attack me at all IIRC. Made a SM army with the Leader.

Then I founded the city and they all charged.

Turn 5 saw me kill 11 MI, 9 A, 19 S, and 49 Impi. Losing 5 SM behind my city walls. Gained a Leader on defense, made a SM army. Turn 6 was where the majority of the Zulu forces reached me, and I killed 23 MI, 16 A, 78 S, and 13 I. Lost 8 SM. Gained another Leader and created a MI Army because the Zulu had only a handful of MI and S left in range to attack.

Turned off battles at this point as it was taking forever. Got another Leader on defense the next turn and made another SM Army. That should pretty well keep the Zulu from ever threatening my city, but I need more attacking armies before really making a push anywhere. Still a long ways from Cavalry, but I might get Chivalry from the GL pretty soon. And the Zulu don't have any Saltpeter now, so they are pretty much dead (going to take a long time to kill though).

[Aeson]

Your Zulu have/had Horses right? Do they have Chivalry yet? ALso, do they have Gunpowder? You may end up facing a lot more units the first couple turns because of Horsemen/Knights, so you may want to go with a larger landing force than I did.

[vmxa1]

So thats over 200 units you documented, not too bad. How many cities do the Zulu's have? How many turns into the game was the attack?

[vmxa1]

Nathan it is hard to say how many they will be kicking out, but if you are lucky they will have a few cities building structures and be reluctant to switch right away.

They will surely switch most cities to troops once the counter attack starts. I would expect half of their cites to switch. Then the question becomes how much production can they muster in those cities and what unit will they build.

The empty army for galley's and partial armies in caravels is what I use. In my invason of Germany I was able to get muskets over soon and fill out a 4 unit army. I had a pike army that I added a musket to and with Germans attacking over a river I took very few loses.

That did not goes as well against Chinas Riders and Calvs though. They just had too many.


I am enjoying the games gentlemen, thanks so posting your reports.