Sid games C3C: how to improve our skills

[Aeson]

I finished off the Zulu in 1180AD, with some help from the Egyptians. They captured 3 of the N cities, and then I followed their Frigates around the coast capturing Zulu cities they were bombarding. Worked very well.

I've spent most of my gold rushing cultural improvements and Settlers. Cultural difference with Egypt has become stable at 43k difference, so no worries there. Egypt has also just gone into Fascism, right after Communism, and doesn't have rails yet.

My 'war' with Arabia payed off, as the Mongols have quickly researched Theology and Education. 3 more turns on my 50 turn Metallurgy.

ICS on the Zulu continent is going well. Only a few more cities to place down S. My army support costs have dropped a lot because of the extra cities, and I have 4 empty Armies waiting for Cavalry. Have 6 3x Knight, 2 3x Med Inf (lost one in the fighting, only Army loss to date), 3 3x SM, and 1 4x Knight Armies.

[nbarclay]

Cleo fell for it, landing two settlers escorted by a single regular rifleman right next to three cannons (which had been injuring a frigate) and two tiles away from more than thirty. Thanks, Cleo, for the four additional slaves!

I made peace shortly thereafter (in 1265), giving Egypt an updated map and a handful of pocket change. The Hittites are still at war with me from one of the more useless alliances in history (although I imagine I could have gotten peace with Egypt on better terms if it weren't for their Hittite alliance). I'll probably let that technical state of war drag on since as long as my people are angry at the Hittites, they won't be as unhappy.

I made peace with the Zulus a while back, allowing them to keep their last (and southernmost) city in exchange for Music Theory and a little gold and gpt. Depending on what order AIs research things in, Music Theory might possibly do me some good in trading. In the meantime, I've shifted from having gobs of tax collectors (especially in the former Zulu lands) to having gobs of scientists researching Physics. My tentative plan is to get Physics myself and then beat up on Egypt however long it takes to get Banking, Theory of Gravity, and Magnetism from them (assuming I don't get one or more of the techs from someone else first). Then I can push full speed ahead researching Nationalism and Communism myself, at which point I'll be in good shape.

At current rates of cultural growth, Egypt can hit 160K in about 100 turns and I'll hit 80K about ten turns after that. (Of course both figures will go down over time, but that gives a general feel for the situation.) So if I can put a serious dent in Egypt in the reasonably near future, I should be on track to prevent a cultural victory without having to go too far out of my way.

My camp cities in Zulu lands are under orders to produce settlers, partly for additional camps and partly for the invasion of Egypt when I reach a point where I dare build more than a single city. I can rush completion of settlers if I reach a point where I need to, but I'd rather not hurry about it. In the meantime, the camps' excess populaiton is providing a nice source of scientists - I can research at a bit better than a 50-turn pace with the science slider at zero, using only scientists, and then kick up my research rate when the situation calls for it.

[nbarclay]

Aeson, I'll probably be invading Egypt in the not-too-distant fiture. Do you want me to go ahead and post about it when I do, or hold off so you don't get as much spoiler information about how strong they're likely to be?

[Aeson]

It's ok. I think I know pretty much how it will go, and my invasion is likely to be a bit different than yours given that they'll likely have rails everywhere by the time I can get accross.

[nbarclay]

Another update: in 1275, I traded Military Tradition to the Arabs for Navigation. (Not that the Arabs have any horses or saltpeter to take advantage of the tech.) ETA for the invasion of Egypt is about ten turns. Unfortunately, a world map I got as part of my deal with Arabia indicates that Egypt has recently started their rail network.

Edit: That let me trade to the Mongols for luxuries, allowing me to drop the luxury slider back to zero at long last since my core cities had marketplaces, colosseums, and cathedrals. If it weren't for my monstrously huge military (359 units and growing), I could manage a halfway decent tech pace.

Another Edit: I just checked the government situation, and Egypt is in Democracy, Arabia in Republic, and everyone else in Monarchy. Republic, coupled with Arabia's rather considerable unit losses fighting a losing war with the Mongols a while back, must explain why Arabia is doing so well in tech.

[nbarclay]

It's 1315 AD, and the entire Dutch fleet of fifty-three caravels has arrived off the coast of Edo. Fifty-two of those ships are loaded, with the contents including seven 2x Swiss Merc armies, ten 2x cavalry armies, 31 stand-alone Swiss Mercs, 38 standalone cavalry, 33 cannons, an elite swordsman, a regular MedInf or two, and a settler. And the mountain next to Edo, with its 100% defense bonus, is unoccupied. (Of course that means the cannons can't land immediately, but you can't have everything. )

First, I contact Cleo and trade a world map and some pocket change for Egypt's latest map. Their rail network has progressed a bit, but is still far from complete. Good.

Then I contact the Hittites and make peace with them, since that's probably an easier thing to do before I'm at war with Egypt.

Then I sell Egypt contact with the Mongols. After all, I can't bring the Mongols into an alliance against Egypt if they and the Egyptians haven't met. That finishes my diplomacy with Egypt, so I declare war even though the peace treaty is only half over.

Next, I build some alliances. Arabia allys with me for 120 gold, the Mongols for 300, the Hittites for 240, and the Celts for 280. The Arabian and Celtic alliances break embargos that Egypt had arranged during our previous war.

I then get back my gold from the Celts, along with some furs, in exchange for Monotheism and Engineering. The other civs are willing to give back my gold in exchange for world maps; apparently, they haven't been able to scrape up the cash to buy world maps from Egypt. So for the cost of some maps and a couple obsolete technologies, I enlisted the entire world in an alliance against Egypt and brought in some furs to supplement my luxury situation.

As an afterthought, I bring the Zulus into my Grand Alliance as well. That's a bit risky since the Zulu city is the only place on the continent that I haven't walled off with workers and cannons to preclude the possibility of an Egyptian landing (which was how I freed so many troops), but I'm inclined to choose that risk over the risk of having Egypt entice the Zulus into an alliance against me.

[nbarclay]

And here's what I have overall in terms of troops:

[nbarclay]

The assault on Edo was interesting. Egypt didn't try to attack my landing force, but did reinforce Edo with about three or four extra cavalry (and, in a classic show of AI stupidity, moved a cluster of three frigates and a galleon into the city).

Then, in my turn, I ran up against a serious flaw in the game's mechanics. When you go to load units in an army, the only thing the game tells you about the armies is how many slots they have free. I decided to try loading cavalry into armies to see whether the order in the loading list would match the order right-clicking, but when I ended up with a mixed cavalry/Swiss Merc army, I reloaded. (I could have set up a test scenario to see if I could load the units savely, but running the test in-game and reloading if it failed was a lot easier.)

So with no reliable way to know which army I would be loading units into, I had to resort to Plan B. Fortunately, Egypt left the hill northwest ("7") of Edo vacant, so I was able to move armies there, move cavalry to load into the armies, and still have two moves left to attack. Some of the units were damaged by the ZOC of enemy cavalry in the process, but the maneuver worked: I was able to set up my ten 4x cavalry armies to attack the Egyptian riflemen.

Even so, with the armies reduced to two attacks each instead of four, the battle was close. One army was forced to retreat after trying to tackle a second riflemen, so I started playing it safe and using fresh armies against each new rifleman. The armies finished the riflemen without any further close calls, and then went through the cavalry without incident, but an army was reduced to four hit points using its second attack on a MedInf. (That looked a lot scarier while it was happening than it seems in hindsight; I saw the army go red, but it's hard to see exactly how many hit points a 16-hit-point army has left.) Then I was out of army attacks and attacked a MedInf with an elite cavalry for what turned out to be the final round of combat. I razed the city, moved a settler into position to replace it, and moved in armies and cannons to defend the city site and the neighboring hill. I left the standalone units on the mountain as an invitation for Egypt to attack me there and maybe give me some elites and/or additional leaders. But since I'd used all but three of my elite Swiss Mercs as the nucleus of armies, odds of getting a leader weren't especially high. (I hated putting elites that hadn't yet generated leaders into armies, but with a limit of two units per army aboard caravels, I figured I'd play it safe and build mostly ten-hit-point Swiss Merc armies.)

[nbarclay]

The results of my initial "bait" trick were mixed. I suffered heavier losses than I'd hoped for, but I did some damage to Egypt in the process. Still, I don't think the kill/loss ratio was as good for me as is really needed on Sid.

Egypt's counterattack reached its peak in their turn in 1330, which came very close to being an outright disaster for me. When I'd planned my invasion, I didn't realize that with all that rugged terrain around, Edo was on flatland. Worse, I didn't think to compensate by building my city 7 from the original Edo to get the hill defense bonus. Then I went barracks-then-walls rather than walls-then-barracks, and when Egypt had a stack of over a hundred units including (I think) over fifty cavalry, my defenses were a bit lacking. The results: four out of seven Swiss Merc armies and two out of ten cavalry armies dead. And it could have been a whole lot worse. All but one of my surviving armies were redlined to a point where elite standalone cavalry and 3/4 Swiss Mercs were having to defend by the time it was over. (One Swiss Merc army didn't participate in the defense because it was guarding the hill "7" from the city at the time. For a few minutes, I was mentally kicking myself for not recalling it to the city along with the rest of my forces, but then I remembered that if it weren't on the hill, more Egyptian cavalry could probably have attacked that turn by going over the hill. So if that army had participated in the city's defense, it probably would have been redlined or killed like all the other armies. Still, the optimal move would likely have been to use a cavalry army instead of a Swiss Merc army as an obstacle Cleo's forces would rather go around than try to go through - but of course that assumes I would be willing to trust Cleo to go around rather than through if the army were cavalry rather than Swiss Mercs.)

The following turn was also a scary one. On the plus side, my walls were finally up and fewer of Egypt's attacking units were cavalry (although they had plenty of knights and MedInfs). On the minus side, I had a lot fewer armies, and about three of the ones I did have had moved the previous turn and so didn't heal. By the time it was over, most if not all of my armies were into the red, but I suffered no outright losses.

I think the corner is turned now, though. None of the units in sight in 1340 are cavalry, and ten of my eleven armies are healthy (the exception being the hill-guard unit that had just moved into the city). Even before the 1330 fiasco, I'd brought in more than forty additional cannons (supplementing my original thirty-three), so I can use bombardment to limit the number of Egyptian units that can attack me each turn. (Those massive numbers of cannons are probably the only reason my invasion force is alive at all. Not only was their defensive fire a huge help, but they drove away a lot of riflemen that could have attacked otherwise if they were in a mood to do so.) Egypt is still showing as not having saltpeter, so even though they have a huge tech lead, their offensive punch will be a bit lacking. (For which I am profoundly grateful!)

In other news, I just traded Metallurgy to the Mongols for Banking (a tech which Arabia also hasnow). So I'm starting to think I'll research my way out of the medieval era myself and try to extort the fist-tier industrial techs from Egypt. Not that I'm anywhere close to being able to extort techs yet, but if I'm right that I've fended off the worst Egypt can throw at me, it's just a matter of time.

Edit: Also worth noting, Egypt is now in anarchy; little wonder with how many dozens of units they've lost. I'd expected Cleo to lose enough units against me that the negative war weariness from having the whole world declare war on Egypt wouldn't last long, and things worked out more or less as expected. (Egypt started Universal Suffrage before the war but didn't finish it and now seems to have abandoned the effort.)

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Egypt managed to hit me with cavalry one more turn using the hill, and had a few more left than I'd expected. But after that, all they had was Crusaders and units with an attack value of four. In the year 1350, I got a leader bombarding a small number of Egyptian units on the hill by New Edo (my reincarnation of Edo) down to one hit point each and attacking them with elites. That let me replace one of my lost Swiss Merc armies, which should give me a bit more tactical flexibility when I'm ready to resume offensive operations.

The Egyptian counterattack started to really fizzle in 1355. Their stack wasn't anything that posed a real danger, but since it was concentrated on a mountain and included more riflemen than I could possibly ping down to one hit point, it made little sense for me to attack it. So I decided to refrain from bombarding in my turn and let as many Egyptians as wanted to commit suicide by impaling themselves on my Swiss Merc armies' polearms. I also diverted a cavalry army to escort my six slaves from the destruction of Edo onto the mountain northeast ("9") of New Edo to rebuild the road Egypt had pillaged. Now it's 1360, and the only units Egypt has in New Edo's borders are four riflemen, a knight, and a MedInf on the mountain to the north. But for some unknown reason, there's an assembly of about a hundred fifty riflemen, musketmen, and pikemen just north of that. I'm guessing those are escort units that no longer have anyone left to escort, but I'm not sure. Whatever is going on there, it's strange.

[vmxa1]

Yes when you play Sid and start using lots of armies, you learn that loading them is haphazard and to fight them in a round robin fashion. IOW each army takes a combat turn until all have fought, then they each take a second turn.

This helps preserve them and hopefully a move point to go into the city to heal and defend.

[vmxa1]

One of the most annoying things the game does is how it selects defenders. At most levels this is not so big a deal, but at Sid where the battles can be very long, it is horrific.

They will just keep putting up my army while it gets redlined, while other healthy units are doing nothing. Units I could stand to lose. So you sit there sweating out each combat with the damaged armies.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by nbarclay

Now it's 1360, and the only units Egypt has in New Edo's borders are four riflemen, a knight, and a MedInf on the mountain to the north. But for some unknown reason, there's an assembly of about a hundred fifty riflemen, musketmen, and pikemen just north of that. I'm guessing those are escort units that no longer have anyone left to escort, but I'm not sure. Whatever is going on there, it's strange.

It seems the AI on Sid does not like to attack with these "defensive" units. I constantly run into large numbers of "escorts" with nothing to escort and they do not attack.

These are pikes/muskets/rifles. Then you have to go after them and if they keep them in a stack that cannot be bombarded to the point that you can attack damaged units, it is a bear.

I will use my armies to kill as many as I can with no danger, until I get the numbers down to were it can be pinged.

Are you finding it to start to become a bit tiring yet? So many units to move and fight, gets to me after a bit.

[Aeson]

I am very disappointed in the AI, they reacted as expected to my 'invasion'. I landed a 2x SM army, 3 other empty Armies (didn't want my Knight Armies defending at all the first turn), ~60 Cannon, ~40 Elite SM, and ~20 Knights on Egypt's mainland. They had units on almost every Hill, but I found one open and put my troops there (777 of Edo). They didn't attack. I guess even a 2 unit Army outside a city is invulnerable against the AI. Filled up my Armies and started pillaging and Leader farming. I doubt I will place or capture any cities until I have razed the bottleneck city, destroyed the Rail network completely, and taken out Iron and Saltpeter sources.

With 4 Armies on Egypt's mainland, auto-pillage...

I landed a no Army force the same turn on the NE islands that Egypt had Settled. ~20 Cannon, 20 Elite SM, and 15 Knights. Even though Egypt is in Fascism they must be up to their unit limit now. 3 units in each city on that island and no counterattacks...

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To lead up to that point, I had researched Printing Press myself after getting Education and finishing off the 50 turn Metallurgy. Egypt didn't have PP yet. I had traded Metallurgy to the Mongols for Astronomy, then traded PP to Egypt for Navigation. Navigation back to the Mongols for Banking. Then I demanded that Egypt remove their troops from my territory (they were furious at me for destroying the Zulu and ending our alliance it seems), which prompted them to declare war on me cancelling our luxury trades that I was playing 130gpt for, along with the gpt (~100 IIRC) that I had thrown in for Navigation.

Navigation allowed me to replace 2 of the 3 Luxuries, trading for Mongol Ivory and Incense. Also, Astronomy allowed me to finally benefit from the Wines on the Zulu continent. Combined with negative war weariness from Egypt, I was able to drop to 0% Luxury rate.

The war on the Zulu continent was no contest, as I quickly took the 3 Egyptian cities and killed the few units out in the open. Seeing how well Cannon + Knights worked against Riflemen led me to try the invasion now instead of waiting for Cavalry.

The next few turns were spent repositioning troops for the invasion and rushing Banks back home. I was up to 600gpt income, working on a 50 turn Democracy. I upgraded all my Galleys to Caravels, and was using shore bombardment of Egyptian transport groups, then finishing them off with the Caravels. Should have kept some of the Galleys around for that, but took no losses anyways.

The Egyptians landed 3 times on the Zulu continent, and my Armies quickly disposed of their Riflemen, Cavalry, and Med Inf they were landing. I almost have a outpost barrier around the entire Zulu continent, but it's more for show than anything. With 12 armies, I can easily cover every possible landing site.

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One thing about outposts that I checked, they can be bombarded and destroyed. Egypt doesn't seem to have any free Frigates though, and so I am relying on only a handful of Knights back home to react if the AI ever were to try to bombard and then land. I doubt they are programmed to us that tactic though.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by vmxa1

These are pikes/muskets/rifles. Then you have to go after them and if they keep them in a stack that cannot be bombarded to the point that you can attack damaged units, it is a bear.

I will use my armies to kill as many as I can with no danger, until I get the numbers down to were it can be pinged.

I'm up to 1395 now, and the last couple turns, I've been pinging riflemen down to two or three hit points before going after them with cavalry armies. This turn, I almost pushed two of my armies' luck too far, though: one got down to two hit points and another down to one against especially lucky defenders. At least I have things reconfigured so the AI is coming in over hills instead of over mountains; I was able to blast them off their favorite mountain on a turn when they used an exceptionally small force.

There's a slight complication, though: Egypt has mobilized! (Their culture per turn is showing at just over half what it had been, and mobilization is the only thing I can think of that would cause that.) If they stay mobilized much longer, it precludes all possibility of their winning a cultural victory (at least unless they can stomp me militarily to get my culture down), but I guess Cleo decided she had bigger problems.

Are you finding it to start to become a bit tiring yet? So many units to move and fight, gets to me after a bit.

A bit. Can someone please tell me how to have all my cannons in a stack bombard the same tile, assuming there's a way to do it? In the past, I've preferred to go one at a time so I could see how things are going, but on Sid where I can have over ninety cannons (I think) in a stack and not have any real chance of redlining everything in an AI stack...