'Crusades' scenario: century beaten

[La Fayette]

King TONY of the English announces with great pleasure that the Holy Cross rules

'Crusades' scenario, deity level, no caravan rehoming.
Previous record held by STYOM: victory (all objectives conquered) in 1243.
New record, by La Fayette: all objectives conquered in 1193 (which means 97 turns from start).

[Scouse Gits]

All praise King TONY (should that not be President?)- oh yes and well done La Fayette...

SG[1]

[La Fayette]

AFAIK Tony is Prime Minister in RL.
But this game was very far from RL and that is precisely why I love it

[Lars-E]

Good one LF! How did you do it? I've been trying for a while, but found it difficult.

[La Fayette]

Lars,

The problem with the English is that they are by far the weakest civ (everyone knows that ).
But they live on an island (everyone knows that ), and this allows for fat bonuses on caravan delivery.
In this scenario all units have a nice movement rate (=2 for caravans, which means 6 squares/turn when travelling on roads).
I made use of that in the early game (first 20 turns or so spent earning a decent treasury over 1500g), then rushbuilt a number of siege towers and played 'Paris brûle-t-il?': huge losses, but the city was mine, followed by most other French cities.
I then came across a foreign knight willing to sell the tech named 'la lance sacrée' for 880 gold. That is a lot of money (close to my whole treasury), but I decided to buy the tech, because it allows the building of 'templiers', and those guys are really powerful.
The game after that was building 'templiers' (templars?) and riding as fast as possible.

[samson]

LF,

I've been meaning to try one of these scenarios for awhile. This one looked fun.

Same conditions: Deity, no caravan rehoming. Playing as the English. All objectives conquered in 1118 AD, 23 turns.

I used the English cities to trade with the French and the expeditionary force in Anatolia to take a few Turk cities one of which gave me the Holy Lance tech. All cash from caravan deliveries went into Templars. Swept through Asia Minor and Egypt, then regrouped to take out the Greeks. Iberia and the French cities were last.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Well, my record only stood for this long because it was unchallenged.... good work, La Fayette! I am

BTW, my version was the 2.42-CiC one... as I recall there is more than one 'crusades' scenario. Are we talking the same game?

Good grief, samson... 23 turns??

[samson]

Yup. same version.
Conflicts-in-Civilization, the Crusades.
William II of the English Normans. 52 objectives.
1096 to 1118 AD.

[La Fayette]

who's the master? no doubt...

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
Good grief, samson... 23 turns??

Yes, STYOM, there are people like you and me, who fight hard and try to improve their gameplay, and then there is samson who gets that kind of results that make you wonder whether you are playing the same game...

You were happy with about 150 turns. I was very happy with about 100 turns. He plays one game and achieves 23... (just remember that this guy previously won the game with one city size one...)

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Re: who's the master? no doubt...

Originally posted by La Fayette
You were happy with about 150 turns. I was very happy with about 100 turns. He plays one game and achieves 23... (just remember that this guy previously won the game with one city size one...)

Sighs... when I get through Red Front (my current non-succession game), I'll retry this one.

If anyone says they won RF in 1941, I'll cry

[samson]

The key to this scenario is setting up a two-continent trade engine to bring in the gold. Then pump the excess cash into making lots of Knight Templars in your cities in Asia Minor (take Nicea on the first turn and expand from there).

I used the Supply/Demand formulas to figure out how to get London and Winchester their fourth commodities (the key is getting 32 techs to change the wildcards). Then set up alternating trade routes to refresh the supply side. Avoid acquiring Invention as it cuts caravan bonuses in half. I had London alternating supply of Gold and Gems for payments of 400+ gold. With this strat it's possible to crank out a lot of money without caravan rehoming. The trade engine becomes a big bellows to fan the flames of holy war.

He plays one game and achieves 23...

Actually, I played this twice. First time it took 50+ turns, second time I did a better job of managing the trade and coordinating the East and West forks of my attack.

[La Fayette]

It looks so simple when you explain