AU208: Total Eternal Forever War - Reports and Comments

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Keep in mind that killing off an AI counts as ending the war for demobilization purposes.

Really? That's awesome news! You had better be right about this...


Dominae

[vmxa1]

I went with China to avoid the early GA and to have a 3 move unit. I suppose an ancient GA could be useful, if you had a fair number of cities. I think most ancient UU woul dhave to be used too soon, especially if they had 2 move like impi.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae


How far are you in the scenario, Nathan? I'm halfway through the Industrial, and I can safely say that the latter part of the game is a much tougher challenge than securing the home continent. I'm guessing this will be true of other people's games as well, although I could be wrong.

I'm four mandatory techs short of the industrial era, and the AIs are five short (although they have some optional ones I don't - the diplomacy interface can be useful for spying even when you can't actually sign a peace treaty). Keep in mind that I'm playing on Monarch, so I don't have as tough a challenge as you do. I have no idea how my entry into the industrial era will compare with the AIs'; I just entered anarchy to switch to Monarchy, which will slow me down in the short term but speed me up once the government changes. And there's no way of knowing how good a job the AIs will do pursuing different paths and swapping.

True. But, given knowledge of the map, I still believe the Ottomans to be superior in this scenario. Securing the home continent is important, sure, but getting a foothold on the other continents (beyond England) is equally important, and probably more difficult because the AIs would certainly pull ahead of you in tech eventually (how do you get them to go to war with one another before Espionage?).

That depends on how big a tech advantage winning the home continent earlier carries, and on the exact timing of the initial extrahemispheric attacks. The situation that would make the Ottomans look best is if Persia would be unable to invade before enemy riflemen show up, but the Ottomans would still have plenty of time to use their Sipahi against riflemen before enemy infantry appear. The situations where Persia looks best by comparison would be if it gets a significant amount of time to attack with cavalry while the AIs are still stuck with musketmen instead of riflemen (which I'm convinced is possible on Monarch, although I'm skeptical as to whether I'll pull it off), or if Persia's time advantage means that Persia can rip into AIs while they're stuck with riflemen while the Ottomans have little or no time to use their sipahi before infantry show up.

Also note that Alex threw in an additional nasty surprise for the Ottomans: the need to conquer at least part of England in order to get saltpeter. Stronger late-ancient and medieval research and the availability of immortals make conquering part or all of England (and holding the captured territory if England remains reasonably intact) easier for Persia.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Dominae
2. Do not go into Mobilization until you're sure it's the right thing to do (think about it...).

Not even remotely up to this stage yet, but...

[Theseus]

Bear with me, both in terms of playing the game out and also doing AARs, but Scandinavia also, obviously, has similar timing attractions.

In other words, Lizzie... BUH-BYE!!!

[vmxa1]

nbarclay I am not sure you can count on using the open talks to figure out what they have. The list you see under tech is not always all they have.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I went with China to avoid the early GA and to have a 3 move unit. I suppose an ancient GA could be useful, if you had a fair number of cities. I think most ancient UU woul dhave to be used too soon, especially if they had 2 move like impi.

It's not just the GA. It's the combination of the GA and the power advantage of the UU over its conventional counterpart. Suppose Persia gets an effective 50% production boost in its GA (since some tiles are helped and some aren't in an ancient GA). Couple that with a UU that has 4/3 the striking power of a swordsman and you get effectively double the striking power that you would with a civ building swordsmen not in a GA.

Unfortunately, free unit support limits tend to put a damper on taking full advantage of that. If I were playing a civ not in a GA, I would have kept disconnecting and reconnecting my road to my iron colony to use warrior upgrades to keep up my sword production. But as it was, I would have faced unit support cost problems if I'd done that. (Then again, I likely should have done it anyhow to make the war go even faster. After all, with "always war," you can't start making any real use of captured cities until their parent civ is dead - a huge disadvantage to dragging out wars in an effort to troll for leaders.)

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by vmxa1
nbarclay I am not sure you can count on using the open talks to figure out what they have. The list you see under tech is not always all they have.

It only shows techs you have the prerequisites for, since those are the only ones you can negotiate for at the moment. But I've never noticed so much as a hint that it shows any techs a civ doesn't have or omits any techs a civ does have that you have all the prerequisites for. For example, if an AI has Engineering and Feudalism and you don't have both of them, there's no way of knowing how far along the bottom of the tech tree the AI is. The fact that you're missing at least one prerequisite prevents Invention and its descendants from showing up. But if the AI is missing either Engineering or Feudalism, it can't have Invention or any of its descendants yet either, so the negotiation screen can be of immense value in determining what an AI doesn't have as long as you aren't seriously behind. (Or have you seen cases where apparent inaccuracies in the list of techs available for trade can't be explained by the trading rules I noted above?)

[MrWhereItsAt]

I'm pretty sure that it's cut and dried: in the negotiations screen you can see all techs that an AI has that

1. you don't have and
2. that you have the prereqs for.

So if an AI has any of the techs that you could start researching that very turn, you can see it is available to make offers for.

The same wors the other way. You can only offer techs that the AI hasn't got that it has the prereqs for.

Nothing more.

[Arrian]

I'm kinda annoyed now that I didn't go all-out on making gpt deals upon first contact. I would be a lot closer in tech if I had.

But the mobilization tidbit is gonna be important. I had forgotten about that, but now that Nathan mentioned it, I remember - he's right. Sweet.

-Arrian

[badman]

Damn this is so tough, I'll give it one last try before switching to Monarch.
I already lost several times as the Germans and the Chinese.
Last time I was able to capture Rome (which I abandoned soon after because there was no way I was going to keep it).
I was able to move a settler there and actually build a road (through the hills near the mountains) and some cities along it but then the MW's just kept coming and even though my units did a great job fighting them, I couldn't resist them very long.

[Dominae]

More War!

I had originally posted this part of my report, but lost it somehow. I hope I'll not forget all the details.

If you'll recall from my last report (yeah right), in ~200AD, I had finished with the Iroquois and Romans, the former being taken care of early with a rush and the latter offering little resistance once their Legionary forces had smashed themselves against my Walls for a few hundred years.

My only problem at that point was that I had spent a Great Leader on the Great Library, but contacts with other civilizations were in short supply. I decided to spare the Romans one city, so that they could eventually team up with some other civ to teach me a bunch of technological secrets (in spite of the perpetual state of war between us...did you ever notice how the Great Library sounds great in theory but makes no realistic sense in actual gameplay?).

Sure enough, in 300AD opportunity came a-knockin' when an English Galley popped into view. England was actually behind in tech, which lead me to the conclusion that they were an isolated civ. Here's how the negotiations went:

Round 1:

England offers Math., World Map, 15 Gold
China offers Polytheism

Round 2:

England offers Currency, Construction and 44 Gold
China offers Monarchy, Literature and 10 Gold per turn

Round 3:

England asks if there will be anything else.
China gives Lizzie the finger and declares war.

Fun fun. Seeing the size of the English lands, I felt I could conquer them without too much extra military buildup, so my core cities went into super-builer mode. As I mentioned earlier, it feels like Total War is more of a Builder scenario than a Warmonger one; since you're forced to do most of your own research, getting all the economic and scientfic improvements in your main cities is a must, not to mention the fact that the entire home continent contained but two Luxuries, making Temples and Cathedrals a must too. But, even with all this building, the wars raged on.

Shortly after meeting England, the Babylonians appeared, courtesy of that Great Lighthouse they kept talking about. I exploited them for a round of negotiations, then gave Hammurabi the finger (I had heard enough of their "Wonders"), triggering another war. Hammurabi told the rest of the world about China's manners, and soon I became known as the "evil civ" on the world stage. To support this reputation, I wiped out the poor Romans, since their thinkers were not needed anymore in the Great Library.

Looking at the maps I got from the Babs, I muttered an audible "uh-oh". Seems like we've got a lot of lot of land mass, but disconnected continents: a perfect recipe for at least three Killer AIs I was not going to be able to trade with. Sure enough, the rest of the world ganged up on me immediately. I doubt there was ever even a war among the Indians, Babs, Egyptians or Americans in the entire game prior to contact.

Back to the action. I sent over a rag-tag crew of units (Medieval Infantry, Longbowmen, Pikemen, Elite Archers and Horsemen, you name it, I had it) across the Convenient Sea Lanes to Great Britain, unsure of where to strike since the English had just obtained Feudalism and Pikemen. Since the English refused to go easily, I also sent over a few Riders, unwilling to delay my Golden Age any longer.

Below is a screenshot of the fall of Britain. I struck at Oxford first with all my bad units, then braced myself for the English counter-attack which ended up being disappointingly weak. With most of the English standing army gone, I proceeded to Newcastle, then (as you can see) Dover and Brighton. I actually got to use Riders effectively (my first time!): landing units at Newcastle, I was able to conquer Dover and Brighton in one turn!

[Arrian]

Good decision re: Newcastle - you took out their saltpeter before it became an issue. Well done.

I should've attacked the English too. Mistake - I went straight builder (and my GA was all done).

Don't Riders rock? Though in this particular scenario I might prefer Samurai. They make great invasion troops.

-Arrian

[jshelr]

This game is really interesting. As an early game report, one thing that seems to work is an immediate archer rush of Rome. If you use workers to chop forests to boost growth you can build build barracks, asap. You will need those to beat the Legions with archers. Three cities tops before first rush seems to work.

We took out Rome this time at least. Now I need some walls to the West to keep the MWs from routing us while we finish off the Red Men.

Also having fun watching the market rise.

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by jshelr
This game is really interesting. As an early game report, one thing that seems to work is an immediate archer rush of Rome. If you use workers to chop forests to boost growth you can build build barracks, asap. You will need those to beat the Legions with archers. Three cities tops before first rush seems to work.

I agree that an immeadiate archer rush on Rome is a good thing (and that is why I'd take China over the Ottomans on this any day). I'm just not sure about your idea of immeadiate.

The whole point of an early archer rush is to avoid ever meeting legions. I've not seen anyone comment on whether my barracks, worker, 7 archers and a spearman before any settlers or granary was sensible. I think that it might be but I don't know.