AUSG101 - Opportunist Team DAR2

[Theseus]

Very opportune.

[G'Kar]

My Vote: Dominae

The number one reason is that I simply find his growth to be the best and the most flexible, to either a warfighting or builder plan of action. Also, the tech progress has been comendable. Being three turns from Monarchy, with all of that gold for deficit research spending, will be a plus. And of course I love the eight temples. And Dominae is still in position to hold the chokepoint (as long as that Carth warrior doens't bonk that scout in the haed).

But really they are all fine games and this team could dominate the world with any of them.

[Beta]

Dominae.

For comparison purposes to my quick and dirty analysis in the spaceship team thread:

12 cities and 2 settlers
Poly and 3 turns from Monarchy
617 gold in the treasury
Very solid city improvements
13 workers
3 warriors
1 spear
3 chariots

(Hey - where is Vox when you need them??!! )

Awesome round, Dom!

[Rhothaerill]

The voting for the second turn block is finished and Dominae is the choice. Congratulations Dominae. The third turn block will be posted in a new DAR thread. Everyone will have 5 days to complete the third turn block. That means the DARs will need to be posted by 23:59 EST Tuesday the 30th.

Per prior discussion, Dominae’s third turn block will not be a part of the voting process, but I fully urge him to play the turn and post anyway. Thanks.

[Dominae]

I'll play the next block nonetheless.

I quite look foward to playing from someone else's save. I bet you guys are getting tired of playing from mine!


Dominae

[Dominae]

Part 4/4

As promised here is the final section of my report for this block. It concerns the "paper-thin defense" strategy.

The idea here is highly dependent on a good knowledge of the AI, and its capabilities in the early-game. Although harassment by Barbs and sometimes other civs is annoying, it's something that can be dealt with without putting too many resources into military units. The result is that almost everything goes to your economy.

By "dealt with" I do not mean that with only a couple of Warriors you will always kill all Barbs. Rather, I mean that you can minimize your losses (sometimes, they can in fact be zero) by just having a handful of units around. Obviously having no active defense is bad. But I think having too much is bad, too.

The cost/benefit tradeoff is thus: more units means slower expansion, or, fewer units means faster expansion. The point I'm trying to make here is that against the AI faster expansion easily compensates for any minor loss you may take along the way.

The first part of minimizing your losses is making sure your AI neighbors are not going to attack you until your military is nice and ready. Trade with them, give them gifts, whatever, just make sure they're always Polite or Gracious. Even if you do this, sometimes the AI just decides that your time is up (I'm thinking of the Germans here, where Bismarck can smile at you in the Diplo screen while having three Archers and a Spearmen at your borders). How do you cope with this?

Well, this is why I rarely use Military Police. Lookouts (i.e. units on high ground on the edges of your empire) are worth far more than static defense. If just a handful of units you can spot the AI marching toward your lands, and have that much more time to prepare your response. Maybe you'll have enough time to pop out a few Archers and meet them. Or maybe you'll be able to trade around for a tech, then trade it to the threatening civ, calming them down a little. In this game I used (I believe) five units as lookouts in this regard. None of the other civs attacked: Japan is the most aggressive of the bunch, but was also the weakest, so I was gambling that I would not be a target right away. Again, knowing the AI is key.

I used a couple of Scouts for lookout duty, which brings me to the point of Barbs. Barbs are annoying because they're always at war with you. You therefore always have to defend against them (and so Scouts are not so good as military units in this scheme). But Barbs are also really stupid: I'm quite certain there is some sort of randomness programmed into them since PTW. Do not play into the game's hands by giving Barbs more credit than they deserve. The "operating range" of Barbs is no more than 2-3 tiles (more for fast units), i.e., they will not make decisions on any feature outside this radius. So you can leave cities undefended and rest assured that those Horsemen will not beeline for them. This also means that you can trick Barbs by giving them juicy targets within this radius, such as Workers. When a Barb is threatening a city, make sure it will reach a Worker first: the Barb will detour for the Worker, hopefully giving your own Warrior enough time to come and help out. So what if you lose 2 Worker-turns, at least you've not lost 10 Shields and ~3 city-turns on building another Warrior "just in case".

Another trick is to never attack Barbs unless you're right next to one of their camps and your unit is Veteran or stronger. Yes, 25 Gold is useful, and the AI might steal it from you (in this game I would prefer giving the AI Gold so that I could trad with them!), but when you have so few units it's not a good idea to throw them away. This goes not only for camps, but also defense: try to position your units in the path of Barbs, using terrain features to get defensive bonuses. If the Barbs attack, you'll probably win; if not, you can just keep shadowing them until they do attack.

Obviously this strategy only works against the AI; please do not try this against human players in PBEMs unless you're really confident in your diplomatic skills!

I definitely took this strategy to the extreme in this game, but that was my goal: to demonstrate that, under certain circumstances, you can survive and thrive without a military. It can definitely backfire, as in Arrian's game, but even then I think the benefits outweigh the costs. Sacrifices must be made if you want to REX like a madman, and IMO it usually pays off.


Dominae

[vmxa1]

I agree with your points and have always been aware of the strategy. My problem is I dislike being diplomatic, so I take the hit. This means I will not get the most from a situation, but it is worth it to me, to not have to be nice or check in all the time with the AI.

[Arrian]

The "don't attack barbs unless your unit is a vet" advice is probably more of an emperor-level thing, wouldn't you say, Dom? I attack barb camps with regular warriors all the time on monarch, and win the vast majority of times (there is always the occasional 3-and-out loss, but that's just the RNG for ya).

Besides, my losses to the barbs in this round were *all* on defense.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

I'm giving that advice only in the context of my "paper-thin" defense idea. With so few military units, chasing Barbs around the map ends up not being worth the Gold. If there's a camp close to home that's producing Horsemen, it's a judgement call whether or not to take it out. Typically if you can stall long enough the AI takes care of it for you.

In general, yes, Barbs are tougher on Emperor though. Watch out.


Dominae