AU601: Rhoth's Roman DAR II (playing against Beta)

[sabrewolf]

roth: 50 cavalry should do the business. you may have some trouble against hilled-walled-bombard-aided-fortified-town-musketmen, but as soon as that perimeter is broken, nothing lies in your way.

don't forget that beta is probably throwing ALL his commerce into research to keep up a little bit. and musketmen are expensive. also, his borders are wide on both sides, so he'll have to spread his defences.

if he's in republic, he'll unlikely have more than 4 muskets per city in a surprise attack. in monarchy, maybe slightly more.

and bombard units may be very good in defence, but they only fire once per turn, so with large enough numbers, he'd run out of trebuchets very soon. they also are capturable, so i even doubt he's got too many (probably only, for softening up AI who attack in small waves)


edit: on your attack plan. it looks like you'll ship over some units by caravels or probably even galleons, once you've got physics and magnetism. but they won't be able to transport your whole force, so i presume your going to to a combined attack. a well defended cavalry strike force from the sea and a suprise rush with cavalry-only attack from land? am i close

[pedrojedi]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
yes, it's an option and i've been using it to ship settlers over to former greek lands.
probably the reason why noone uses it for military transport is the location: rome is on the outer side of the torus, so inner cities are very corrupt. and in greek lands the inner sea may be nearer, but it's behind tons of jungle and wetlands - so unlikely to have productive cities there too.
and don't forget: galleys are quite slow and only carry 2 units. taking a RoP road through persia or around northern lands is probably faster... especially with armies, ACs, knights or cavalry.

Well, I thought on the long run, a Palace location change, communism, and that stuff.

Galleys aren't the best ship for that... Though 3 of them, with 3 muskets and a fast unit can really be boring. The inner Greek cities wouldn't be a new core, but more of a beach head of sorts... Besides, who likes seeing enemy units deep inside your territory, even being so few? With pillaging, that can be a real nasty thing...

Of course, all of this is for a little slower operation... RoP are faster and much more devastating, as you said and did.

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
edit: on your attack plan. it looks like you'll ship over some units by caravels or probably even galleons, once you've got physics and magnetism. but they won't be able to transport your whole force, so i presume your going to to a combined attack. a well defended cavalry strike force from the sea and a suprise rush with cavalry-only attack from land? am i close

Something like that. I have almost enough galleons to transfer my main force. I've done a bit of scouting from Persian lands and it appears much of his main force is near the Babylonian and Persian borders. Therefore I intend to strike with my main force elsewhere in his lands. I'll keep you updated when it happens.

[Rhothaerill]

750ad

My plans are proceeding apace and I intend to start my invasion in 5 turns with the first blows being dealt in the next 10. I've moved my timetable up slightly as I've noticed a trend recently. Beta has not had iron hooked up for a while now and hasn't been researching very quickly. I deemed it worth it to take a look at his capital to see whether he was building a huge cash reserve for horseman upgrade to knights. He doesn't have a huge reserve, but I want to catch him before he is able to build that reserve and upgrade. If I can catch him with a bunch of horses rather than knights then my job will be made easier. I will be going in with about 10 less cavalry than I had originally intended (~40) but with four more muskets that I intend to bunker down on his northern iron hill to keep him from building any knights. Denying him his iron and saltpeter is a large part of my plans.

Another interesting thing I discovered. Beta is also in his golden age just like I am...and I'm still outproducing him on every level. He has a larger empire than I do since I was blocked by other nations, but mine is more productive.

[Rhothaerill]

840ad

The invasion has begun...with a whimper.

Beta and I often chat on mIRC while playing the game and he has suspected for some time that I'd try to hit him over the ocean. He has been preparing for several turns by blocking all the landing zones with warriors, etc.

Per the picture below I had planned on four different landing zones. In the northwest I had four cavalry and eight musketmen preparing to land on his iron and also take out a saltpeter resource up there. My plan was to land on the mountain. That didn't work out as he had a unit there, but I was still able to land next to it. Also up there was my spearman spotter (to make sure Beta wasn't sending units at me through other's lands) also plunked down on one of his luxuries to deny it to him.

In the east, I had eight ancient cavalry that were preparing to land and wreak as much havoc with roads, etc. as possible.

The stack of five ancient cavalry and five legions was a planned event that he noticed a few turns ago. Originally I was fine with it because I hoped he would expect the attack from there and move units from his other coast and core.

But the main attack is where it really hurts. That consisted of 39 cavalry, 8 musketmen, 8 cannons, and 1 settler...and he completely blocked all my landing zones, especially the one I really wanted right on top of his other saltpeter resource. That galleon stack is now travelling south toward Persia to land there and fight my way up the coast.

[Rhothaerill]

And a look at the F4 screen. Part of my strategy all along was sending everyone at Beta. That is why I cultivated trading friendships and right of passage agreements with everyone...and also to keep them from trading techs with Beta unless he bought a tech from one of them.

He thwarted my initial plans, but I still think I have the upper hand. We'll see how things play out.

It's a fun game!!!

[Jaybe]

In C3C, Workers do not block naval landings. I do not recall that being verboten in this scenario.

[sabrewolf]

jaybe: "verboten" didn't know you used that in english too, but it's actually a valid adjective

i also didn't know that workers could be captured by naval landings! i remember seeing aeson playing one of the AU games without a single unit on his mainland. he just "defended" the island with workers on every single tile...
are you sure about this fact?


rhoth:
beta sure needs a great upkeep for all those units. and he can't remove them to defend down south as that would open up space for invasions.

enjoy the feast

[Rhothaerill]

Sabrewolf is correct. Workers can block landings and Beta has a few workers blocking. Most of his blockers though are warriors. Shouldn't be too much trouble against cavalry...though last night I had a veteran cavalry go down to two hit points while attacking a defending horseman.

Beta still does not have military tradition, though he did have metallurgy right before my attack. I was able to cut one of his saltpeter resources, but the other one will take me several turns to be able to cut after being blocked from landing on or near it. Unfortunately that gives Beta the time to upgrade/build some muskets and cavalry if he gets military tradition before I have the chance to cut his remaining resource.

On the 'Friends of Rome' front, Beta was concentrating so much on trying to destroy my harrying force coming out of Persia that he left himself open and Persia took one of his cities. I only wish I knew how many of his forces were destroyed. All of my surviving units were damaged, but I'm not sure if he had retreating horseman that I can't see, or if his units died attacking mine.

[Jaybe]

Aeson defended his beaches with workers BEFORE CONQUESTS. Also, the AI is reputed to not take advantage of abducting workers from beaches.

To invade a worker-only occupied beach, WAKE the ground units and assault as you would with Marines. I have done this for several months, and I just took the trouble to retest this with generic C3C 1.22.

"The AU is for learning"

[Rhothaerill]

Really? Hmm, I don't think I ever tried it by waking them before. I'll have to try that when I get home tonight.

Learn something new every day.

Thanks Jaybe. I've got something new for Beta tonight.

[Rhothaerill]

All right so my conscience is already invading me and I feel like I should probably warn Beta about this as he didn't know either (obviously). It would be unfair to take advantage of him with something I just learned only because of my DAR thread which he has no access to.

[Rhothaerill]

I sent Beta an email with this new info so now if he does leave workers out on the coasts my conscience won't eat me up for using this new information (new to me anyway ) to land.

All the other ways I've been taking advantage of him are things I know that he would have done to me if he had the chance (taking away all tech trading possibilities with the AI, setting all the AI nations on your opponent at once, etc.).

[Jaybe]

The best way to teach is to demonstrate! You should have accompanied your workers-on-beach-are-vulnerable message with a demonstration by taking one of his workers (with a single, low-value unit). It would have driven home the message and you would have had the practice!

[Rhothaerill]

I guess I'm just too nice.