The Immortal Storm

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 15

It’s kind of stupid. Not only do I have all those units I also have cannon and cavalry upgrades coming quickly. They have to slog through the jungle just to get to me. I have roads and can easily defend myself despite my lack of dedicated defenders. Whenever the AI attacks the human in their own territory the human player ALWAYS has the advantage. In the case of the enemy having to slog through movement reducing jungle terrain, if you set it up the right way and you’ll never even have to use a defending unit. My 4-attack Immortals, moving on roads, can make mincemeat out of their 2-defense medieval infantry before they even get close to my cities.

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 16

Yep, they’re stupid!

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 17

650ad – One of the keys to a good defensive campaign is having a barracks nearby to quickly get your troops healthy again. Since Thebes was the area the Chinese chose to attack and I didn’t have a barracks there yet I rushed one. Also on this turn I did a massive upgrade of my cannons as I had finished research on metallurgy. My cannons started moving toward the Chinese front where they’d take their toll. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about bombard units not being worth it, but I’ve always thought that they are well worth it. A stack of 20 cannons is going to do a lot of damage to invading units. And they can eventually be upgraded to artillery, my personal favorite bombard unit.

710ad – After roughly 15 Chinese units have met their death at my hands (with only the loss of one musketman because I moved him the wrong direction), I’ve now discovered Military Tradition. I immediately used all my remaining gold to upgrade 30 of the 41 horses I have. The rest of the world has not discovered Gunpowder or Chivalry yet so my freshly minted cavalry won’t be facing knights or musketmen yet (or Chinese Riders since they are my first target). Can you say slaughter?

Here’s a view of my military at current time in the game. As you can see I’m very light on pure defensive units right now, but I don’t expect to really need them for a while. The musketmen I do have will accompany cannon stacks while new musketmen are being built in the core. I don’t plan on building any more Immortals, so the ones I have will be along for the ride and the occasional elite battle. My native work force also has not changed at all since the last picture. My slave force is somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 and much of the jungle in old Egypt is gone already.

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 18

740ad – Complete Sistine Chapel. It was completely worthless for me after rushing Leo’s, but I didn’t want to waste all those shields from my prebuild and it was the only wonder available. I was just starting on the upper tier techs where Smith’s, etc. were located.

After a bit of cavalry relocation, my CavalRumbleâ„¢ officially started. About 25 of my newly minted cavalry invaded Chinese space from the side, rather than going through the jungle like the Chinese were. The city of Tatung, which had been a staging ground for them, was captured along with five workers. Unfortunately I started suffering from some horrible RNG luck and several of my cavs were wounded, which made going after the next city a little more difficult.

750ad – Complete research on education intending to trade it so that the Chinese will receive it and no longer have the free techs from the Great Library. But I find that one or the other of the Ottomans and Chinese apparently finished it the turn before and traded it to the other for another new tech, chivalry. Oh well, no more Great Library, which meant all of my lower path military techs were safe now. Safe meaning I could trade them without the Chinese getting it for free. As it ended up though I didn’t do much more tech trading in the game.

760ad – Capture the city of Tientsin after heavy fighting and many losses. The Chinese had a LOT of units in and around the city and my score of cannons weren’t touching them. Meanwhile they were wounding my cavalry heavily with attacks from medieval infantry and a few Riders. The retreat capability was all that stood in the way of several of my cavs dying outright. By the end of the turn all but three of my 25 cavalry were wounded and 5 of those were dead. With so many of my forces wounded and Chinese Riders coming online I decided to call a halt to the war and gave peace to the Chinese for 23gpt, 135 gold, and their world map. The only tech they had was chivalry, which I had no use for, and they wouldn’t give up a city so I took as much cash as possible. I also traded them wines and incense for 18gpt and 9 gold, the rest of their cash flow. I dialed up the rest of the civs to see if anyone else could buy some luxuries from me since I had an abundance of them. I gave wines to the Ottomans for 1gpt, 90 gold, and their world map, and dyes to France for 50 gold and their world map.

770ad – I had already made the decision to finish this game with a domination win, and I really wanted to do it as quickly as possible. I’ve never had a domination win this early on a standard map at monarch and above before, and I was anxious to get it done before 1000ad. So to that end I decided to pick on civs weaker than China (who was by far the strongest of the AI civs) and set my sights on Germany. With eight healthy cavalry, their three cities wouldn’t last too long. On this turn I took Frankfurt with two cavs, capturing another worker as well.

780ad – Capture Berlin. Quite easy as they had moved their lone pikeman outside the turn before to head toward Frankfurt. All I had to face were two spearmen.

800ad – Capture Konigsberg and obliterate the Germans. The only unfortunate part of this was that the Chinese were able to slip a city in where the old German culture borders were before I could get one in. I was tempted to take it, but decided again not to mess with Chinese Riders if I was going to win this game before 1000ad.

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 19

810ad – My next target is in sight…the Ottomans. My newly healed cavalry, and most of my cannons and Immortals started moving up to Edrine, just adjacent to the Ottoman capitol. A small trade also occurred and I traded gems and spices to China for 13gpt, 45 gold, and their world map. I would need more gold to be able to rush libraries in my newly acquired cities to push the culture radius out for more tiles under my sway for domination.

850ad – Discover China has astronomy but hasn’t traded it yet, so I quickly trade it to the Ottomans (the only civ that has any gold or gpt) for chivalry, 40 gold, and their world map.

860ad – The city of Tyre is founded between Berlin and Konigsberg. The Chinese had already settled a new city where I had intended it to be, but rushing a library caused Tyre to eat into the Chinese inner radius in a few turns. Yep, Dominae it finally happened to me. I think the key is to have more culture than the other city to eat it’s inner ring, since when I settled Tyre it didn’t take it immediately.

On the war front, my invasion force was finally ready in Edrine so I declared war on the Ottomans (yes, ending a 20 turn deal I’d made, but that wasn’t really a concern anymore). I captured Istanbul quickly, despite its Great Wall, and gained Sun Tzu’s Academy in the process. Now I’d have no need to rush any barracks at the front like I did in Egypt a while back. Soon after I also captured Uskudar, which was also close to Edrine. All of this was accomplished by cavalry so that I was able to move my slow movers deeper into Ottoman territory as quickly as possible.

870ad – Capture Iznik, along with a catapult and a settler, on the peninsula near the remaining American island. Again with cavalry only so that my slow movers could get closer to the new capitol and size 12 city Bursa. By now slave workers weren’t much use to me as I was blazing quickly through Ottoman territory. Throughout the few turns I spent fighting Ottomans I only fought one knight and two horsemen. By taking Edrine early on in the game I denied the Ottomans horses and the only reason they had those three must have been a deal with France who had several extra horses. Unlike in China, the Ottoman lands were set up to allow me to pick and choose my battles better. The Ottomans, who also didn’t have iron through much of the game, had only a few pikemen and a few medieval infantry. I even fought one warrior when taking Istanbul.

900ad – After a few turns of cannon bombing, this time bombing that worked, Bursa fell to the Immortals that were part of my Stack of Doom. I deliberately used Immortals instead of cavalry, because in that same turn I was able to use the new road movement through Bursa to capture Antalya and Aydin on the coast, as well as sending eight cavalry toward the last remaining Ottoman city. Also, during the fighting in Bursa I received my third and last great leader. I didn’t really have much for him to do, but I had just researched economics so I could rush Smith’s to free up more gold. It wasn’t really necessary at this point, but I suppose I still have certain builderish tendencies and not using a great leader for one of the better wonders in the game struck me as wrong somehow.

910ad – Another spate of bad RNG luck occurred. My first two cavalry ran into musketmen and made short work of both. But the one lone remaining pikeman in the city successfully killed four of my cavalry (none retreated) before the fifth finished him off!!! I killed the remaining settler that the Ottomans had sent out from the city with my last cavalry and the Ottomans were finished.

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 20

930ad – I spent the next two turns rushing libraries, healing my units and getting as many cavalry as I could ready to attack France. I only had a few turns left before 1000ad so I basically left my Chinese border open with only a few defenders and sent everything else toward my borders with France. I declared war on them and captured both Lyone and Tours on the same turn. I knew I was very close to the domination limit by now (from the mapstat utility), but I wasn’t quite there so I continued to press on as well as setting a few cavalry in the cities to act as resister suppressants. I didn’t want to annihilate the city population as I needed it for the population part of a domination win. I took a chance that the cities with big populations wouldn’t revolt on me before I had achieved the domination win.

940ad – With my remaining attackers I captured Paris and Chartres and started to settle in. Most of my forces were damaged by now since I didn’t bother bombing any of the cities down before attacking them.

970ad – I made peace with France on this turn before they could send a large force back into my newly acquired territory.

990ad –A few culture radiuses expanded from my last round of library rushing, and my domination victory is complete…one turn before my goal of 1000ad!!

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 21

The score at the end…5442. The power graph looks much the same as the score graph.

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 22

And a look back at my forces the turn before victory. As you can see I never really built more defenders. This was a completely offensive game. Throughout the game I did whatever I could to set up favorable matchups with my attackers taking out their attackers first. The only place it didn’t really work was when I was taking the two cities in China, and that was mainly because they had a horde of units to throw at me. If they hadn’t thrown all those units at me at the same time (and I didn’t suffer some bad RNG such as a simple archer taking my cavalry down to one hp before it retreated) then the Chinese offensive would have been much smoother and I wouldn’t have had to give them peace so quickly. If you take a look at my Immortals and remember one of my earlier military advisor posts, you’ll see that I only lost 17 Immortals from the time I started my war on Carthage. I never built another Immortal, but they were verrrry useful throughout. Not only were they great when I was defending China’s treacherous attack right before my CavalRumble™ came online, using them to take Bursa and freeing up my cavalry to take out two of the remaining Ottoman cities and get close to the last saved me a few turns of play.

[Rhothaerill]

MZO Boot Camp V – Part 23

And last but not least, the save on the turn before my victory. Just press enter and let it go through a few build queues before the last city radius expands.

[Solomwi]

I love it. Damn fine stuff, Rhothy. Nothing beats that ultra-early autoraze of what would otherwise be a powerhouse city.

[vmxa1]

I will have to read this soon as it looks like another heroic effort.

[Konquest02]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I will have to read this soon as it looks like another heroic effort.

It is...!

Great Job Rhoth. Unless someone comes up with a better AAR, you are sure gonna get my vote for the Shakespeare Award!

BTW, if people are interested in playing that game, you can find the MZO Boot Camp here. It's a monthly game based mostly on learning that hands out awards for best palyed games, best AAR, best defeat strongest economy and a bunch of other stuff....

Come take a look!

--Kon--

[vmxa1]

I have read through part 6 so far. I like the style you used for the AAR.

Ok I am editing this to update my book marker. Part 9 finished.
Finished 18, one more pass should do it.

[Master Zen]

I don't have the patience for writing AARs of this magnitude so my hat's off to Rhoth for a WONDERDFUL job. Try an epic.

[Harovan]

Looks like a great game, indeed.