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Hey guys! The bad news is….I had to report for work today….the upshot to that is that it FORCED me to pull myself away from Civ for a while, so I figured while I’m here and until I can get my “fix” later this evening, I might as well write about it….
Some interesting notes from my first “Huge-16 Game” too, that highlight the importance of a few of the things we’ve been talking about here…good stuff, GREAT game!
Comments to the comments and questions:
Chris: I think the main difference is that I really try hard to find someone to battle during the latter stages of the Ancient Era. Specifically, my “target civ” to attack has 8-12 cities and no iron….::evil grin:: So…at the end of the Ancient Era (and sometimes lasting through to the early part of the Middle Ages), I’m hacking and slashing, and the time after that is spent bringing those relatively recent acquisitions up to par with the rest of the empire.
That, coupled with the hatefully expensive upgrade program (Pikemen --à Riflemen = 100g EACH…UGH!), (Catapult -à Cannon = 40g each), and a few irresistible builds (Hospital, Factory) pretty much keeps me tied down through the bulk of the Industrial Age….and if I finish up sooner, then I’m verging on tanks and Infantry –another upgrade cycle ::sigh:: so I’ll just hold off my attack till I get the good stuff.
Dissident: re: Early-Game Research – ‘s all about gold mines, rivers, and roads. If you’re looking for an early game boost (and this is very much dependent on geography), one thing that’s worked for me is if your capitol starts on a river, CRAM cities in along that river, veering off that path slightly to take advantage of gold mines fairly near your capitol (founding cities ON the mine squares when possible.) High corruption or no, if you throw ENOUGH gold at the problem, you will begin to make headway….
Henry! Yes sir….VelociCivSlave reporting for duty! I SORTA remember what the whole sleep thing is like since this game came out… And thank you for the compliment! Got me blushin’ here as I write this note….superior brain, eh? I’ll have to see if I can convince my co-workers of that….I’m regarded as the “token hippie” ‘round here.
::nods to both Henry and Jguy:: ‘k guys….the checks are IN the mail….seriously….thank you both….and I’m glad that this thread is proving helpful. Already, the stuff that’s been discussed here is laying the foundation for what should be an AMAZING strat guide for this game! :: pondering a moment:: “On another plane….” Yep….now that’s one I should be able to convince my co-workers of pretty easily….
blc: AWESOME idea! Culture Capture seems like it would work VERY well for religious civs, too….cheaper temples at the outset makes for happy citizens, bigger borders and more culture, more quickly….VERY cool!
GaH: Thanks man! And I'm glad you're liking the thread! Looks like we're pushing the 250 post limit, and will have to open Part two of the thread, but hey....that's cool....I get the feeling there's plenty more to be said!
And an excellent call about using your workers in gangs! Quite right, too! The faster you can make a target tile more productive (especially if that target tile is already being worked), the better for the city in question! I had a number of similar instances in the game outlined below where I would not have completed a wonder ahead of the opposition if not for gang-forming!
Game Notes
Huge Map, 16 Civs, Regent Level Play
Velocirabi, leading the Babylonians
Had an average start….decent terrain, but my capitol was at the tip of a short peninsula, which, as has been talked about here, did nasty things to my cities founded later, since ALL of them were pretty far from my capitol, requiring me to think about relocating it sooner, rather than later.
Began expanding in REX fashion from the get-go, taking the occasional break to build a few additional workers so I could build roads at a decent rate (I MISS my Industrious French workers!), and in roughly a triangular pattern (began at the tip of that little peninsula, and began founding cities following the coast till I encountered border markers, thusly)
  x
  x
  x
x
  x
  x
  x
Since I chose the Babylonians, I made temples a BIG priority, setting them as my first build everywhere (even before garrisons). At half price and with pop-rushing, it was a snap to get them in place, and my borders simply exploded!
Soon as I saw borders, I changed my expansion focus to something like:
.........x
......x...x
...x......x
x.........x
...x......x
......x...x
.........x
Backfilling from there (note that in some cases, I was able to space my cities a little farther apart cos of border expansions in my older cities, allowing for wider placement with no gaps….also note that because of marauding barbarians—and sometimes rival Civs—some cities wound up being only three apart….but in general I tried for a fairly balanced approach where spacing was concerned).
My nearest neighbors were the Russians (butting up against the “top” portion of the shape you see above), and the Aztecs (butting up against the right portion of the shape above), and in addition to them, we shared the continent with the Zulu (north of Russia), Iroquois (north of Zulu), Americans (past a choke point to the NE), English (North of America), and Persia (north of England)….so….LOTS of early contacts, but not much tech swapping after I snagged the Great Library (which sent me into a largely useless golden age….I wasn’t working on any additional wonders, didn’t yet have the tech to switch to republic, and had already pop-rushed all my early infrastructure, so I build swordsmen….::yawn:: TOTAL waste of a GA, but….the GL and free tech was still kinna nice….
So….lots of early game tension as I tried to out-expand the AI…lots of wide open terrain meant no choke points I could use to my advantage, either. I did pretty well I think, having consistently the largest number of cities of any civ on the continent (I kept track each time we’d hold diplomacy).
The Russians were actually fairly slow to head my way, and partly this was due to local geography….explorations revealed a wide expanse of desert terrain separating us…true, it DID contain a whopping SEVEN tiles of spices, but still….it’s desert.
I was trying to expand to it, and got to the edge of the desert, but when the Rus saw me heading that way, they suddenly got a lot more interested, lit a fire under it, and next thing I know….there are two new Russian cities in the desert.
DRAT.
Meanwhile, the Aztecs were rapidly becoming an ancient-era Godzilla…..they certainly lived up to their fearsome reputation, at one point, fighting a coalition of Americans, Zulu, Persians AND Russians to a standstill! Despite repeated attempts by this large, cooperative group of nations, only one Aztec city fell, and was set upon by no less than thirty Jaguar warriors, who swarmed in and took the place back two turns later, then proceeded to pick the attack force apart relentlessly.
I was very glad I sat that one out, tho I did have a small, serviceable army (three battle groups, consisting of 4 Swordsmen, 2 Horsemen, 2 Catapults in each group), sitting on the borders of Aztec land….had they faltered, I’d have jumped in as well.
Tech-wise, I was one of the first people to snag “Iron working” as a tech, and saw that I had two deposits of the stuff inside my borders. Sweet.
I also took note of the fact that neither the Rus NOR the Aztecs had any, though the Rus had easy access—a lone mountain that they were far closer to than anyone else….sooner or later, they’d snag it. Also, neither of my near neighbors had horses—I had one source, the Americans had two.
All of this left me feeling fairly secure. True, my army was smaller, but we had superior goods…horses AND iron, and I was the only Civ on my continent to have researched Mathematics, so I could count the catapult among my strategic advantages (of which I had six total).
Not bad….not bad.
Then, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, the freakin’ Persians decide to declare war on me. Fortunately, the force they had dispatched toward the Aztecs got wiped out to a man, and I never saw the first Persian soldier before I was able to contact them again and sue for peace.
Xerxes musta just got up on the wrong side of the bed or something.
So….I watched the armies of rival civs clash in and around my border towns….everybody was violating my borders, nobody would listen to me when I’d tell them to leave, so eventually I stopped trying. As a safeguard, I moved my battle groups toward the worst of the fighting, figuring if they wanted to kill each other on my turf, that was cool, but the first worker of mine that got kidnapped, I was gonna unload on whoever did it.
Lots of biding my time, and LOTS of culture. In fact, in the ancient era, my culture was nearly twice that of everyone else’s combined. It was insane.
I was watching borders, too, and figured that the Aztecs would eventually bite off more than they could chew….and when they did, my plan was to swoop in on them and snag three of their cities bordering mine.
As it stood, despite being lush, rich ground (lots of gold, lots of rivers, and a TON of bonus food tiles), my rather large Empire had all of two luxury resources (both dyes, and both near the capitol). The Aztecs had silks and ivory, and I was looking to expand my options, so I started casting my eye toward selectively acquiring Aztec cities, and repositioning my armies accordingly.
Before the battle groups could even complete the move, two of the three cities I had my eye on were culturally absorbed into my fold, and a few turns after the armies were re-positioned, the other fell as well! Talk about a totally bloodless battle! I was loving it, AND I now had a decent spread of luxury items (2 tradable Ivory and 1 tradable Dye). That, along with the tech lead I was enjoying, courtesy of the GL, and being surrounded by iron and horse poor neighbors….life was good.
Still….I bided my time….when I committed to war with someone, I wanted to make it count. Wanted to make it decisive. And until then, I was content to build on my tech and culture leads, making good use of my surplus luxury items to keep my rivals cash-poor and use the money to ratchet my research all the higher.
Broke through to the middle ages in 500-something AD, WELL ahead of everybody else on my continent, switched to Republic and kept steaming right along. Wonder-wise, I snagged the Observatory and Newton’s University in the same city, and got Sun Tzu’s for good measure. Also during this period, I relocated my palace to a more centrally located city, taking a small hit to Empire-Wide corruption (I actually LOST 8 gold per turn initially, because my oldest cities were larger and produced more, but I knew long term, it would be a boon).
Also, the Russians managed to land on a little nub of shoreline that hadn’t yet fallen inside my borders and set up a miserable little town there. THAT ticked me off, and was the moment that I began thinking in terms of making eventual war with the Russians, rather than the Aztecs, especially since three Aztec cities had fallen to me already….pruning them sufficiently that they just didn’t seem like the Godzilla they had before.
As this segment of the game wore on, three MORE Aztec cities would be absorbed into my burgeoning Empire, reducing the Aztecs to a smallish (but still heavily armed) state off to my east.
Halfway through the Middle Ages, the folk of “the other continent” got in touch with us and ohhh man was it scary looking over there! The lower half of the continent was fairly orderly. The French, then the Japanese, a small Germanic state just north of them, slowly being crushed between the Japanese and a MASSIVE China….north of China though, it was total chaos…Greeks in the middle, beset on all sides by Romans, Indians, and Egyptians…borders were total chaos, and there was almost constant warfare. Clearly, the Big Dogs on the other continent were China, followed somewhat distantly by Japan and France, while on our side of the Pond, I came out on top of the heap, followed somewhat closely by America and Russia, with Persia somewhat weaker, and the others (Aztec, Iroquois, Zulu) all having been reduced to minor roles and technological backwaters.
True to form, about ten turns after selling contact information all around, the Aztecs declared war on China and India, and those two nations pressured the Rus, Persians, and Zulu into declaring against the Aztec Nation.
Without iron (The Rus finally build a city out toward their source of Iron), I knew the sturdy Aztecs could not hope to stand up against such an onslaught.
I had only built roads to one of my two sources of iron, but when war was declared, I set two workers to build a road to “activate” my second source of iron—and actually “found a new reserve” a few turns later. This, I traded to the Aztecs, and gave them Chivalry for good measure.
On their own, they traded for horses (from the Americans, I assume), and began cranking out veteran Knights like nobody’s business, while they sent their older, outdated troops to hold off the invasion until the new stuff could come online.
The early battles did not go well….their aging army of Jaguars, Archers, and Spearmen were ground up by Immortals and Swordsmen arriving in droves.
Clearly, if they were to survive, they’d need a bit more help, so I gave them Right of Passage through my lands, and suddenly, the entire landscape of the battle changed.
As before, much of it was fought in my turf anyway, but now, with access to my road network, the jaguars began inflicting more punishment on the floundering Russian, Persian, and Zulu troops. Aztec units could move into position more quickly, and they used that with deadly effect on their enemies.
Soon after, a large contingent of eight Aztec Knights poured through my road network, and swept a contingent of Impis and Immortals aside, and suddenly the coalition was on the defensive.
Meanwhile, I had been busy building Knights of my own (and upgrading my existing horse troops), and quietly repositioning my armies on the Russian border.
My attack would consist of four prongs.
One group was devoted exclusively to the capture of the “cheese-town” that the Russians had set down on my coast.
The second group would drive straight for the capitol.
Third group would raid the desert and secure the spice sources I had been after ages ago, and the fourth group would attack Russian border towns up near where the Russian border met the American border.
Absolute mayhem followed, and I found in the Aztecs, a sturdy and QUITE capable military ally. On two separate occasions, when my damaged troops were threatened by possible counterattack, the Aztecs swept in with Knights and took the opposition forces out before they could move against me.
They were so good, in fact, that they actually beat me to a couple of my combat objectives, capturing three Russian towns I had set my sights on! It was the first time I have ever played a game with only AI players that I really felt as though I had a PARTNER in the battle. This was not some useless, “fifth wheel” military ally…..this was a capable and deadly partner, and together, the Aztecs and I picked apart the Russian Empire, and while they were helping me against the Rus, the Aztecs also put a serious hurtin’ on the Zulu and Persian armies.
Absolutely awesome battles!
I got a great leader out of the deal and made an army out of it with an eye toward the Heroic Epic and such (hoping like HELL for a second leader tho, so I can rush a project in the future!), and made peace with the Rus when they were down to four cities….at that point, my army was pretty widely scattered and badly out of position, and war weariness was starting to become an issue, so I accepted peace in order to re-organize my armies and get ready to polish them off once and for all.
During the course of the battle, I broke through to the Industrial Age (so far, I’m the only one on either continent to do so—city icons for the other have not changed yet), and am two turns away from being able to build hospitals.
One of the cities captured by the Aztecs recently reverted back to Russian control, and I’ve duly put in on my target list as the troops reposition themselves.
Another recent development, Nationalism, so all 33 of my pikemen were upgraded to riflemen (and btw, I think the main reason I don’t fight during this time is the fact that those stupid riflemen shoot each time they move….UGH…how annoying!). Anyway, Riflemen defending most of my towns, swordsmen gathering to be my sacrificial lambs, an army in the field looking for an easy kill, and a core group of veteran and elite Knights at the ready.
The destruction of the Russian Empire has solidified my position as this continent’s superpower (though, score wise, I am listed as third, behind both China and France), it has brought me new and valuable resources, and it earned me the trust and respect of the Aztecs, who proved themselves to be an invaluable asset! Best thing I ever did was sell them iron and give them a tech!
I finally forced myself to stop at ten minutes to three this morning…..but I can hardly wait to get home! As fascinating as this game has been, I find that I can’t wait to see what’ll happen next!
-=Vel=-
Some interesting notes from my first “Huge-16 Game” too, that highlight the importance of a few of the things we’ve been talking about here…good stuff, GREAT game!
Comments to the comments and questions:
Chris: I think the main difference is that I really try hard to find someone to battle during the latter stages of the Ancient Era. Specifically, my “target civ” to attack has 8-12 cities and no iron….::evil grin:: So…at the end of the Ancient Era (and sometimes lasting through to the early part of the Middle Ages), I’m hacking and slashing, and the time after that is spent bringing those relatively recent acquisitions up to par with the rest of the empire.
That, coupled with the hatefully expensive upgrade program (Pikemen --à Riflemen = 100g EACH…UGH!), (Catapult -à Cannon = 40g each), and a few irresistible builds (Hospital, Factory) pretty much keeps me tied down through the bulk of the Industrial Age….and if I finish up sooner, then I’m verging on tanks and Infantry –another upgrade cycle ::sigh:: so I’ll just hold off my attack till I get the good stuff.
Dissident: re: Early-Game Research – ‘s all about gold mines, rivers, and roads. If you’re looking for an early game boost (and this is very much dependent on geography), one thing that’s worked for me is if your capitol starts on a river, CRAM cities in along that river, veering off that path slightly to take advantage of gold mines fairly near your capitol (founding cities ON the mine squares when possible.) High corruption or no, if you throw ENOUGH gold at the problem, you will begin to make headway….
Henry! Yes sir….VelociCivSlave reporting for duty!
I SORTA remember what the whole sleep thing is like since this game came out… And thank you for the compliment! Got me blushin’ here as I write this note….superior brain, eh? I’ll have to see if I can convince my co-workers of that….I’m regarded as the “token hippie” ‘round here.::nods to both Henry and Jguy:: ‘k guys….the checks are IN the mail….seriously….thank you both….and I’m glad that this thread is proving helpful. Already, the stuff that’s been discussed here is laying the foundation for what should be an AMAZING strat guide for this game! :: pondering a moment:: “On another plane….” Yep….now that’s one I should be able to convince my co-workers of pretty easily….
blc: AWESOME idea! Culture Capture seems like it would work VERY well for religious civs, too….cheaper temples at the outset makes for happy citizens, bigger borders and more culture, more quickly….VERY cool!
GaH:
Thanks man! And I'm glad you're liking the thread! Looks like we're pushing the 250 post limit, and will have to open Part two of the thread, but hey....that's cool....I get the feeling there's plenty more to be said!And an excellent call about using your workers in gangs! Quite right, too! The faster you can make a target tile more productive (especially if that target tile is already being worked), the better for the city in question! I had a number of similar instances in the game outlined below where I would not have completed a wonder ahead of the opposition if not for gang-forming!
Game Notes
Huge Map, 16 Civs, Regent Level Play
Velocirabi, leading the Babylonians
Had an average start….decent terrain, but my capitol was at the tip of a short peninsula, which, as has been talked about here, did nasty things to my cities founded later, since ALL of them were pretty far from my capitol, requiring me to think about relocating it sooner, rather than later.
Began expanding in REX fashion from the get-go, taking the occasional break to build a few additional workers so I could build roads at a decent rate (I MISS my Industrious French workers!), and in roughly a triangular pattern (began at the tip of that little peninsula, and began founding cities following the coast till I encountered border markers, thusly)
  x
  x
  x
x
  x
  x
  x
Since I chose the Babylonians, I made temples a BIG priority, setting them as my first build everywhere (even before garrisons). At half price and with pop-rushing, it was a snap to get them in place, and my borders simply exploded!
Soon as I saw borders, I changed my expansion focus to something like:
.........x
......x...x
...x......x
x.........x
...x......x
......x...x
.........x
Backfilling from there (note that in some cases, I was able to space my cities a little farther apart cos of border expansions in my older cities, allowing for wider placement with no gaps….also note that because of marauding barbarians—and sometimes rival Civs—some cities wound up being only three apart….but in general I tried for a fairly balanced approach where spacing was concerned).
My nearest neighbors were the Russians (butting up against the “top” portion of the shape you see above), and the Aztecs (butting up against the right portion of the shape above), and in addition to them, we shared the continent with the Zulu (north of Russia), Iroquois (north of Zulu), Americans (past a choke point to the NE), English (North of America), and Persia (north of England)….so….LOTS of early contacts, but not much tech swapping after I snagged the Great Library (which sent me into a largely useless golden age….I wasn’t working on any additional wonders, didn’t yet have the tech to switch to republic, and had already pop-rushed all my early infrastructure, so I build swordsmen….::yawn:: TOTAL waste of a GA, but….the GL and free tech was still kinna nice….
So….lots of early game tension as I tried to out-expand the AI…lots of wide open terrain meant no choke points I could use to my advantage, either. I did pretty well I think, having consistently the largest number of cities of any civ on the continent (I kept track each time we’d hold diplomacy).
The Russians were actually fairly slow to head my way, and partly this was due to local geography….explorations revealed a wide expanse of desert terrain separating us…true, it DID contain a whopping SEVEN tiles of spices, but still….it’s desert.
I was trying to expand to it, and got to the edge of the desert, but when the Rus saw me heading that way, they suddenly got a lot more interested, lit a fire under it, and next thing I know….there are two new Russian cities in the desert.
DRAT.
Meanwhile, the Aztecs were rapidly becoming an ancient-era Godzilla…..they certainly lived up to their fearsome reputation, at one point, fighting a coalition of Americans, Zulu, Persians AND Russians to a standstill! Despite repeated attempts by this large, cooperative group of nations, only one Aztec city fell, and was set upon by no less than thirty Jaguar warriors, who swarmed in and took the place back two turns later, then proceeded to pick the attack force apart relentlessly.
I was very glad I sat that one out, tho I did have a small, serviceable army (three battle groups, consisting of 4 Swordsmen, 2 Horsemen, 2 Catapults in each group), sitting on the borders of Aztec land….had they faltered, I’d have jumped in as well.
Tech-wise, I was one of the first people to snag “Iron working” as a tech, and saw that I had two deposits of the stuff inside my borders. Sweet.
I also took note of the fact that neither the Rus NOR the Aztecs had any, though the Rus had easy access—a lone mountain that they were far closer to than anyone else….sooner or later, they’d snag it. Also, neither of my near neighbors had horses—I had one source, the Americans had two.
All of this left me feeling fairly secure. True, my army was smaller, but we had superior goods…horses AND iron, and I was the only Civ on my continent to have researched Mathematics, so I could count the catapult among my strategic advantages (of which I had six total).
Not bad….not bad.
Then, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, the freakin’ Persians decide to declare war on me. Fortunately, the force they had dispatched toward the Aztecs got wiped out to a man, and I never saw the first Persian soldier before I was able to contact them again and sue for peace.
Xerxes musta just got up on the wrong side of the bed or something.
So….I watched the armies of rival civs clash in and around my border towns….everybody was violating my borders, nobody would listen to me when I’d tell them to leave, so eventually I stopped trying. As a safeguard, I moved my battle groups toward the worst of the fighting, figuring if they wanted to kill each other on my turf, that was cool, but the first worker of mine that got kidnapped, I was gonna unload on whoever did it.
Lots of biding my time, and LOTS of culture. In fact, in the ancient era, my culture was nearly twice that of everyone else’s combined. It was insane.
I was watching borders, too, and figured that the Aztecs would eventually bite off more than they could chew….and when they did, my plan was to swoop in on them and snag three of their cities bordering mine.
As it stood, despite being lush, rich ground (lots of gold, lots of rivers, and a TON of bonus food tiles), my rather large Empire had all of two luxury resources (both dyes, and both near the capitol). The Aztecs had silks and ivory, and I was looking to expand my options, so I started casting my eye toward selectively acquiring Aztec cities, and repositioning my armies accordingly.
Before the battle groups could even complete the move, two of the three cities I had my eye on were culturally absorbed into my fold, and a few turns after the armies were re-positioned, the other fell as well! Talk about a totally bloodless battle! I was loving it, AND I now had a decent spread of luxury items (2 tradable Ivory and 1 tradable Dye). That, along with the tech lead I was enjoying, courtesy of the GL, and being surrounded by iron and horse poor neighbors….life was good.
Still….I bided my time….when I committed to war with someone, I wanted to make it count. Wanted to make it decisive. And until then, I was content to build on my tech and culture leads, making good use of my surplus luxury items to keep my rivals cash-poor and use the money to ratchet my research all the higher.
Broke through to the middle ages in 500-something AD, WELL ahead of everybody else on my continent, switched to Republic and kept steaming right along. Wonder-wise, I snagged the Observatory and Newton’s University in the same city, and got Sun Tzu’s for good measure. Also during this period, I relocated my palace to a more centrally located city, taking a small hit to Empire-Wide corruption (I actually LOST 8 gold per turn initially, because my oldest cities were larger and produced more, but I knew long term, it would be a boon).
Also, the Russians managed to land on a little nub of shoreline that hadn’t yet fallen inside my borders and set up a miserable little town there. THAT ticked me off, and was the moment that I began thinking in terms of making eventual war with the Russians, rather than the Aztecs, especially since three Aztec cities had fallen to me already….pruning them sufficiently that they just didn’t seem like the Godzilla they had before.
As this segment of the game wore on, three MORE Aztec cities would be absorbed into my burgeoning Empire, reducing the Aztecs to a smallish (but still heavily armed) state off to my east.
Halfway through the Middle Ages, the folk of “the other continent” got in touch with us and ohhh man was it scary looking over there! The lower half of the continent was fairly orderly. The French, then the Japanese, a small Germanic state just north of them, slowly being crushed between the Japanese and a MASSIVE China….north of China though, it was total chaos…Greeks in the middle, beset on all sides by Romans, Indians, and Egyptians…borders were total chaos, and there was almost constant warfare. Clearly, the Big Dogs on the other continent were China, followed somewhat distantly by Japan and France, while on our side of the Pond, I came out on top of the heap, followed somewhat closely by America and Russia, with Persia somewhat weaker, and the others (Aztec, Iroquois, Zulu) all having been reduced to minor roles and technological backwaters.
True to form, about ten turns after selling contact information all around, the Aztecs declared war on China and India, and those two nations pressured the Rus, Persians, and Zulu into declaring against the Aztec Nation.
Without iron (The Rus finally build a city out toward their source of Iron), I knew the sturdy Aztecs could not hope to stand up against such an onslaught.
I had only built roads to one of my two sources of iron, but when war was declared, I set two workers to build a road to “activate” my second source of iron—and actually “found a new reserve” a few turns later. This, I traded to the Aztecs, and gave them Chivalry for good measure.
On their own, they traded for horses (from the Americans, I assume), and began cranking out veteran Knights like nobody’s business, while they sent their older, outdated troops to hold off the invasion until the new stuff could come online.
The early battles did not go well….their aging army of Jaguars, Archers, and Spearmen were ground up by Immortals and Swordsmen arriving in droves.
Clearly, if they were to survive, they’d need a bit more help, so I gave them Right of Passage through my lands, and suddenly, the entire landscape of the battle changed.
As before, much of it was fought in my turf anyway, but now, with access to my road network, the jaguars began inflicting more punishment on the floundering Russian, Persian, and Zulu troops. Aztec units could move into position more quickly, and they used that with deadly effect on their enemies.
Soon after, a large contingent of eight Aztec Knights poured through my road network, and swept a contingent of Impis and Immortals aside, and suddenly the coalition was on the defensive.
Meanwhile, I had been busy building Knights of my own (and upgrading my existing horse troops), and quietly repositioning my armies on the Russian border.
My attack would consist of four prongs.
One group was devoted exclusively to the capture of the “cheese-town” that the Russians had set down on my coast.
The second group would drive straight for the capitol.
Third group would raid the desert and secure the spice sources I had been after ages ago, and the fourth group would attack Russian border towns up near where the Russian border met the American border.
Absolute mayhem followed, and I found in the Aztecs, a sturdy and QUITE capable military ally. On two separate occasions, when my damaged troops were threatened by possible counterattack, the Aztecs swept in with Knights and took the opposition forces out before they could move against me.
They were so good, in fact, that they actually beat me to a couple of my combat objectives, capturing three Russian towns I had set my sights on! It was the first time I have ever played a game with only AI players that I really felt as though I had a PARTNER in the battle. This was not some useless, “fifth wheel” military ally…..this was a capable and deadly partner, and together, the Aztecs and I picked apart the Russian Empire, and while they were helping me against the Rus, the Aztecs also put a serious hurtin’ on the Zulu and Persian armies.
Absolutely awesome battles!
I got a great leader out of the deal and made an army out of it with an eye toward the Heroic Epic and such (hoping like HELL for a second leader tho, so I can rush a project in the future!), and made peace with the Rus when they were down to four cities….at that point, my army was pretty widely scattered and badly out of position, and war weariness was starting to become an issue, so I accepted peace in order to re-organize my armies and get ready to polish them off once and for all.
During the course of the battle, I broke through to the Industrial Age (so far, I’m the only one on either continent to do so—city icons for the other have not changed yet), and am two turns away from being able to build hospitals.
One of the cities captured by the Aztecs recently reverted back to Russian control, and I’ve duly put in on my target list as the troops reposition themselves.
Another recent development, Nationalism, so all 33 of my pikemen were upgraded to riflemen (and btw, I think the main reason I don’t fight during this time is the fact that those stupid riflemen shoot each time they move….UGH…how annoying!). Anyway, Riflemen defending most of my towns, swordsmen gathering to be my sacrificial lambs, an army in the field looking for an easy kill, and a core group of veteran and elite Knights at the ready.
The destruction of the Russian Empire has solidified my position as this continent’s superpower (though, score wise, I am listed as third, behind both China and France), it has brought me new and valuable resources, and it earned me the trust and respect of the Aztecs, who proved themselves to be an invaluable asset! Best thing I ever did was sell them iron and give them a tech!
I finally forced myself to stop at ten minutes to three this morning…..but I can hardly wait to get home! As fascinating as this game has been, I find that I can’t wait to see what’ll happen next!
-=Vel=-
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