Jericho as Jericho .. WOOO HOOOO!!

[GabrielGL]

hehe.. hate to take up valuable space with fun, but i finally finished the Jericho scenerio playing Jericho and actually WON!!! took me over 150 move tho.. it is fun.. even after u think u have it made, it is still tough!! They just keep on coming from the little twerps who always control 5 bazillion acres variously in the NE corner.. .. and the little jerks pass by the greenies to pour in on poor little me!!!

I dont' think there is a strategy to WIN. .. luck is always envolved even tho u play your best game.. everyone hates us Jericho's [Jerichites? Jerichians?.. hehe..]

I played it on to get 3 mil pop and a bazillion levels in tech just goofing and exploring... can't wait til u guys get some tech stuff in ..

I have a couple of BMP files (no graphics conversion prog's .. sorry) which I am attaching if possible.. may be too big.. one is the page as finished with land /cities /tech level etc.. The other is the econ model at the end.. cranking edu, techs, etc.. and supported all the warriors on less than 0.1% of the budget.. hehe.. in attack could have generated 15+ warriors per turn at least for a few turns.. would have turned the econ to hell of course.. took me hours to accomplish all the above so pls excuse the self back patting

hmm .. guess i can't upload a pic. or don't know how .. anyway if anyone wants to see em I can send em up via email or whatever.. later all..

Oh, and as always keep up the good work and let me know if I can help in any way..

[Mark_Everson]

Congratulations Gabriel! I've yet to win that one, although I've only tried about five times so far.

Oh, and as always keep up the good work and let me know if I can help in any way..

The playtesting and reports are already helping! If you decide you want to work on something more detailed, just let us know what your skills are, and what you like to work on, and we'll find an area for you to contribute!

[LDiCesare]

Congrats. I managed to beat it only once myself. I had a bit of a strategy, but I am not sure it can be repeated easily, as you may or may not have time to move before the first opponent comes upon your land.

[GabrielGL]

Well sadly I know didlysquat about Java or I'd be happy to help.. never learned it, tho I am sure it is pretty straightforward.. just one of those things.. Given that I guess I'll just have to continue to be "play tester" rank.. hehe.. And doubly sadly I have no graphics experience or skills.. What I can do tho is help debug or whatever.. if u get reports that so and so happens if such and such, I can help verify to the extent that my pc is able.. Or maybe u want some kind of pretest or partial stuff looked at before inclusion.. that kind of thing.. sorry..

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gabriel:

Playtester is quite valuable by itself. If you decide you want to go further, there are two possibilities that come to mind.

1. A naval model -- you would need to understand some about real-world naval combat, and how the units and combat system works for land combat first.

2. Make up new scenarios -- Clash has extensive scenario-generation capabilities even now. If you are interested in doing things like the Carthage scenario to add to our list, let me know. I can then give you enough info to get you started.

Cya,

Mark

[Martin the Dane]

Well I find the Jericho scenario when played as the Jerichoans to be the most dificult scenario currently available. But there is a way to win, if not each time then around 50%. It's not easy but its doable, but you have to win your first battle, and do it befor your nearest neighbour gets to build his first additional unit. If you manage that you stand a good chance of wining. if not you'll soon be overrun.

[GabrielGL]

Hehe.. yep that about sums it up.. by stealing population squares constantly that helps too.. Another problem is that if u get many battles on your land, even if u win, u lose so much population from collateral damage that u may lose the game anyway even winning a good number of your battles..

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Martin, thanks for describing your strategy. I hadn't tried that approach. I'll go see if I can do it right now!

Originally posted by GabrielGL
by stealing population squares constantly that helps too..

Gabriel, shame on you That is cheating using a known bug!

Maybe we should limit population that can be transported to something like 2x unit manpower for now, just to make the population-stealing cheat a bit less easy for D7.2. Long term of course we'll have a better solution, some of which have already been suggested.

What does everyone think?

[Mark_Everson]

Finally won!

Hi Guys:

I Finally beat the Jericho scenario as Jericho! I'm still not sure how you can win 50% of the time as Martin says, but at least with a bit of luck on my side I was able to do it. I moved my first unit north at the beginning of the game, and caught the guy directly above me with his pants down . He must have been on the "kamikaze" AI setting, since I was just able to walk into his home city unopposed. Of course, he took mine. But then the first rush of everyone's Warriors heading to Jericho screwed him up rather than me . Then I was able to go back and take back the home city a little later. I think we could make this scenario even tougher to win as Jericho with some AI tweaks.

The other thing I hadn't realized about the Jericho scenario is that building all those Warriors draws down the population very severely. Hopefully the new build limitations for how much population can go into the military will fix that. Laurent, is that so? The economic orders to build only Warriors right at the start are reasonable, but they really put the economy in a ditch if you keep it up long-term. We can certainly fix that when the economic AI comes along, but maybe I can think of a quick and dirty way to do something like that sooner.

Anyway, I had a good time, and can't wait until we add a few more facets to the game. I'll give it another shot in a bit when I'm tired, and see if I can't figure out how Martin is able to win a substantial fraction of the time. Care to post a spoiler Martin?

[Martin the Dane]

Well Mark, I allready did, but here are a few more:

**** MAYOUR SPOILER in 5 parts ****

1: When you wander North take most of you pop with you, and don't wait, just runn for your first naighbour, if you are lucky you will catch him befor he leaves his teretorry.

2: If you manage to kill him in the first encounter(>50% chance), you now controll a quite large population capable of turning out wariours at a significant speed. Oh btw. remember to drop off your pop at the first conqured square, they'll get to work on building new units right away.

3: If you take most of your pop with you, you'll not suffer overly if one of the oponents manages to take Jericho, but remember that Jericho is in a high productive location, so as soon as you have the manpower to spare, secure it, one or at the most two units should be enough. The AI won't send staks, untill your Northern stronghold is up and runing and able to block that.

4: As soon as you have captured Beth-Shan build an army and take Byblos. The sooner the better, due to the seriouse drain on population caused by the massive build-up.

5: You'll now have the time and resources to build a good-size amry to take oer the remaining three civs, and if you are lucky they have done most of the job, by fighting among themselves.

If you don't win your first encounter you are lost. If you do you'll stand a very good chance of winning.

[Mark_Everson]

Ah Martin, now I see! Cute!

The advantages of being a nomad We will have that in a more formalized way as Clash becomes more mature.

Of course the people won't be very productive at higher population density in the conquered city, but because of the peculiarities of the Jericho scenario, its a good solution.

If we give the cities walls though I think your "nomad rush" solution may be thrown into the dustbin of history. At least if we ensure every AI is smart enough to leave at least one garison unit. That would be trivial to put into the scenario file.

Thanks for the hints writeup!

Mark

[GabrielGL]

By "steal", I meant capture.. not the "take population" deal.

Most city units will not take back squares if they are alone. This leaves the captured square to support your ambitions..

The real battles tend to take place along the waterfront, so by managing the off-water cities, you can do pretty well..

Taking citizens would help too, but is not necessary..
It still is heavily leveraged on the first encounters though.. u can stand aside to some extent to allow the others to drain their resources too, but be careful or they will be streaming warriors at you..

[LDiCesare]

The population limit for building units does hinder building warriors sometimes in Jericho.
My own tactics to win was to flee east with a lot of population, move far enough not to be attacked and settle, then come back to Jericho.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by GabrielGL
By "steal", I meant capture.. not the "take population" deal.

Most city units will not take back squares if they are alone. This leaves the captured square to support your ambitions..

Sorry Gabriel, misunderstood. On the take back squares, we can change that by modding the scenario AI. I may take a shot at it.

[Mark_Everson]

The Jericho Challenge is back with Demo 7.2!

Just wanted to let the Jericho fan club know that I've tweaked the Jericho AI a bit to make the scenario even harder to win. I think its going to be Very difficult to win now, none of this 50% of the time stuff! At least I don't think it'll be that way unless you cheat. Check out the D7.2 thread up top for the details.