Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

Game Report: Adv20 - Desert Domination (page 2 of 3)

Before we get back to the game, some oddities I noticed during the games. The first is a corn on desert tile. Zooming right in and you cannot see any corn, nothing, nada, zilch. I am not sure if this is a Blue Marble thing or not. I'll have to load up the game without BM to test it (I tested it and non-BM is the same)

Secondly, I also needed fog busters ... lots of fog busters. Why? Because I was clearing a lot of real estate and if I leave it fog bound, you create a massive barbarian problem. The very best units for this are units with the sentry promotion. The cheapest unit that I could build to get this promotion was a Chariot promoted with Flanking & Sentry. A unit needs 5XPs to get 2 promotions out of the gate - a barracks gives you 4XPs and the 2 from Theocracy puts me over the line.

Here are some shots of unit visual range (I WB'd these in after I finished the game) ... normal unit, unit with sentry, unit on hill with sentry. I've illustrated the visual range by the yellow box.

[Here is a normal chariot with its normal field of view]

[Here is a +1 vision promoted chariot - it can see 2 tiles out]

[Here is a +1 vision promoted chariot on a hill! - it can only see 2 tiles out]

Strange, I thought a sentry unit on a hill would see 3 tiles. Guess I don't need the sentry promotion if I can park the unit on a hill.

So, back to the game. I 'asked' Napoleon for 260 gold, got it and then declared war. Cats and maceman against archers was a pretty quick kill. The war started in 740AD (turn 147) and was over by 1050AD (turn 165). The only city I kept was Paris.

While this was going on, Mecca was on a permanent Mace build (usually 5 ever 6 turns), while my other cities were on permanent cat builds (about 1 every 4 turns per city). This was my approach for the whole game, set various cities to constant unit builds (maces or camel archers for Mecca and cats or Chariots for the other cities). I was annoyed with myself after the discovery of Guilds as I couldn't build chariots anymore (I only had about 6 for fog busting and 2 Medic Is at that stage). After guilds, the other cities were swapping between cats and explorers (my new fog busters - put these guys on a hill with suitable promotions and barbarian horse archers only had about a 20% change of victory).

Catherine had actually got on my nerves this game (normally she doesn't) and so as France was being wound up, I was looking for my next target.

You can also see from the above picture that Catherine is metal challenged - as in, she doesn't have any. The war against Russia was another pretty straight forward affair ... the biggest issue being logistic in nature. It started in 1060AD (turn 166) and was over in 1260AD (turn 186). I had kept Paris (assuming that capitals are the best cities to keep) so I held onto Moscow (I used a GA to bring it out of revolt and help its borders to expand. Both of these cities were food rich with little hammer potential.

While I had some units en route to Russia, I noticed a couple of longbows supporting an American settler - this would shortly be another city that I would just have to burn so I decided that this was an opportune time to start taking America down. This war started on 1230AD (turn 183). I rarely war on multiple fronts (I guess I am just linear in nature) so this was a rare double war ... admittadly, the Russian war was really in wrap up at this stage (getting cats / maces to the final city to take it) so it wasn't much of a departure from my normal course of events.

I had already decided to let the Americans keep one city and I wasn't going to keep any. In 1400AD (turn 200), I signed the following peace deal with Washington and left him this city as his only city.

The main problems that I was facing at this stage was expenses (I was -20 gold at 0% science, 1437 in the bank) and barbarians harrasing my troops. I had been running at 100% science and using my pillage proceeds to fund research and maintenance. This can be very misleading and if you don't keep taking cities you can run into a brick wall very fast. The war against Germany started in 1420 (turn 202) and proceeded along very similar lines to the other wars. Raze, raze and more raze. My science was turned all the way off (slowly teching steel at this stage) and using the pillaged gold to fund troop finances.

At this stage, Germany was reduced to one small ex-barbarian town in the far South East of the map. I had the firepower to capture this city but it was a few turns away. My economy was bleeding 100 gold per turn at 0% science and Mecca was starving (and losing population) due to war weariness. I signed a peace deal with Germany (1525AD, turn 215) and started to work on my economy.

Here is the world after the peace deal with Germany. I've circled in yellow my cities and their cultural influence. I've also shown America (blue) and Germany (white) alone with the rare fog tiles (red).

How did I work my way out of this to reach a Domination Victory by 1660AD (turn 242) ... the story continues on the next page.