It is turn 118 now. I feel rather stupid for what is happening to me. I do have quite some experience against human players from other strategy games, and i do know you can't get away with few units when your opponent might choose to go for aggression. In fact, i know that normally the correct strategy is to build nothing but troops and rape the opponent as hard as you can.
However, i made some misjudgements. With the same experience from other games, i learned most players have a tendency to build way to little troops.
In naval landing games like these, the defender has an advantage. He has the turn after landing to attack the troops in the open (of course you close hills and mountains against landings)
In this game, horses are best used for defending and pikes are best used for attacking. The defender does however need to have a LOT of troops. The defender also has the advantage in that the attacker needs to build a large amount of ships and loses time on transporting his units. On top of that, the attacker will lose more troops and thus suffers more war weariness.
Now because of these advantages for the defender, i decided to delay my offence until after the middle ages. I have a very agressive reputation in civ and thought KC would expect nothing else than a full force attack from me. I judged KC would be smart enough to build horses for defence. I did not think he would choose the offence, certainly since that appears not te be the nature of most players.
Since i have had only 2 units for ages, i was never worried about being military weak compared to KC. Only after i started producing horses, as i build more and more of them and kept hearing i am weak compared to them, i started to get more and more worried.
Now it is turn 118, and i'm afraid i'm scrambling for survival. Last turns, i typed a little per turn log while playing. Sorry for telling things double (or triple), i was typing it while playing and now after providing a sumary, i include the text unaltered. some pictures should be uploaded soon.
The log:
It is now turn 113.
I am 1 turn behind KC in research. We are both researching the same path. Theology-Education-Astronomy-.......
We have been talking about who's gonna get copernicus. This turn, he has researched Astronomy, but not completed copernicus. I will research Astronomy next turn and copernicus could complete the turn after.
Meanwhile, i am building mounted warriors to prepare for possible meetings. I have produced 18 now and am still weak compared to him. As offensive points count twice as much as defensive points and MW's have 3 of em, he must have quite some troops already.
He has been telling me that he would defend himself and try to prolong the game, insinuating that he is expcting agression from me. We also spoke about completing copernicus.
Finally, culture growth tells me i have more libraries than him while he is actually scientific.
Therefore, i am expecting a huge invasion from him when he researches navigation. I can only hope he does not have the galleys to bring them all at once. If they come in waves, i may be able to handle them. If they come all at once, there will be way too many for me to kill and i will lose cities.
Still, that does not mean i should lose hope. I will kill his invaders with great efficiency. This will cause him great war weariness. This war weariness will allow me to research into industrial age and beat him for universal suffrage and ToE.
Turn 118:
I keep building horses and he keeps being strong compared to me. He is telling me he is building universities. Obviously i don't believe him. He researched Navigation. His first boat is getting near.
I hope am gonna survive trough this. He did talk about researching Chivalry and sending knights. I am not sure if that was cowpoop or if he really is gonna do that. If he does, he has been researching 2 optional techs and i will probably research MT to fight his knights efficiently.
I am not gonna build a large load of vessels. First of all, i need to invest most of my production in horses to stand a chance for survival if KC attacks me and second, they cost too much upkeep and i figure in these island battles, defensive units are best for attacking and offensive units are best for defending.
So what i really hope now is that he is gonna be sending me horses, not pikemen.
If he is smart, he does have the opportunity to kick my ass. If he spends all his production and gold on building and upgrading for many vessels full of pikes.
The only advantage i have is that he will need a massive load of vessels to send me his attack force if he chooses to attack me and that he loses time in travel. Time that i can use to build more troops for defence.
Turn 119:
He dropped 2 horses and a pike on my shore. Couldn't get there in time. I am forced to disband 6 of my ICS cities. Worse however is that by moving my boats 2 tiles into sea and back, i spotted 16 more boats comming for me, that could be 48 units. They can land in 2 turns.
I have 33 Mounted warriors now and with some rushbuilding, 10 will be ready next turn. I have 4k more gold so i will be spending some more next turn. I must survive this attack and hopefully harm him with loads of WW.
Turn120:
He thinks i haven't seen his 16 boats.
The units he landed last turn were landed on the south east. He has boarded them again and send the boat north. He took one of his 16 boats and moved it into my obvious vision in western direction. The 15 remaining boats he is moving around trough the ocean "out of my vision" Of course, i have a perimeter of boats to move out into the ocean and back every turn so i know his every move.
I have produced some mounties and i am rushing more of them. Some mounties i sent to the single boat in the east, the rest of the mounties are following the big stack of boats moving to my core. I will keep adding more mounties as i want to decimate his stack in turn. Even if i can't do it in 1 turn and i happen to lose a core city, the damage for KC in war weariness should be worse i think. A city can be rebuild, WW is not so easy to repair here. Certainly not if it is gonna prevent him from beating me to Universal suffrage and ToE. (Also time to do research on communism)
Turn121:
He has landed 6 units. I kill them 6-1. One of my MW became elite in the battle.
Last turn i was military average with 43 mounties. I am now still average with 50 mounties. I'm gonna gonna lower the gold spendings on rushbuilding a bit.
The bastard did research Chivalry and is now building Knights templar. I will go straight for MT to upgrade for cavs. I must say i am not really thrilled to research MT as i really want to beat KC soundly into the industrial age for the important wonders and the race for bombers. But i will have to do this to keep fighting efficiently. Unfortunately i will have MT just a little late and KC has a few turns to attack with Knights while i have only MW to defend.
I have done some research and learned the following facts:
-Universal suffrage has only a minimal effect and is not really worth building.
-As my empire is now, communism would not help my average corruption. Unit support makes up for the lost commerce bonus. Commy allows more cities to be added, but those would have to build tons of buildings before they are usefull. Not counting the WW aspect, i think republic and commy are eachothers equals for my empire.
War weariness is the only real profit for swiching to communism so i hope i can delay the anarchy period as long as possible.
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