So Pike and I have been playing a little game of Civ IV over the past couple of days. Standard enough settings; just she and I, Pangaea map, regular sized world, etc. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t play as she was expecting me to play.
See, normally we’re both turtles and techers. As I’ve said before on this blog I very much like to establish a solid defense, build up within it, establish a strong technological lead, and then strike once I am prepared and assured victory. But I knew this wouldn’t work with Pike, because she does the exact same thing, and it would be unlikely that I could establish a significant tech lead at any point for long enough to overrun her.
So I did something unorthodox, and this unorthodoxy proved successful. What I did was, I built an army. Not a vast 30-unit stack of doom, just a moderate sized stack, but enough that I could bring force to bear against any one city of my choosing and hopefully conquer it.
Now, the eagle-eyed and Civ-informed among you might notice something from that picture. Nibru is a city of the Sumerians. Sumeria is led by Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is a Defensive leader. In fact, once I got eyes on the city, I discovered that she had very wisely been whipping archers out every turn, and even though it lacks a barracks, they all started with decent promotions anyway. Had I actually attacked, I’m not at all confident that I could have won. But Pike calculated that her own chances were poor, and was also fearful of a ship I had knocking around that she presumed had marine forces aboard (It was just an old unit I had sent out to explore and forgotten about entirely), so she capitulated to my demands, and several technologies were mine for free. More insidiously, her extra units both cost her population to create, thus significantly slowing her growth and causing unhappiness, and the increase in military units will also be a drain on her treasury.
I give no quarter. Talk about times you have been cruelly aggressive or trolly in multiplayer games!
Sometimes, all it takes is a simple bluff and even a single scout ship forgotten about can work wonders when it suddenly appears on their shores. The best poker players are also the best bluffers. I think the analogy works pretty well here. I think I’d do horribly in multi-player Civ games. I tend to turtle very hard and create very small empires, usually keeping a token military force around to deter attackers and hoping to exploit the lesser-pursued win cons: democracy and cultural.
You may not have noticed, but a couple of my cities did have barracks in them and I was using those cities to spam even more archers and then send the archers off to my barracks-less cities.
It’s really too bad that I surrendered when I did, I’m actually curious as to how the outcome of your stack vs. my archers would have played out– no doubt it would have been close. I just know how you are with your amphibious invasions, is all, hence my concern with your boat!
I must admit, that would make for an epic war story, like your Ceasar one.
P.S.-I’d like to blame you for my newfound Pony-fandom. Curse you!
@Pike: I didn’t know it at the time, the only archers I saw were without experience, but your barracks have come to my attention since and I am taking… precautions.
@Fig: You’re very welcome!