1. Well-paced upgrade lines. Relatively easy to get ahead of the AIs' and hence starting a lethal rush
2. Strong defense - good for unit conservation
3. Technologies coordinate well with Diplomatic and Science victory
So I am not going to make my life more difficult by picking another line (such as the Cavalry line, or the Nuclear Bomb rush late game). Other ways are certainly possible but requires very different playing styles.
On the Level 9 MOD, most Civs get Rifleman and Cannon early (earlier than I do), with only two exceptions - Egypt and Spain. So if I have to pick between Arabia and Spain, Spain is a perfect target for me to conquer with relative ease. But I don't really have Rifling yet. Just a little while longer.
111. The exploration ship found Russia, but Catherine is already bankrupt, dragged down by her supersized army. I won't be able to do any trade with Catherine until much later.
112. One of the goals of the level 9 MOD is to "treat" the players with large-scale battles. Even when Spain is crippled economically, Isabella still manages to have an army about 90% of the size of Persia. This won't be an easy war.
113. Also, under the AI's 200% research bonus, Persia's research is still lower than average. That's a good sign for a long and exciting game.
114. Took the first small Spanish city with ease. Salamanca will gain access to two units of Incense, but I don't want to keep armies here to fight barbarians forever. Besides, Persia's trading partners don't have enough cash to buy my existing resources anway. Burn!
p.s. I tried to sell this city away to China just for fun. But Wu Zetian immediately announces that she protects Hanoi and then denounced me. Civ5's AI are such an ungrateful bunch of bastards! I hope they get more reasonable in .1.332.
115. Took another small city. Santiago already has improved Marble. I immediately sold it to China since I have been importing Marble from Greece.
Spain already has Conquistador, which can easily kill my Longswordsman along with other inferior Spanish units if I carelessly leave them on the open. Therefore, I must take a more defensive approach here and wait for Rifling (just a few more turns for the next Great Scientist).
116. More and more Spanish army shows up. To kill the time, I tried to make a trap: I put a captured worker to the NE of Santiago, and let Isabella send a unit to recapture it. On my move, I can easily kill this unit with ranged attack, and capture this Worker with a melee unit. The melee unit moves back, leaving the Worker free to capture again! Each turn grants me two extra Spanish unit kills (the captured worker counts as one). Very quickly I completed city states' missions of killing more Spanish units.
117. While I got temporarily stuck in the Spanish front, I still have to take the heat from Arabia (Harun declares war on me no matter what). He sends over a good mixture of late-Medieval and early-Renaissance army. I can only defend with Pikeman. They are upgraded from Immortal, so they should last pretty long.
118. Here comes Rifling, rushed with two Great Scientists. One from the Porcelain Tower, the other from my the capital's Universities' Great Scientist points. I have been saving cash for unit upgrades for a while, and I am going to sell whatever I can to make just a bit more cash every turn for more unit upgrades.
119. I only had enough gold to upgrade three Immortal Pikeman to Rifleman. But they made a huge difference already. Quickly, the Arab invaders either got decimated or fled.
120. Suddenly Alexander, who used to be Neutral, turned Hostile on me, thinking my army is too weak. Indeed, nobody can match Alexander's army, especially when he is given a corner of the map to accumulate a sea of troops. Perhaps my second half of the game will be all about defending against Alexander, which would be a very fitting scenario for this map and Darius!
121. Since I want to go for a Diplomatic Victory, the rest of the Patronage policies are very useful to me (maybe except Cultural Diplomacy, since I probably won't have a happiness problem that quickly). Aesthetics saves me a lot of money later on.
122. Harun is quite rich! Too bad I can't make use of that gold, since he has declared war on me.
123. With Rifleman, I was able to take Cordoba after cutting through an aggregation of Spanish units. The loss of Horses crippled Isabella's Conquistadors. But I have to deal with a large number of Tercios in the east.
124. My Rifleman is now seriously low in health, and Isabella has built the Great Wall. I won't be able to progress very quickly if I slowly push towards east. I have to think of another stratgy. 10 Turns of peace plus Open Border will work perfectly.
No comments:
Post a Comment