Warning: possible spoilers ahead!
Holy cow, this one was tough. Just finished Baharija Oasis after 370month. After Iunet, which is a piece of cake without bug, and Rostija, easy after you win the battle, this was a major change in pace. My skills as general seem to be a little rusty, but I had a lot of training now.
I'm playing with a few personal rules:
- difficulty very hard
- no debt/extortion
- no blessings
- no feeder houses, all labour has to come from a developed housing block. You can't imagine how far these guys walk if they have to...
I'm also not very innovative, my cities usually consist of combinations of Nerdicus type worker blocks and SenetEr type luxury blocks. And I'm lazy and slow when building.
So this scenario starts easy, you earn a lot of money from selling wood and you can start building an army. The first invasions are manageable.
But when you reach your 6 companies, you recognize the enemy still grows stronger with each invasion. After about 10 years, the computer sends in 3 armies in a row, 2x 6 companies of Lybians plus one large bedouine force, each of them stronger than your whole army. And from now on, this comes every 5 years. If you get completely wiped out, you don't have the time to rebuild until the next wave.
In an old thread Vriesia wrote the key here is fast completion and blessings of Seth. Well, you read my intro...
So I had to get better in military. Here's the keys:
- towers. As many of them as possible on each of the entrance routes. Because of my no feeders rule, I cannot build a defence several lines deep, but a solid wall to back up your army is already a great help.
- forget about gates. Complete waste of money.
- put a 3rd layer of wall in front of the towers. If you don't the enemy goes for the towers and takes them out. With this layer, they try to get around it.
- I added about 10 police stations per entry point. This takes some pressure from your army and keeps the enemy busy when your soldiers run away. This ate into my workforce - I ended up with 1% unemployment.
- These 3 Lybian archer companies per invasion were a pain. They slice through your infantry in no time. So it was very helpful to keep an archer comp at the side to keep them distracted while the towers and your inf defend against the infantry attack. They don't kill the archers, of course, just run up and down to draw their attention.
- Infantry is useless for this task. They get killed before they get even close to the archers.
- Never ever touch the units that riot. They will riot immediately again, taking away the rest of your army's confidence.
- On the other hand, they are sitting ducks when attacked in the fort. I've seen half an archer comp killed by one bedouin. So if they recover after running away in the first battle, you can have them fight again against the last army.
This time I didn't make the no extortion rule. After 20 years they got me by surprise. The first attack almost took out my army, then the second one came from a new, undefended entrance. They overran my city, destroyed the palace and thereby took away 7000db cash,plus destroyed about 10k worth of goods and buildings. Finally they were driven away by towers and police. I think I could have avoided that disaster by using this money to build towers there in time. I might reload after I took a deep breath and relaxed.
Hope this is helpful for other armchair generals. Comments welcome.
Holy cow, this one was tough. Just finished Baharija Oasis after 370month. After Iunet, which is a piece of cake without bug, and Rostija, easy after you win the battle, this was a major change in pace. My skills as general seem to be a little rusty, but I had a lot of training now.
I'm playing with a few personal rules:
- difficulty very hard
- no debt/extortion
- no blessings
- no feeder houses, all labour has to come from a developed housing block. You can't imagine how far these guys walk if they have to...
I'm also not very innovative, my cities usually consist of combinations of Nerdicus type worker blocks and SenetEr type luxury blocks. And I'm lazy and slow when building.
So this scenario starts easy, you earn a lot of money from selling wood and you can start building an army. The first invasions are manageable.
But when you reach your 6 companies, you recognize the enemy still grows stronger with each invasion. After about 10 years, the computer sends in 3 armies in a row, 2x 6 companies of Lybians plus one large bedouine force, each of them stronger than your whole army. And from now on, this comes every 5 years. If you get completely wiped out, you don't have the time to rebuild until the next wave.
In an old thread Vriesia wrote the key here is fast completion and blessings of Seth. Well, you read my intro...
So I had to get better in military. Here's the keys:
- towers. As many of them as possible on each of the entrance routes. Because of my no feeders rule, I cannot build a defence several lines deep, but a solid wall to back up your army is already a great help.
- forget about gates. Complete waste of money.
- put a 3rd layer of wall in front of the towers. If you don't the enemy goes for the towers and takes them out. With this layer, they try to get around it.
- I added about 10 police stations per entry point. This takes some pressure from your army and keeps the enemy busy when your soldiers run away. This ate into my workforce - I ended up with 1% unemployment.
- These 3 Lybian archer companies per invasion were a pain. They slice through your infantry in no time. So it was very helpful to keep an archer comp at the side to keep them distracted while the towers and your inf defend against the infantry attack. They don't kill the archers, of course, just run up and down to draw their attention.
- Infantry is useless for this task. They get killed before they get even close to the archers.
- Never ever touch the units that riot. They will riot immediately again, taking away the rest of your army's confidence.
- On the other hand, they are sitting ducks when attacked in the fort. I've seen half an archer comp killed by one bedouin. So if they recover after running away in the first battle, you can have them fight again against the last army.
This time I didn't make the no extortion rule. After 20 years they got me by surprise. The first attack almost took out my army, then the second one came from a new, undefended entrance. They overran my city, destroyed the palace and thereby took away 7000db cash,plus destroyed about 10k worth of goods and buildings. Finally they were driven away by towers and police. I think I could have avoided that disaster by using this money to build towers there in time. I might reload after I took a deep breath and relaxed.
Hope this is helpful for other armchair generals. Comments welcome.
[This message has been edited by Seneca (edited 05-17-2013 @ 01:47 AM).]