Welcome to komodo’s AAR for "AGAINST THE ODDS"
 

In this AAR I'll not just submit the save file but also explain the process I used to get there and show off a lot of "perfectly balanced" game mechanics. I hope that some of those game mechanics will be rebalanced, so don’t expect all of them to work once the new "diplomacy" dlc is out.

In this challenge the rules are better defined than in the last one, so it won’t end in a "Definition of speedrun cheese"

But instead, I have the "extra rules" sheet next to me for MP games, and I will see if we can use them to turn the odd’s in our favor. (save file will be posted later in this thread)

The challenge in 2 points is:

• Eliminate or Vassalize all other Empires
• Get higher than black in fame

 So our strategy will work around eliminating Black from the map as fast as we can, to stop him from getting fame, then cleaning up the map, while catching up blacks Fame

There are 3 openings that can work on this map. 

• The west opening that you will see in this run.
• The South Opening, where you settle into the Coffee Territory and brace yourself for an early war vs. green.
•  And the Northeastern opening, where you try to play isolationist and avoid conflict for as long as possible.
  
  

For the Opening We decided to do the West opening, so we settle "Ascella" as our capital while taking some actions in the south to slow down green’s expansion.
 At Turn 14 we advance to the next era as olmecs since we have a side objective to save up 250 influence, to show off the first "perfectly balanced" mechanic.

On Turn 21 we make contact with red.
We propose an alliance, then after he rejects the offer, we raise it as a demand, and thanks to our Ideological Proximity being always maxed, they accept it.
This allows us to see nearly the entire map and all of his allies' units (including their stealth units while at war with them), as well as meat his allies, allowing us to declare war on black on turn 21.

Next part comming soon

With our acctions in the last AAR, we definitely did not get good relations with green, and attacking greens ally can’t have done anything to improve relations.

This may appear to be a bad idea given Green's three terrifying army stacks.
But our scouts are in position to "defend" our citys by third party blocking green’s armies, should they get ideas.

Third party blocking (TPB):
Third party blocking is a "perfectly balanced" game mechanic, where you use a stack of accounts to start a siege or battle against a third party, to create a battlefield. The primary enemy armies are then trapped under the battlefield, unable to join the battle or take any actions for the duration of the siege or battle. This also prevents enemy cities from building units, and animals are also a valid third party to use for this.

In our case, this means liberating our city, then immediately sieging with scouts to trap greens army’s thill we have our 250 influence together to start our version of "pacifist cheese".
This is made easier since we can see all of green’s units regardless of where they are(even stealth units), since red is giving us the maps of our enemies.

Pacifist cheese:
An AI will reject a peace deal it does not like unless this would cause it to lose the war. In multiplayer, this "perfectly balanced" game mechanic can be used by attacking a stubborn ai far away, then sending it 3 white peace deals in 3 turns, to get the pacifist badge on lv3
This will cause your primary human war enemy to lose 4 war support every turn.

In our case, our objective is not a pacifist badge but to become a subject of Black, Black really does not like this though, and rejects it in every run I've done so far. This is why we are going to threaten Black that he will lose the war against us, so that Black is forced to accept us as a subject.
To do this we send him a offer to become his subject. He will reject it and lose 10 war support. Since it is the ancient era, sending the same offer again immediately is only 50 influence. And since we saved up 250 influence, this means in a single turn we can spam Black with offers of us becoming his subject. We do this till he has only 10 war support, then send him one last offer that he has to accept, since else he would lose the war by no longer having any war support.

Turn 34:
We have finally done it. We are a vassal of Black, and since they are allies with everyone, this gives us immediate access to 40+ luxury resources without spending money.
And since our overlord is allied with everyone, red and green have to stop all hostilities against us immediately.

There were some additional reasons for rushing to become a subject of Black. Black has this religion, and the "show not mercy" tenent is critical to a later stage of this run.
The developers made it so that in every run i tested, Black converts to Atheism before turn 50, removing this tenant from the game.

 That is, unless black has a subject, in which case black geting Atheism will elevate the subject to the position of religious leader. 

So we are now in control of the strongest religion in the game.

 Next part coming soon

There are 3 openings that can work on this map. 

• The west opening that you will see in this run.
• The South Opening, where you settle into the Coffee Territory and brace yourself for an early war vs. green.
•  And the Northeastern opening, where you try to play isolationist and avoid conflict for as long as possible.

Has no one tried to go south and immediately become a vassal of Gilgamesh (green)? I have the feeling this was the intended (no cheese?) strategy, since it gives you some time to develop and then slowly catch up, which sounds like a more logical path for an underdog type of scenario. Green should lose his next war, which should allow you to easily rebel, but at this point you should be strong enough to catch up to your next rival. I'm not sure if it's doable, though.

Anyway, looking forward to the next chapter in your showcase of "balanced" mechanics in this game, let's see how fast you managed to win by abusing the game's unintended "solutions".

The next turns have not been very event full, we used blacks osmosis events to boost out tech lv and spameded city and makerquarters, the classical MP build.
While we have not built any special districts, we did build some harbors since we will need ships eventualy.

Some might ask why I don’t have special districts, but the reality is, that makerquarters+silk are just better than the special districts we have acces to this run.
 This is our capital at turn 50.

Even though we don’t have a single farmer quarter by turn 50, our population is going up faster than we need, thanks to the food from the stuff we get access to, for being a subject of black.

But the one thing we maximise for is Motar per turn, and we have enough production to get 6-10 per turn. That means we will reach a critical mass in about 10 turns.

This is our continent on Turn 94, and it becomes clear for me, that from here, it’s all strait forward.
Spam motars, conquer and raze citys and so on.

This is because the AI can’t engage our big army, and the main limiting factor is the hours of time it takes to move that many units.


Since there is only hours of slog of moving so many army stacks around, in multiplayer players normally surrender at this point.
 but in single player without any real resistance I got bored from the scenario, and will take a break and see if I can get the motivation again to go through the slog.

"That is, unless black has a subject, in which case black geting Atheism will elevate the subject to the position of religious leader. 

So we are now in control of the strongest religion in the game."

I completly forgot about this. My religion game was a little different. I was able to get abstain before atheism swept through my continent, and i just stubbornly didn't convert, cause all my cities were still getting the bonuses from abstain. Idk if it's a visual bug, but the exploits said they did, so i assume they did, i thought you lost you're religous bonuses in a territroy when it's been wiped out like that. Then, once i went ottomans in the late, i was able to start converting the world to my religion cause my religion never got wiped out, and i eventually was able to grab the other tenets, specifically the t4 mediate often.

Also, it gets even worse for the ai. Not all of them are like this, but a good chunk of the bots when you are allied or a liege of them care no mind to your troops. So you can walk a army right up to thier city (cause you're allies/leige) and immediatly attack the city as your DOW. the bot, completly surprised by this betrayal, has little to no standing army. This even applies to outside alliances and vassals, the ai tends to have a very small standing army in general, and only builds troops when preparing to war, or war has been declared on them

If no one submitted a save by the end of the weekend, I was going to make a T50 check-in thread, but you have illustrated your strategy so well it could prove the model to beat. The influence to war support engine did not strike me as cheesy but now obviously seems so after reading. Using TPB as you write is novel to me. I also had no idea you could preempt Atheism through vassalization!

There are a few variables that stick out to me in terms of optimization: openings, how long to spend in the Neolithic, pace of advancing into new eras, culture selection, pace of/patience with final conquest.

Thank you for the detailed write-up, and good luck finishing the run!

OK, now I understand you aren't preempting Atheism as much as keeping the religion alive. As for TPB, it looks like you need the influence for a second city so you can liberate it to tangle up Green.

Managed a couple play-throughs up through T80s. A neutral or positive attitude from Red seems necessary to demand the alliance. Also, it takes a while to save up 250 influence! It is impressive how you tidied up the continent by T94, but I would be concerned on that save about clearing Black's fame even with world conquest. Of course, correct me if I'm wrong. I am curious how you manage science to time the push. It is worth nothing as well that Green appears to have a tendency to follow up Teutons with Ottomans/Spanish.

DrCron wrote:

Has no one tried to go south and immediately become a vassal of Gilgamesh (green)? I have the feeling this was the intended (no cheese?) strategy, since it gives you some time to develop and then slowly catch up, which sounds like a more logical path for an underdog type of scenario. Green should lose his next war, which should allow you to easily rebel, but at this point you should be strong enough to catch up to your next rival. I'm not sure if it's doable, though.

This was my initial thought when surveying the scenario. It does not seem too hard to actually win a war against Green and then vassalize. That said, no early alliance from what I can tell. Black has better resources, and is stronger, so perhaps the better liege. I think there is still a lot of room to maneuver at this point.

DrCron wrote:

There are 3 openings that can work on this map. 

• The west opening that you will see in this run.
• The South Opening, where you settle into the Coffee Territory and brace yourself for an early war vs. green.
•  And the Northeastern opening, where you try to play isolationist and avoid conflict for as long as possible.

Has no one tried to go south and immediately become a vassal of Gilgamesh (green)? I have the feeling this was the intended (no cheese?) strategy, since it gives you some time to develop and then slowly catch up, which sounds like a more logical path for an underdog type of scenario. Green should lose his next war, which should allow you to easily rebel, but at this point you should be strong enough to catch up to your next rival. I'm not sure if it's doable, though.

Anyway, looking forward to the next chapter in your showcase of "balanced" mechanics in this game, let's see how fast you managed to win by abusing the game's unintended "solutions".

The reason black is the superior liege is twofold. One, black's religion is better. Two, Green doesn't have access to as much luxuries as black, cause it's not just what ones your liege owns, it's also which ones he's also bought that is shared with the vassal. Black is able to actually buy up everyone's luxuries so you get more bonuses there for being his vassal

I find it pretty strange, that the developers really seem to have planed for the uses of unintented game mechanix, because with use of regular game play this thing is not solvable.

My main game is LOTRO, there you would get banned for using such mechanics :D ok I guess there need to be different rules for multi player games.

Beleandcats wrote:

I find it pretty strange, that the developers really seem to have planed for the uses of unintented game mechanix, because with use of regular game play this thing is not solvable.

My main game is LOTRO, there you would get banned for using such mechanics :D ok I guess there need to be different rules for multi player games.

Regular game mechanics it's totally possible, i used none of these in my run, along with never becoming a vassal, and was able to do it. But even if you argue that it's unintended mechanics, you still have the option of becoming a vassal of green or red after they succesffully win a war agaisnt you and they force you to be a vassal (since the bot does that if possible rather than eliminating a player). The tricks are just what the challenges are about imo, it tests you're entrie knowledge of the game, and a great way for the devs to see the results of these mechanics in effect, and if they want to remove them or not

This is a good point about trade route visibility and not relying on the Olmecs. Thanks for sharing! I noticed that even with the Olmecs it is tricky to demand an alliance from Red, perhaps in part if there is too much interaction with Green. An advantage in favor of the Olmecs is influence generation to exhaust Black's war support.