Five_X

I played a bit of India because elephants are just AWESOME and managed to get my Home City of Delhi to a pretty decent level.

But, I turned my attention to Russia soon afterwards. Can't ignore my main place, after all! I ended up playing another three battles, interspersed by a couple India skirmishes for fun.

The first two battles I'd say were overall stomps. The second one was in California, which is a definite resource-heavy map with gold mines and trees everywhere. Since I had access to so many resources, I could just pump out an endless stream of Strelets, Cossacks and Halberdiers. I even managed to get my new second Fort up with Castrametation, which gave me a nice forward base.

The third battle was definitely the most interesting, on the Yellow River (Large) map. The enemy side was made up of real heavy hitters: Frederick the Great (Germany) and Tokugawa (Japan), both of whom have great infantry, as well as Queen Isabella (Spain) who managed to lay in a few dents with her armies of mercenary cavalry archers.

Now, I had the luck of being relatively alone and close to a nice Native settlement where I got Rattan Shields which are kind of pretty ridiculous. Henry the Navigator (Portugal) was on one side of me, and on the other was Gall (Sioux) so I was nested pretty well... at first.

Germany doesn't have only good infantry, though; they also have Uhlans, which are a pretty cheap and versatile cavalry type. Freddie basically just spammed those, and so there was little my Strelets could do to save my Portuguese ally. Henry the Navigator was basically crushed, and in the meantime Gall was getting bashed hard by tons of Samurai and all those Japanese goodies.

Of course, that was exactly where my Strelets shined. They're super cheap, but with the right upgrades they can be exceptionally tough, and their technical role on the battlefield is anti-infantry. At range they just decimate most foot soldiers you can throw at them if only through numbers, and in close combat, well...

You see, in close combat most firearm soldiers just use bayonets or bash their enemies with the stock of their rifles. Not so for Strelets. Each and every man of the steletsy carries a gigantic poleaxe - and yes, this is absolutely real and historically accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strelets

Yeah, the guys were hardcore. Basically a good strategy with them, especially against enemy skirmishers, is to just whack them with axes to their faces in close combat so they can do basically no damage to you.

Anyhow, Gall was saved (though divided into three parts) and Henry the Navigator was toast and only saved by my intrepid explorer guarding his last couple houses for no reason. Gall somehow made a huge comeback and boomed right to Industrial (in this one I actually managed to get to Colonial within two minutes!) while I was in Imperial, getting ready for a serious push.

I gathered up 50 Strelets, 15 Rattan Shields, 20 Cossacks and 5 Falconets, all with their maximum upgrades bought (so they were all Imperial level) and hotkey grouped them and sent them at my enemies' base, starting with Queen Isabella. She was easy as hell to destroy, since really she had nothing going for her but Pikemen and Rodeleros which I could waste with ease.

Next was Tokugawa, who put up far less resistance than I thought.

The third and final, Frederick the Great, stood no chance against the combined forces of myself and Gall.

Overall it was a really nice victory, and I gained three levels for my Home City there, bringing me up to level 20. Looking at the Postgame screen I saw that my score was actually universally high and only got higher, so I think after a few more battles like that I'll ramp up the difficulty to Hard.

First, though, I'm going to have to reach a Level 25 Home City. Why? Because I am anticipating with giddy glee the amazing Level 25 cards I can get, many of which upgrade my precious Strelets, and another which gives me a second factory. Overall, really nice stuff. I'm already stocking up on cards so that I can buy these nice new ones!

I'll be back once I've made it successfully to Level 25.