An Awfully Audacious Akkadian AAr

[deadmeat1471]

The Akkadian Empire 2300 BCE–2200 BCE



Personal note: When I saw the advert for this game it looked like a clone of one of my favourite board games, Tigris and Euphrates. Of course I grabbed the game as soon as I got the email announcing it was released! I was pleasantly surprised due to the complexity and difficulty.
So far its a great game that requires great proclaim!

Because of this I will AAr through a game, It's very short so It will be fairly quick, however I will be asking for any player input I get as to what move to make.


The Akkadian Empire:

We can make Palaces(5 silver): It works as a Citadel, Army, Ziggurat and town put together. So a very powerful but very expensive tile to place. Built up tiles (everything but farms) cost silver upkeep, from 1-5 and cannot be removed.

Cons: We cannot make any Ziggurats, so we cannot convert farms. Unless we use a Palace.

Strategy: After playing a few games I have come to the conclusion that a mix of offensive defence is needed for this civilisation. Mostly due to the lack of ability to snipe at farms (no ziggurats). We burrow into the other civilisation and use citadels to hold onto it. This is my personal opinion however so could be wrong!

Gameplay:

Put simply, we place a tile each turn. Either a farm, bridge, mining village, citadel, army, town or palace.
A farm gives us 1 silver.
A citadel defends every built up tile around it (everything but farms)
A mining village is essentially a 'farm' next to a source of income, giving it 2 gold instead of the farms 1.
A palace is as stated before, a immensely powerful tile. It is a army, citadel, ziggurat and town combined, but is incredibly expensive.
An army will 'conquer' any built up tile adjacent (everything but farms)
A bridge will build a 'bridge' (surprise!) across a river. They cannot be built adjacent.
A town will take all neutral squares the adjacent squares to it which adds up to 9 possible total I believe, including the one its on.


AAr Coming soon!

[deadmeat1471]

Our glorious leader and his tools of conquest.


The map of Assur, our first conquest.


Key considerations:

The river is key, we must get at least 1 major foothold across the river. They have more land than us so if we have a stalemate on either side of the river, they will win. So again, we must get a foothold across the river in at least one place to make up for that.
Defending the river is fairly easy however so defence poses less of a problem.

In essence - this is an offensive battle for us. We cannot afford to sit back and let them consolidate their possessions.





More to come...


*let me know if the pictures are too big, for me they are auto resizing.

[Alexander311]

The pictures look good. This map is quite a challenge on Historical difficulty level. It will be interesting to see what strategy you come up with

[deadmeat1471]

Agreed, it's difficult. However I have completed it once (I think), still I foresee difficulties.

[MikeLemmer]

The big issue will be establishing a foothold before the Elbians go town-crazy, I believe.

Notes about our opponent, the Elba:
Advantages: Cheap Towns (-3 instead of -2), Trade Depots (1+)
Disadvantages: Expensive Ziggurats (-4 instead of -3)

(Trade Outpost can be built every other tile along a river. The money they earn increases with each Trade Outpost on the board. The Elbians' first one will earn 1, next will earn 2, third will earn 3, up to a max of 5. Makes a great income source if you can hold enough river tiles.)

My prediction for how the first 5 turns may go?

Elba will push for an early citadel/bridge from the south.
Akkadia will make a bridge to the north, but then have to build a palace to stop a early Elba bridge.