Overview
Cataphract rush, it’s possible!
Settings
- Game Type: Random Map
- Map: Arabia
- Players: CsI_Canary vs TsC_B1ade_
- Nicks in game: CsI_Canary vs TsC_B1ade_
- Civs: Byzantines vs Celts
War Story
An older game, but definitely a topper. Blade had Celts and started out with a quite enthusiatic 5 milita drush. Both players had a very closed map so even though he had raw power by his side, he had a hard time killing villagers. Once in feudal, Canary made some quick and cheap Byzantine trash to fight back Blade’s men at arms and archery. However, his interest didn’t lay in a feudal war, so he went to wall off a huge chunk of the map, up to 1/3 inside Byzantine walls. Blade didn’t notice how Canary castled and went onto booming with some small packs of ranged units hassling the red concrete walls. To his surprise a mangonel came to bury all his guards. The game went into a boomwar, but once again, Canary had another idea. He stayed in castle age and started to create masses of cataphracts. The moment Blade imped, he saw his town swarmed by cataphracts. Even though he was one age ahead, he suffered one massive problem though. Blade had only forward goldmines and he could not set up an army to kill the cataphracts without gold. He spread out his economy and found some goldmines on the outskirts of the map and quickly started to produce scorpions. And after buying a few thousands of gold with the food and wood that was piling up, he could quickly make them heavy scorpions. His first attack of scorpions failed however and Blade became desperate on finding a counter to cataphracts with Celts. He found the clue a little later though: packing all your scorpions between buildings and have a pack of halberdiers around to protect them. At this point, Canary made a mistake in my humble opinion. The power of this specific Celtic army is that it isn’t agile. Blade had a huge economy to protect but Canary kept focussing on the big, heavily protected chunk in the middle.
Blade had to break out at one point though and he tried a few times to break out of his penible position. Canary’s Cataphracts kept him in all the time though. Until the inevitable happened: both players started to run out of gold. Blade had 4 relics vs 1 though and aided by a little siege he managed to break the flow of Byzantine trash. With some trash resistant woad raiders in the mix, it only started to look worse for Canary and he was forced to resign.
Canary had good posibilities to win the game, but alas he lost. Canary’s Cataphracts eventually turned out in a Cataphract Catastrophe. Thumbs up for the great game nevertheless!
