SGOTM4 - Game Thread.

Hi everyone, and welcome to your game thread.

Here is the start position.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM4.jpg

Note: EVERYONE has to install the correct resource graphics whether or not they have played this scenario or GOTM before. If you haven't done it yet, you had better get a wriggle on.

The saves will be available once the timelock has been released tonight (19th September).

Here are some links you might find useful.

The original GOTM28 Announcement. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/gotm28_india.shtml)
The Draft Constitution (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1733966&postcount=61)
The GOTM Reference Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=71788)
SGOTM4 - Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=100194)
Download latest Save. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm_submission_list.php)
Upload a Save. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm.php)

This Months' sponsored variant is 5 City Challenge the rules for which are as follows.

1. You may not end a turn with more than 5 cities.

Team Leaders: It would be a good idea to PM your team mates to get them all checked in here as soon as is possible. ;)

Good luck everyone! :)

Hello team! Checking in.

I don't think I've had the pleasure of playing with any of you before, so this should be a fun game :)

Anyone have any ideas as far as a playing order goes? We can just use the order provided in mad-bax's team list, if no one has any objections.

Hello everyone.

Hello team! Checking in.

I don't think I've had the pleasure of playing with any of you before, so this should be a fun game :)

I've never played a succession game before so I'm afraid you're playing with a complete novice in that respect.

Anyone have any ideas as far as a playing order goes? We can just use the order provided in mad-bax's team list, if no one has any objections.

I'm happy with that. By the time the save gets to me I should have some idea how it works :D

Ok, just for reference, this can be our order, if no one objects.

Kaiser (this or KB works fine, BTW)
marconos
-Oblivion-
stagnate
Tone

[
Team Leaders: It would be a good idea to PM your team mates to get them all checked in here as soon as is possible. ;)
Hopefully this is not me as I don't think you can lead without experience. ;) As first on the rota do you qualify, KB?

Just to clarify we are playing 5CC, right?

I can PM everyone if you would like. I'll give them another day before I break out the :whipped: ;)

Yes, I do believe that every team is playing the 5CC variant, IIRC.

Checking in. Looking forward to playing with you guys :D

Checking in ... This is my 2nd SGOTM ... looking for something ... ANYTHING better then a wooden spoon this time. All new players for me ... looking forward to some more education.

I am a Monarch difficulty level player.

Any turn order is fine for me .... just as long as I'm not 1st!!! ;)

I have never played a 5cc before ... what type of victory do you generally go for? 20k Cultural??

I have never played a 5cc before ... what type of victory do you generally go for? 20k Cultural??

I've succeeded with cultural 20k, Diplomatic and SS. Conquest? Now that sounds like a real challenge ;)

Why not a conquest victory. Be much funner :D
I am a demigod player if you wish to know.

5CC conquest is a very fun victory. If we are going to shoot for that, I'd suggest reading one of the 5CC conquest games in the Succesion Games forum. Of particular interest is this game (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=96264) that I participated in.

I have already lurked most of that game anyway ;)
Yea, it does look very fun - i say we go for that, but first we have to see the surroundings.

One important thing will be the dotmapping - we need every city to have a lot of tiles to use, to make the most out of what we will have.

Checking in. I played int SGOTM3 as jhigham under team akots as a rather painful introduction. Generally a peaceful player so conquest will shake me out of my shell, as long as you guys are around to give me input.

I don't know if there are other weaker or more novice players, but if so they should be separated in the turn order (so two turns of morons like me can't do too much damage ;-)

I have never played 5CC but am open, I'll read up some on the strategy.

Why not a conquest victory. Be much funner :D
I am a demigod player if you wish to know.

No problem with conquest. It's just IMHO it's the most difficult in 5CC. I've never gone for it (I though that it would take a lot of time to achieve) but I'm happy to give it a go. It would definitely give everyone more to do ;)

Well, I opened up our starting save, and we're Carthage! Bizarre. I think I'll play our opening 20 later tonight, provided I have time.

I'll have to read through the given game thread. I just didn't think it would be possible to win a 5CC as a conquest victory.

Just make sure that Stagnant and I are are seperate from each other ... I'm a lower level novice player as well --- only Monarch ability.

Any victory type is fine ... I just want to win one ;)

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_BC3000_01.SAV)

4000 BC

I move worker east, uncover another BG and a cow. I move settler NE to utiliize more of the river tiles.


3950

Worker starts road. Carthage is founded, revealing spices and another cow we can claim with border expansion. Carthage starts warrior. I set science towards writing at min.

zzz

3750

Carthage completes warrior, starts another.

3500

Another warrior complete. Start one more for good measure.

3350

Warrior completes, settler started.

3200

Red borders spotted to south.

3050

Settler completes. It is sent south towards what looks to be the most promising land for the moment.

3000

We contact Rome. They are up Bronze Working and Warrior Code, but lack Masonry.


Summary

We're off to a decent start. Carthage is building a barracks for the time being, as more warriors aren't needed at the moment. I think we should settle where I have indicated, as this city will be a powerhouse later on. With all that grassland and plains irrigated (once we're out of despotism), we'll be able to reap the production of the mountains. Also, I forgot to lower the lux when the settler was produced, that needs to be done as well.

Got it ... any direction on what I am targeting to do? I will review the save tomorrow and post some thoughts and then play tomorrow night.

I am on EST (not sure what that is in GMT)

Looks a fair area for a 5cc, but playing Carthage :( The lower corruption from Commerce is no use to us and we are not going to have much land to develop so Industrious is not much help either (apart from quickly getting roads to our ememies ;) ). Also no cheap culture to expand the borders is another downside.

Did you switch research off KB? If not what tech are we going for?

@marconos: I normally spend the early part grabbing prime sites and developing them. I don't overlap any tiles and expand the borders quickly. I also try to ensure that I have knowledge of at least one of iron and horses and have securred a source before the fifth city is founded. However I've done all this with a peacful aim so maybe we need to think for an earlyish strike on Rome before they get iron and their dreaded UU (although I rather face them than the Persian equivalent :) ) I haven't had time to check out KB's link yet so maybe that's the place to look.

We're researching writing at 10% right now, as that should be great trade bait once it come in.

Actually, it's funny you mention Persia, because in the original version of this GOTM, it was Persia down there. It was interesting to say the least :lol:

The legion is an impressive UU that the AI can use well due to the extra defense. If we build up a decent amount of catapult, we should have little problem with them. And, if something does go wrong, we'll still have Numidian Mercs defending our cities.

In a 5 city only mode how big of a problem is corruption. How far apart can our cities get and still be okay?

It isn't too bad at all. We have the land to have no overlap, so I suggest we do that. Once we have all the surrounding land uncovered, we can look at other potential city sites.

Actually, it's funny you mention Persia, because in the original version of this GOTM, it was Persia down there. It was interesting to say the least :lol:

That's why I mentioned it ;) I also remember that iron was hard to come by for many of us although some got a source appear part way through the game. It was a long slog with archers (no horses either) plus a few spears for protection before I could sieze some iron. Hopefully that has changed as well this time. :)

The legion is an impressive UU that the AI can use well due to the extra defense. If we build up a decent amount of catapult, we should have little problem with them. And, if something does go wrong, we'll still have Numidian Mercs defending our cities.

Are we looking to avoid a despot GA? If so we might want to avoid building them until we et a higher form of government. What do people think?

I'd certainly like to hold off our GA until a higher form of government. I don't think we need to be going on any conquests right away. If we do end up tripping our GA in despotism, its not the end of the world. If that GA helps us take a bite out of Rome, then it was a success. I just hope we have some horses or iron nearby, as offensives against 3 defense legions will be bloody with just archers. We'ld need a lot of catapults to make that feasible.

Just checked out your LK72 link. I'm up to page 7 and it looked a great game. I'm just grateful that we're not playing 5CC at that level!

It was a great game, one of my favorites ever for sure. That one was rather supposedly even tougher than a typical deity 5CC, as the tech pace was insane. Also, having a monsterous Persia for a neighbor doesn't help :lol:

Turn Log:

PreTurn: Lowered Lux slider to 0%

1) 2950 bc not much
2) 2900 bc not much
3) 2850 bc Utica founded
set production to warrior
4) 2800 bc not much
5) 2750 bc ... wow carthage went up a whole citizen
Rome has not researched any new techs yet
Nothern Side of us show island or continent.
Nothing South of Rome yet
6) 2710 bc not much
7) 2670 bc not much
8) 2630 bc Utica -- warrior -> worker
Carthage .. chop forest beside city to get settler faster after barrakcs

IBT: Carthage finishes barracks .. notice I miscaluted on forest chop
set Carthage to make a warrior 1st then go to settler
chop should time out about right then. May need another
warrior to get timing correct.

9) 2590 bc appears to be a land bridge SE of Rome ... can we block it??
Figure on chop miscalculation will waste a total of 5 shields
4 on warrior now and 1 on settler in 3 turns .. sorry guys

10) 2550 bc not much

Don't think I hurt us too bad except for the mistimed chop.


I have indicated two potential city spots. Neither is on a river :sad: that I don't like but they both have access at the ocean. :confused:

There is a false nice spot with sheep on the hills and plain. Problem is there are two many mountains and not enough space. There looks like some really nice land in Rome's home town ... hmm do we want that? :mischief:

I have a feeling that we may be alone with Rome. If that is the case do we want to "secure" OUR island earlier rather then later.

I think I'd move the western dot NE by 1. Gives us same bonus grassland, but adds a hills and puts more land in the boundaries. With 5CC we need shields and ocean spots stink for that.

Another spot would be NE of the coral(?) which gives us access to a lot of mtns and hills (shields) with enough grassland to support it. We should secure the spices with quick culture; we don't have a good fit for just plopping a city down for that purpose.

That's about as much as I have to say, so far...

I think the dots look good, give us the best of the terrain we have to work with. I think our last city can go one NE of the coral.

I think that I agree. There is a slight overlap which I try to avoid with 5CC but the only other options I can see leave us short on production later in the game. Moving the western dot increases the overlap which I would be reluctant to do.

The potential 5th spot is closer to Rome than the others but I guess we are unlikely to lose it at this level. Maybe something better will present itself when we have knowledge of critical resources. Shame about the ivory up there.

@ marconos. The way I see it, the problem we face with Rome is that if leave it too long before taking them out, they will be a tough nut to crack and we will have no potential allies to help us. However if we go for the kill too early we are left doing all our own research. I think that we might want to keep them in check with a few small clashes to limit their development and pick up some additional techs in peace deals until we manage send out some successful suicide galleys for tech trading. I guess all that is for the future though and a lot may change. We only have two cities at the moment :)

Well slap me silly and call me Shirly ... I forgot to upload the save :blush:

It's uploaded now.

Save Here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_BC2550_01.SAV)

EDIT: In response to the city placements. With the city locations where they are at there is no overlap between the cities. That is why I chose those locations. They seem to be close and give us good land use. I don't think we have any other good land open unless we "obtain :ar15:" some from Rome.

With the city locations where they are at there is no overlap between the cities.

There is one tile overlap between the two- a bg halfway between the two sites-but perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic. I agree that your choice of sites will give us a good start and I certainly can't see anything better. I normally look to also have a few tiles in between city sites that will not be used but will be claimed with border expansion just in case there are resources there. Of course that is impossible in this game so we have to make the best of the situation. We will also have to put up with plenty of water in our city areas which is far from ideal.


I don't think we have any other good land open unless we "obtain " some from Rome.

Will corruption be too high or is that negligible with just five cities and the commercial trait? I've never tried it but if it's not too much of an issue they do have some great land there. It could be worth having one city that is not too developed (barracks and then pump out military?) which we would subsequently abandon if a better site became available. Does anyone have experience of this?

I have no experience with it, but putting cities that far down doesn't seem to be worth it, unless we got a leader and managed to rush a new palace down there. The sites up north aren't fantastics, but they will suffice. It could be much worse.

I guess I'm just a sucker for a site with wool on hills. It is just *so* powerful!

Reviewed the map .. saw the 1 square overlap.

Looked at the 5th city location (by stones not clams right?) Has 1 square overlap with the main city. Also has 2 - 3 mountains in it. Will we need to irrigate the green there to be able to get much out of that city. It appears that it will be a smaller city due to the quality of the land.

1 mountain, 1 hill and 1 bg. I guess it depends upon what's underneath the forests and if there is any iron there. Either way it will be OK for a fifth city for the early part of the game at least.

Turn 0: 2550 BC

Masonry and 5 gold goes to Rome for Bronze working.
Hit enter.

Turn 1: 2510 BC

Carthage warrior-settler
MM the citizen to the grassland so that when the forest chop is finished the settler is timed with growth.

Turn 2: 2470 BC

Nothing

Turn 3: 2430 BC

Utica worker-barracks
Forest chop completes, settler in 2, growth in 2. Only regular grassland under forest.

Turn 4: 2390 BC

Nothing

Turn 5: 2350 BC

Carthage Settler-Numidian Mercenary
Romans pick up Iron Working - Yay! Legionaries..

Turn 6: 2310 BC

Nothing

Turn 7: 2270 BC

Warrior and Settler combo see barbarian two tiles away

Turn 8: 2230 BC

Warrior down south sees Goody hut. I am 98% sure we share the island with the Romans.

Turn 9: 2190 BC

Doh. Roman settler and Warrior move so they can reach the Goody hut before me. It is in hills, whats the bet there is iron in those hills?

Turn 10: 2150 BC

Leptis Magna founded. Starts on warrior. Worker afterwards to time with growth. Writing next turn. Maybe a trade with Rome so we can get Iron working, to see if we have any.

When we complete the Numidian Mercenary next turn, switch to settler. It will be 4 turns to growth and 5 turns to settler BUT on growth it will pick up 2 shields from the forest and the settler will complete.

Leptis Magna is in the NW city spot, one to the NE as suggested. We share our small landmass with Rome.

Save is on the website.

Got it will play this evening.

Turn 0: Check out the layout not too bad, wait, I don't see the resources. Hmmm, probably ought to install the graphics pack.

Turn 0 take 2: Writing due in 1 turn at 10%. Found a potential strong shields spot farther south that grabs the two sets of sheep. Do we want to make a try for that spot (since I think we are kind of shield poor) or stick with our original plan? I'll wait for input, screenshot included.

I accidentally cropped a bit too much of the shot to the south of the spot, but the two spots SW are grassland (1 bonus) and SW SE is grassland. There is a block of four mountains in range that you can mostly see.

The city would only be able to get to size 12 with rails (all grassland irrigated, 1 ocean spot, gives 11 free food, which would give us one hill spot and 5 mountain spots). It's in a bad spot for defense though. Also note that Rome has three really strong starting spots for the three cities, so we need to take it too them quickly. Recommendations along that line? IMO try to get info on iron quickly, get down there and plant mercs on any such resource, then use mercs to pillage terrain. Would probably mean a despot GA though.

The only problem that I see with that spot is we won't be able to grow the city very large due to food issues. We can get a total of 6 extra food / turn that would allow us to work 3 mountains and not the non-sheep hill. That was my only concern about that before.

Is there anything that will get the coast areas up to 3 food? I don't know of any.

My concerns are the same. That spot will be better with rails to up the food produced, but until then, the other spot has my vote.

This will show how little I know ... railroads up your food production? Does it add food production to all land types? How much does it add?

Rails add one food to irrigated land or one shield to mined land.

I think that site is as good as or better than our current southern most site. There are two grasslands (1 BG) slightly chopped from that screenshot. I can accept other reasons to not settle there (defense, etc), but it's a solid site.

The current site has 6 squares that can run even under despotism, but no food bonuses. In despotism we can irrigate the sheep at the proposed site and get an extra food, making it them even for growth purposes. The current site gets 5 shields unmodified (6 because we already have one mine). The proposed site gets 6 shields unmodified.

Once we get out of despotism the proposed city site has 1 extra food (from the sheep) and at that point it outclasses the existing site for both growth and production.

We have 5 squares that can all be worked at even or surplus food without modification. We can work those 5 plus a mountain without any terrain modification. We can irrigate the sheep even under despotism for extra food, so we can easily get to size 7. Shields here would be 1 (BG) + 1 (city) + 2 (sheep) + 2 (hill sheep) + 1 (mountain) = 7 without any modifications, 9 with mines.

Once we are out of despotism, we can irrigate all grassland for 7 food surplus, which gives us a hill and 3 mountain additional (size 9). This gives 1 (BG) + 1 (city) + 2 (sheep) + 2 (hill sheep) + 3 (3x mtn) + 1 (hill) = 10 without mods. With mines, this increases by 10 (2 extra shields for mines, times 5 hill/mtn squares) to 20 shields.

With rails, that goes to 11 surplus as indicated.

This compares well with our other sites, with the caveat that it wouldn't get as large (no harbor) -- it would never get to size 13. It is on a river, so there's additional commerce there as well.

Aside from that, what's my direction at this point? Build workers, barracks, and warriers/mercs in prep for attacking rome? Do I research at min for something like math, or try to speed to monarchy? Need math for cats, so that might be the way to go, but if we do that we're basically resigned to GA in despotism.

I can trade Writing for Iron + 15g, or Writing + 100g for Iron + warrior code. IMO we go for the second trade, but don't know if there are problems with opening that research path.

I'd like to know what you guys think our strategy is with regards to research and war, so I don't go down 10 turns of wrong direction :-)

Personally I would be happy with either but as we have the option of getting knowledge of IW now, can we not make the trade before deciding. This will give us a better idea of where to build the 5th site and also of future military builds.

I don't fancy building plenty of warriors to fight legions unless we have an iron source to upgrade. IMO we should go for the first trade option and if we haven't got iron then buy WC and build some archers. The second option would be cheaper but if we have an iron souce we can use the cash to upgrade warriors and get WC in a peace deal or further trade. What would be really useful is if we could have the iron source connected to a city with barracks but not connected to the other four. We can then continue to build warriors and upgrade them when they get to our iron town but I'll stop ther because we may not have iron :)

Future research? I would either head at full speed for MM to get some additional contacts (if we haven't got Iron) or maths at min (if we have iron) and use the cash to upgrade warriors. Have we got Pottery? Have Rome got additional techs that we haven't?

I'll shut up now as I'm going to be late for work :D

I say we definately take the IW trade and I lean towards getting the Warrior code as well.

Future research should be for catapults incase Rome attacks us to fend off those legions. We could also use that to trade with Rome for MM. Course.... we really need MM to get off our island.

BTW: I am horrible at island maps so everything I say may be worthless.

We basically lose money if we just go after IW, because rome doesn't have enough cash to pay for the 'real' price of Writing. I will go for WC and IW both, and then decide on city location. We have no other techs to trade at this point.

In my comparison I also forgot that there are three plains squares at the northern city that need irrigation, so for growth and shields the southern city site is best. My question now is whether it is sticking out too far. We'll need to set mercenaries on the nearby mountains, but I also think it'd have the effect of focusing roman attacks at a choke point.

I'm going to go after Math at min - Romans will go after CB, Pottery, Wheels (some or all) which we can get via pointy stick. The cats will be needed though.

I will get IW and WC, then decide where to put the next city. One more city, some more workers, and start cranking the warriors (if we have iron handy) or archers, plus mercs.

If we manage an offensive enough war we might not need to use mercs (and a despotism GA), but don't count on it. Everyone else weight in with what you want, I'll play it this evening. Sorry about the delay, but I want to make sure we are all working from the same strategy book.

Sounds fine. I didn't realise that the 15g was all that they had so I agree with your decision to go for both techs. I really hope that we can get an iron site as archers against legions will require quite a few artillery pieces and we are 40 turns from being able to make them. Also we can only have 20 free units so will we be running at a deficit for too long, wasting cash with units that we are not using until we get maths? On the other hand if we don't build units what do we build?

If we don't have an iron source and if -0blivion- is correct that Rome do (with a border town), can we steal it with an early archer rush before they can utilise their source? If we both have iron, would it still be worth an early strike to deprive Rome of their iron if they only have one source? Rome without legions would be ours for the taking whenever we please. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what we find but as I'm up next I would appreciate hearing others view on this as I don't want to put the rest of you in an awkward position in my first succession game;)

Sorry about the delay, but I want to make sure we are all working from the same strategy book.

No problem. What's the saying? Something like 'Act in haste, repent at your leisure.'

I would put money on the fact that we will not have iron. They wouldn't be that nice to us.

I saw we do an early archer rush and crush Rome. If they do have iron and they get legions we will be in really big trouble.

A thought here is why build archers why not just go all mercs as the have a 3 defense verses a 1 defense and they have the same attack value. I'm resigned to the fact of having our GA under despotism.

Priority 1 crushing Rome.
Priority 2 getting the remainig 2 cities operational ( who know we could always capture on from rome if it's in a good location)

Question: Are we sure we want Mathematics instead of Map Making ... we really need to get off our island don't we???

I think getting some military action against Rome isn't a bad idea.

@Marconos- I think the reasoning for using archers to attack is that it's a lot less painful to lose 20 shield units compared to the 30 shield Mercs. I'd say let them defend for us, and come in on offense only if needed.

Indeed. If we were worried about an early GA, leave the mercs at home and protect our archers with warriors. They can soak up any attacks and the archers do the damage.

Here's the save http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_BC1725_01.SAV

Ok I'm playing the turn for real this time. Sorry about the delay, but since it's a very different style from how I normally play I want to make sure I don't go down the wrong path.

Turn 0:

IBT Rome moves warrior settler to the plains, so I can get the hut.

Carthage Merc -> Settler. Learn Writing, start on math at min.

Trade Writing + 100g for IW and WC. Only one iron source on the island, and it's right next to their capital :-/ Hut is deserted :-/

Workers complete road on way to spices.

Turn 1 (2070 BC): Workers to spices

Turn 2 (2030 BC): Start road on spices, move other worker forward.

IBT Warrior defeats barb with no loss.

Turn 3 (1990 BC): Warrior attacks barb and dies. I should have waited for merc, but at monarchy thought it was safe enough. If we are going to be warlike I we should leave huts be, to help promote our units.

Turn 4 (1950 BC): Carthage Settler -> Merc, Leptis Magna Warrior -> Worker. Settler moves to the northern location, I'll let someone else decide which southern spot is best. Rome has the wheel. Spice road is complete.

Turn 5 (1910 BC): Workers move

IBT Rome establishes an embassy.

Turn 6 (1870 BC): Road network finished connecting all cities

Turn 7 (1830 BC): Theveste founded, starts worker to coincide with growth.

Turn 8 (1790 BC): zzz

Turn 9 (1750 BC): Leptis Magna worker -> barracks. Worker moves to chop forest. Rome has pottery also.

Turn 10 (1725 BC): Carthage Merc -> Settler (same story, will complete with growth). Worker starts chop.

Settler will complete with growth and that's our last city. Barracks were started way too early in utica, but I couldn't change without losing shields. Get a worker out of there and get those plains irrigated. Workers to the north will complete on the same turn, the two of them road in one turn, so move them to connect Theveste.

There's a beauty of a future city spot in Roman territory, just look at it and drool a little bit. This war will be very tough but needs to happen quickly, so barracks, warriors, archers and workers (cats once we get there). We have 30 turns until Math so it might be easier to take a stack of mercs to stand on the iron resource (very likely to generate a leader also) before Rome starts cranking out the legions.

Let's hit rome now and hit them hard. Park a Merc or two on the iron with an archer or two for bombard. We should also take out all of their cities but 1. Let's take them out before they are a real problem for us.

I agree that we have to hit Rome, but we shouldn't be hasty in this. Since Rome knows iron working and has iron right next to their capital, there are surely already legions in progress. Simply heading down there with a few archers and Mercs wouldn't be prudent. The only 2 attack unit I would go up against a legion with is a horseman, because it can knock off an hp or two and then retreat, setting up the kill for another unit. Seeing as we don't have the horse possibility right now, we need cats to take off a few hp here and there to make the job easier on our archers. With only five cities producing troops, our units all are much more valuable than in a normal game. We can't afford to let our archers get slaugtered by legions in straight up combat.

Hasty would be bad, but what about a strictly defensive war to tie up the iron resource? We don't want Rome to get a stockpile of legions.

If we send down a stack of say 3-5 mercs and 2 archers, we will have bombard, and can fortify on the hill. If we enter war and chop the iron, we can keep them occupied. The mercs will defend well, then we can back away and heal -- the workers will probably stay in city boundaries (would the AI send the worker out with an escort, and would it keep a legion fortified on the hill)?

We really need to take advantage of our mercs and defensive. We should be able to keep pretty good defense ratios (especially if we keep iron cut) and that'll stunt their growth significantly.

Our second wave would come quicker due to GA, and once we are secure in our iron defense we can start hitting other cities. If we do this a road network south is key, and I recommend building on the southern location (walls, rax, units) to use as the bridgehead.

It's aggressive but I think it's a better option than waiting the 40+ turns it'll take to get some cats and units ready to go - by that time we'll be facing a lot of legions at all locations, and more importantly we won't be able to get to the iron without a lot more work.

I agree that we have to hit Rome, but we shouldn't be hasty in this. Since Rome knows iron working and has iron right next to their capital, there are surely already legions in progress.

If the iron is connected and if other cities are also connected I agree with this but if Rome is the only city connected they may not have(m)any. The last map posted suggests that they have not developed much infrastructure. I think I shall scout the area and see what their road network and most powerful unit in Rome is. (A legion will obviously show up as the strongest.)

All roads may lead to Rome but if they don't stretch as far as their other cities it may be worth a gamble. If Rome is the only city connected and we can knock it out quickly, they will never have other legions. However this all depends on how long it takes to get a decent force down there.

That's a lot of ifs so I shall look to build an offensive force whilst scouting the area and then make a decision. If it's not clear cut I shall post in the middle of my ten turns but I won't download the save until later this evening as I've had a tough day and want to hit this relatively fresh. In the meantime sorry for the delay.

agree with stagnate ... we need to be careful but waiting is much riskier. At most them have 4 cities they would have 4 legions. All of their cities are small so it will take awhile to build legions. They are also making workers and settlers ... All of these items are in our favor this time.

1) Kill their iron
2) Take out their closest cities and push them back

If we don't we could end up with legions all over us. We could defend them but would be in bad shape as the fight would be on their terms. we can use a warrior at this time to find out if they actuall do have the iron connect up. if they don't we could skip the merc and just use warriors/archers to keep them from getting it.

I meant to add that I did this successfully in a Medal Play game as Babylon. An early GA was annoying but cranking out Bowmen at a fair rate enabled me to squash Rome once I'd taken their iron sources. The key was their lack of a decent road network.

Alright, I see your logic. I'm willing to go with this plan.

Since it appears we are going to go after Rome the next question is. What about a city placement in the center of their empire. I know it's a bit out on the time scale. The reason that I ask is would corruption be too high and negate having a city down. If it is then discussion is over. If not then the we know we are going to do it we just have to do it at the best time frame for us.

That also means we need to decide what city we want to invest the least into in our main empire so as to waste as little production and improvements as possible.

Thoughts?

OK. Got it!

Firstly: year is end of 1725 which by my calculations is a turn too far ahead! I am happy just to play nine turns to get the turn rota back on track but does it actually matter? As a newbie to SG, please advise.

Onto game matters. The latest maps show that the iron is connected to Rome and using F3 we have an 'average' force 2 mercs, 2 vet warriors and 3 reg warriors. Utica is 2 turns from completing a barracks but has only one tile fully developed (2 sh/turn) so I believe we need to irrigate the plains around there to get more production in our 2nd city. I shall not be sending any mercs south this city for one would gain nothing from a GA at the moment. All our workers are in the north so the next build in Utica will be a worker. If we are going to hit Rome hard, we need to get our troops there fast and the road stops at Utica so in short there will be no attack in my turn. My first impressions are that I shall be looking to send the last settler from Carthage to the southern site, but a lot could happen in the four (five?) turns before it arrives. Oh, the other two cities are producing barracks (19 turns away but will get forest chop and bg mined in 2) and a worker (in 7 turns) so are of no use in the short term. I guess I've changed my tune :blush:

Turn 0 (1725) Press enter after assessment posted.

No time to acclimatise. Rome demands 28g. Their military is more numerous, they have archers and I don’t want a GA with undeveloped land so I submit. (Sorry if that’s the wrong choice in your opinion.) Rome sends warrior/settler combo northwards from Rome.

Turn 1 (1700) Send warrior into Roman territory. Can confirm that Cumae is not connected to iron yet and would need all three tiles to the west roaded for this to change. I leave the barb camp alone until it grows as instructed.

Turn 2 (1675) 2 workers mine separate roaded bgs. Mm cit in Theveste to take advantage of roaded bg. Warrior moves further S and cannot see a road further than 2 SW of Rome. With two wool in hills and a river bg Veii is a powerful town!

Romans are building the Pyramids in Rome. That will cut their military production down but they have four good sites still.

Turn 3 (1650) Warrior moves further S towards Veii and confirms that it is nowhere near getting iron either (bg plus hill still to be roaded and not a worker to be seen!)

Turn 4 (1625) Carthage: settler-->archer. Unfortunately the Roman settler/warrior combo is heading for our southern area and will get there first so I send settler SW towards site identified in a previous post, NE of rocks. (Rome now have the Wheel to add to Pottery but I cannot wait until we get maths to find out where the horses are before settling.) No road to Neapolis but they at least one legionary in Rome. map attached:http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=69399&stc=1

IBT Warrior booted out by Rome & forest chop reveals plain grass.

Turn 5 (1600) Decide that we don’t need a worker from Theveste as it is now producing 2 shields/turn and we have enough workers there so change production to a barracks. Roman worker mining bg near Rome so it appears that only the capital is being developed-another reason to take them early!

Turn 6 (1575) 2nd barb arrives in camp. Defeat it with vet merc without losing a hp but no promotion.

Turn 7 (1550) I put a warrior on our preferred southern site a couple of turns ago and it appears that Rome wanted it too. Their settler has gone for a coastal location three tiles from our proposed site so we could still take it, although that might annoy them. I can move to the other site this turn and think some more. It will take another 5 turns to get there and I’m not sure that the increased production will offset the corruption (or 5 turns wasted)

Utica: worker-->archer.

Rome will sell us the Wheel for 176g (we have 241g). Should we go for this? I’ll save, pause and wait for your views as I’m still trying to get to know your game styles.

IMnot-so-very-greatO

Get wheel and find horses. If we have them in range settle at southern location, if we have a _good_ spot to settle and get horses go for it.

If they settle on the coast I think we should be ok building next to them; it isn't until we push back their boundaries that they'll get too upset. Also, since we'll be building strictly military they'll be less likely to declare.

Let them get some more production into the pyramids, if we start war too soon they'll switch right off. I figure that we should be ok if we build and plan to start attack in around 15-20 turns.

All this is said with the cavaet that I don't play early aggro games so I could be blowing wind.

IMnot-so-very-greatO
???

Get wheel and find horses. If we have them in range settle at southern location, if we have a _good_ spot to settle and get horses go for it.
I agree and am too impatient to wait any longer. I can't see us using chariots but it may be useful to know of any sites either to grab for us or pillage if they have it. We will need them later on I guess.

Let them get some more production into the pyramids, if we start war too soon they'll switch right off. I figure that we should be ok if we build and plan to start attack in around 15-20 turns.
I think this is a reasonable time scale, although the sooner the better. The land around Rome is the only land they have developed. I really think that we can steal this and they will then be ours to control.

Turn 7 continued: Buy The Wheel for 176g. No sources on the island. :sad: Rome also has HBR.

Turn 8 (1525) Carthage: archer --> archer. Decide to send the settler S.

IBT Rome’s borders expand and their units moving N to head for barb camp get in the way of our settler. :mad:

Turn 9 (1500) zzz

I shall stop here. The settler/merc combo is heading for the warrior unless you see something better, KB. ;)

Now have several workers developing the southern site (you may want to mm the citizens here before pressing enter as the worker irrigating will finish this turn IIRC-depends whether you want shields or commerce). They can then move onto the last city when it is built and pave the way to Rome. In another 10 turns Carthage can pump out 10 shields/turn which should enable us to keep enough units in the field once the war starts. If we want an early war we can have 6 archers heading south with our mercs in another 10 turns. I think they will probably have iron in other cities within 20 turns so it could be a close call. The trouble could be getting them close enough to Rome before a DoW. In the meantime they don't appear to fussed about the warrior in their lands and the up to date map info is helpful whilst they continue to tolerate his presence. The barb camp only gave me one opportunity for battle-is it worth keeping it around with two Roman units on their way North?

Save uploaded. Over to you, KB.

Nice turns - i think the wheel trade was a good idea, it gave us the oppurtunity to see any horses and plant a city or colony there if we could. No horses on the island immediately ups the difficulty of this variant. Did you check under all the Roman cities?

Tone - He means I(in) M(my) not so very great O(opinion)

I am all for an early war to set Rome back - it will be very difficult later on if we have no iron and they do. But we have to think realistically. We will want a considerable force of NumMercs and 'pults if we want to do anything significant.

The road situation in Rome is good. No iron connected in most places. Maybe if you keep the warrior around that area then all the workers will be too scared to come out?

Ctrl-Shift-m used; no horses but perhaps my eye sight is failing me. ;)

Thanks for the translation. In which case I should reply that your analysis was sound, stagnate. :goodjob:

The worker did retreat into Rome when our warrior passed by and came out again later to start from scratch so you're right about that. I just wonder if they might start building workers in the satellite towns and work back to Rome.

Looks like some good turns. Good call on the wheel, and it does hurt that he have no horses. Looks like we'll be doing future invasions with swords, mercs, and cats until we can find some. Actually, since there are none on the island, we won't be able to secure our own source ever, unless we found a far off city, which I don't think is good. Hopefully we'll be able to trade for.

As for the game, I see it, but won't be able to play until tomorrow night.

Preturn- Things look good.

IT- zzz

T1 1475

We kill a barb with a merc.

IT- zzz

T2 1450

Not much

IT- zzz

T3 1425

Merc whacks another barb.

IT- zzz

T4 1400

Merc disperses barb encampment. Our last city will be founded next turn.

IT- zzz

T5 1375

Leptis Minor founded. Not much else.

IT- zzz

T6 1350

Not much.

IT- zzz

T7 1325

Not much

IT- Viking city of Nidaros completes The Colossus.

T8 1300

Nothing

IT-zzz

T9 1275

Nothing

IT-zzz

T10 1250

Not much new.


Summary

Fairly boring turns. We have churned out a fair amount of archers, and we now have a strong military compared to Rome. I think a quick strike against Pompeii and Antium would be a good idea, as it'll slow down Rome a bit and we can extract some tech from them, I'm sure. If we do go to war, make sure you raze the cities immediately, as if we keep them then disband them we can get unhappiness problems if they did any whipping in that city, as it doesn't disappear when the city is abandoned and will flow to our nearest city. On another note, I have a road started heading towards Leptis Minor to speed up our troops movements.

The Save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=100196)

Seems to be ticking along nicely. I think the road S will be essential to a successful strike to get subsequent reinforcements to Roman lands quickly. Also we are now 10 turns from cats and they won't get over mountains.

Has Rome built any more cities or has its expansion stopped since building on the Pyramids started? Also have they got ant other techs beyond Pottery and HBR?

Got --- will play tonight.

Target Rome

Do we want to take out their Iron? I would think that should be a top priority. As well do you want to send any Mercs with the groups or keep them out of the fight?

They have the same tech, and I didn't see any visible expansion, so it would appear that they Pyramids are setting them up nicely to be smacked around a bit.

As Rome has legions in the area most likely, I would say no in going towards their iron. Right now I'm just thinking of razing their two border cities to keep them down in size a bit. After that war ends and we have Mathematics, we can pump out a bunch of cats and head down there for a deathblow later on. I would hold off the mercs from this assault, but be warned that Rome has a few units up near us in the fog.

Were they the warrior and archer that went barb hunting? If so a couple of archers will be sufficient to deal with these and can be built after the first wave heads south.

If we are not sending mercs it may be worth building a couple of vet warriors that can absorb any strike before our archers get in range. IIRC Antuim is on a hill so be careful with that one but this is only from memory; I haven't got access to a save at the moment.

Happy hunting marconos ;)

Hand Off: 1250BC nothing to change looks good

IBT: Theveste Archer -> Worker
Rome Norther archer moves S

1) 1225BC: Moving archers S to Rome
Trying to walk a warrior to their iron.
You never know we might get there.

IBT: Leptis Magna Archer -> Archer
MM for production not growth
Rome Northern warrior moves towards our home base.

2) 1200BC: Moving more archers S.

IBT: Carthage Archer -> Archer
Rome units are moving in on our base. I belive they are going to attack us

3) 1175BC: 1 Southern archer into Utica to counter incoming barb.
1 sourthern archer in mountins watching rome archer coming in.

IBT: Thevestes Worker -> Archer
Rome forces our warrior out and retreats his two units.

4) 1150BC: Archers in place. Will move on attack run into rome land next turn.

IBT: Carthage Archer -> Merc (Start making internal defenseive units)
Utica Archer -> Archer

5) 1125BC: 4 archers and 1 warrior move in to attack Pompeii.
Road to leptis minor is complete. Continuing it South
Setup attack area in mountains to get Rome warrior archer to attack our warrior archer in mountains.

IBT: Rome tells us to leave or delcare war. We declare war.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=69868&stc=1
Leptis Magna Archer -> Archer

6) 1100BC: Archer attacks Spearman
Archer dies. Redline spearman but he promotes.
Archer attacks Spearman
Archer loses 2 health kills spearman.
Pompeii is DESTROYED and we get 22 gold.
Capture Roman worker. Begin work on Road to rome.
IBT: Rome Archer attacks us in mountains. Redlines us but he dies.

7) 1075BC: Archer attacks warrior in mountains.
1 dmg to warrior archer dies.
Move Merc OUT of Leptis Minor and fortify with archers and warriors to keep from having GA when warrior attacks.

IBT: Carthage Merc -> Merc

8) 1050BC: Antium attack force (3 archers 1 warrior in position)
Use "acquired" roman worker to scout S.
See roman Spearman/Settler pair and veteran warrior.
Trying to "chase" rome warrior out of mountains. Only unit not in "front" of our army

IBT: Antium: Archer attacks us. Kills us redlines but promotes.
Rome warrior moves up on city.
Rome Norther archer moves back towards Leptis Minor now in hills.
Utica Archer -> archer
Theveste Archer -> Archer

9) 1025BC: Kill that dang rome warrior in our lands. Promote archer to elite!!!
Archer attacks Antium take 1 pt of spearman and dies.
Antium has 2 spearman and an archer in city.
Retreating till have a larger force.
Archer attacks Spearman/Settler pair. Kills spearman no damage.

IBT: Leptis Magna Archer -> Archer

10) 1000BC: Up lux to 10% to take care of Carthage with 6 people.
V archer attacks V Warrior wins 1 life lost.

New 5 Archer 2 warrior Battle group almost in position to take antium.

Turn Summary:
We are in very good position to take out the romain Iron.
We have to do that. Take antium then direct run to iron and take out rome.
We should not declare peace with Rome until they are down to 1 - 2 cities.
I don't think we need catapults this early. Archers rushing will do it if we
get the Iron early enough.

Battle Stats:
Killed
2 Warriors
2 Spearman
1 Archer
1 Settlers
Lost
4 Archers

Destoyed 1 City
Lost 0 Cities
Captured 3 workers.

Not good enough on the kill/lost ratio. Sorry guys.
Had to clear out the Roman units in our land.

I like our progress, but I'm still not sure if I like the idea of attacking 3 defense Legions with archers. We need far more archers to pull that off unassisted. I think we should brun Antium, and then prosecute the war as long as we want. Once a legion shows up, call for peace. Another reason not to attack Rome right now is to not trip their GA yet. If we can hold that off for when we finally do sack Rome, they'll only get a few turns of it before they are dead.

Agree in general. If we can skirt around Rome and attack other cities this will weaken the Romans sufficiently so that next time when we do want to take Rome, we do not have to fight the same number of established cities. We cannot afford a large army so losing a few archers here and there is fine if damage is done to the opposition.

However if our strength is sufficient to take Rome then we should do it before the iron gets to the other cities. We may find that the war continues without legions at our door and a dozen archers in our army with nothing to do. :)

Just a small point; do you think that 5 archers is enough when they have had time to prepare for an attack? (and is it on a hill?)

okay ... I give ... we won't go after Rome.

BUT... we have to take out their Iron and pillage their land. Let' weaken Rome down to nothing. If they send out a Legion then lead them around for awhile. I would like to see us take out 2 - 3 more Roman cities to really weaken them. A weak neighbor is a good neighbor.

BTW: What would be the problem of triggering Rome's GA in Despotism. Won't it really decrease the benefit that they get?

Research Issues: I believe we need to start heading towards Map Making. We have to find our other opponents and get off our island. Not sure what we are missing for requirements for that.

If we have achance to disconnect their iron, I'm all for that. It'll be a good six turns unitl they hook it back up.

Another thought on Rome. If they are building the pyramids there. Do we want just disconnect the iron but leave everything else in place. That way we can take the city after they finish it???

Well, unless we're going to abandon another city, we won't be able to keep the Pyramids. Nonetheless, it would be nice if we could destroy them as to deny them from any other civ.

Trying to disconnect the iron would place our troops against legions thus almost certainly giving them a GA, unless we pillage with mercs and then we get a despotic GA! Are we ready for this?

Those are my concerns as well. Its a bit of a risk. Personally I'd like to hold our GA of until at the very least we have the ability to build some markets and libraries.

Turn 0: 1000 BC

Everything looks good.
Hit enter.

[I] Roman archer attacks our archer. We win, promoting to elite.

Turn 1: 975 BC

Carthage NumMerc-NumMerc
Mathematics comes in.
Science at 50%, Philosophy in 10 turns, at -2 gpt.
Lose our new elite archer attacking a Roman archer.
Kill a Roman warrior with our warrior.
Lose another archer attacking a Roman archer.

[I] Our warrior kills two Roman archers and promotes to elite.

Turn 2: 950 BC

Move troops next to Antium.

[I] Lose our elite archer to a Roman archer

Turn 3: 925 BC

Utica Archer-Pult

Battle of Antium

First archer attacks and dies, spear now 1/3. Another spear in Antium.
Second archer attacks and wins, now the archer is 1/4.
Third archer attacks and wins against 1/3 spear, archer is 2/4. City razed.
Lose a warrior attacking a Roman archer, promoting the Roman to elite.

[I] Roman archer attacks our archer and dies. Caesar comes asking for peace.

Turn 4: 900 BC

Move science forward to 70% to get Philo a turn earlier.
Carthage NumMerc-NumMerc
Theveste archer-archer
Leptis Magna archer-pult

[I] Roman Galley moving up Coast towards us.

Turn 5: 875 BC

Letis Minor barracks-archer
Move an archer to go pillage iron, Rome has a Legion in Rome. We will probably be attacked, triggering Rome's GA.
Lux to 20%, Carthage grew.

[I] Nothing. Legion didn't attack.

Turn 6: 850 BC

Move our archer onto iron.

[I] Archer moves next to our archer by Rome. We will still have the chance to pillage. Galley moves next to Utica.

Turn 7: 825 BC

Carthage NumMerc-archer
Leptis Magna pult-pult
Utica pult-archer
Pillage iron.

[I] Our archer dies to a Roman archer.

Turn 8: 800 BC

Move stack of 8 archers/warriors into Roman territory, plum next to a legion.

[I] Legion attacks and wins, kicking Rome's GA. Roman galley moves east. There is another landmass there, i reckon. Water colour is right too.

Turn 9: 775 BC

Philo comes in, but were not the first. Start Pottery in 6 turns. We need it so when we get peace with Rome, we can get Map Making off them - we need contacts.
Kill the Legion and another archer for no losses.

[I] Archer moves into Rome.

Turn 10: 750 BC

I take the plunge and attack Rome.

Battle of Rome

First archer attacks and kills Legion, archer is now 3/4
Second archer attacks and kills spear, archer is now 2/4
Third archer attacks and kills archer, archer is now 3/4. City razed.

Notes:

I haven't made peace with Rome yet - that is a point for discussion.
We have quite a few troops in the area, with more in our homeland.
They are in a GA, but don't have any more iron. With Rome razed, they are weakened. Currently we can get all their techs for peace, but they have more than we can see, like MapMaking. I suggest we get Pottery, raze a few more cities, then take lots of techs and MapMaking for peace.

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_BC0750_01.SAV)

Fantastic play, -0blivion- :hatsoff:

I agree with your analysis at the end. We need MM badly for other contacts. The more we can weaken Rome the better. We don't want to be facing legions in the future. What would be great is if they attempt to send settlers back to the iron. Using their sheilds to build them will mean we face less military units and plenty of slaves will allow us to have a larger military.

Isn't it true that we will get a better deal if we hit them hard just before accepting peace?

Excellent Oblivion ... I knew we could take Rome.

1) Take out 2 - 3 more roman cities before we declare peace with them. I want them easy to clean up after the 20 turns on the peace. We want them dead.
2) Bump up research to get pottery in 4 turns .. will cost us 16 gp.
3) Kill all regular warriors. we don't need them for anything and it is a waste to upgrade them to swordsman.
4) Once we have pottery and the two most powerful Roman cities are gone we should declare peace. Right now we can get all of their techs, workers and 1 city. If we play the cards right we can jack them down to one city by killing two more and getting the other in peace with all of the techs.
5) If we are going to build a colony on the Iron make 10 or so warriors before we do that for quick upgrades.

After that I'm kinda at a loss ... start building galley's to find our next meal I mean contact???

Excellent play, Oblivion :clap:

I had no idea Rome would collaspse so easily. Awesome. I'd say take them down to one city, and then make peace for lots of tech. We need to get galleys out soon. Also, make a colony on one of the wool sources, as more luxuries are always good.

We also need to connect up the Ivory resource on the N. of the island. That is one we can connect up quickly with very little chance of losing it.

question ... how to we keep from having barbarians destroy our colonies to the Southern part of the island. Are we going to have to place units on those colonies?

Can we place a colony on the Iron to bring that in? I know we can do that for Conquests not sure on PTW

Oblivion: no bonus tech for philosopy in PTW.

Yes, we can make colonies. They are a crucial part of a 5CC. I'd say a spear in each colony will be good enough to hold them, and we can go whack the barb camps occasionally for some extra cash.

I'd say take them down to one city, and then make peace for lots of tech. We need to get galleys out soon.

Agree, but given a choice I say meke peace as soon as we can get MM. As you say we need galleys ASAP. If that means they still have two or three cities, so be it.

Of course if we are not worried about our rep (not recommended) or if we find that they have no contacts, we could always start again before the 20 turns are up! :)

Turn 0 (750 BC): Preflight, MM a couple of cities for extra gold, net +1. Change pottery to 4 turns at -3.

IBT Roman archer kills our vet archer after taking 2 pts damage.

Turn 1 (730 BC): 3/4 archer kills left over roman archer after taking 2 pts damage. Discovers regular spear and settler. Vet archer kills spear with no damage.

Carthage archer -> pyramids (prebuild for granary). Move lux to 0 and put a clown in Carthage so we're +3/t. Utica also starts prebuild for granary.

IBT rome lands an archer on our northern front. Leptis minor builds archer -> cat.

Turn 2 (710 BC): Send warrior against archer in a valiant attempt to prevent GA. Warrior deals one pt damage, dies, and archer promotes. At 3/4 it'll probably attack, but possibly not against a merc.

Reduce science a bit, still get pottery in 2 turns. Move warrior, cat, and 2 archers against Cumae.

IBT Turns archer moves towards open land (to heal). Thevest and Leptis magna archer -> granary prebuild.

Turn 3 (690 BC): Archer kills 3/4 roman archer taking 2 pts damage. Archer attacks spear at Cumae, redlines it but dies. Another spear is present, realize I don't have enough forces and let the rest of the units fortify (cat missed). Move in stack of archers to finish the job.

Lux to 10% and carthage using a clown, research at 20% pottery in 1.

IBT turns Babylon completes the Oracle.

Turn 4 (670 BC): Cat hits in Cumae, damaging spear. Cumae dropped in size probably rushed a spear. Archer gets hit by archer incoming, does no damage to spear. Archer redlines spear, dies. At least three spears and an archer in the city. Archer takes 2 damage but kills regular spear. Archer takes three damage but kills 2/3 spear. Archer takes 1 damage but kills archer. Leaves redlined spear alive. Reg warrior goes redline but takes out the redlined spear, captures cumae.

Merc disperses barb camp, promotes to elite.

Get pottery, change prebuilds. Can get all gold, techs, all but 1 city from Rome for peace. Will research CB at 4 turns and hope to get Myst plus cities (to be disbanded) for peace in 4 turns.

Turn 5 (650 BC): Roman archer moved at us, cat deals 1 pt damage and vet archer finishes it off with no damage. Move archers against Pisae. Road almost complete to ivory.

Turn 6 (630 BC): Our castle gets a fancy stone entrance. Archer disperses Sui encapment. Warrior uncovers roman archer, archer kills taking no damage.

IBT turns roman archer kills our vet archer over the river.

Turn 7 (610 BC): Cats do 2 pts damage to archer, 1 hp warrior dies but 3/4 archer finishes the deal. Ivory colony founded.

IBT turns persia completes the Pyramids.

Turn 8 (590 BC): 4/4 archer goes 1/4 before killing 3/3 spear in Pisae, and gets promoted for his bravery. 4/4 archer goes to 2/4 before killing 3/3 spear and Pisae is razed.

Discover CB, temples started in Carthage and Leptis Minor. Decide to take a small risk; I think Rome might have Poly, so start 4 turn research on Myst at -4. Should be able to take Veii at that time, and next player can negotiate for peace in solid position.

Turn 9 (570 BC): zzzz

IBT turns Roman archer deals 2 dmg to our archer before falling. Vikings complete TGLighthouse.

Turn 10 (550 BC): zzzz

NOTES: I am building infrastructure in all cities, but we will likely disband one of them within 30-40 turns (and refound at the southern location). Change builds in that city. I recommend Utica; it is slightly worse long-term shields than Leptis Minor. Leptis Magna has a forest that will be cut same turn the granary completes (it'll be applied to the next build).

I have a few workers improvings squares that won't matter until despotism, we have all current squares developed.

Stack is in position to take Veii in two turns, and we get Myst at that same time. Get everything from Rome, plus ravenna, and raze it. I think with Monarchy we don't need to be that concerned about happiness associated.

I also didn't build a colony on iron, I was worried about holding it against roman expansion. Recommend that you make the colony and surround it with archers so that a city can't build right on it (with expansion is fine; rome won't last that long anyway). Also pillage locations outside city boundaries so that new roman cities don't get a jump start.

Turns look real good. I agree with the Mystcism try.

I do not believe that the romans have any contacts yet. Does anyone know that for sure? If they don't negotiate peace and then kill them off. It will just make life easier for us if that is the case.

I agree with just killing off the Romans right after peace. No one will no of their existence, so no rep damage at all.

I've been thinking about it, and i think we can go and found a city down by old Rome and still have it be corruption free. It involves founding a bunch of cities on one turn to get our total up to the FP limit (8-10?). Then, with the city founded on the location we want, we can start the FP there, and then disband the rest of the cities to get back down to 5 total before our turn ends. What do you all think of this?

I do not believe that the romans have any contacts yet. Does anyone know that for sure?

If we get as many techs as possible and their WM then see what they have showing once peace is declared. If they have contacts then I feel that the rep is worth keeping, but I always try to play an honest game so if someone wants to convince me of a different stragegy I'm all ears. :D The WM will show if they are on the verge of new contacts. BTW where did the galley go?

If they have no techs I will be keen to knock them out without waiting 20 turns. We then prioratise ships and government change for research but I like KB's idea for a FP in the south. That city could be a real powerhouse. Perhaps the site suggested by stagnate <here> (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2206327&postcount=51)?

I'll play my turns later this evening

Agreed on FP gambit, I think it'll make a big difference. Ship went north and deposited troops, then headed back south, I don't think that much exploring has been done.

Rome hasn't been able to offer contacts yet, so we're ok so far.

I've just played my 10 turns but not very well. Certainly had little luck with the RNG. I'm just about to post the log and update the save but things have moved on a bit, including another civ landing on our island :eek:

Turn 0 (550)
Everything looks good-press enter

Turn 1 (530)
Reduce research by 20% to still give Myst next turn. Move stack to attack next turn

Turn 2 (510)
Carthage: Temple->Merc
Utica: Granary->Temple
L.Magna: Granary->Temple
All bombards fail so I hold back for a turn! Rome hasn’t got Poly so no immediate need to get peace. I didn’t realise that map trading (and therefore contacts) is like the current GOTMs or am I being stupid? Go for currency just in case Rome gets Poly before peace.

IBT Barb appears from camp somewhere around the northern wool and takes a worker out.

Turn 3 (490)
One hp knocked off one spear. First vet archer kills reg spear, losing 2hp. 2nd vet killed for no gain and defended promoted. Next vet is a repeat and next loses for just one more hp. 3/4 archer defeats elite spear and Veii is reduced to rubble but at some cost. Sorry! Utica now has a clown and will not grow anymore unless we up lux or get the temple.

IBT:Barb pillages road SE of L.Minor-I have an archer on the way to deal with this threat but we only had one merc in the town and another barb horse appears

Turn 4 (470)
Theveste: Granary->Temple
Archer kills barb and army heals

IBT: Barb horse attacks L.Minor and loses but another uses the road to attack the archer and kills it. Another barb appears from east of cows

Turn 5 (450)
Carthage: merc->merc.
Merc from L.Minor loses two hp to kill wounded barb horse. Knock out barb camp by cows

IBT-Roman spear and settler appear.

Turn 6 (430)
Cats knock spear down to 1hp and then the vet archer loses. How much bad luck am I going to get? 2nd defeats it for the loss of 2hp and picks up two more slaves.

IBT-Bad news-the iron may not be ours- a purple warrior/settler combo have arrived from the east straight onto the iron.

Turn 7 (410)
Carthage: merc->merc
Scandanavia have MM and HBR plus all our techs. They only have three other cities showing on their screen and no resources. Kill a wandering Roman archer.

Turn 8 (390)
Trying to get a force to attack Neapolis

IBT: Vikings are heading for wool.

Turn 9 (370)
Mercs disperse camp by wool and land next to a Roman spear. Archers and cats approach Neapolis for attack next turn.

IBT elite archer defeats attack on our stack and Roman spear heads North. Vikings 'steal' southern wool

Turn 10 (350)
Carthage: merc->merc
L.Minor: temple->archer.
First archer loses to reg spear and sees it promoted to vet. The second loses as well-I give up! I cannot get more units to the south very quickly so take peace for everything they have and abandon southern town.

No new techs from either civ. Rome has CoL but not maths. Scandinavia have maths but not CoL. Should we sell CoL to the Vikings for their 32g? Have not switched builds to galleys as temples almost complete but you can get two galleys started next turn if you wish, KB. Do you want to claim the iron and disband another town? The Vikings are not much of a threat at the moment but we can't fight them when we don't know where they are. Maybe this is a site we could develop to claim wool and iron?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=70040&stc=1

Sorry for the poor round.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_BC0350_01.SAV

Not a poor round at all Tone. The RNG bites us all at one time or another. I'll try and find where the Vikings are coming from.

THE SAVE (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_BC0150_01.SAV)

Preturn- I make some minor adjustments, but nothng major.

IT- Magna and Utica both complete temples, and both start galleys.

T1 330

Not much

IT-zzz

T2 310

Nothing new

IT- zzz

T3 290

We now have iron and wool colonies online.

IT- zzz

T4 270

Not much

IT- zzz

T5 250

Our first galley is produced. The Vikings have polytheism.

IT- Scandanvia founds another city on our island.

T6 230

I prepare a galley to plunge into the unknown.

IT- zzz

T7 210

Our first galley leaves our shores, heading west, moving a very long distance. At this point I remember differential naval movement.

IT- We learn Currency. Start on Republic at minimum as we would have to run a deficit to decrease the needed time.

Our galley sinks.

T8 190

We start another galley heading east.

IT- We lose that galley too. I've had wretched luck with them lately in all games.

T9 170

Not much.

IT- zzz

T10 150

Nothing of interest.



Summary

We have another galley working its way down the west coast to make another suicide attempt. We have markets in production in all cities. I pumped out a few swords from Carthage, and was thinking about quickly torching the Viking cities in the near future. We could get a nice discount on Polytheism for that, I reckon. I leave it up to my successor.

Got the save 6 turns into it. Stopped to ask a question.

here is the turn log so far.

Startup:
Change Carthage Taxman to Scientist and get a +20 gold instead of +16 by dropping research to 0% and same research time.
No other changes

IBT: zzz

1) 130BC Move troops into Viking land

IBT: Viking boot us out

2) 110BC move swordsman over to wool Vikings heading that way.

IBT: Barb galleys attack us and loses .. no dmg

3) 90BC zzzz

IBT: Viking put embassy in our capitol .. I know where there island is!!!

4) 70BC See border of someone else just to W of our island.

IBT: Carthage Marketplace -> swordsman
Viking galley shows up
Rome spearman trekking across our land.

5) 50BC Make contact with Persia
Stats:
They are up republic
Our miltary average compared to theirs
They have 7 cities
they have horses
duu the galley that approached us wasn't vikings but persian.

Trade currency to Vikings for Poly and 93 gold. Hopefully can trade Poly to Persia for Republic.
Persia will Trade us Republic for Poly + 935 gold. Do not take it.
Us science to 60% -1 gpt but drop republic to 27 instead of 33 turns

IBT: Theveste marketplace -> swordsman
Massive barbarian uprising near Leptis Minor

6) 30BC zzzzz

IBT: zzzzz

Question:
Vikings have construction now. will trade to us for 830 odd gold.
Persians have republic we are 25 odd turns away. Believe we can get that from them for Polythesim and Construction.

Should I attempt the deal?

I await your input.

I think trying the deal is good. The sooner we get into a better form of government the sooner we can begin our conquests in earnest.

Another Question. Further Turn log posted. Question at the end.

6) 30BC Trade 751 gold for Construction to the Vikings
Trade 254 gold 1 gpt plus constuction and polythesim to Persia for republic
Trade the Republic to Vikings for 934 gold
Persia is still up Feudalism

Persia is already a republic and Vikings are in Anarchy. Go for the switch now.
Any cities that can't grow where I can do without revolting are sent to scientists.
Research set to Engineering. Skipping Library???
IBT: WOW a 1 turn transition.
Our Palace get's a new set of Stairs
A Persian horseman and settler show up South of us.

7) 10 BC Change Thevestes from Swordsman to Adeduct.
Set lux to 10%
MM to get Marketplaces as quickly as possible in all cities that still need them
Set research to 40% to get engineering in 27 .. good idea bad idea?

IBT: It appears Persia is going to setup home on our southern wool colony.
Carthage Swordsman -> Swordsman
Utica Marketplace -> Swordsman
MM back to balance growth/production
Leptis Minor Marketplace -> Swordsman
MM to maximize production -vs- growth

8) 10 AD Veteran Archer attack barb .. 3/4 now no promotion

IBT: Persia creates city destroying our wool colony causing carthage to riot.
Leptis Magna Marketplace -> Aqueduct

9) 30 AD We have an average military compared to persia.

I want to attack persia now. Looking for thoughts here before I proceed again.
A lot happening these rounds and I'm not used to a 5CC so want to verify not screwing up.
BTW: Want to use MERC to kill Persian city to cause our golden age to start.

Problem here is we have a 20 turn trade deal with Persia. Would I be better going after vikings as they are on wool on the island as well and that won't hurt our rep?

I would go after the Vikes in this situation, as we can get wool back and not trash our reputation.

There's a lot happening in the game now. Was the border in the west Persia or is there another civ to meet in the near future, marconos?

I agree that we want to keep our rep and so must leave the Pesians alone for now. Are Persia a small state like the Vikings or are they going to be a problem?

IMO we are always going to have a problem with settlers stealing 'our' wool and also our iron unless we found a city there. If we agree on this principle should we not decide where we would like this city so that whoever is playing the game can found it when the opportunity arises? I made my suggestion a few posts ago but no follow up comments! Also if we do that I think that we need to agree on which city will be disbanded so that we don't waste shields building further improvements there. If we are agreed on this then holding off our GA until we can found this city may be advantageous. (Particularly if we are going to try KBs FP gambit.) ITMT we could still send the vikings packing without using mercs.

There's a lot of ifs there and I would really like to know your views so that we have some medium term strategy agreed. :)

I will take out the viking city and establish a new colony on the southern wool. Virtually ALL of our current land is developed. The only one that is quite a ways away is our worst city. I agree with Tone that we need to disband that city and build a new one in the Sourthern location to secure the wool and the Iron.

Persia is the nation to the west. They currently only have 1 settler on our land with a horseman on it. I believe they will be problem.

The course of action I would like us to take is
1) Kill vikings to get them off our island.
2) Wipe out the last Roman city.
3) Build up build up build up and make an invasion force to take out Persia.
During that time we need to build a new city in the south to secure our Iron and wool there. If that is desired I can get those actions going by having the one week city generate workers an settlers as quickly as possible. The next player should be able to competle these things.

Sorry about all of the question but a very active set turns for me.

I will finish up at lunch time today.

I'm not so sure if we need to go and found a city down there. I think if we just leave a detachment down there of a few swords, we can simpley kill anyone that comes near our resources. Sure, it might end up with the game descending into AWM, but that would interesting nonetheless :crazyeye:

An option we'll have later is to block off our coast entirely, because once we raze a few AI cities we'll be swimming in slave labor. We can use those slaves to block the coast and help prevent landings, or at leaset shunt them all to one spot.

I can see that we will have plenty of slaves to help block landings. However we will also need troops to deal with the barbs otherwise they will kill the slaves and then the AI will land units. Even worse is our lack of mobility with no horses (shame that we cannot find the barb's source of horses :) ) which would mean tying up a large force spread over a large area. How corrupt could a southern city be when we are below our OCN and we are commercial?

Reposted complete turn log so all in one location. Sorry about delay couldn't finish play at work on lunch. Business happened.

Startup:
Change Carthage Taxman to Scientist and get a +20 gold instead of +16 by dropping research to 0% and same research time.
No other changes

IBT: zzz

1) 130BC Move troops into Viking land

IBT: Viking boot us out

2) 110BC move swordsman over to wool Vikings heading that way.

IBT: Barb galleys attack us and loses .. no dmg

3) 90BC zzzz

IBT: Viking put embassy in our capitol .. I know where there island is!!!

4) 70BC See border of someone else just to W of our island.

IBT: Carthage Marketplace -> swordsman
Viking galley shows up
Rome spearman trekking across our land.

5) 50BC Make contact with Persia
Stats:
They are up republic
Our miltary average compared to theirs
They have 7 cities
they have horses
duu the galley that approached us wasn't vikings but persian.

Trade currency to Vikings for Poly and 93 gold. Hopefully can trade Poly to Persia for Republic.
Persia will Trade us Republic for Poly + 935 gold. Do not take it.
Us science to 60% -1 gpt but drop republic to 27 instead of 33 turns

IBT: Theveste marketplace -> swordsman
Massive barbarian uprising near Leptis Minor

6) 30BC Trade 751 gold for Construction to the Vikings
Trade 254 gold 1 gpt plus constuction and polythesim to Persia for republic
Trade the Republic to Vikings for 934 gold
Persia is still up Feudalism

Persia is already a republic and Vikings are in Anarchy. Go for the switch now.
Any cities that can't grow where I can do without revolting are sent to scientists.
Research set to Engineering. Skipping Library???
IBT: WOW a 1 turn transition.
Our Palace get's a new set of Stairs
A Persian horseman and settler show up South of us.

7) 10 BC Change Thevestes from Swordsman to Adeduct.
Set lux to 10%
MM to get Marketplaces as quickly as possible in all cities that still need them
Set research to 40% to get engineering in 27 .. good idea bad idea?

IBT: It appears Persia is going to setup home on our southern wool colony.
Carthage Swordsman -> Swordsman
Utica Marketplace -> Harbor ( will need food for growth from sea tiles )
MM for production -- will finish harbor before cached food runs out but will need to be MM to keep from starving out citizens after Harbor complete.
Leptis Minor Marketplace -> Swordsman
MM to maximize production using food in granry to speed up production. Will need to MM back after aqueduct is completed.

8) 10 AD Veteran Archer attack barb .. 3/4 now no promotion

IBT: Persia creates city destroying our wool colony causing carthage to riot.
Leptis Magna Marketplace -> Aqueduct

9) 30 AD We have an average military compared to persia.
Merc attacks Barb horse. 3/4 no promo. Pults weakend horse 1st.
Begin moving troops towards viking cities.

IBT: Ghandi appears in our contact list. They have landed a ship
They have 7 cities
Behind Code, Poly, Currency and Construction
They have furs and horses

10) 50 AD They will give us all of their gold 33 for polytheism. Do not make the trade.
44 Gold to make embasy in India .. do it to find our where they are at.
India has 2 sources of Horses and Iron.
Capital has 3 citizens.
Garrison of 3 spear, 1 horse, 1 settler
Making Swordsman.
They share the island with Persia. An ally to take out Persia???

Next turn we can attack both Rome and Scandanavia. I believe we should do both and just remove them. I also think we should start "sucking up" to India to get them to attack Persia with us.

I took the opportunity to build the next level of infrastructure Aqeducts and Harbot to get the cities to really grow faster. Seemed like a good time to do that and then we kick in military fighting after that.

I would like some feedback on what you guys think about that startegy.

Be careful to not let persia squash india with immortals. In the next turn we need to decide whether to do the FP gambit or not. If so we need to start settlers and prep for it; if we wait any longer it's just pointless.

When we go to war we need to surround the iron and wool so that cities can't be founded next to it. Is using workers like that legit? I think I'm thinking of some RBCiv rules that didn't allow it but want to make sure.

The city location to the south would be an incredible powerhouse, compared to the 10-15 shield max locations currently south of us, imo it's a move to make, but sooner than later.

I agree but we also need to kick Persia out of there now! If we do go for a southern site will it be our FP city?

Add that we would be better kicking off our GA by dropping a few mercs on Persian lands (can we get there?) to fortify on hill, pillage iron, etc so that India is not fighting them alone if we can get an alliance.

Got it, opened it up, and there is a problem.
The galleys movement and carrying capabilites seem to have switched. Our galleys can carry 6 troops, but can only move two tiles a turn.

Have i just not played PTW for too long or is this wrong?

It's not because you've got a poor memory as far as PtW is concerned. I was surprised when we couldn't trade maps; this is something else!

Is it worth sending mad-bax a pm?

PM sent to Mad-Bax.

The Game settings are the same as for the original GOTM, and I provided a link to that page in the first post of the game thread. The Civilopedia is the generic one made for gotm20 ish IIRC. and isn't altered AFAIK from game to game.

Just found this quote in the maintenance thread but as I type this I remember that differential naval movement is on. i.e galley has 6mp but uses 3 for a coastal square, 2 for a sea tile and one for ocean. Did you take that into account?

It still doesn't explain the boat capacity though!

One word of Caution on going to war with Persia early is we have a gpt deal with them. I believe we need to kill off Rome early 1st and kick out the vikings. We should build up and get ready to hit persia. With the naval movement though things are going to be risky as sending troops over the water may be ... shall we say bad. There may be a better crossing just a little North of where I went through as that is where the Persian's and Indians came from.

OK, MB has told me that it is just differential naval movement, etc.
It is too late to play these turns now, so i will have to leave it till tomorrow.

One thing to note. I noticed that both of the Persian and Indian ships came through the exact same spot. the western most tip by our farthest southern city. Since neither of these guys has the great lightout there has to be a clear path through. Computer players won't do suicide runs correct?

Thats correct. For them to be coming here, it has to be a safe passage.

Word crashed on me - notes are gone.

Basically, i wiped out the Romans, continued sword, pult and NumMerc production, explored some more, kicked off GA (might want to bump up research) GA was kicked off on last turn i think - note the injured NumMerc who took out the last Roman archer.

Didn't get galleys out there at first, but we have more now, with more in the shipyards.

Save is on the website.

Preturn check: Things look ok, lower lux to 10% and put a clown in Carthage (it's at 12 already). Xerxes up Feudalism so we'd be facing pikes, and 7 turns left on trade. Persia is moving past their UU time, recommend building to go after them with knights; (can we trade if we have a viable sea path, or does it all have to be coast?) otherwise longbows will have to do.

India's UU isn't that mighty, so we could go after them, but they are already behind. Don't think we want to face viking UU unless we can get there before they come out in numbers.

My vote is to go after persia, prep for the attack in 7 turns with a bunch of galleys and an invasion force. Opinions?

Let's nail the vikings as well and keep them from getting a foothold on our island. They aren't that big yet and this can help to "control" their growth. We should be able to negotiate peace after a quick 2 city strike. Something to do while we are building up to hit Persia.

-0blivion-, wool is not showing on your screen shot. Have you got the correct graphics installed?

I agree with an attack on Persia but I think that we should drag the other civs in against them. Once we've knocked out Persia we can go for India or Vikings.

I've just trailed a 5CC game with a 5th city at a similar distance to where I want to place a city in our game. I have corruption down to 23% in Republic, although this is with WLTKD. (IIRC it was around 35% before this.) IMO it is worth placing a city there with those figures. The production from wool and iron and the food bonus will make it a powerhouse. More importantly we cannot afford to lose that iron and it will also ensure that two of our lux sources are secure. Any objections please voice them otherwise that is what I shall aim to do on my next turn.

The more I think about it the less in favor of it I am. We already have established cities and things are moving along well. With a 23% corruption that negates any benefit that we get correct?

As for keeping our resources don't we plan on putting slaves around the island to keep people from coming in. If so then resources won't be a problem to hold on to.

-0blivion-, wool is not showing on your screen shot. Have you got the correct graphics installed?


I've just trailed a 5CC game with a 5th city at a similar distance to where I want to place a city in our game. I have corruption down to 23% in Republic, although this is with WLTKD. (IIRC it was around 35% before this.) IMO it is worth placing a city there with those figures. The production from wool and iron and the food bonus will make it a powerhouse. More importantly we cannot afford to lose that iron and it will also ensure that two of our lux sources are secure. Any objections please voice them otherwise that is what I shall aim to do on my next turn.

I know, i need to reinstall the graphics, they got lost in a cleanout. When i click on the square i can see them though.

I like the new city idea - but what city do we get rid of?
I would think one of the more northern ones - Theveste or Utica i think?

If we are going to get rid of one the Northermost city would be the best. It is all grassland and has the least amount of production potential.

As for keeping our resources don't we plan on putting slaves around the island to keep people from coming in. If so then resources won't be a problem to hold on to.
I don't see that working. We cannot hold our island frontiers at the moment. I know that we're planning conquest but the civs are appearing quicker than we can remove them!

I agree that production in the north is limited and we should consider a move but only if we are all agreed (or at least silent for those that do not want to express an opinion :) ) as this is a major decision. IMO 77% of a high producing city is better than 95% of a low producing one. ;)

I'm torn on this issue. If we do manage an FP down there, we could have two cities that would be real powerhouses. I suppose I can support the idea of moving south. Don't just straight out abandon the northern city though; bleed as many settlers and workers off of it first as you can. We can join the settlers into the new city to get it up and running ASAP.

On the issue of the FP how many towns do we need on that turn to start building it? It could be a lot of shields. Could we use those shields to rush a courthouse and put up with the other corruption?

If the team are unsure as to the validity of the southern site we can elect to stay as we are. I certainly don't want to push people into a decision they are not happy with; I just want a clear mandate one way or the other!

Perhaps we can hold off on the plan until we pop a GL so we can rush the FP down there? That way we would not experience much drop off as we could have productive cities down there right away. I think we need at least 8 cities for a FP on a standard map, though we should be prepared to go as high as 12 or so.

I did some quick calculations.

Northern most city --- full improved working all LAND tiles. NO Rails
20 shields
95% uncorrupted
19 shields total

Placing city by the wool hills ... where all 5 hills can be worked. fully improved working all LAND tiles on rails
36 shields
77% uncorrupted
27 shields of production

Can't argue with those numbers.... let's do the move.

BTW: How do you plan on getting a FP??? Conquer enough cities in 1 turn and start FP before we end the turn and disband all of them? Can be done but tricky.

The plan is to have a bunch of settlers on standby, and found a bunch of cities on one turn, set one of our southern cities to the FP, and then disband the others. It should work just fine, I think. Also, I agree with the numbers. They speak volumes, the move south is very much worth it.

Never thought of the settler trick ... good one.

I was suggesting a different site: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attac...tid=70040&stc=1 that secures the iron. It has one less hill and more water tiles than the one you are suggesting though. We just might have to have the occasional fight to reclaim the iron with this site but production is higher and corruption and waste will be lower so I am happy with your suggestion, marconos.

If we are agreed on the site(?) and the move are we agreed on disbanding Theveste by building a settler and a number of workers to join to our new city or should we build a number of cities to go for KB's FP gambit?

OR should we disband a different site?

My vote is to go after persia, prep for the attack in 7 turns with a bunch of galleys and an invasion force. Opinions?

If that is what we are doing we also need to be ready to settle our new site when we demoloish the persian town on our island before India or the Vikings get there.

I know were thinking a different site but I went for max production. Sorry ... didn't state that in me message.

I say we go for it ( have to get rid of those pesky vikings 1st though ).
Let's generate settlers to try for the FP as we have a good number of our workers and Roman workers that we could join to the city to quickly bounce it's size up.

If we time it right we could establish that city plus a couple of others for the FP AND capture 1 or 2 persian cities to help reduce the number of settlers needed to get the correct amount. Then turn around and sell everything in the captured city and the city we are disbanding.

I think our #1 priority has to be getting the offensive move going against Persia. Our military is strong and we really need to keep moving to keep in control of the situation.

As for needing to keep our island safe. At this point the viking are the only ones that have sailed to our Island without using the special location that india and persia came through. If that is the only access point that is safe we could park a couple of galleys there to hold that water point and stop ALL other nations except for the vikings from hitting us. Course that is IF that is the only safe access point and that will only work until someone researches the tech to open up the other type of water squares. By that point we should be in really good shape.

I like the idea of blocking the sea route to Persia/India. (Do we know where it is yet.) This would help us keep the fight where we want it.

It appears to be the western most tip by our sourthern most city. That is where both of their ships appeared and stopped at. If needed I can try and get a screen shot some time today and post it.

If you have time that would be great.

Ill get a screen shot doctored up tonight. Can't do at work today sorry. (Two software product releases today )

Attached is a screen shot. An indian ship is currently sitting in the arrival point. I don't see how the ship can make it accross there. Unless there is something in the black but they have to make it somewhere.

It's the differential naval movement where ocean only uses 1MP. I think we may find a couple of routes when we fill in the black. Then again I've just got up and my eyes could be playing tricks. ;) I think I'll download the save tonight (that stagnate is currently playing) to have a closer look with the grid switched on.

BTW, flu and comp problems slowed me, will get it out tonight

Preturn:

Ok. Decided move south is priority (we want to claim that as soon as possible, and get the shields without wasting more time).

Switch Thevest to a settler; granary empties at size 7 and growth there is slow, so stay size 6 and below. Start storing up the settlers to do the FP move.

Move swords towards Upsala (Vikings) to declare war next turn. We can't hold that spot right now, but it'll set the vikings back and get rid of their foothold on our island.

IBT Persia starts Sun Tzu, and sends out a horse.

260 AD: Carthage Sword -> Settler (at size 12, milk the population). Declare war on the vikings, move SoD into their territory. Vikings have an embassy, might be able to get to them without suicide galley.

270 AD: Carthage Settler -> Sword, Leptis Magna Galley -> Galley, Utica Galley -> Galley, Thevest Settler -> Cat, Leptis Minor Sword -> Sword.

Vet sword kills Elite spear defending vikings, takes city with no damage.

I didn't see anything about it before, but I think that we are a seafaring civ, or similar to it (check original announcement). Haven't seen any galleys sink yet.

Switching all grassland tiles from mines to irrigation in the southern cities.

IBT Indians start Great Wall

280 AD: Movement, nothing big. Moved archers/mercs out of cities, Republic doesn't have MP. They'll blockade the iron for us. Switch Leptis Minor to Granary in 3, MM growth to 4 (from 3).

290 AD: Carthage Sword -> Settler, Leptis Magna Galley -> Galley, Theveste Cat -> Settler.

IBT Babylon completes the GW.

300 AD: Utica Galley -> Cat.

Lose a galley in treacherous waters; maybe not seafaring but reduced odds of sinking? Have had 10+ chances to sink and this is the first one. Don't want to lose Galleys if this just happens to be a lucky streak.

Two swords are redlined but take out the last viking defenders, they have been knocked off our island. Several Galleys have been spotted heading north.

Holy cow! Vikings will give us 2 of their 3 spare cities (not counting capital) for peace! Unfortunately the settler isn't quite in position to build the FP city, so I'll wait 3 turns and we should definately have enough cities to start FP.

310 AD: Viking ship up north. Carthage Settler -> Sword. Leptis Magna Galley -> Harbor. Leptis Minor Granary -> Sword.

Galley Spies blue border (Babylon) behind Vikings. That's why they'll give so much for peace, looks like they've been mostly eradicated by Babs. Babs are even tech, and have 9 cities (with capital), horses gems and incense extra.

320 AD: Utica Cat -> Cat. Theveste Settler -> Worker. Vikings landed a single warrior dispatched by our archer. Move troops to prep for Persian attack.

Galley discovers Germany beyond Babs. Germany has 10 cities (incl capital), dyes extra, and is lacking Currency and Republic. Hopefully we can get engineering before they get into the next age and hope they don't get engineering for free. They have a nice swords army, it looks like that continent is pretty squeezed and warlike.

330 AD: Screw up and Leptis Minor riots (forgot to check happiness after moving a city, 1g made the diff).

Pausing game now to decide where to place southern city. The three tiles NE of the lake are our options; the northern most location will secure iron with expansion, the southern two can control wool. I believe that we can hold either iron or wool by troop/worker placement (deny enemy cities that can get resource in radius) so IMO we just go for the best location.

Shields without rails are 38 next to the lake, 35 NE of that, and 28 NE of that. The southern most location has three wool in radius. I think that's the best choice; we'll really want the wool to be able to trade in later turns. I think we can lock up iron without building on it. The middle location is not a bad compromise; it gives us 2 wool, but with the 2nd expansion (100 culture) will hit iron, which eliminates most of the need for troops surrounding it (need some still to the NE). I can found in two turns on the nortern locations (which pushes me a bit towards founding in the middle), or 3 turns for the southern location.

Anyway, give me your opinions before I proceed.

Also, how many cities are needed for FP? We can get 2 from Vikings, 1 from Persia, and have 3 settlers of our own.

I think we need at least 8 cities for a FP on a standard map, though we should be prepared to go as high as 12 or so.
I tried to check by looking in the editor but I couldn't find it.

One city from the Persians? Have I lost track of the game? Do you mean if we give a DoW and take the city on our island? Haven't we got a trade deal there or is that history? :confused: :crazyeye: Perhaps I need to get some :coffee: ; I've just got up.

On the settler location, I vote for the middle one of your three. One square further south is not going to increase corruption by as much as we can gain in extra shields but have you checked out marconos' suggestion earlier in this thread?

According to the sheet I have we only need 8 cities on standard. We have 5 + 1 persia + 2 vikings + 3 settlers == 11 cities. How close are we to 1 more settler to be sure?


The corruption value of (77% good ) that I gave earlier was from somebodies elses suggestions and I just applied the number. I say go for the southen most location. I just don't believe we are going to have a problem holding the Iron. We are going to need as much production as possible.

The last point is are we sure we want to start a FP and build it by hand. I though we were going to wait for a GL to build it? With on 5 cities can we wait that long to build it by hand?

I agree that we should wait for a GL for the FP. IMO we should get some culture early on though with a temple to get those borders expanded asap. Maybe those settlers can give a quick boost to the population of our southern town. Maybe if we can get a courthouse that will be enough and the GL can be used for something more useful. After all FP is 200 shields and Leo's is 600.

Persian city is the one on our continent, our per turn deal just expired.

We are 2-3 turns from another settler, I believe.

Several reasons to build the city now:

* We are not militaristic, it could be awhile before we pop a GL (and it could be used for something better)
* Each city costs us 2 pop points, if we use the 3 enemy cities that is 6 pop points saved.
* With workers we should be able to increase size quickly and get FP in ~20 turns.
* That spot is unsettled; if we wait we will have to boot another civ.

The one gotcha that could be pro or con, is that we are in our GA. We would lose some gold/production doing this, but our FP would be that much quicker to build.

I believe we should take this opportunity to use GA production to crank out the FP. I don't think we can build temple/courthouse first for the same reasons listed above.

How about build the city and see what the corruption is like? We can always switch production to a FP when we have enough cities if corruption is too high. My question is is the FP worth this many shields with such a small number of cities. 200 sheilds for a FP plus maybe a couple of settlers wasted might be uneconomic.

I can do that. The other southern city, at size 7 is losing about 7 shields out of 25 -- somewhere in the 25-33% range. A 5 shield loss would have a ROI of 40 turns, 10 shield loss in 20 turns. That doesn't count the gold difference (5-10g/t). I don't think that there is any question we want to do it, just need to make sure that we don't cramp our building efforts too much in the process.

Ok proceeding.

340 AD: Move into position for city. Worker movement. Micromanage Leptis Minor for shields; it will only get 1 food per turn, but will build sword in 2 turns rather than 3, plus extra gold. We'd be wasting about 10 shields every other turn if we maximize food.

350 AD: The big turn. Settle Sabratha at the southernmost location (it gives us wool in immediate radius, which the other spots do not. Make peace with Vikings for two of their cities, plus 20 gold. That's all it takes to build FP, so start on it. Start moving settlers down to grow the city.

Viking cities place us next to a Celtic ship, they are down Math, Code, and Poly with 4 total cities.

Declare on the persians, move stack in. Saved and uploaded.

NOTES:

There is a worker on the tundra north, we get Engineering in 1 turn. Plant forest and head south.

There is a sword up there, I recommend pillaging the extra tiles there; no sense in giving anyone else a leg up.

Once we have engineering, we may want to trade currency to Germany. That'll pop them into the MA and their free tech. Hopefully we can make a nice trade of it.

Several cities aren't making max food; they would be wasting significant shields so I have slightly less food, but speed military builds by a turn. Keep this in mind before changing them :-)

I recommend using the workers in the south to improve all the tiles before merging with the city. We have three settlers headed south (I think one is fortified in Carthage, check that) so don't put in too many workers. Be careful to not switch production off FP, since we can't get it back.

We have three gallies ready to head over and make war with the persians, and plenty of troops. Make sure you keep troops ready on this side to handle any incoming troops.

The strongest civ is Babylon, then the Persians. I recommend putting mild hurt onto Persia, but plan to go after Babylon in not too long.

Just downloaded the save. Everything looks fine. Just one question: How do we get safely to Babylon? We still can sink at sea, can't we?

Maybe I should have kept quiet. We lose a galley at sea before my first turn!

That's why I asked about seafaring; The odds on sinking seemed to be really low, although we do still sink in sea. However, if we might need to wait until astronomy to go after babs.

Also, check to see if the persians have contact with the babs and/or germans. They would be one civ to trade with if we went after the german gambit, and we're at war, so we really don't want babs or germans to get a free trade there. Might still be worth doing once babs have researched another tech, but keep that in mind.

OK. I've stopped already! I'd appreciate your views on the following:

1. I think that we should go for the Persains to knock them out of the game. Our military is strong and we can get an alliance with India for CoL. Once we succeed we then go for the Indians, who should be weak after the fight with Persia! In the meantime we head for Astronomy so that we can get to the others safely.

2. I agree with stagnate in gifting Germany into the MA with currency and then trade for their bonus tech. The risk is that they appear to be strong and we are helping them along by doing this and it could backfire if they get Engineering!

3. We have a large treasury and I would like to set up embassies with all known civs. We cannot trade yet but it will let us know exactly who has contact with whom and make them more favourable to us until we decide to strike.

I shall resume at around this time tomorrow, following these strategies unless you advise me against them!

1) Take out the Persians. Nothing good ever came out of leaving an enemy behind. Proceed on to India is a very good idea.

2) Gifting Germany is hazorduos in my mind. Not sure it is really worth the risk. Whatever the team decides in find with me.

3) Yes .. setup embassies with everyone. If anything it will give us a better idea where everyone is at. Don't set them up with Persia obviously.

Another option that we have to is to get everyone that we know all fighting each other. It may make them weaker. Not confident on that item though.

Other civs are behind in tech. We may be able to draw them all into a war on babylon to keep them from gaining while we're fighting on the other side of the world. We should be able to set up alliances for really old tech, and bab doesn't have pikes yet so it should still be fairly even.

I am happy to declare war on Babylon and buy an alliance with Germany. I am not so sure about the Vikings though. I would like them to keep the GLHouse for a while as it doesn't hurt to have the more powerful civs kept at a comfortable distance. However they may get dragged into a war anyway so maybe we should get them involved and hope the Germans protect them!

I forgot to mention point 4 in my previous post! I've set research to Fued at 30%, which is the highest we can do without running a deficit budget, and will take 20 turns. However our GA will run out in about 8-9 turns, if -0blivion- remembered correctly (after word crashed on him). After this it might be a bit tough on the finances as we have a massive unit cost (currently -96gpt IIRC). However a lot could happen in these turns and I think we have a lot to gain by getting this tech early. Switching off research and having one scientist could make sense though. Views?

I think stirring up the other civs a bit isn't a bad idea. We want a slow tech pace here. I really don't see this game hitting the Industrial age if we do things correctly. I think getting to Feudalism is of great importance to us, as it unlocks the best unit we're going to have for a while in the form of the Medieval Infantry. It seems likely that we'll be doing a good deal of conquering using a combined arms approach of Mercs for defense, MDI for offense, and catapults for softening up targets slightly. After Feudalism, I think getting to Mettalurgy would be nice, as cannons are 400% more efficent than cats.

Agreed! I have had poor luck on my opening turn with cats again. :mad:

However I think that Astronomy is more important as we need it to get to these other civs which is why I favour the top tier. My concern is that the others will have too many cities on hills defended by muskets before we can get to them.

Another topic for discussion: Should we be looking to get Monarchy? Unit support is costly in Republic and the slow SOD is going to lead to war weariness eventually and I doubt that we can use the lux and research sliders that much with so many units. (Should I be building colloseums in the meantime.) Is it worth another revolution though?

Ahhhh, yes indeed. Astronomy is a must for us as well. I do suppose Astronomy is more important than Metallurgy. Monarchy isn't a bad idea. The WW is a big problem if we get stuck in prlonged wars. I would look to pick it up and revolt at the most optimal moment.

If this was C3C, i would be saying stick with Republic. But, yeah, i think Monarchy is a superior government for this type of game, in PTW.

Preturn (350AD) Everything looks fine! Press enter.

IBT Indian sword to the west of our FP city attacks barb (?) and loses.

Turn 1 (360BC)
Engineering-> Fuedalism @ 30%.
Carthage sword-> sword.
Utica cat-> cat.
L Magna harbour->galley.
L Minor sword->sword
Galley in sea near Babylon sinks.

Cats do no damage so wait a turn.
-Post and wait for advice-
Resume and build embassies with Celts and Germany (we already have them with Persia, India and Vikings). The Germans haven’t met the Celts yet but are at war with Babylon!!! Buy alliance with India vs the Persians using Polytheism and the same with the Celts vs Babs
Switch builds in middle three cities to Colosseums (is that the correct plural?)

Turn 2 (370AD)
7 cats reduce the pop by one-are they going to do damage to the defending troops. I’ll have 9 next turn but if they still do nothing I’m attacking with swords anyway. Barbs head for FP city.

Turn 3 (380AD)
L Magna galley->galley.
9 cats reduce one spear by one HP. Are these really worth the shields and gold?! Lose 2 swords on attack but reduce the Persian town to rubble and get another 2 slaves.

Turn 4 (390AD)
Send two galleys with 2 swords and 2 mercs. Persia has pikes so we shall pillage hills!

Turn 5 (400AD)
Carthage Col->sword.
L Magna galley->galley.
Send galleys towards Persian iron hill. Clown in Utica until we get the col in 2 turns.

Turn 6 (410AD)
Carthage sword-> sword.
Join one worker to FP town and the three settlers will be added next turn. If only they were further south when it was built!

Turn 7 (420AD)
Carthage sword->merc.
Utica colosseum->galley. Just seen on the map an Ottoman city in the wreckage of a Viking town.
L Magna galley->colosseum.
Join 3 settlers to FP city to give 8 workers and a clown. Current shield production is 25 but 14 are wasted. FP in 17 turns, but when our GA is over… Up research to 40% giving us Fued in 9 turns @ -9gpt.


Turn 8 (430AD)
Carthage merc->merc
L Minor Colosseum->merc (thought about court but FP will make this a short term investment only)
Persians have an island town SW of Arbela

IBT Persia ask for peace. They have Literature, Monarchy and Feudalism but will only give the first of these in a peace deal. Maybe when we get some troops there we can do some damage and get a better bargain. At the moment however we have a pact with India…

Turn 9 (440AD)
Carthage merc->sword
Utica galley->galley.

Turn 10 (450AD)
L Minor merc->merc
End of GA has resulted in disorder in FP town as 10% lux has less value now. Didn’t think of this. :mad: Nothing else of any consequence happens.

Over to you, KB.

Put second clown in FP city which will result in starvation but the eight shield producing squares will still be worked. It is not worth raising the lux slider for just this town and I believe that it is not worth irrigating two bgs to gain the extra commerce from the lake. I have left the workers SW of Utica alone just in case you want to change this though. ;)

In checking for war weariness, I notice that Utica have 20% cruel oppression complaint. I haven’t rushed anything (haven’t we been in Republic for 20+ turns by now?) so what does that mean :confused: I suggest you keep an eye on that as it grows in two more turns.

Research is at 40% but now losing 45gpt. You may want to reduce this to 30%.

Four galleys ready to transport troops to Persia with a fifth one ready to block their route to us by fortifying where the four currently are. This blocking technique has worked perfectly so far-they have not attempted to fight their way across here either. There is a selection of mercs, swords and cats for you to choose from! We could do with losing a few troops at the moment with such high unit costs! I was tempted to send a couple of mercs over to pillage but decided to leave you with a full choice.

Two galleys in the north almost in place to try and pillage iron.

Galley at sea in the East aiming to contact Ottomans and another being built in Utica just in case it sinks.

Indians blocked in on our island by troops and workers. We don’t want them spreading!

Three slaves heading north to stop foreign settlers claiming ivory but more will be needed.

Sword in the East pillaging improvements, as suggested by stagnate.

Looks like some solid turns Tone. The only way I think we could have gotten the "cruel oppression" in one of our towns is if we captured an AI city that had been whipped and abandoned it. In that case, we get the honor of keeping the "cruel oppression" in the form of it jumping to our nearest city.

I've got it, and I'll play now.

Preturn- I feel like I'm at the Ancient Age Warfare Superstore, as the coast near Leptis Minor has everything a war monger could ever need. I load up two galleys of swords, one of mercs, and 1 of cats.

IT- zzz

T1 460

I kill a barb camp. Our pillaging party lands near the Persian iron. First wave of initial invasion force heads over, spotting pikes in Parsargadae.

IT- Persian MDI impales itself on our merc.

T2 470

We land at Parsargadae. Our pillaging force takes the iron hill. We meet the Ottomans. They are up monarchy on us.

IT- Babylon and Celts sign peace. Several MDI approach our pillagers.

T3 480

The Persian iron is disconnected. I open up on Parargadae with our 2 cats and take off one hp. I'm not going to attack until we have more forces. Our next wave is loaded up.

IT- Our pillaging force is reduced to one redlined sword by the vicious attack of Persian MDI.

T4 490

Seeing as our redlined sword will die anyway, I suicide it against an MDI, rather than give them the pleasure of killing it.

IT- zzz

T5 500

Our second wave lands. I would invade next turn, but we got some some luck with the cats and the highest exposed defender is now a 2hp pike. I decide to go for it now.

Vet sword kills reg pike, losing 1hp.
Two vet swords die and I stop there. I don't fancy promoting that pike all the way to elite.

IT- A bunch of civs start on the Great Library.

T6 510

War Weariness has hit. Increasing lux by 10% gets everyone back to work.

I begin siege of Parsargadae. We knock two hp off the defending pike and destroy the temple. I kill the pike with our first sword. Regular spear is then killed by a vet sword and the city burns. We get three slaves, two of which hitch a ride home on a galley.

IT- zzz

T7 520

Our SoD moves on to Antioch. We'll attack next turn.

IT- zzz

T8 530

Cats manage to knock one hp off of a pike. Our first sword redlines a pike. Second sword kills a spear. Third sword redlines a pike. 4th kills a pike. 5th kills a pike, and the city burns.

IT- We learn Feudalism. Research is set to Invention, but with a single scientist, as we can't research it any faster really.

T9 540

Not much.

IT- zzz

T10 550

Not much. I begin our SoD's trek towards Persepolis.


Summary

We're on the prowl now.I'm not sure if we can hack Persepolis yet, but we should be able to. Maybe waiting for an MDI or two to get there wouldn't hurt.

Got it ... plan on doing some more dmg to Persia and that about wraps it up.

Any other suggestions?

Will play tomorrow night ... have to work tonight.

Did anyone try trading currency to germany and seeing if we get lucky with their tech? Might be too late now, but didn't see anything about it from Tone.

@Marconos

Just to let you know, I just uploaded the newest save now, as I forgot earlier. Just wanted to make sure you have the right save.

Great progress, KB. :goodjob:

we got some some luck with the cats and the highest exposed defender is now a 2hp pike.

I'm glad someone is getting them to do some damage! I'm getting a little concerned at my lack of good fortune in battle in this game.

Research is set to Invention, but with a single scientist, as we can't research it any faster really.

That's the problem we'll have for a while I guess. At the moment we should be OK damaging Persia and keeping WW under check. BTW have they still got iron?

Did anyone try trading currency to germany and seeing if we get lucky with their tech? Might be too late now, but didn't see anything about it from Tone.

Sorry I should have said something about this. You would think that in a post so long I might have managed to squeeze this important bit of info in. :D

The was some doubt in the team about the wisdom of this if we want to keep the tech pace slow so I decided to hold back. They are in a prolonged war with Babs and I was keeping currency back to tempt them back to war if they agreed peace terms. It wasn't too late at the end of my turns but now I don't know. They may have been going for monarchy and so the deal could still be on. We have techs to trade that I think are monopolies for that part of the world so if you think it's a good idea...However it may be worth checking the relative strengths of Babs and Germany (plus Ottomans?) and realigning sides to make sure no power gets too great before we can get there.

Well ... before I get started. Quick question. Are we driving for Astronomy? Is so why are we spending any time on invention? I belive our best course of action is to get to astronomy as quickly as possible as that is our best hope of getting to the computer. THoughts? Will wait for replies before I play

I wondered about that for a while and decided that it was a wise decision on KB's part. We are researching on min so it will take 40 turns. There are several scientific civs in the game* and so if Germany don't get Mono for free it will probably be researched by someone sooner than Invention by other civs so we can trade for it and also get something else in the bargain.

I agree that we need to be heading for Astro but when options are limited, our research path should be the most profitable by going for the most expensive tech and buy the cheaper techs with the gold we save as the other civs will get there first anyway.

*Persia and Germany are scientific but Babylon are not. I've no idea about Ottomans; have they also been doctored?

sorry down sick yesterday ... will get it out tongiht

Someone want to post a summary to the spoiler forum?

Startup: Being agressive ... moving more units out to send to Persia.
It appears that Persia's final city is on an Island. We may be able to knock them down to a single island city and then declare peace for our missing techs.

IBT: India signs a peace treaty with Persia ... I knew we couldn't trust them ... guess they will have to pay .... soon
Carthage: MDI -> MDI
Utica: MDI -> MDI
Leptis Magna: MDI -> MDI

1) 560AD: Closer to Persia
Moving workers to close off our island.
(Will try to do all of this with slaves so it's free)

IBT: Leptis Minor: MDI -> MDI

2) 570AD: Persia falls ... I HATE CATAPULTS. We have 8 catapults. If those were swords man I would not have to wait for the ones I have left to heal.
Cannons actually work. Lost 3 swordsman in attack.
Bye bye Pyramids.
We get 6 more slaves
Take out Persian archer that shows up with new swordsman reinforcements.
IBT: Persian archer attacks new swordsman over river. He dies doing 2 pts dmg.
Carthage: MDI -> MDI
Babs are building Sun Tzu's
Persians are building Sun Tzu's
3) 580AD: Have 5 good swordsman and a zillion pults. Moving in on Arbela. No use being slow speed is our friend.
1st two MDI units make it to the Persian land.
IBT: Perisan MDI and Horseman show up. India is having lots of troops moving south.
Utica: MDI -> MDI
4) 590AD: Veteran Swordsman Knocks Elite Perisan MDI down to 2 pts.

IBT: Veteran MDI attack Merc from Arbela and we kill it flawlessly.
Carthage: MDI -> MDI
Letptis Magna: MDI -> MDI
Leptis Minor: MDI -> MDI

5) 600AD: Okay .. attack Arbela ... With pults the had a 1 and 2 pt Pikeman left. We suffer no losses or dmg during attack. ( still don't like them )
Arbela is destroyed.
Moving to next city on the list.
With all of the new slaves island border is filling up well.
IBT: Perisa captures our exploring worker in India's land.

6) 610AD: More troop movements

IBT: Two MDI attack our mercs on a hill. We lose 1 pt each and kill a veteran and elite unit.
Carthage: MDI -> MDI
Utica: MDI -> MDI
Vikings are building the GLIB

We are going to be in trouble. We are going to run out of opponents before we can safely get to the other guys unless we can find a way to get there.

7) 620AD: Barbs showing up near our old city.

IBT: Barb kills a worker.
Babs building the hanging gardens.

8) 630AD: Susa falls. We lose on MDI and 2 hp on another. Guarded by 3 veteran pikeman. Moving on to the next city.
We gain 5 more slaves. Only 25 move till fill the southern tip of our Island.

Declare Peace with Persia.
Get
Monarchy
Literature
37 gold
9 gpt
last city on main land ... sell barracks for 5 gold and abandon it.
Persia only have city left on an island.
We get 3 MDI next turn.

IBT: Carthage: MDI -> Library
Leptis Magna: MDI -> Library
Leptis Minor: MDI -> Library
Ottomans are building Sun Tzu's

9) 640 AD: Change Utica over to Library

We need the science research and Culture. We are going to have trouble with troop levels soon.

Find a new friend, Greece. They are down Republic and Monarchy and have 9 cities. They are going to be tough at that size later on.

Build an embassy in Greece for 68 gold
3 hoplites and 2 catapults garrisoned with a MDI in production.

Build an embassy in Ottamans for 63 gold
Garrison is 3 pikeman. 25 turns till GLib for them.

Change Carthage over to GLIB ... we can get in 18 turns. Can change off of it and not lose anything is desired. Not confident that this is the right thing to do.
IBT: India has too many guys moving around. They are annoying me.

10) 650 AD: Declare war on India.
Take out Indian spearman/settler with MDI. 1 hp left.
Select wrong unit. Merc dies attacking spear, spear 1 pt left.
Spear dies to MDI attack.
Put all border holding workers on road bulding. Might as well be able to move around our border quickly.

Notes to next player.
three seperate groups of units are moving in on three different locations on india. The main force is moving in on Delhi to cut the country in half. The secondary force isn't totally gathered but is setup to take out Bombay with what it has and then Karachi. It is the southern group and will get reinforcements soon. The third group is on the main land and is ready to take out that city. Make sure to use the Elite archer to try for a great leader. No promotions for me on my turns.

Moving workers to complete shutdown of eastern side of unselleted land on our main land. Forbidden palace in 3 turns.

Edit: Overall we are being too conservative. We need to be much more agressive against the computer. Our best hope is a fast quick kill. I am in favor of suicide galleys with units in them to reach the foreign lands if we have to. I don't want to spend forever waiting for astronomy. India should be gone in 20 turns or less.

You will learn to appreciate catapults and those one or two hp they knock off when you fall one hp short of taking a city ;) Although, I do agree, they can be frustrating.

I disagree with suicide galleys with troops. Ship chaining would be much more economical. We'll have to have a closer look around to see if there are any possible places to implement this.

Great going, marconos :goodjob:
You will learn to appreciate catapults and those one or two hp they knock off when you fall one hp short of taking a city ;) Although, I do agree, they can be frustrating.
Close the 30 bombards in my last turn (I didn't do much) and in total they knocked off 1hp and 1 pop point. I'd rather have the swords and lose one occasionally with that success rate. I'm glad to see that the rest of you have had some luck with them though and they appear to have been instrumental in redlining a number of pikes before raising Persian cities. Maybe my turn of having a successful barrage will come soon but in the meantime I have to admit that I hate them too!

I disagree with suicide galleys with troops. Ship chaining would be much more economical. We'll have to have a closer look around to see if there are any possible places to implement this.
I was a little concerned about the wide expanse of seas and oceans. We may find that we have a number of transports in the link sitting at sea, hoping that they don't all sink so that we can get at least one boat load over.(Maybe stagnate needs to do this on his turns-he had a lot of luck with galleys on his last turn! :) ) I thought that we would need two transfer points to get to Germany IIRC. However this has got to be preferable to suicide galleys with troops aboard. Do we need to start building up galley strength or will there much to do with India first?

@stagnate. I cannot do a post until the weekend and if you haven't suffered trying to read my posts on the GOTM spoilers before you should be aware that they are normally quite boring! I'm happy to do this if no one else wants to though. Any other volunteers?

I believe we have enough forces on the island to take out India. We have more there now then when we hit Persia and Persia when down easy.

Ship chaining. Forgot about that. With differential movement it might work. I was sending a galley over to the persian island. Maybe we can jump somewhere from there. I didn't do enough exploring on the high seas as I should have. I do agree that we need some more galleys.

Here is another thought. This one is radical but may payoff.
1) After india dies get rid of all of our troops on the indian lands. We disband all of them.
2) Use that extra cache to speed research to astronomy to get caravels and travel over sea squares.
3) After that start churning out the troops again and go hit the computer hard.

Risky but it may be less risky then waiting around. Speed is our best ally in this game and I think this option my work our for us. Course if we can get a ship chain going that would be MUCH better.

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of ship chains. If we can raze the GLHouse city we will not suffer any attacks until the AI gets Astro and at their current rate of research we could be well on our way to finishing. This is particularly true if we can keep them all at war so they are wasting shields trying to kill each other and losing income due to unhappy citizens or not being in Republic. I say let's get those coastal cities churning out galleys. We'll lose a few but not before we have a decent army on the German/Celtic/Babylon/Viking area.

BTW do we know where the Greek and Ottoman main cities are?

I put embassies in teh Greek and Ottoman empries on my turns. Their stats are in my turn log.

I will not be able to play until Monday evening, unless Oblivion gets a turn out in the next 3-4 hours :-)

Astronomy is several techs out, and we have a lot of troops sitting idle if we don't use them. Recommend ship chaining to move as many over as possible, keep a token force on our island, and keep building galleys to keep it up. We need to use the troops.

Keep a small stod on the persia/indian island; persia will try rebuilding there, and we want to attack them every 20 turns to keep them subdued, shouldn't take much.

Cats are really best at anything outside of a city. We are aggressive so their real advantage isn't as clear, but when we go against babs/germans we'll want to start by luring their offensive troops into the open, ravaging them with cats, then cleaning up. They are also good at destroying improvements, get rid of irrigation and knock cities down to size.

If you need to skip me next turn go ahead, I'll play ASAP when I get back if the turn is still waiting.

I put embassies in teh Greek and Ottoman empries on my turns. Their stats are in my turn log.
Sorry, perhaps I could have made myself clearer. Do we know if they are also on the island with Germany and co, Babs or is it another island? If it is another island, is it so close to the others that we can get there without suicide missions? I appreciate that it is not always possible to see from the maps (not that I have an up to date map anyway!) which is why I asked the question.

Contacts (by looking at possible alliances) could be a clue to this if the map info is inconclusive. I am curious to know if we can get troops to wipe out the Vikings and then not worry about having to transport a complete army by ship hopping again.

ps I did read all of your log-not just the part about hating cats :D

I will not be able to play until Monday evening, unless Oblivion gets a turn out in the next 3-4 hours :-)...If you need to skip me next turn go ahead, I'll play ASAP when I get back if the turn is still waiting.

I can wait if necessary. There is the new GOTM to keep me occupied fro my civ time this weekend but if others want to keep the momentum going we could change the playing order so that stagnate gets another set of ten turns at another time (if that isn't too complicated). Let me know what you want me to do if we get into that scenario.

It's been awhile are we going to have any progress here soon?

Is it -0blivion-'s turn? If so are you still out there? (If it's my turn please let me know :) )

I have been waiting for Stagnate to take his turn:

I will not be able to play until Monday evening, unless Oblivion gets a turn out in the next 3-4 hours :-)...If you need to skip me next turn go ahead, I'll play ASAP when I get back if the turn is still waiting.

I think it is best if the game is reasonably relaxed, so i thought we were waiting on Stagnate to do his turn - unfortunately he didn't take it last night (Monday Evening)

I thought the order was stagnate after you!

Here is the order from the begining of our thread

Kaiser (this or KB works fine, BTW)
marconos
-Oblivion-
stagnate
Tone

Got it and playing, didn't make it in until after midnight, and after a weekend in vegas with ~8 hours of sleep total, I wasn't exactly in position to play a turn :-P

Ok preturn check. Looks like Vikings and Celts on an island, and a short hop over to the other continent with Greece, Ottomans, Germans, and Babylonians. Babs at least have an island settlement off the main continent.

Reduce lux to 10% still happy everywhere.

Turn 1 (660 AD): Archer is redlined but takes the city on our land, no leader.

Turn 2 (670 AD): Utica Library -> MI.

Turn 3 (680 AD): Sabratha FP -> Temple. Raze Indian city but with two lost MI :-/

Turn 4 (690 AD): Leptis Minor Library -> MI, Utica MI -> MI. Bombard Delhi and move troops into position.

Turn 5 (700 AD): Same as above, missed notes somewhere?

Turn 6 (710 AD): Leptis Minor MI -> MI, Leptis Magna Library -> MI.

Take Dehli with 1 sword lost, 2 promotions.
Take Karachi with no losses and 1 promotion.

Discover a small bug, if you take capital, you get to see where the new capital is even if you haven't discovered that city.

Turn 7 (720 AD): Sabratha Temple -> Granary. MM for growth in 5 right after granary. Put a scientist in Leptis Magna to keep research active (wasting shields there but it does stop growth). Take hyderabad with no losses.

IBT lose a galley to indians. They've sunk 2.

Turn 8 (730 AD): Utica MI -> Galley.

Lose 2 galleys attacking the indian galley, lose an elite MI attacking unfortified spear in the open field :-/ I managed to move half the fleet to the other side of the continent, and lose the rest of the fleet in battle. Sets us back a good bit and no real excuse for it.

Turn 10 (750 AD): Leptis Magna Galley -> Galley. Take jaipur with no losses. Increase lux, WW kicking in.

Notes to Oblivion: Keep a scientist for min research. I screwed up and sent Leptis Minor to size 12; it can't stay that size and will shrink, until then I have a scientist there.

Troops moving on india, recommend a turn of bombardment while the second stack comes into position. You have several elites so try for a GL.

TGL is still being built, not sure what we want to use the shields for, possibly Leos? If so we need to slow building ASAP.

Here is the order from the begining of our thread

Kaiser (this or KB works fine, BTW)
marconos
-Oblivion-
stagnate
Tone

So to clarify the situation (for me at least if no one else)...

We swapped over stagnate and -0blivion- for this round so I will follow after -0blivion- has his turn next. Then we will revert to the order posted above for the next round. Is that correct?

Discover a small bug, if you take capital, you get to see where the new capital is even if you haven't discovered that city.

Doesn't that always happen if you have an embassy with that civ? It is strange that it happens though if you are at still war with them and so at that time have cut diplomatic relations with them? (Or does it only appear if they are willing to talk peace?)

ps Is it OK to download saves IBT turns to look at them? I don't want to fall foul of any SG rules but I have lost track of The Big Picture despite the detailed logs. I guess I need the maps in front of me.

Oblivion got confrused; I agree that we just swap this turn, then revert to normal. Tone was the one who had the option to wait for me, but no harm either way.

AFAIK (as far as I know) it's ok to look at saves. You just can't play turns (because you could learn extra info that way).

I'd never seen the FP thing, but I'd also never really looked.

Ah, i was certainly confused. That will teach me to look at the roster more often. Gotcha.

I noticed the Lux drop to 10%. Sorry missed that. When peace was declared with Persia the WW we had dropped off and I didn't adjust. My bad.

I have downloaded and looked at the map but. Can we take out India with what is left on the island???

We should be able to, I've started to move a very few troops back. Have solid stacks in place. Only question is their other cities (still 4 left) I think they might havesettled to the south next to persia.

Turn 0: 750 AD

Looks good. I switch Carthage from Glib to Sun Tzu's in 16. Invention in 19. I will slow it soon so we can build Leo's.

[I] Nothing

Turn 1: 760 AD

Utica Galley-Galley
Leptis Minor MDI-MDI
Sabratha Granary-Barracks

Bombardment at Madras hits one spear and takes a citizen off city. Move big stack next to Madras.

[I] Nothing

Turn 2: 770 AD

Kill two spears in Madras with elite swords: no leader. Raze city.

[I] Lose a galley to an Indian one. See hoplite fighting Ottomans.

Turn 3: 780 AD

Kill one Indian spear in Lahore. City gone next turn.

[I] Nothing

Turn 4: 790 AD

Kill pike in Lahore and the city is razed, with an Indian galley in it.

[I] Ottomans ally with Babylon and declare on us.

Turn 5: 800 AD

Kill two spears in Bangalore and raze the city. Lose an MDI.
Will hit final Indian city next turn.

[I] Nothing

Turn 6: 810 AD

Kill two spears and an archer and raze Calcutta, destroying the Indians. Lose an MDI. Disperse Barb camp.

[I] Leptis Minor starves. Re set scientist.

Turn 7: 820 AD

Ugh, lots of troops, no boats nearby.

[I] Nothing

Turn 8: 830 AD

Nothing

[I] Nothing

Turn 9: 840 AD

Ah. Check out the picture at bottom. Dam, 'nuff said.

[I] Vikings declare too.

Turn 10: 850 AD

Nothing.

Looks like a quick conquest is out of the window. We are too late for a 20k, can't dominate with 5 cities, 100k is definetly out, space and diplo are later than the marines we need.

We can either get are research boots on and build up to marines, while taking out the other civs. Another option (very based on chance) is too make peace with the Vikings and ally them against the Babs, hoping they may use berserks to raze the city.

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_AD0850_01.SAV)

Another option that is easier yet is to destroy our rep and beat up on the babylonians. Try declaring peace every turn until we get them to give us lagash. Then either attack them again immediately ( trashing our rep ) our wait the 20 turns and then hit them again. I have found that is the easiest way to get an island paradise.

Question ... why do we want leo's -vs- glib???

I agree with marconos. we take it in a peace deal but if we do it right we don't have to take a rep hit. We can knock them down to just a few cities before taking peace and turn our attention to someone else for 20 turns. We still seem to have plenty of potential victims :) A word of caution: we need a unit on a boat nearby (a slave will do) so that we can place him on the tile and block any settlers giving us a repeat problem.

The problem with asking the Vikings to do our work for us is that even if they succeed in taking the island they might then settle there before we can wipe them out. My view on the Vikings is that we look to take them out asap but we must get rid of the GLHouse before someone else gets it. We'll then be secure at home until Astronomy and by then it will hopefully almost be over.

GL vs Leo's? I don't have a view on either!

I am going to Berlin for 5 days tomorrow - unable to play from 24th October until 29th October.

Leos will give us cheap upgrades, I think it's the biggest advantage we can get for wonders. TGL would get us Mono, Chivalry (maybe), Theology, and Education, at best. IMO we can get those by pointy stick/trading and are better off with cheaper upgrades.

However, I haven't waged war much; I guess we probably won't be bringing many units back for upgrades, so it might be a moot point.

Sistine might be the best option; it'll keep happiness strong so we don't have to worry about war weariness.

I still haven't downloaded the save (I will play it later today) but I wanted to gauge the group feeling on the wonder issue.

We get invention on my penultimate turn. The GL was due 3 turns before this but -0blivion- will have slowed the shield rate a little to coincide with discovery of our new tech (or is using Sun Tzu as a prebuild) but then we will still have around 200 shields to get before we build Leo's. We could then convert to Sistine at a later date if we got Mono and Theo beforehand as stagnate suggests.

The way I see it, Leo's could be useful if we need to mass upgrade but what are our units upgrading to? Can we pillage/abandon our iron colony? If so we can build stacks of warriors and then reconnect our iron but unit count was not an issue on my last turn-it was unit upkeep combined with a need to use the lux slider that was our concern. Is this still the case or could we do with a fresh wave of MDIs?

The GL will give us a few techs unless we decide to research them first. We are stuck with 40 turn research so most of our tech comes from pointy stick. What the GL would give us is the choice of wiping out that civ rather than have to take a deal to regain tech parity.

As I said before I am not too bothered about either wonder in this game. With that in mind I am tempted to go for the GL and then get our fifth city producing units that will get us closer to our goal asap. What do you think?

I lean toward the great library so we can turn research totally off. It also get's our production back to it's highest level. If we get some GL's we can rush the other items as needed.

The sistene chapel would be the best one to have to take care of happiness as 6 content faces takes case of all our cities. I don't think we can wait around for that.

I don't know what the benefit of leo's is as we have no horses to upgrade and it won't take long to replace the swordsman with MDI with just plain production.

In a side note .. has anyone found a safe passage over to the other lands yet? Is all of this moot if we can't get over to the new lands?

An luck Tone?

We do not have a safe passage over, but can do the boat chain to only risk boats (no units will be lost). That's why I switched to galleys at a couple of locations.

Sorry for the delay. I haven't played yet but will do so tomorrow morning. I paused to see if there was any strong feeling on the wonder issue and then RL got in the way ;)

I shall take it that Leo's is the group decision BTW.

@ stagnate-a wise decision. we shall need plenty of them to get a decent sized army across in a short number of turns.

Preturn (850AD) Slow down build in Carthage to coincide with discovery of invention for Leo’s. We have a massive army but only 6 boats!

IBT
Babs and Germany sign a peace treaty.
L.Magna galley->galley

Turn 1 (860BC)

Move galley into Persian waters to have a look around. Start to move galleys from the West coast to the East but they won’t get there for a while (except one that heads for L Minor to ferry troops backs from India/Persia.

IBT
Germany demand 91g. I say no but they don’t give a DoW. Ottomans offer peace if we give them 100g-Ha!
Utica galley->galley
Sab MDI->MDI

Turn 2 (870AD)
zzz

IBT
Vikings land settler and ref warrior next to our sword East of Carthage. Good job that it isn’t further away as we have virtually no military up there!
L Magna galley->galley
L Minor MDI->MDI

Turn 3 (880AD)

Sword loses 2 hp but gains two slaves to help block the coast

IBT
Utica galley->galley
Sab MDI->MDI
Sogat completes the GLib. Everyone starts building Sun Tzu and we have 5 more turns to last using it as a prebuild. We should be OK as the GLib is a lot less shields.

Turn 4 (890AD)
A few troops will soon be in place to get over to Persia before they start to re-settle their old lands

IBT
Vikings land spear and archer in forest close to Carthage. We have one MDI in the area!
L Magna galley->galley

Turn 5 (900AD)

Send MDI and Merc towards Carthage from Utica and withdraw MDI into Carthage.

IBT
Archer and Spear advance on Carthage!
Utica galley->galley
L Minor MDI->Merc
Sab MDI->MDI

Turn 6 (910AD)

MDIs take care of Vikings. I suggest that we leave them there in future!
I decide to get our boat circling the Persian island out of their waters before attacking them. Don’t want to lose our rep unless we can gain more out of it.

IBT
Persians evict us which helps!
L Magna galley->galley

Turn 7 (920AD)

Dec war on Persia. Land 3 MDIs and a merc on their shores.

IBT
Persian horse comes out of the fog and attacks our units in Old Persia but loses.
Utica galley->galley
L Minor merc->merc
Sab MDI->MDI

Turn 8 (930AD)

First MDI defeats vet pike with 1hp left. 2nd defeats reg pike with 1hp left. 3rd defeats vet spear without taking any damage. Don’t risk the merc.

Send two suicide galleys towards Vikings with two more on the coast loaded up with mercs and MDI hoping that the others survive.

IBT
Galleys at sea survive an attack by a Viking galley.
Germany signs alliance with Ottomans against us.
We get Invention and production in switched via the Big Picture to Leo’s. Gunpowder @min.
Carthage Leo’s->MDI
L Magna galley->galley
BUT both galleys lost at sea so our troops must wait a bit longer to tackle the Vikings.

Turn 9 (940AD)

MDI defeats spear and razes Gordium taking 361g with it and the Persian are but a distant memory. Leave the slaves there to block the island.

IBT
Utica galley->galley
L Minor merc->merc
Sab MDI->MDI

Turn 10 (950AD)

Just the usual move galleys and ferrying a few troops from old Persian and Indian lands to the East.

Notes:

We have 3 galleys in position to move East with a few more working their way to the launch site. Hopefully your suicide galleys will be more successful.

There are another four galleys ferrying troops back from the West. It might be worth leaving at least one galley there after the troops are back home just in case the Vikings decide to claim some of that island.

It might be worth considering peace terms with some of the civs before we are at war with everyone. I think that we should take out the Vikings though as they are the only ones who can settle in the land we’ve cleared up to date.

Something else to consider. We have plenty of troops but not many galleys. Would it be worth sending a number of galleys to sea loaded up. We may lose some but the more you send over, the more that will survive. I’ve just spent ten turns moving galleys around and it was pretty boring. Maybe I was unlucky with the two I risked and maybe I should have waited until I had a larger stack. However the troops are not doing anything at the moment and we will soon be running a negative budget.

Even more radical: if we can capture the GLH should we keep it and abandon one of our towns? I’m not so sure about this as it might flip but I don’t think the loss in production will be that significant if it means that we are not sending galleys out to sink at sea. It would also give us a base to launch further attacks from. Views?

Keeping the town with the GLighthouse would be quite risky. We would effectily become a 4 CC as that city would never have enough production to offset it's corruption. Once we get a ferry setup with the galley's are we going to continue to have losses? If so will the glighthouse remove that problem? If it does and we will continue to lose galley's then it may be the right thing to do as we wouldn't have to keep producing galleys and would make things quicker even though we would have less overall prodcution. I'll try to download the save and take a look tonight to try and answer some of those questions.

I'll try to get to this later tonight.

Once we get a ferry setup with the galley's are we going to continue to have losses? If so will the glighthouse remove that problem?
I'm not sure that I understand the question but it won't stop me commenting ;)

Our ferry situation is that we are leaving some galleys at sea hoping that they will survive. I tried it once and both galleys at risk sunk. My experience in previous games tells me that this was a liitle unfortunate but it was annoying that of all the RNG events in the sequence of turns, I had some good fortune in some (eg viking galley fails to knock a single hp off our galleys) but the survival of at least one galley at sea was crucial and lady luck did not smile on us. We can replace the galleys in two turns but it is the time taken to get them in position that I found somewhat frustrating.

Will the GLHouse remove this problem? YES! Can we hold it? Now that is a different question!

Understand now. Let me know if I have this right.

1) send out some galley's 1/2 way to the destination. End turn.
2) send out 2nd group of galley's with troops in them. Transfer troops from new galley's to the original ones. Move original ones the rest of the way and unload.
3) rinse and repeat.

Basically then we will continually need to make galleys as we will periodically lose them. So the question is. Will having the GLight and no production offset the production needed to make up the new galleys to cover our losses. If that answer is yes. Then get the GLight ... otherwise no and keep producing galleys.

Soooo .... since there is no definate on whether or not we lose boats we have to say ... "do you feel lucky punk!! We'll do ya" ...
1) If we feel lucky then skip the GLight
2) If we don't feel lucky the don't get the GLight.

I'll go either way on this ... 4 high prodution cities should still out produce the computer as it's not smart enough to only make military. So mark we down for whatever ;)

I tend to think we'll be able to ship enough units over to not make it worthwhile to have a GL town (figure ~10 shields/turn lost minimum) that's a galley every three turns.

Make sure that you don't leave your boats in the deep water. I had left my boats near a passage way that would require one boat (per 'ferry string') to be vulnerable in oceans (is that the right term, the middle water?). All others would remain safe.

There is the option of getting the GL city, razing one of ours, and then reverting once we get astronomy. I don't think it's worth worrying about the GL, personally. Then again, I was really lucky.

Also, have the Indians been completely defeated? I might have missed the message, but based on city count they had some island holding somewhere. Vikings are definately the first target to take out the GL. We also need to make peace with some civs, and get them fighting each other. Get some of the backwards civs into the fights with tech.

Note that from what I recall, Babylon and Greece are the two powerhouses, so don't put either of them in a situation where they'll get stronger.

-0blivion- did KO the Indians and I did the same with the Persians. The only trouble is that I didn't check the F4 screen to see what existing deals we had and I only thought about this this morning. I checked the save at the start of my ten turns and it's bad news. -0blivion- must have renewed the peace deal just before the end of his turns and so I've wrecked our rep. :sad: Sorry guys!

On the galleys issue...

@marconos. Yes you've got it, although I would add to stage 1 "fill waiting coastal boats with troops" so that they can transfer boats next turn. If you wait until the next turn they will have used their MPs.

@stagnate. There is a transfer position just outside Viking waters that is a sea tile. (I tried that as I thought that they would have less chance of sinking at sea than in the ocean-can anybody confirm this?) The trouble is that you must bank on losing at least one galley so you put several out there hoping that one survives. I just lost both the vulnerable ones! Maybe that's just bad luck. We are producing two galleys every two turns so we cannot afford this rate of loss as we haven't got a surplice of boats. At the moment we have got a surplice of ground units though and no secure way of getting them across to our enemies. Perhaps the next players can keep a log of how many we lose in getting over to the Vikings and then we can make a decision on the GLHouse?

Preturn- We look alright.

IT- zzz

T1 960

Seeing as Greece and Babylon are the top dogs over there, I send Greece after Babylon for 250g.

IT- zzz

T2 970

Not much.

IT- zzz

zzzz

T9 1040

I'm finally ready to give a decent ship chain a try. We've got 9 galleys at the jump point. I'll send out five and load four.

IT- This is ridiculous. We lose 4 out of 5 galleys.

T10 1050

I take two Mercs to the other side, as they actually have a chance of surviving upon landing. If the boat out there currently surives, I suggest sending some MDI. This is going to take a while for us to build up and effective number of troops. At this rate I'm almost consudering the lighthouse idea. I have a feeling the RNG is going to murder us in this one.

Summary

Not much accomplished. We got two Mercs safely across. With our limited production capacity, we can't afford these boat losses. IMHO, we need the Lighthouse.

IT- This is ridiculous. We lose 4 out of 5 galleys.
So it's not just my bad luck then. Still it's stagnate up next and if anyone can summon the RNG gods to work in our favour on the seas, past experience says this is our person to lead us across the treacherous waters.

I hope so because otherwise we will all have a lot more turns like KB and I had recently

zzzz :cry:

I think if we can get maybe 6-8 MDI over there, we'll have enough to secure the Lighthouse. Thankfully the Vikes have no iron.

And I apologize for my fairly scant turn log....most of the turns were simply unit production and moving galleys into place.

Hey Tone .. don't skip me ;)

I'll do my turns tonight.

#1 Goal -- secure the Great lighthouse ... what city do we want to kill? The other northern one?

Any other specific goals?

Sorry :blush: I had a post-it note on my computer with the playing order for this game but it's fallen off! Poor excuse!

Good luck with the attack if/when you get some troops over there. If we are still at war with half the world, make sure you have enough to defend the city once it is taken as it will take two turns to get more troops across!

-0blivion- did KO the Indians and I did the same with the Persians. The only trouble is that I didn't check the F4 screen to see what existing deals we had and I only thought about this this morning. I checked the save at the start of my ten turns and it's bad news. -0blivion- must have renewed the peace deal just before the end of his turns and so I've wrecked our rep. :sad:

Yep, the Indians were jam packed in the north of their island - first time in a long while i have seen four AI cities all within three spaces of each other. Sorry about the peace deal - shoulda mentioned that. But i don't think the lost rep is that bad. With the attacking we are doing in the this game not many people are going to like us any way.

what city do we want to kill? The other northern one?
I would agree with that. If we can get The GLHouse then we won't need its galley producing capacity and IIRC it is the least efficient. If we are decided on this radical idea (are we?), it may be worth getting a couple of settlers out of it in the turns before we attack (I'm assuming that it will take a while to get a few MDIs there) and then shipping them over to our new acquisition whilst staving the population down to reduce the chance of a flip. Then again they don't have may cities so we might be able to knock them out quickly so this may not be worth the effort as it will slow down troop transportation and we have enough cash to rush some culture there. It might be worth checking their city list to make sure that they haven't sneaked another town in some place that we haven't mapped yet.

With the attacking we are doing in the this game not many people are going to like us any way.
That's true. It's not my usual style to upset everyone at the same time.

Wasn't able to get to the game last night. Will hit it tonight.

Initial Review

Galleys all over but not many in position. Not sure I will be able to get vikings in these 10 turns. Let's see what happens with my luck and the transports.

IBT: Carthage MDI -> MDI
Leptis Magna: Galley -> Galley ( will keep making galleys until we have GLighthouse)

No galley losses
1) 1060 AD -- Amazing get two boat loads of MDI over to Scandanvian lands.
Have 4 MDI and 2 Mercs in their lands. Will not attack with them will wait for some more support.

IBT: Viking Galleys shows up in our waters. Will try to sink it.
Utica: Galley -> Galley
Leptis Minor: Merc -> MDI
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

1 galley lost at sea

2) 1070 AD Have 10 units in Scandanvian lands. 1 catapult. Will wait for a couple more loads.

Berseker attack .. pult hits and merc put him down. 2 hp left.
Viking ship finally move into attack range.
Carthage: MDI -> Library ( we have many troops and no way to transport )
Leptis Magna: Galley -> Galley

1 galley lost at sea

3) 1080 AD Lose 2 galleys but sink 1 viking galley.
Lose 1 galley on viking galley doing only 1 dmg
Nothing else in area to attack them.

Get another pult and MDI in scandanavia. Will move into position next round.

IBT: Utica Galley -> Galley
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

3 galley's lost at sea

4) 1090 AD In position for attack next turn. Another MDI and pult join the groop. Hard to get more forces there are most of the transport galleys have sunk.

IBT: Leptis Magna: Galley -> Galley
Leptis Minor: MDI -> MDI

1 galley lost at sea. Only 1 galley read to receive troops.

5) 1100 AD Attack Nicaros:
pult destroys harbor.
Other 2 fail
MDI kills vet spear loses 2 health.
MDI dies on vet spear, spear 1 life left.
MDI kills vet spear 2 life left.
MDI kills reg spear flawlessly.
MDI kills reg spear loses 1 life
Elite spear kills 1 pt life vet flawlessly.

Victory!!! -- how do you embed a freekin image???

7 Resistors

Stopping for question review here.
We now control the GLight. What city do we want to abondon.
Leptis Minor: 20 prod 3 corrupt -> Total 17 cannot grow any larger. 11 pop
Utica: 18 prod 2 corrupt -> 16 total 1 scientist
Leptis Magna 21 prod 3 corrupt -> Total 18 pop 12.

What city do we want to abandon?

I will await your input before going farther. Will check message board in the morning. I vote for Leptis Magna as it is the farthest N and farthest away from the war front.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Well done, marconos. We're back in business :)

I've given my vote already-I agree with you. We definitely need Utica to pump out a few more galleys so that we can get the military over there quickly to take the fight to our enemies and knock the vikings out before Nicaros flips.

Marconos:

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Thanks mad-bax ... been trying to figure out how to do that.

BTW how many cities have the Vikings got left?

Utica is 2 shields less than Leptis Minor after railroads, but gives us a boat producing city. I recommend dumping Leptis Minor.

Carthage has excess food, plant forests on three locations to give us 2 shields per instead of 1 shield on straight grassland. Do it on the river locations; we want to utilize all riverside squares for most commerce. We don't gain anything with shields for MDI (40 total, changes would give 26-28 shields) but it'll be good to have developed when we do want it. My turn is coming up, I guess so I can do this if you want to start moving some workers over.

Can anyone tell me why Utica has 2 shields on the center square? I thought where your city was built would be 2 food 1 shield.

2 food 1 shield is the standard for towns (unless the base sheild value is above one, such as iron hills or fur plains). Cities on hills get a second shield though (as do cities on bgs). Don't quiz me further though as I still have many gaps in my knowledge in this area of the game. If anyone has a good reference I'd be glad to know of it.

Railroads? Surely we'll be finished before then!

Viking have 1 city left. Plus a galley out there some where. Hopefully it doesn't have a settler on it. Believe they were heading toward indian land but they may have sank now without the GLight.

Leptis Minor will die. Finishing up the turn tonight.

EDIT: Sorry reviewed post. We have 2 people saying Letpis Minor and 1 saying Leptis Magna. Will await a little more input before I proceed. we don't want to kill the wrong city. I can see the logic in ditching Letpis magna. Looking for a clear go ahead before I do this.

Here is the complete turn log. Ignore previous post ... Leptis Minor bit it. I have to read better.

Initial Review

Galleys all over but not many in position. Not sure I will be able to get vikings in these 10 turns. Let's see what happens with my luck and the transports.

IBT: Carthage MDI -> MDI
Leptis Magna: Galley -> Galley ( will keep making galleys until we have GLighthouse)

No galley losses
1) 1060 AD -- Amazing get two boat loads of MDI over to Scandanvian lands.
Have 4 MDI and 2 Mercs in their lands. Will not attack with them will wait for some more support.

IBT: Viking Galleys shows up in our waters. Will try to sink it.
Utica: Galley -> Galley
Leptis Minor: Merc -> MDI
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

1 galley lost at sea

2) 1070 AD Have 10 units in Scandanvian lands. 1 catapult. Will wait for a couple more loads.

Berseker attack .. pult hits and merc put him down. 2 hp left.
Viking ship finally move into attack range.
Carthage: MDI -> Library ( we have many troops and no way to transport )
Leptis Magna: Galley -> Galley

1 galley lost at sea

3) 1080 AD Lose 2 galleys but sink 1 viking galley.
Lose 1 galley on viking galley doing only 1 dmg
Nothing else in area to attack them.

Get another pult and MDI in scandanavia. Will move into position next round.

IBT: Utica Galley -> Galley
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

3 galley's lost at sea

4) 1090 AD In position for attack next turn. Another MDI and pult join the groop. Hard to get more forces there are most of the transport galleys have sunk.

IBT: Leptis Magna: Galley -> Galley
Leptis Minor: MDI -> MDI

1 galley lost at sea. Only 1 galley read to receive troops.

5) 1100 AD Attack Nicaros:
pult destroys harbor.
Other 2 fail
MDI kills vet spear loses 2 health.
MDI dies on vet spear, spear 1 life left.
MDI kills vet spear 2 life left.
MDI kills reg spear flawlessly.
MDI kills reg spear loses 1 life
Elite spear kills 1 pt life vet flawlessly.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/glight.jpg

7 Resistors

Stopping for question review here.
We now control the GLight. What city do we want to abondon.
Leptis Minor: 20 prod 3 corrupt -> Total 17 cannot grow any larger. 11 pop
Utica: 18 prod 2 corrupt -> 16 total 1 scientist
Leptis Magna 21 prod 3 corrupt -> Total 18 pop 12.

What city do we want to abandon?

I will await your input before going farther. Will check message board in the morning. I vote for Leptis Magna as it is the farthest N and farthest away from the war front.

Leptis Minor will be detroyed continuing turns

Sell everything in Leptis Minor
Abandon Letptis Minor
Nidaros comes with a barraks and GLight and Colossus.
Starting work on a temple.

IBT: Quell 4 of 8 resistors.
Utica: Galley -> MDI ( we have a ton of galleys now that they are not sinking)
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

Babylon wants peace can get peace with Mono and 350 gold. Not sure who we have an alliance with so decline.

Bab declares war on Celts.

6) 1110 AD 6 more MDI land in new land with 2 more boat landing next turn.
Kill 2 attacking viking spears losing 1 MDI.

IBT: Carthage: Library -> MDI
Nidaros resistance ends. All tax collectors. Need to destroy other Viking city.

7) 1120 AD Land 3 more MDI and 1 merc. Boats are moving troops fast now. Revolving train starting to move.

IBT: Viking Berserker attacks killin elite merc. Pult missed. Only 1 hp left on berserker.
Ottoman galley shows up by Nidaros
Leptis Minor: MDI -> MDI
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI
Palace get's some pretty columns.

8) 1130 AD Kill Berserker with MDI (lose 2 hp) Troops in position for attack on last viking city.
Rusing temple for 236 Gold in Nidaros

IBT: Nidaros: Temple -> Harbor
Carthage: MDI -> MDI
Utica: MDI -> MDI

9) 1140 AD Attack Bjoergvin
Pults do 1 hp dmg and destory barracks.
MDI dies flawlessly on reg spear
MDI dies flawlessly on reg spear promotting him
MDI dies flawlessly on vet spear promotting him
MDI dies on elit spear doing 2 dmg
MDI kills regular spear losing 3 hp
MDI kills dmg vet spear losing 3 hp
MDI dies on elite spear doing 1 dmg
MDI FINALLY kills last spear in Bjoergvin
Get 127 gold destory city.
Vikings have been destroyed. GLighthouse will not flip now. Expensive attack ... rng was not nice to us

Moving troops to hit Babylon. See that we are on another island. Will need to make another invasion of a new land.

Nidaros now has 1 entertainer and 1 scientist.
Change Utica scientist to worker to get a +3 gold on land. Production increase doesn't make any difference.

IBT: Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

10) 1150 AD Decide to head to Island N and a little east of new land to take out bab cities there. Should be able to sue for peace at that time and get the island city. At least I hope so. All troops heading for that area. Leaving large contingent in Nidaros to hold it in case of assault.
22 units on their way to bab NE island.
16 units in Nidaros to hold it. Celts have a lot of Galic swordsman around. Could be trouble.
Only 9 units left on the mainland to be moved out.

Have harbor being built in Nidaros. Sugest rushing after forest chop is finished. Should be quite soon. I'm concerned about the amount of money we are losing each turn. In the 20's now. Marketplace and Harbor in Nidaros should help with Colossus there.

Great turns, marconos.

Babylon wants peace can get peace with Mono and 350 gold. Not sure who we have an alliance with so decline.
We have an alliance with Greece against Babylon that KB set up on his first turn so this should be running out on -0blivion-'s first turn (if I've got the order right this time ;) ) F4 will confirm if this is true

Bab declares war on Celts. This is good news as it should keep them away from us.

Vikings have been destroyed. GLighthouse will not flip now. Expensive attack ... rng was not nice to us. Expensive but worthwile and losing a few troops is not disastrous if our unit costs are so high at the moment.

Have harbor being built in Nidaros. Sugest rushing after forest chop is finished. Should be quite soon. I'm concerned about the amount of money we are losing each turn. In the 20's now. Marketplace and Harbor in Nidaros should help with Colossus there. Have we got a sea route to Nidaros? I thought that there was an ocean break across the route and if that's the case then we won't be able to ship our luxes there so I'm not sure how the harbour will help. I think that a marketplace might help (particularly if we can get a lux source there) but a courthouse would be more important.

Maybe this is a good time to consider a change in government? I haven't done any sums and we would need to do these carefully but my gut feeling is that we can profit from the increased unit allowance and reduced additional units that Monarchy give us; even though we do get less income. If we are currently making a loss due to unit costs this will not have an effect during the revolution. We also lose the war weariness! The downsides: loss of production (we have plenty of units at the moment) and loss in population due to the depotism penalty. I think that we have a few native workers still (I almost disbanded them to reduce our unit costs on my last turn) which can be used to replenish the civilians in food shortage areas when the revolution is over. I think that it is something worth considering at this time in the game. Views?

Going to monarchy seems quite feasible. Oce we hit some heavy war, we're going to be hurting. 30-40% War weariness is not fun at all.

Have we got a sea route to Nidaros? I thought that there was an ocean break across the route and if that's the case then we won't be able to ship our luxes there so I'm not sure how the harbour will help. I think that a marketplace might help (particularly if we can get a lux source there) but a courthouse would be more important.

You are right. Forgot about that. Need to switch immediately on the next set of turns to make sure forest shop goes correctly. Don't think we are in danger of losing any production.

Goverment Switch: I saw we switch now. The sooner the better. We have plenty of troops in route that we should be able to take the two bab northern cities and get peace while in anarchy.

I am concerned about the island that we now share with the celts. They have a ton of galic swordsman sitting on the northern island city. I'm concerned if we hit bab hard they will declare peace with celts. My thought is we need to check for peace with bab every turn to try and get the island city. As soon as we can get that we need to get the Celts to ally up with us against someone else and attack that person until they are gone.

Another thought ... Do we want to start brining slaves over to our new Island to try and fill it up. That will stop bad guys from landing on our island.

As soon as we can get that we need to get the Celts to ally up with us against someone else and attack that person until they are gone.

I think the Germans fit the bill for this. ;)

Agree with slaves idea, but hopefully Germany will give us many more at the source.

BTW Are any of the AI civs building Sistine? They've had Mono for quite a while now and once they hit Education you can be sure that Astronomy will not be far behind, although perhaps they are going for gunpowder at the moment. We really want it tied up before they get caravels.

Gotcha.
I agree with jetting to Monarchy.
Small empire = Small Anarchy

Oblivion's turn, correct? Want to make sure we have our order fixed :-)

Yes! more characters needed in this message

Sent email to oblivion, will play this turn tomorrow if we haven't heard from him since then.

Apologies for my tardiness.

Turn 0: 1150 AD

Everything looks good.

[I] Nothing

Turn 1: 1160 AD

Just shufflinf galleys. Bit off a bugger that Leptis and Utica are both just off 20 spt for 2 turn MDIs. Nothing can be done though.

[I] Nothing

Turn 2: 1170 AD

Land troops by Samarra. Realise i should be revolting. Do do. Pull 4 turns.
Leptis and Utica will starve a fair bit.

[I] Nothing

Turn 3: 1180 AD

Kill two bab spears and a bowman and raze Samarra.
Kill an Ottoman LB next to ruins.
Land force by Ur.

[I] Bab LB dies attacking our MDI by Samarra ruins. Bab Knight dies attacking our NumMerc by Ur. Gallic Swordsman takes out an Ottoman MDI near Nidaros, then is killed by another Ottoman MDI.

Turn 4: 1190 AD

Kill two pikes in Ur and raze city. Lose an MDI.

[I] Nothing

Turn 5: 1200 AD

Move next to Babylon.
Kill 2 spears in Eridu. LB still there though. City goes next turn.
Kill Bab knight loitering near Babylon.

[I] We are a Monarchy. Lose 2 NumMercs and an MDI to Bab LB counters. Ouch!

Turn 6: 1210 AD

Re MM cities after switch.
Kill 2 Bab LBs.
Kill one Bab LB and raze Eridu.
Kill Ottoman MDI.
Sink Ottoman galley.

[I] Lose an MDI to Bab knight

Turn 7: 1220 AD

Kill Pike in Bursa.
Not enough forces for Babylon yet - withdraw, for now.

[I] Nothing

Turn 8: 1230 AD

Kill two spears in Bursa and we raze the city.

[I] Nothing

Turn 9: 1240 AD

Nothing

[I] Nothing

Turn 10: 1250 AD

Accidently leave two galleys in Ocean. Doh!
Lots of forces gathered to attack Babylon soon.
Gunpowder in 11.

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_AD1250_01.SAV)

Nice set of turns oblivion. Don't forget that we need to declare peace with them to get the Island city. That is the highest priority. Once we get that we are back on for a hopefully quick finish to the game.

Nice set of turns oblivion. Don't forget that we need to declare peace with them to get the Island city. That is the highest priority. Once we get that we are back on for a hopefully quick finish to the game.

I know.

Lagash, island city, is still doubtful for peace. Maybe we need to raze Babylon first?

Lagash, island city, is still doubtful for peace. Maybe we need to raze Babylon first?

It probably doesn't help that we are at war with so many civs. Maybe we should accept peace with Ottomans and get serious with the Germans for a while (and get those G-swords busy against the Germans in the meantime with an alliance before someone gets them going against us). I think that we will get a more advantageous deal if we have less civs and less alliances against us when we go to the negotiating table, and we can reconvene any wars when we feel like it. At the moment though we appear to have the upper hand in both conflicts and we have a few Babylonian towns to play with until the island is likely to become the capital, don't we?

Remember that we need to be able to land something on that island so that when we abandon it we don't get another civ settling there. We should have a boat within one turn of that city ready to land a unit there on the turn that we accept peace terms. If we can also get Monotheism in the deal that will give us a better idea of how close they are to Education/Astronomy.

Ok preturn:

First thing I notice is Leptis Magna abandoned instead of Leptis Minor. Some confusion there I guess :-/

Looking at power, Greece and bab are strong, greece is at peace with everyone (bad). Can make peace with Ottomans and set them against greece, but I'm worried that they'll bit it hard and just give greece more territory.

Can get units to lagash in 3 turns, it'll take that many to take babylon anyway. MM extra gold in Utica (keep workers next to rivers if possible) and MI in 1 turn in Carthage (20/turn). Join 2 workers to Leptis Minor to bring it to 20 shields/turn.

Change nadiros to a galley instead of harbor; we won't have trade pathway for awhile, and we need more ships (units are still stuck on the persian/indian island).

Mismove a cat and can't fit it on a ship, load an elite MI onto a ship for landing next turn.

Lower lux to 10%, sabratha needs a clown but was at size 12 and wasting shields anyway.

IBT Ottomans and Celts sign for peace. Babs land settler on the cleared island to the north, have troops handy :-)

Turn 1 (1255 AD):

Move troops into position.

IBT Lose 2 NM and 2 MI to knights and LB (redlined 2 but still lost). Nidaros riots because I'm a moron.

Turn 2 (1260 AD):

Ouch. Lots more pikes than I expected in the capital (11, to be exact). Lost most of our stack, peace treaty further away now rather than close. Go for peace with Ottomans for Mono, Gunpowder and 400 gold - not sure about getting mono (as opposed to just gunpowder. -- thought we might be able to use chivalry but realized our capital needs to connect in order to trade for horses :-/

However, we do have gunpowder, and I figure we need it against LB and Knights; our mercs are being eaten alive.

Move some galleys back to the other coast, leave 6 between us and the Babs. Might leave a few more, but need reinforcements before proceeding.

Switch production in Sabratha and Carthage to muskets (Both with no shield loss, 20/t and 30/t). Leptis minor continues with MI. We have a bunch of offensive units, but we'll be staging landings and getting hit by Knights and LB, so we need to boost our defense. Cannot upgrade Mercs on the far shores, so need to produce them here. Upgrade all Mercs that are here now.

IBT defeat one LB, but lose a NM and MI.

Turn 3 (1265 AD):

Retreat from the island to regroup.

Move some ships, reveal a stack of 7 GS stuck in the celtic city to the north due to our blockade. Will let them through once I drop my units into the city, so hopefully they can put some hurt into babylon.

Move upgraded Muskets to the shore. Start two galleys over to the old island to start ferrying.

Bring Greece into the war vs the Babs for 11g/t. Two benefits, first is Greece spending money on war rather than advancing science, and they trade gunpowder to the Babs.

Turn 4 (1270 AD):

Moving units. Switch Nidaros to a courthouse, 288g to rush which is high, but I think we need to do it. We can produce units at nidaros and ferry them back to the mainland for upgrades.

Turn 5 (1275 BC): Move more units.

Turn 6 (1280 BC): Move more units.

Turn 7 (1285 BC): Move more units. Babs have gunpowder now :-/

Turn 8 (1290 BC): Move more units. Good buildup of troops now, next player can put them to use. Take hannover from the Germans with teh loss of an elite MI.

Turn 9 (1295 BC): Move more units.

Turn 10 (1300 BC): Move more units.

I have 8 boats ready to take troops over, and you can choose what composition you want from Nidaros. Move them three NE this turn, next turn load them into the boats to go where you want them to. I recommend landing on the mtn NE of Ashur, to limit their offensive abilities against us on the first turn.

We cannot upgrade ANYTHING in Nidaros, so upgrade swords/NM on the main island before shipping over (there was a large stack of swords waiting to be transferred).

We will want to pillage the Babylonian lands to reduce city size; going against city (7+) is going to kill us. Cats can help too, we really need to increase our artillery. Chemistry due in 32 at min, I think we should increase our research, since we don't have much to buy, and cannons will be a big improvement.

Three galleys on the west of our main island can ferry our last troops off that island. Most of the stack has been moved, so at this point we have a good fleet for handling troop transfer. You should be able to get troops across in two turns by using boat chaining.

I think the cities are well optimized, losing little or no shields on their current builds.

We need to hurt Greece and Babylon, ignore the rest for now. Greece in particular has gotten very fat, hopefully the Babs have trimmed that, but Greece is still expanding rapidly. We have a trade agreement with the Ottomans and a MA with Greece against Babs.

Hope you can do better than I did; take it very carefully because you'll be going against musket defenders. Lots of cats. In fact, probably switch 2 prebuilds to cats (start building cats in Nidaros instead of warriors).

Preturn (1300AD)
Send 3 muskets, 4 cats and 9MDI towards boats. Will head for saltpetre mountain as suggested. As Nidaros is only producing warriors, switch cit from hill to grass still giving a warrior every second turn but an extra pop point in 6 rather than 8 turns. I also find our last two workers and send them towards L Minor. They are costing us gold and it would be useful to have them in a more central position to use if required.

IBT
Nid war-> war
Carth MDI->MDI
L Minor MDI->MDI

Turn 1 (1305AD)
Evacuate last troops from India/Persia. Load up 8 galleys with troops above and send towards Ashur to disembark next turn. Load four muskets to send to hill north of Babylon to keep them busy.

IBT
Greeks land one hoplite on the saltpetre mountain
Sab musket->musket

Turn 2 (1310AD)
Land four muskets on hill north of Babylon and load four MDIs in galleys. Leave 8 galleys full to see what happens to Greek hoplite as it may get displaced by a Bab knight.

IBT
No attack on Hoplite-it pillages Saltpetre source.
Nid war->war
Carth MDI->MDI
Utica MDI->MDI
L Minor MDI->MDI

Turn 3 (1315AD)
Look to land 8 galleys south of Ashur but see three knights and think twice-this is frustrating! Pillage hill N of Bab and land 4 MDI plus load some more of each in the two galleys W of Bab.

IBT
Muskets are attacked by LB but no loss and the knights heads that way but move only two squares (why?).
Sab musket->musket

Turn 4 (1320AD)
The hoplite is no longer on the mountain so I land our troops except the cats. Babs won’t give us Lagash.

IBT
Three knight attack muskets on hill-two withdraw when losing and the third kill a musket but is also down to one hp. Another knight kills the hoplite that had moved onto plains and a Greek galley kills a Bab galley that I though might land troops at Nidaros.
Nid war->war
Carth MDI->MDI
L Minor MDI->MDI

Turn 5 (1325AD)
MDIs kill knights. Srart to give the MDIs a go against Ashur but the first loses without scratching the enemy. I quick check with a combat calculator shows a 14% chance of winning. I don’t like the odds and so load the rest onto galleys to participate in the attack on the capital which can be supported by cats.

IBT
MDI exposed by attack on knight last go is defeated by a LB.
Ottomans and Greece sign alliance against Babs.
Utica MDI->MDI
Sab musket->musket

Turn 6 (1330AD)
Decide to attack Krish first instead and line up attack

IBT
Stack draws out the Bab offensive forces and they get just one kill.
Nid war->cat
Carth MDI->MDI
L Minor MDI->MDI
Ottomans are building JSBach.

Turn 7 (1335AD)
Krish was defended by two knights which were both relined and a LB which retreated here after killing an MDI on the previous turn-here we go! First MDI loses and the knight is promoted! 8 cats do nothing to knock the second hp off. 2nd MDI also loses without reply but the third just wins. 4th just wins against the other redlined knight and the 5th sacks Krish, getting promoted in the bargain. Other dispatch the knights, MDI and LB that were surrounding us from the previous attack.
Babs will give us Chemistry and Theology in a peace deal but not Lagash!

IBT
We lose a couple of redlined MDIs to LBs but they we worth losing as they killed knights beforehand.
Sab musket->musket

Turn 8 (1340AD)
Troops ignore LBs and regroup on the hill for the assault on Babylon.

IBT
LBs attack muskets healing on the ruins of Krish-one wins.
Carthage MDI->MDI
Utica MDI->MDI
L Minor MDI->MDI

Turn 9 (1345AD)
Troops march on Bab and others land south of the river.

IBT
Celts and Babylon sign a peace treaty.
Nid cat->cat
Sab musket->musket

Turn 10 (1350AD)
Move SOD south of the river to improve chances of attack next turn

Notes:
I wish that I had not tried to attack without the cats-that cost a few turns-sorry!

Babs still won’t give up the island which worries me a little. If there is a future resource there we don’t stand a chance of getting this town.

Germany will sign a peace deal with us giving us Theology if we give them 41g-I’ll leave that for the next player to decide but they are no real threat so it could be worth it. We can leave them alone for a while until Babs has been dealt with.

I’ve resisted trading Gunpowder with the Celts as we could look to wipe them out soon and block this island with slaves (their lux will help happiness in Nidaros) but I don’t think that they are far away from getting it and now that they are at peace with Babs they are annoyed with us so we might have to face them soon anyway. We might also have to face a few civs on home soil soon as they can’t be far away from Astronomy now if they have Music Theory.

(Oh, I didn't increase research 'cos we can't afford it!)

save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/Tone_SG004_AD1350_01.SAV)

Good work. Combat is going to suck regardless, but stacks of cats will help somewhat. I don't think the island had a resource; it was at doubtful when I first took the turn, so I just think it's a decent producer and it has good size. It would have been 'insulted' or 'never' if there was a resource.

I contemplated bringing the Ottomans in vs the Babs, which they would do for 40, but was torn, and figured Greece might bring them in. As I start thinking about this I'm getting pretty worried; we CANNOT let Babylon die (mainland). If that happens Lagash is there for the duration. I didn't think about that long term enogh, I'm sorry.

IMO we need to make peace with babs asap (watch treaties), and stop attacking them right now. Switch our war to Greece, and try to bring Germany and the Celts into that battle. At this point we MUST stop a dogpile vs the Babs.

Given that we won't be able to reach Greece very quickly, and Celts don't have gunpowder, I'd recommend going after them. Once we do that we should be able to lock down some colonies to give us resources in Nadiros. If you have spare spots on galleys coming over, bring workers (and get the workers that are on the island north of us). Those suckers need to preserve the entire border if/when we go after the Celts.

It would have been 'insulted' or 'never' if there was a resource.
Good point- I shouldn't be so negative ;) We are probably not that far away so IMHO...
As I start thinking about this I'm getting pretty worried; we CANNOT let Babylon die (mainland). If that happens Lagash is there for the duration ... IMO we need to make peace with babs asap (watch treaties), and stop attacking them right now.
I think that it is worth an attack on Babylon city and seeing if they will then negotiate for Lagash. I agree totally with a limited war but if we can get peace on our terms and then join in on their side we should be OK.
Given that we won't be able to reach Greece very quickly, and Celts don't have gunpowder, I'd recommend going after them. Once we do that we should be able to lock down some colonies to give us resources in Nadiros. If you have spare spots on galleys coming over, bring workers (and get the workers that are on the island north of us). Those suckers need to preserve the entire border if/when we go after the Celts. Celts should offer little resistance if we can tempt their Gallic Swords into 50-50 battles against muskets and then pick them off with counterattacking MDIs. I think that we need to be careful about bringing too many workers over though as our homeland will soon be within reach of the major civs. Hopefully the Celts will provide enough slaves.

Preturn- Things look alright.

IT- Babylon and Greece sign peace.

T1 1355

I ferry a few more troops over.

IT- zzz

T2 1360

It is an extremely bloody battle, but Babylon burns to the ground.

IT- zzz

T3 1365

The Babylonian idiots still won't budge on Lagash.

IT- zzz

T4 1370

Nothing much.

IT- zzz

T5 1375

I move troops for an assault on Nineveh.

IT- zzz

T6 1380

More movement.

IT- zzz

T7 1385

We're ready to attack next turn.

IT- Stupid Ottomans get to the city and torch it before us.

T8 1390

With Nineveh gone, I turn our forces towards Ashur.

IT- zzz

T9 1395

I make peace with Germany as they were about to capture a bunch of our workers.

IT- zzz

T10 1400

Not much new.


Summary

We're heading towards another Babylonian city. We also have a force built up for our impending invasion of the Celts. I think if taking this next Babylonian city doesn't work, we should shield their remaining cities so they are not captured.

It is an extremely bloody battle, but Babylon burns to the ground.
At least that helps our unit costs :)

What will it take to get Lagash, though? Is losing their capital not enough?

BTW congrats on your spaceship award, KB.

:lol: Yes, it was a nice consolation to watch our gpt go up as our MDI count went down.

I'm not sure if they'll ever give us Lagash as is. The only possible solution I can see if filling every sqaure around it with a galley so that it will eventually starve down. If that doesn't work, then we're going to have the dubious task of researching all the way to Amphibious Warfare with 5 cities.

Thanks for the congrats :) . Now that I've gotten a space and a diplo award, I need to look to new frontiers. I think 20k culture will be next. Then again, considering GOTM 37 is going to be Deity, perhaps I should just take what I can get :lol:

Would that take 8 or 20 galleys? 8 would cut it off from the outside world but I suspect that they would still be able to feed from the outer ring. Anybody know for sure?

Got it. Will play my turns tomorrow night. Have to make up some work time tonight.

Here is what I believe are the game targets.
1) Galleys to starve down lagash.
2) Take out 1 more bab city.
3) Declare war on the celts and take them out.

Let me know if I'm missing anything.

BTW: Did you guys see that someone already has a conquest win at 860AD? That was fast. Wonder what they did different from us?

That's one thread I'll be reading when we finish! I need some hints on how to do early conquests.

Sory had some stuff come up. Will get it done tonight.

IBT: Barbarian appear on our homeland and take out a worker???
Carthage MDI -> MDI
Utica MDI -> MDI
Leptis Minor MDI -> MDI

1) 1405 AD Forget about barbs and load MDI that can get them. Will have to clean them up next turn. Ready to attack Ahur next turn. I believe we will get Lagash when that city falls. Moving some troops into position for Norther Celtic city.

IBT: Nidaros riots??? Must have missed some growth sorry. Set them to a taxman.
Sabratha MDI -> MDI
Ottoman's finish JS Bach's Cathedral

2) 1410 AD
The fight for ashur
10 catapults shoot ... 1 hits
Elite MDI take out reg Musketman with 1 dmg
2nd MDI takes out vet Musketman and is redlined.

ASHER FALLS!!!

They still won't give us Lagash

Barb camp cleared out in the homeland

Not sure what to do here. Will start moving large stack on mainland around to Ellipi ( well to where I think it is at) and will go after the celts starting next turn or the following depending on what troops are where.

IBT: Nidaros: Catapult -> Catapult
Carthage: MDI -> MDI
Lepis Minor: MDI -> MDI

Greeks are building Copernicus Observatory
They have astronomy

3) 1415 AD
What the heck .. attacking the celts. It's not like we are going to get much stronger.

Invading Antalya land
Losses
1 MDI

Kill 2 Galic Swordsman cause 3 to retreat with 1 hp left
They have 4 Galic swords man sitting back the retaliation is going to hurt.

IBT: Counter attack hurts bad. They had 4 Galic swords man sitting back and waiting.

4) 1420 AD
Take out another Galic swordsman at Nothern City.
Destroy Closest southern city.
Lose a couple MDI's

IBT: Galic swords man attack our Elite MDI and retreats.
Celts land two galic swordsman by Nadros. Bring them from nothern city weaking it.
Carthage MDI -> MDI
Leptis Minor MDI -> MDI

5) 1425 AD
Ottomans have built a city blocking our access to Ellipi. Will attempt to cross their lands.
Antalya falls. Have to use the 2 musketman to take out a redlined spearman and Galic Swordsman. They have one Galic swordsman left on the North part of the land.

2 invading Galic Swordsman are killed off. Lose 1 MDI in the attack.

IBT: Northern Galic Swordsman attacks our Elite MDI and dies.
Greek Caravel appears.
Nidaros: Catapult -> Catapult
Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

6) 1430 AD
Greece sit sitting in the shipping lanes and blocks on of our loaded galleys from making it to "safe" water.

IBT: Agree to Right of Passage with Ottomans to get troops to Bab lands. We will need to attack them last as we are going to need their and Germany's help against Greece. They are a powerhouse.
Carthage MDI -> MDI
Utica MDI -> MDI
Leptis Minor MDI -> MDI

7) 1435 AD Attack and Destroy Verulamium. Lose I MDI in the attack.
Sink Babylon Galley ... Lose one in the Process.
Change Nidaros to Galley to replace it.

IBT: Sabratha: MDI -> MDI

8) 1440 AD
Attack Mohacs:
4 Catapults do no damage.
Lose ALL attacking MDI but 2 and kill off 1 Musketman and 1 pikeman. Use 1 Musketman to kill of remaining 1 hp pikeman. He does with no damage and Mohacs falls. I have no offensive troops left in the Celtic front. Will pull back to mountains and wait for reinforcements.


IBT: Greece has galley at our homeland.
Greece lands Knight and settler in newly conquered celtic lands.
A Celtic Knight counterattacks and kills a musketman.
See Greek galley near our homeland.
Ottomans have carvel near our homeland.
Carthage MDI -> MDI
Leptis Minor MDI -> MDI

9) 1445 AD
Troop movement. Not sure what to do about the greeks at this point.

I'm not going to move any farther and will turn over the turns to the next player.