First random Deity start, standard mapsize, default rules (but no respawn). Vanilla.

We're Russia, and we started on the South Pole. Will the sturdy Russian people be able to survive in the frosty desert? Or will they wander to better places? Only one way to find out: join the expedition!

Members of the expedition:

Tone
McLMan
nerovats
Smart
Beorn-eL-Feared
tupaclives
zyxy

If you want another place in the roster, just let me know. I suggest 10 turns per set, but this is not strict.

Please
- don't use any exploits.
- keep our rep clean unless discussed with the team.
- keep it moving: 24 hrs for "got it", 48 hrs to play, or ask for extension.

I played 20 to kick it off.

Turn 0, 4000BC: If I draw a random start, I never get the 2 cows + 4 bg's + river + lux that some people seem to get all the time, but this one is bad even by my standards:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/terriblestart.jpg

Scout marches north and then east to see if we can get out of this hell-hole. Hey, things are looking up:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy1_4000BC.jpg

Forget the gathering, we'll be hunters :). I immediately have a tough decision to make. I want the settler on the coast, for commerce. NW will give 4 game, but N preserves the hill, and keeps a game in range for the first 10 turns. I choose N.


Turn 1, 3950BC: scout keeps moving north and spots bg's:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy1_3950BC.jpg

Hm, a few more settler moves? I don't like to wander for so long, but the terrain up there is much better, so we get our backpacks and walk. No hunting today, sorry.

Turn 2, 3900BC: our scout oes north again and spots the English. That's not good, too close. England has Alpha, CB, and Pottery. We can trade BW for CB, but I'll hold off for now.

Turn 3, 3850BC: We spot the english border. No food bonusses, so we'll have to go for early war I think. Moving north still.

Turn 4, 3800BC: English scout has gone south. Our scout heads east and spots a cow. A few more turns to walk there, it seems worth it.

Turn 7, 3650BC: Moscow is finally settled. Research to WC at 100%, we need a quick knockout.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy1_3650BC.jpg

Turn 8, 3600BC: Our scout reports that the English have 2 cows, and several spices. Not fair!

Turn 9, 3550BC: The english have WC now, but we cannot buy. We seem to be stuck here just with the 2 of us.

Turn 11, 3450BC: To top it all off, London has fresh water:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy1_3450BC.jpg

IT: Moscow warrior -> warrior.

Turn 12, 3400BC: The english now have BW as well. No more trade opportunities, not even for CB :(. Our entire economy will not buy WC :(.

Turn 15, 3250BC: spot an English settler.

IT: Moscow warrior -> spear.

Turn 16, 3200BC: England has a huge amount of warriors:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy1_3200BC.jpg

Turn 17, 3150BC: An english settler appeared E of Moscow, we'll not get a single city this way.

Turn 19, 3050BC: A barb appears from the south. That's why England sent half a dozen warriors our way?

Turn 20, 3000BC: Our scout valiantly heads south and ends up near the barb camp. I switch the spear build to settler, it should finish in 2.

I hope I didn't lose this already. We probably need to kill England before they completely surround us. There's a barb at the gates of Moscow, there's an English settler pair somewhere to our SE.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy1_3000BC.jpg

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_3000BC.SAV).

I'd join. ;)

I'm really looking forward to this.

I can't play until tomorrow so if someone else wants to pick it up and swap the roster around that's fine by me if it's OK with zyxy. I think that Beorn is keen to join us as well. I've just PM'd him with a link to this thread.

If the English settler has gone eastwards then we could get two more decent sites 4SW and 4NE of our capital. We could even squeeze London (:lol: ) with a third in the NW. The ones North of us might be left free by England for a while. If so a tight core with barracks will give us a fighting chance. You're right to go for WC-this start will surely lead to an early war whether we like it or not.

This is a vanilla game, isn't it?

London isn't coastal ... :hmm: Sorry, vanilla. So england is what, COM/EXP ?

Having great confidence in Tone, and seeing that he believes I won't be harmful, I'll ask to join up.

Now onto the real things: We might be able to plant 2 or 3 towns early, probably not much more. Worker-Barracks-Archers in all of them is what I'd probably think about doing. Archers in great enough numbers can work pretty well, especially if England is slow on researching WC and BW.

However, we need to be careful about where we settle, and in what order, because Betty will take everything around ASAP. The hot spots for us are dyes, fishes and games. She probably will attempt for Dyes early on, so although it's not the shizzle for a location, it might be safer that way - and she'll pay a dear price for he robes to be pink.

I'd like to see what everyone thinks about those first cities though. We might have a 3CC conquest to run for a while there, so it's best if we think it ahead.

Agree with Tone's city placement, just get 2 settlers, barracks, walls, 2 spears and loads of archers. Need to take care of those English fast. Might even be better to just settle 1 of those cities so england can still go around us. Otherwise they are more likely to attack.

Welcome Smart and Beorn!

Yes, it's vanilla, I'll update the first post. English are COM+EXP, we are SCI+EXP. Our UU is better though ;). Unfortunately England already has acquired WC and BW.

Our main asset seems to be a lot of bg's, that should help a bit with production. I'm hoping we'll get some Dyes as they are close to our capital. In any case, an English tundra town there should be easy to raze. Though I hate settling on bg's, it does look like ring 4 is best, with 3-4 reasonable spots: 4 NE, 4 SW, S-S-SW and perhaps 4 NW. Ring 3 has just 2 reasonable spots (E-NE-NE and W-NW-NW). Ring 5 is too wide.

I would make the 4 SW spot the priority. We'll probably get the others as well.

The roster was made up at random, so if anyone wants to swap with Tone that's fine with me.

I'd settle SW first as it sems to be the best location. I fear England will settle on the other sidfe befor we can. We could settle the 3th city on th dyes if taht happens, or not make a 3th city and just stck with 2.

Thanks for your kind words, Beorn though I'm beginning to wonder if I talk a better game than I actually play. It's good to be playing with you again.

Interestiing comments re cities, nero. It was the third city that I was unsure about, as the AI doesn't seem to like it when you settle close to their borders, so maybe we develop 2 cities and have a couple of spare workers to join to the third one asap. We are still 15 turns from getting archers and no roads=no commerce (without rivers) so maybe we could afford a second worker soon to help chop a rax in our second city.

Our saving grace is our potential production. With those bgs mined, we can get 10spt in our capital and 5/7 spt in the other two. That could be enough to knock the English back, pick up some techs and then hit them again at our leisure.

:eek: I'll join. This is gonna be really tough, with the huge delay and still a rather weak start, on top of it all it's deity. Like nerovats game, an early archer attack is the only way to go here.

Gonna see if I can learn a thing or two on "Outdoor Survival Skills"(;) )Subscribed.:goodjob:

Lurkers Comment
Good luck guys i wouldnt be game enough to try out that start, will definately be following to see how you get on though

Lurkers Comment
Good luck guys i wouldnt be game enough to try out that start, will definately be following to see how you get on though

Thanks! We'll need it.

@Own: sorry, the roster is full already. I'll put you on the reserve spot in case someone has to drop.

If you guys can survive, this will probably be the most exciting game on the board. I'll definitely be watching! :D

lurker's comment:

I wouldn't build any settlers at all in such a situation. Just build barracks in the capital, then 10 archers and go take London.

Good luck! :)

Just saw that I haven't officially checked in.

So, Checking In. :D

I agree a 2nd worker would help the most with an attack on England. We need to improve as much as we can to get shields. I think the best way to go about it is to declare, then sit back and wait for the English to come to us & pick them off in the open. Once their 1st wave is repelled, we can move in and raze some English towns.

I somewhat disagree with only one city, but I guess Obormot has a point: the faster out, the better. I tend to be skeptical about lurker comments but you should see his AAC time records, it's heartstopping.

3000
Press enter

IT
the barb attacks Moscow and fails. English establish a city just outside the Dyes so that plan goes out the window. Palace extension. I can see 10 warriors.

2950 (1)
zzz

IT
Moscow: settler>warrior. England has CB-did they have it before? London has dropped to size 1 so expect another settler to come along.

2900 (2)
warrior and settler start moving SW-hopefully the English warriors will have done their work with the barb camp by the time we get there. We are running @-1gpt but it won't hurt for a couple of turns. worker moves to chop forest.

2850 (3)
worker starts chop

2800 (4)
settler and warrior will be in position next turn but an english warrior will block our path. English stack has moved south, presumably to deal with another barb camp.

2750 (5)
warrior and settler cannot move to desired site so they twiddle their thumbs for a turn. Scout end move beside a barb warrior-I guess that solves our unit upkeep costs.

IT
Scout is dead. Moscow: warrior>worker

2710 (6)
warrior/settler in position.

IT
The English also liked the look of the site 4 NE of Moscow as they've placed Canterbury there.

2670 (7)
Build St. Petersburg (rax)

2630 (8)
zzz (England has dealt with another barb camp)

IT
England have Iron Working. Moscow: worker>rax.

2590 (9)
New worker starts to mine bg.

2550 (10)
zzz

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/2550BC.JPG

My comments for what they're worth:

WC in 3. Switch off research after this or 10%? IMO we cannot afford to research as we'll need the cash for unit support before we take on England.

Forest chop in 3 will aid the rax build in the capital. This build will take 7 more turns-I hope that we can wait that long! I thought that one worker could mine bgs for Moscow whilst the other links St. Petersburg to reduce corruption and waste there.

The war might come before we're ready but maybe England will build one or two more settlers before they run out of acceptable spots to settle if they like the look of those game spots. I suggest that we don't build another settler but just build units after the rax. Settling 4 NW of Moscow will piss them off and reduce our unit count when they come knocking at our door (assuming that we can get the rax out by then)

I think that there are 10 English warriors in the south unless more went that way before my turn started.

Save
(http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_2550BC.SAV)
McLMan (up next)
nerovats (on deck)
Smart
Beorn-eL-Feared
zyxy
Tone (just played)

:wow: that went fast, we're out of room already. I agree with stopping everything and go pull a jackass archer war ASAP. Perhaps 1 more worker if we can sneak one in, but I'm not quite sure we can afford the population. We'll have to see.

@Own: sorry, the roster is full already. I'll put you on the reserve spot in case someone has to drop.

That's fine, I'll be happy lurking.

We could still settle to NW, but I agree with just these 2 cities, get rax and as much units as possible. Stop science let English a city out of the way (the one south of us) and make peace for their techs.

I'll readily admit this game is going over my head a bit, but I agree that there are no good places to settle and training archers is our best bet. We'll have to aim straight for London it seems, it's the only way to cripple England enough.

No research sounds good, there's no good min run available IIRC.

I'm agree. There is only one way to win - capture London and then demand all techs from England for peace :sniper:

I'll readily admit this game is going over my head a bit...Well if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room. :D

I'm certainly not in the comfort zone either but that is why I was so keen to play in this one. I've not played a Deity game where such an early strike is required but I still remember the time when I did it on Emperor for the first time-great fun! I should have tried something like this a while ago as you only learn by pushing the boundaries back a little every so often.

Rax->archers->first strike. Not too keen on letting them hit us first. I'd like to take London and knock them for six. If we are not aggressive when the war starts, they'll send over their warriors, we'll kill them and they'll be replaced by more powerful units. If we get London we can look to found the site NW of our capital. Here's hoping that they haven't got iron connected.

Not too keen on letting them hit us first. I'd like to take London and knock them for six.

Sounds good. I'll play my turns shortly. Will try to build up the army & stay out of trouble for now.

Pre-turn: Looks dire.
Hit Enter

Turn 1 - 2510 BC
Nothing

IT
Another Settler Pair comes out of London

Turn 2 - 2470 BC
Nothing

IT
We learn WC
Set research to Alphabet at minimum (20%)

Turn 3 - 2430 BC
Worker finishes chop - road same tile

Turn 4 - 2390 BC
Nothing

IT
Moscow Grows! Barracks in 2 now.

Turn 5 - 2350 BC
Worker N of Moscow finishes road. Move W to BG.

Turn 6 - 2310 BC
Move to road game forest. Mine BG

IT
6 English Warriors appear S of St. Petersburg
Moscow Rax -> Archer
St. Petersburg grows. No change to rax deadline though, shield from new citizen is corrupt. :sad:

Turn 7 - 2270 BC
Begin game forest road.

Turn 8 - 2230 BC
Nothing

IT
Zulu complete The Colossus in Zimbabwe
The English Warriors must have seen something, they head back South.

Turn 9 - 2190 BC
Nothing

Turn 10 - 2150 BC
Nothing.


Pretty uneventful turnset. Which is exactly what we need right now. Will have our 1st archer next turn. Moscow grows again in 2.

Boy, passing this save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_2150BC.SAV) around makes me feel like this SG should have been named "Russian Roulette" :suicide:

Well if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

I really like that. I'm going to steal it.

It's fun talking about how dire things look, but I like our chances. All the BG's are going to give us a lot of shields. Even with only 2 cities going, we should be averaging an archer every turn.

Boy, passing this save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_2150BC.SAV) around makes me feel like this SG should have been named "Russian Roulette" :suicide::lol:
Though that's just what we need indeed.

Nero UP

Well if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

I must remember that one :lol:

I'd like to take London and knock them for six.

Don't understand this, what does this mean?

Got it will play soon, hope to just build archers, might need a couple of spears as well.

knock them for six-sorry but I've just used a cricketing term without realising it.:blush: I could have said hit them hard.

In cricket, if you hit the ball straight out of the playing area without it touching the ground after leaving your bat you are awarded 6 runs, hence the phrase 'knock them for six'. Please excuse me if I occasionally forget that I'm in an international forum.

I think we will need a couple of spears to soak up the first attack as we enter their lands and help deal with any counter attacks, but archers first will improve our power rating a little. Agreed? Our capital will soon be churning them out every three turns which will help and IMO it's good news that England is still building settlers.

Pre-turn
Down science, to 10%, could stop it all together
2110BC
Moscow archer->archer
2070BC
2030BC
1990BC
Moscow archer->archer
St. Peter rax->archer
1950BC
english ar moving some units, another settler pair is going south
1910BC
enlish mov ito our territory
1870BC
Moscow archer->archer (in 3)
up lux as St.Peter grew
1830BC
Moved MP's no lux needed anymore
1790BC
English have now 3 setler pairs in our territory
1750BC
Moscow grows and riots same turn?
adjust lux
St.Peter archer->archer (in 4)

We now have 4 archers 3 warriors 2 workers.
The workers should improve the BG and deer near St.Peter, then road towards london so we can deliver our units fast. I think 1 more turnset of unit building then move in as England is getting stronger every turn. Then we should have 8 archers 2 spears and the warriors.

107911

107910

We're still alive - amazing. Did England build a temple in the tundra? More amazing...

Smart - up!
Beorn - on deck!

EDIT: btw, is Beorn standing upside down?

Got it, playing now.

Pre-turn
All is good. Hit enter.

Turn 1
Order restored in Moscow. Archer>Archer.

Turn 2
Worker have built mine, roading BG

Turn 3
Other worker have built road to St. Petersburg. Move it to BG

Turn 4
Moscow Archer>Archer.
St. Petersburg Archer>Archer.
Worker builds mine.

Turn 5
Worker completes road to BG near moscow, moving it to NNE tile from moscow.

Turn 6
Worker builds road on BG

Turn 7
Moscow grows! It can build archers every 2 turns.
English worker builds road on our territory!
Lux 30%. -2 gpt.
IT
England moves settler to our territory.

Turn 8
Moscow Archer>Spearman.
Worker have to build road to london, but he cant move to that tile because of english spearman. Worker skip turn.

Turn 9
Move worker to London.
Other worker completes mine near St. Petersburg. Start roading..
Now St. Petersburg produce 7 shields and can build archers/spears every 3 turns

Turn 10
Worker builds road to London
________________________________________________

Our great Army:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Army_1475BC.JPG

Our arctic civilization:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Screen_SM_1475BC.JPG

We have now 10 Archers and they are ready to attack London. Worker will complete road in 3 turns, then we must declare war, and move all those archers and 2 spearmans directly to London.
Moscow is 2-turner archer/spearman factory, St. Petersburg - 3-turner.

Save: zyxy01_SM_1475BC.SAV (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_SM_1475BC.SAV)


Roster
zyxy - on deck
Tone
McLMan
nerovats
Smart - just played
Beorn-eL-Feared - UP

I'd like to wait for 3 spears to attack and a couple archers, but I'll wait for input before waiting. Perhaps we're better off just going, or perhaps we should wait for a bunch more archers.

If England have iron, swordsmans will destroy us. We haven't time to wait...
Moscow will build 2 spear in 4 turns, then we must attack.
We have to capture only London, then we can make peace for techs

I think we need to go. We'll be able to send a stream of reinforcements behind. I'm a bit concerned about a counter-attack from the South. 7 English warriors came into the light at one time during my turnset, with who knows how many in the darkness. Maybe keep Moscow on archers, and let St. Petersburg produce a couple of spears that can stay home right after we declare? We should have a few turns before anything from the South can get to our cities.

Got it, finish current builds and go, keep building for defense, pray the home spears do the trick.

Pre-Turn: Change St-Pet to spear, clear rally point (yeah, I reloaded for that :p)

T1.
St-Pet spear (bis)

T2.
IT: London is size 7 now and it's got a radar tower.

http://archimede.mat.ulaval.ca/~fbolduc/B/zx1-1.jpg

T3.
Moscow Spear - worker
Move everyone into position.

T4.
Moscow worker-warrior (MP)

http://archimede.mat.ulaval.ca/~fbolduc/B/zx1-2.jpg

The defending spear is regular :wow:

T5.
Archer 1: Takes 1 HP off, reveals a 3/3 spear
Archer 2: Just dies, spear 3/3
Archer 3: Dies and promotes a spear 4/4
Archer 4: Takes 3 HP off but promotes, spear is now 2/5; 3rd spear revealed 3/3
Archer 5: Promotes ! 2/5 archer won vs 3/3 spear
Archer 6: Dies and promotes a spear 4/4
Archer 7: Dies and promotes a spear 5/5
Archer 8: Dies, spear is 2/5
Archer 9: Takes a 2/3 spear out, 2/4
Archer 10: Takes a 2/4 spear out, 3/4

Now there's 1 spear remaining in london, 2/5. We have 3 spears right by. Press on?

No counter-attack really busted me, I was too sure we'd get hell right upon entering the lands. Well, there's still those warriors in the south, right :lol:

Good job :goodjob:. Only 2 hp remaining. Maybe we can attack with spears? :crazyeye:

Ehm, what is that radar tower doing there?

And rally point??

Has someone been playing this in C3C? It's plain vanilla...

EDIT: Smart's save loads in vanilla just fine. No radar tower.

IT: London is size 7 now and it's got a radar tower.

:lol: I think the Romans brought knowledge of the Radar Tower when they built that wall across the whole country.

I think your right zyxy, somebody screwed up and played this in C3C.

I'm before Beorn in roster. And I haven't saw that Radar tower.

Omg I played it C3C :mischief:

I just tried vanilla, and it won't work: I need to admit that I've never played a game of vanilla, so I didn't know my *cough* cracked C3C wouldn't play it. Sorry to disappoint (and I'm the first to be disappointed), but I'm forced to back out of this SG.

Will stay bolted to my seat lurking, though ;) Wish you better luck at London than I had.

T2.
IT: London is size 7 now and it's got a radar tower.


lurker's comment: :lol: :crazyeye:

I don't understand. You can't run C3C without having vanilla installed, can you?

Are you picking this up, zyxy?

I don't quite understand it either, but if it's a *cough* copy, then anything can happen I guess. (Perhaps it's the Anglophiliac version? Radar towers with Iron Working, launch spaceship with the Wheel?)
Sorry to see you leave, Beorn.

As we have an open spot now, I'll PM Own if he still wants to join. Otherwise I'll pick it up tomorrow morning.

Of course we are partly spoiled now, but I assume that in the Vanilla version London will go to size 7 as well. Meaning spears will defend at 2 *(1 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.1) = 3.7, so even without the radar tower this is a tough cookie. Assuming 4 defenders (I didn't read Beorn's log too carefully, so this is really a guess), then 10 archers have only 76% chance to be successfull - meaning Beorn was probably very lucky :). As we have just one shot really, this is not much. Perhaps attack Canterbury - York - Nottingham instead? I don't like that either, but maybe we can get some land and an iron source that way. Then come back for London with a bigger army.

Btw, we need 12 archers to get above 90%, 14 to get above 95%. Losing about 5 in each case.

Of course we are partly spoiled now, but I assume that in the Vanilla version London will go to size 7 as well. Meaning spears will defend at 2 *(1 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.1) = 3.7, so even without the radar tower this is a tough cookie. Assuming 4 defenders (I didn't read Beorn's log too carefully, so this is really a guess), then 10 archers have only 76% chance to be successfull - meaning Beorn was probably very lucky :). As we have just one shot really, this is not much. Perhaps attack Canterbury - York - Nottingham instead? I don't like that either, but maybe we can get some land and an iron source that way. Then come back for London with a bigger army.

Btw, we need 12 archers to get above 90%, 14 to get above 95%. Losing about 5 in each case.

I'm torn. We have been spoiled. I think we all agreed before that the plan was to attack London. And given the situation I think 76% is decent odds.

On the other hand, if it had been my turn and I saw that London had grown to size 7 right before the planned attack I probably would have stopped & come back here for discussion. What is London building ... units, improvements, or wonders? (or workers to replace the ones consumed building Radar Towers) We might have a couple of more turns without London building more defenders.

McLman: :worship: the avatar :thumbsup:

IMO you should stick to the london attack plan; the choice of units and # of turns to wait for before launch was arbitrary and mine, so that's still spoiler-free.

Agree on Beorn here.

Turn 0, 1475BC: nothing to do.

IT: Pete archer -> archer.

Turn 1, 1450BC:

IT: Moscow spear -> archer. London grows. No radar tower though.

Turn 2, 1425BC:

Turn 3, 1400BC: Moscow has grown to 6 but the new citizen pays his own lux tax. We have 11 archers and 2 spear ready.
Diplo check: England has 7+1 cities, is up Masonry, Alpha, Wheel, CB, IW. Our army isaverage compared to theirs.
Lizzy thinks I called her for a business meeting, hah!
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_1400BC.jpg

A warrior from Moscow captures an English worker. Now lux tax has to go to 50% for a turn. Switch Moscow to spear.

IT: Moscow spear -> archer. Pete archer -> spear.

Turn 4, 1375BC: This is it, the battle for London.

4/4 archer - 3/3 spear: spear 4/4.
4/4 archer - 4/4 spear: archer 2/5.
4/4 archer - 3/3 spear: spear 2/4.
4/4 archer - 3/3 spear: spear 1/3.
4/4 archer - 3/3 spear: spear 3/3.
4/4 archer - 3/3 spear: spear 3/4.
4/4 archer - 3/4 spear: archer 1/4.
4/4 archer - 2/4 spear: archer 4/4.
4/4 archer - 1/3 spear: archer 4/4. Killed 4, lost 5, and
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_1375BC.jpg
We burn London to the ground, gaining 7 slaves! (There were 2 workers and a settler in London.)

Next target: Canterbury. I send out an archer to try and catch a settler pair down south. Cover exposed archers with spears. Hope England has no horses yet. lux 40%.

IT: Well, England maybe has no horses but she sure has swords and kills a spear, sword 2/4. Persians built Pyramids, Zulu are stuck with Oracle. Barb galley shows up.

Turn 5, 1350BC: archer kills himself trying to kill settler pair. Vet archer kills 2/4 sword but is exposed. vet archer dies against 3/3 sword, sword now 2/4. Vet archer kills this sword. Vet archer kills 3/3 spear and we capture a settler. Some archers exposed, have to hope for the best. Pete switches to archer. lux 30%.

IT: lost 1 exposed archer to yet another sword. English warriors from the south appear. Moscow archer -> settler.

Turn 6, 1325BC: We may not have enough force to deal with Canterbury, returning to Moscow for now.

IT: Our spear kills a sword. Pete archer -> archer.

Turn 7, 1300BC: 2 archers kill 1 sword.

IT: Eng warriors appear in force. 6 in our borders now.

Turn 8, 1275BC: England will talk but will only give a cheap tech. not good enough, we'll have to kill those warriors. lux 40%, Pete has grown.

IT: sword kills another archer. English focus on Pete, and throw the archer build off track. Moscow settl -> archer.

Turn 9, 1250BC: I think we have to take peace, and settle the new land. A stupid vet archer loses against 2/4 sword, elite archer kills him. 2 archers kill 2 warriors, hope this settles the balance a bit.

I'll stop here because it's a good cut-off point. The next player has the choice of making peace or not, but as our troops are exposed it's not a real choice I'm afraid. England will give IW for peace and 5 gold, which seems a decent deal - we could use swords next time, or at least know where the English iron is. All cities are at "doubt" except Hastings which is a clear "no" - because of the dyes probably.
All units that can move have full movement. The settler could go 4 NW, or 3 N (spices). We should grab both spots probably, spices first. One of the silks is inside our borders now :).
Pete should perhaps switch to settler. Or you can get it to 8 shields if you finish the mine this turn and use a forest instead of coast.

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_1250BC.SAV).

On to the next and hopefully better player! In this case, Tone ;).

Tone - up
McLMan - on deck
nerovats
Smart
open spot!
zyxy - just played

Congratulations, zyxy :worship:
There is open spot? I remember that Own would like to join ;)

Sounds good.:goodjob: I'm not able to look just yet but I'll download the save a bit later on tonight.

@zyxy: Did you PM Own? From his post in another thread it sounds like he's a bit busy at the moment but maybe he can join us for the next round?

We were really lucky sofar. Better be good next time :D.

I PM-ed Own. He changed his mind about joining, so it's now open for anyone who wants a challenge...

Great job zyxy!!! We're in a LOT better shape than we were 9 turns ago.

Looking at the save with CAII.

I think we should take some shots at warriors with the elite archers to try for a GL, then settle for peace. 3 reg warriors, 3 archers (0/0/1/2), and 2 vet spearman aren't enough to risk continuing. While I thought we'd get more, IW is good to get.

I would go for 3N first. Spices automatically hooked up!

This is a difficult decision to make! We can make St Petersburg secure by taking a pop at one of the warriors outside the city gates with an archer-GL attempt as McLMan says, launched from the city. We're under pressure not to lose that battle though as we can't really afford to let the balance of power fall towards England otherwise the PT gets more expensive for us.

Peace is tempting as we can claim the spots 3N and 4 NW and also connect the dyes. I'm also agreed that 3N should be first as otherwise we lose the other site to the English. However this site will be under real cultural pressure and so we should not wait too long before taking out their new capital unless we can keep sufficient military in their to counter any flip chance. In short I'm agreed to a period of peace (I'd certainly like to know where the iron is) but I think that we may need to lose our rep in order to protect our newly gained land from flipping!

I'll hold on to see if any other team member has views on taking peace and what the team view is on the possibility of losing our rep with the English (and probably the rest of the world). In the meantime 'got it' and chomping at the bit. :)

I don´t it´s wise to expand to quickly. Can we disconnect their iron, those swords are killing us.
Will check save tonight.

We can't see the iron until we get IW so we need to see what the situation is like after we take peace (assuming that's what we do, of course). Pillaging iron will have to wait for a second war unless we pillage every hill that is roaded.:)

I'm keen to leave as many of the warriors alone as possible as based upon the experiences of vanilla teams in a previous SGOTM, the AI will be less likely to go over its unit support limit. If those warriors head south directly after we take a PT, they'll not get ugraded either.

If our proposed city placement encourages them to declare war after ten or so turns, I wouldn't be too worried as that's what we need. IMO two more towns is not expanding too fast but we could limit it to one if you're worried about protecting them. We have one settler already and we have excess food in Moscow that cannot go above size 6 so one settler every 14 turns from here is no problem growth-wise.

I'll wait until you've had a chance to look at the save before playing, nero.

all archers have moved IIRC.

we do not know where iron is yet...

losing rep may not be too bad if we can take out england before they meet anyone. OTOH, we'll need quite some turns to rebuild our strength, so another strike in 20 may be the fastest we can do.

EDIT: I would defintely try for 2 more towns. We can use the production capacity and unit support.

Here's what I would do:

Settle N,N,NW or on the spices first then maybe NW, NW, W.

Take IW for peace and 5 gold, that will let use pillage their iron.

Need at least 10 turns of peace (get back to 10 units minimum), then maybe try to make english declare on us (by booting them) to get happiness and not brake treaty.

We are all agreed on taking the PT for IW.

I'm not keen on losing our RCP4 though so I'm going for 3N. We can then see what it looks like at the end of my turn set.

There should be sufficient opportunities for the next player to force a declaration from a rival with a split empire. :)

Now look where the iron is!!!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/iron1.JPG

That is not secure at all! I say that we use a third settler to steal it and have a couple of warriors ready to upgrade. That will really upset Lizzie. :)

I will still build 3N first, which will discourage the English from settling by the iron, but then our second city should be NW of the iron hill towards the end of my turn set.

I'll pause for now and play this time tomorrow. (I can't play tonight and I feel I should wait for comments before continuing right now.)

Good plans Tone!

On a different note, I'll be away from tomorrow until Jan 4. Though I may be able to check the web and play a bit now and then, if you don't here from me, please skip. In the mean time: good luck!

EDIT: here's how I would continue. Switch Pete to settler. First settler to 3N, second to 4NW. Get another settler out of Moscow once it's back to size 6, growing on 7. If needed, you can add one of our own workers if growth takes too long, it saves upkeep as well ;). In the meantime, train warriors for upgrade (40 gold each in vanilla), after iron connection train swords obviously. Try to time it such that our treasury and nr of upgrades match nicely. Upkeep payments should be rather small with 5 towns. Target: Canterbury, and whatever we can get up north. Once England is banished to the tundra, we should be able to deal with them easily, and get some pointy stick research out of her. Our own research will have to stay at min. MapMaking is sorely needed I think, but still far off...

I'll be away from 26th Dec to 3rd Jan so we may be a bit short of players over the Christmas period.

Thought about it how nice it would be if the english would just have 1 iron on that location, but never expected this. Stealing it would be great. Agree on switching St.Peter to settler, and grab it. Things look a lot more bright now.

What to do with so little amount of players?

1250 (0)
Take peace as discussed. Send settler +spear northwards, hoping that the English don't get there first. Switch production in St Petersburg to a settler and mm so that we can work tiles that England has troops on. Switch build in Moscow to a spear for St Petersburg, just in case barb horses appear.

IT
English troops head south again.

1225 (1)
Build Kiev 3N of Moscow (rax).

IT
Moscow: spear>archer. Reduce lux to 30%. Mapstat says we need 17-18 troops in Kiev-whoops:(

1200 (2)
There is a green border to the East. I'll be looking out for a galley.

IT
Alphabet>Writing. (England already has it-surprise, surprise)
St Petersburg: Settler>archer.

1175 (3)
Reduce lux to 10%

IT
Moscow: archer>warrior

1150 (4)
settler moves to site 4NW of Moscow.

IT
Moscow: warrior>settler

1125 (5)
Build Minsk (rax)

1100 (6)
zzz

IT
St Pet: archer>warrior

1075 (7)
Dyes connected so cut lux tax completely.

IT
Moscow: settler>warrior
Eng are building the GLHouse

1050 (8)
Join native workers to Moscow and Kiev (1 each)

IT
One English warrior heads north into our territory for the first time since hostilities ended.
Moscow: warrior>warrior
St Pet> warrior>warrior

1025 (9)
settler in place to steal the iron.

IT
English warrior retires.
Moscow: warrior>warrior.

1000 (10)
Found Smolensk (rax) and the iron is ours!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/iron_is_ours.JPG

We have a couple of warrior builds which can be switched if you think that we have enough. Our current military is

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy_military_1000BC.JPG

3 of the warriors are regs and two archers are elite. No home workers-10 slaves.

One slave is on galley watch, fortified on the Dyes. Switch to a military unit if you prefer.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy_contact_Eastwards_1000BC.JPG

We have 3 cities that are going to flip at some point. I suggest that we upgrade our vet warriors asap and do everything to encourage England to declare on us so that we can relieve that cultural pressure.

1000BC save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_1000BC.SAV)

McLMan (up next)
nerovats (on deck)
Smart
open
zyxy
Tone (just played)

The chances of win are greatly increased :goodjob:
We must capture Canterbury (new capital) ASAP, to reduce flip chence of Kiev and Smolensk ;)

Any clue about the amount of time that worker has spent mining the iron? He could be put to use for the boot-war declaration, though it'd be wise to wait as long as possible to do the actual thing.

Any clue about the amount of time that worker has spent mining the iron? 2-3 turns. Can you actually get a 'declare or leave' from just a worker? I've only ever got the more feeble 'please leave' option come up.

Don't think it'll take long before english send down a settler pair, we can boot that. If they cooperate we could do with pease until we get swords then hope for boot, otherwise wait just couple of turns for treaty to end?

wait just couple of turns for treaty to end?
We can breake peace treaty without getting rep hit, if this treaty doesn't contain gpt or resource part.

Peace treaty reputation
Well, there is no such a thing. It means if you sign or renew a peace treaty and declare within 20 turns, you do not incur a rep hit, unless by doing so you break a gpt deal (within the same peace treaty or not).
So you could attack an AI, sign peace and get several cities, and break it immediately without a rep hit. However, many consider it an exploit.
War academy (http://civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/trading_reputation.php) (c)

Thanks for that, Smart. Why did I not read that article before?

So, do we consider it an exploit? In this case I'm not so sure that it is. It's not as if we have taken something from them and then redeclared the same turn and it's not like the AI doesn't break the 20 turn rule sometimes. However our leader is on vacation and bearing in mind that zyxy was keen for us to preserve our rep which could be an underlying desire to play the game with certain stadards of behaviour. (weak RB rules?) I would therefore be uneasy about making that decision without his consent so maybe we should not take advantage of this?

I suggest that we build the two warriors we have going at the moment, Upgrade all the vets and then wait for the English to come into our territory. (Can we aggrevate them before hand or is that also underhand? :mischief: )

Suggest not to start ourselves within 20 but ok to try and trigger english to declare.

However our leader is on vacation and bearing in mind that zyxy was keen for us to preserve our rep which could be an underlying desire to play the game with certain stadards of behaviour. (weak RB rules?)

In this instance I think it will be OK to coerce England into declaring on us. From his earlier post I think keeping the rep clean is more important than playing by certain standards.

losing rep may not be too bad if we can take out england before they meet anyone. OTOH, we'll need quite some turns to rebuild our strength, so another strike in 20 may be the fastest we can do.

Looks like we have enough gold to upgrade our 4 vet warriors to swords right now. I'm not sure of how long to wait before attempting to boot the worker. We have 9-10 turns before he's done with the mine. (Am I thinking right that it's 12 for a hill?) On the other hand we have 3 cities that are in danger of flipping. Our military is still kind of small.

5 Swords are enough to take Cantenbury. Switch moscow to sword (3 turns), and upgrade 4 warriors. Then we can boot worker and attack.

Lurkers Comment

Wow guys you've done far better than I ever expected, great work knocking out London and the positioning of the iron is a terrific stroke of luck! You'r in a, perhaps not good, but certainly a vastly improved position. Keep it going and does everyone else see the green borders to the south east?

Got it. Will play tomorrow when I'm more rested. I'll finish the current builds, upgrade vets to swords, and then do my best to provoke Elizabeth. (My wife can attest that I've got a knack for infuriating women.)

...does everyone else see the green borders to the south east?If they read my comment for turn 2 of my log they should. ;) Perhaps I should have placed it in bold. BTW that's why the slave is there on galley patrol. I couldn't spare a warrior at the time and it could not join the other worker teams to make any difference to the job completion times. Maybe a spear would be useful there-the worker should really be free to work and as war comes closer as we would prefer not to lose the lux connection I guess.

Welcome back from holiday, Tupaclives!

Pre-Turn
Upgrade 4 vet warriors to swords
11 gold in bank - change Moscow & St. Pete to swords

Hit enter

Turn 1 - 975 BC
Move new Swords towards Canterbury.
Move warrior to replace worker on galley watch.

Turn 2 - 950 BC
Consolidate "stack" next to Canterbury's border.

IT
Moscow: Sword -> Sword
Kiev: Rax -> Sword

Turn 3 - 925 BC
1st boot attempt at worker - Weak
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/boot_attempt.jpg
Our stack now consists of 5 Swords, Sword outside of Canterbury is not fortified ATM.

IT
St. Pete: Sword -> Sword

Turn 3 - 900 BC
2nd boot attempt - Not an ultimatum!

Turn 4 - 875 BC
3rd boot attempt - Again, nothing
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/come&go.jpg
Lux to 10% to prevent riot in Moscow. It's now at size 6, max size until Construction.
Very worried about Smolensk flipping. 56 units to prevent flip.

IT
Moxcow: Sword -> Sword

Turn 5 - 850 BC
4th boot attempt - Nothing (I'm beginning to grow tired of their insolence)

Turn 6 - 825 BC
5th boot attempt at worker - No ultimatum. It's not going to work
Move a warrior into English territory to try to agitate the situation.

IT
Lizzie gives tresspassing warning
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Lizreactstotrespass.jpg
Click goodbye with no acknowledgement of the trespass.
Kiev: Sword -> Sword

Turn 7 - 800 BC
This will be the last attempt. The English worker is finished mining our iron hill, and is awaiting orders.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/workerdone.jpg
6th and final attempt - no dice.

IT
The English worker moves to Canterbury. No other English units in our territory.
Moscow: Sword -> Sword
St. Pete: Sword -> Sword

Turn 8 - 775 BC
Move our Warrior further into English Territory. Treaty to expire next turn.

IT
Lizzie gives US an ultimatum.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Lizultimatum.jpg
Need to leave. That's ok, don't want to lose the warrior.

Turn 9 - 750 BC
The peace treaty is up.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/renegotiate_peace.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/englishscum.jpg
And here we go. Our stack is 9 swords, with one en route and Sword builds going in Kiev, Moscow, & St. Pete.
1st sword redlines the defender outside of Moscow and dies
2nd sword dies trying to take him out, and the English swordsman is promoted
3rd sword loses 2HP but wins! Stack moves next to Canterbury.

IT
Zulu complete Great Lighthouse

Turn 10 - 730 BC
The seige of Canterbury
1st Sword redlines vet spear and dies
2nd Sword loses 1HP winning against a reg spear
3rd Sword doesn't even dent a reg spear and promotes him
4th Sword takes 1HP off of new vet spear but loses - promoting him to elite.
5th Sword takes 2 HP off of new elite spear and loses. Revealing another reg spear.
Thats it for the attack. Move elite archer out of Kiev into stack & reinforcement arrives brining stack to 1 elite archer, 2 full health vet swords, and 1 vet with 2 HP.

Sword due in Moscow next turn, Kiev in 2, St. Pete in 3, and Minsk in 4. There are 2 warriors going after the warrior on galley watch, and a sword is getting ready to whack our worker mining the hill. There is at least 1 elite, 1vet, & 1 reg spear left in Canterbury. Kiev & Smolensk each contian a reg warrior that can be moved into the stack to beef it up a little bit. But it doesn't look good right now.

730BC Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_730BC.SAV)

nerovats (up next)
Smart (on deck)
open
zyxy
Tone
McLMan (just played)

Pre-turn
take workers of the hill
IBT
other worker stack is captured by archer
warior on dyes loses to warrior
710BC
kill the archer
capture workers back
Moscow sword->sword
retreat the wounded swords to heal
IBT
english sword pillages
english city in south grows and claims our dyes
690BC
2 riots
kill the sword
670BC
moving
650BC
kil 3 warriors near Moscow
have to adjust luxes we're now on 1 scientist, science at 0%
kill archer near Canterbury
IBT
get 3 counter attacks lose 1 win 2
630BC
kill warrior near Canterbury and Moscow
get elite sword
610BC
start attack on Canterbury, just 1HP spear gets left
upgrade the reg warriors
IBT
English want to take, are wiling to give small city or tech, nope
590BC
Finally claim Canterbury, but at some cost, pushed trough as now the english will just have 2 productive cities left.
Canterbury kept it's rax, nice
570BC
Try to get thigh healed and organised again
Leader fish, no luck
IBT
english land archer and warrior near Minsk
550BC
Mini Managing, now spot green border in south touching english border, they must have made contact
Leave worker to be captured to be sure Minsk will survive
IBT
English don't go after worker, but suicide against Minsk, even better
530BC
moving

A couple of swords can still move, we could let elite sword attach the archer on the hill, there's another sword to cover it when it get damaged.
We now have 8 swords 3 spears and 2 archers
3 swords will finish in 2 turns

Suggest to move 10 swords to the north after 2 turns, go for Nottingham from the hills, then York. If we succede, the English are gone.
Just an ocasional warrior/archer is comming from the south keep the spears 1 archer and 1 sword down there.

108655

108654

That's fantastic nerovats! Way to pull out of a very tough situation. Smart decision to pull back from Canterbury to heal.

Canterbury kept it's harbor too! That + Rax is very nice.

:worship: Wish I were still here [party]

Looking good, nero! :goodjob:

Step forward, Smart.:)

Nice work, team :goodjob:
Got it, will play tomorrow

Lurkers Comment

Great turnset nero! the english are just about on their deathbed if you keep pressing, geez next time why dont you guys try a challenging game :p

Pre-turn
Move elite swordsman from Kiev to Smolensk

Turn 1
Move stack of 6 swords to Nottingham
IT
Contact with China.

Turn 2
Reg sword dies attacking archer on hill. Vet swordsman kills him. [1-1]
IT
Buy CB for 60 gold from China

Turn 3
Trade 204 gold for Masonry and Myst

Turn 4
Nottingham captured without loses [3-1]

Turn 5
Buy TM from china for 13 gold.
Move 3 swordsmans and archer to Dyes city
Move 6 swordsmans to York
Kill english archer [4-1]
IT
Sword win vs archer. [5-1]
China declares WAR! England and China had signed MA against us.

Turn 6
York captured! [9-2]
Hastings captured! [11-2]
Make peace with England for Math, Poly and The Whell.
Starting FP in Kiev
Lower lux slider to 20%

Turn 7-10
Nothing important. We have settler. Writing will be researched in one turn.
England was moved to tundra :beer:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_SM_310BC.JPG

Lurkers Comment

Don't build the FP in Kiev. This is Vanilla not C3C, the positioning of the FP actually has a huge impact in Vanilla.

Lurkers Comment

Don't build the FP in Kiev. This is Vanilla not C3C, the positioning of the FP actually has a huge impact in Vanilla.

I agree 100%. The FP should be built on the land East of Hastings. China has some unfourtunate land. It will be slow to conquer.

Looks good! (No time to look in detail as I haven't done my packing yet.:) ) Well done on the conquering (RNG appears to be making up for the bad luck we had during McLMan's turnset) and tech deals. Shame that we didn't have a gpt deal for techs with China but I guess you can't have it all your own way. England's only threat is now from flips I imagine.

I'm not sure that I agree with the other posters on FP placement though. If we are going to handbuild the FP, Kiev seems like the best place for it to go as long as we then look to then jump the palace somewhere else of course.

Ah the palace jump. :confused: Something I never remember to consider. Good Idea. I'll go back and re-read Chinese Dynasty.

Great progres. Nice piece of land we got now.
Agree with Tone on FP, I think this city is perfect, later jump palace to other island.

We're back to the open spot, Tupaclives could pick it up now.

OK I know I wasnt intrested in joining at the start but with an open spot now available, then if noone has any objections i'd love to join. I'll start playing the turns now but if anyone objects to me being in the team then I'll just leave it.

Welcome aboard, tupaclives :)
I think nobody will be against your participation in this SG. You can play turnset right now.

Thanks Smart, I hope you speak for everyone. If you do, then consider this a 'got-it'

Pre-turn Thoughts
Take a look at the cities, everything seems to be in order. Not certain of the intended spot for the settler from Moscow so send him 2 tiles south of the game E of St Petersburg.

IBT - Writing comes in. Not sure if we want to go straight for Republic or not. England has philo, CoL, MM, HBR, Monarchy and construction and possibly republic on us so not quite sure what to research. Currency they lack as does China. But even at max allowable research would take 23 turns. Set to CoL with 1 scientist. Opt not to make embassy's. Zulu's finish the Great Wall.

Turn 1 - Minsk: Sword --> Sword. Heres when I see something else very interesting. Tell me who else sees it.
http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/5007/border1xh.jpg
Thats right its a border. Green or yellow, its impossible to tell, in fact we rnt even meant to be able to see that tile :lol: but lucky us we know theres someone else there as well as the dark green to the south of China (hopefully get that contact from China for peace). Check to see if England have contacts with other nations and they have contact with the Japanese, Persians and Zulu.
http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/5287/communications5qq.jpg
Now heres the difficult decision. We are at best 15 turns from MM to be able to fight with China. We are also 15 turns of peace with England left. How much military build up do we want? Do we take this opportunity to build up our infra? Whats our plan here? I'll pause here as I want to know what the team think should be done with regards the borders to the east and west. 15 turns we could have our own galleys and meet them. Otoh we could buy them straight up from the English or maybe get 1 for peace with china. Also I want to know what you think we should do with this 15 turns before we can fight anyone (assuming we actualyl care about our rep otherwise we could just attack england again ;))

This is practically a pre turn thoughts still as I've moved a settler n thats it :lol:

Ok, I'll try to answer to your questions :)
I think that borders are green - persians.
We should first conquer England, and then start on China. They can't do much damage to us via sea. We may start world conquest with Knights later.
If we are going to knights, we have to build now horses for upgrade.

About peace treaty and reputation. This is second thread, where i have to post this LINK (http://civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/trading_reputation.php) :(
"Peace treaty reputation
Well, there is no such a thing. It means if you sign or renew a peace treaty and declare within 20 turns, you do not incur a rep hit, unless by doing so you break a gpt deal (within the same peace treaty or not)"

No I have read that article, but my question is whether or not receiving things via the peace treaty (which I don't no whether we did or not) ie. gold, maps etc. and then breaking the peace treaty before the 20 turns has expired counts as violating a gpt deal. As far as I can tell it does in say a MA or with a RoP agreement but does it in peace?

No, there is no peace treaty reputation.
You wouldn't trash rep, if your peace treaty didn't contain: RoP, MA, MPP, embargo, gpt, and recources deal. You can check diplomacy screen for it:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_peace.JPG

In this case you can safetly declare war.

Alright so your reputation will remain intact so long as the deal shown in diplomacy screen contains only the peace treaty. I get it now.

Alright so your reputation will remain intact so long as the deal shown in diplomacy screen contains only the peace treaty. I get it now.

That's been my expereince too. Most of the time, at the bottom of the diplomacy screen it says something like "This deal will last until war is redeclared" unless there are resources or gpt involved in which it says something like "This deal will last for 20 turns."

We made peace for 3 techs, so we should be ok.

Edit: We should take advantage of the peace to set ourselves up to get the rest of Englands techs when we do re-declare.

Turn 1 (cont'd) - I take a look at our military with a view to turning the English into our punching bag again. We have 16 swords available and I take a peek to see which ones can be spared from MP duty, all those that can are deployed to Hastings in preperation for an attack. Decide to go for research on CoL for Republic at 1 scientist research. Worker moves, mostly mining irrigated grassland and the like.

IBT - China starts the Hanging Gardens

Turn 2 - Worker moves, repositioning troops zzzzz

IBT - Persian and Japanese galleys show, I guess that solves all the problems re: contacts.

Turn 3 - We can trade resources and luxuries with the Japanese as there is only coastal tiles seperating us. We are able to trade for any tech other than Monarchy or Construction for 2 Luxuries. Or we could trade 2 lux's for 1 of theirs. Decide to grab Philosophy for the Republic and a WM for dyes, Spices and 60 gold. Taking a look at the world map... ouch. This really is going to be a polar expedition! Most of the known world is mountainous (like China and Zululand) or frozen. Our lands taken from England are some of the best in the known world! There are no deals possible with the persians.

IBT - Nothing visible.

Turn 4 - Canterbury riots. Now explain this to me... its size 2, we arnt at war with the country its citizens are from, we have 2 luxs hooked up to it and it has a military police.... :confused: totally bizare and when I check the city it has 2 content faces (remember its only size 2...). :hmm:
St Petersburg: Temple --> sword. Swords start to be sent to Odessa as well so we can attack from 2 points.

IBT - Chinese galleys move around

Turn 5 - Canterbury: Sword --> Sword. One of the problems thats preventing us from building infra atm... is that we cant build any infra! we could build granaries but atm we lack the ability to keep the people happy when the cities grow beyond 6. Lit or Currency would be nice but we dont have it so I decide to stick with military build up. We now have 20 swords and hope to redeclare on England in a turn or 2. England is buying iron from someone as they have swords. China will finally talk for peace. Get HBR for peace and 38 gold. They are into the MA and wouldnt trade any other techs even if i threw in all our gold and more than a quarter of our gpt so i decided to get HBR. Switch nottingham from rax to settler. North of China I spy red borders and a check of F10 reveals it is the Romans. A galley would be handy but alas its not to be.

IBT - Galleys move around on our coast and english troops move around inside their borders but basicly nothing. Persia completes the Hanging Gardens.

Turn 6 - Would like to declare now but still need to position more troops in odessa. A peek at the Zulu-Persian territory reveals that they are at war (no embassies with either so couldnt otherwise tell)or were earlier as a number of Zulu cities belong to the persians. Actually after making the moves i realise that we are safe to declare war now as the English can't reach any cities for 2 turns which gives us time to send more defenders. Take a deep breath (still not 100% convinced about rep from this) and declare. Before moving any units I decide to check our rep by offering gpt for a tech and the result... 'they would never accept such a deal'... even if i offer our whole income and throw in some resources. Oddly they will now what were u saying about no peace treaty reputation?? I told you that because we took something from them straight up it would count as breaking a gpt deal. Oddly they will still accept them for maps (prob cos they'r practically worthless) but not for any techs. This begs the question is it just techs because thats wat we got with our peace deal, what if we'd taken maps would the result be different? Anyway our loss but its too late to do anything about it now. Can still trade for luxs though so offer Mao dyes and spices for Silks, throw in ne gpt and it becomes 'getting close' throw in any gold it becomes 'never accept'. Looks like its gunna be cash up front for techs from now on. With the extra lux
Move swords toward Warrick. Get ready for the counterattack. Check our cities before hitting enter. All english towns will riot so switch to taxmen where possible. Only York is on starvation the rest just no growth.

IBT - A Sword and an archer both attack our main sword stack. Our elite sword dies inflicting no damage to the sword, the archer is killed but yellowlines a vet sword.

Turn 7 - A sword kills a vet archer for no damage the main stack continues toward warrick. Reinforcements coming from the rear.

IBT - Nothing visible.

Turn 8 - Moscow: Sword --> Sword (in 3) St Petersburg: Sword --> Sword (in 4). St Petersburg also grows culturally. First sword attacks Warrick, kills reg spear without taking damage and gets promoted to elite. 2nd sword dies but redlines the spear. 3rd kills the spear without taking damage and takes the city. Keep the city, 3 resistors, set to build workers. Get 1 slave from the battle. Move the rest of the stack into the city to quell resistance and use the roads next turn.

IBT - Archer attacks the mini-stack (2 swords, 1 spear) outside coventry and suicides against the spear causing no damage and promoting our spear to elite.

Turn 9 - With just 1 resistor quelled in warrick i set him to taxman to start starving the city down. Leave the sword injured by the archer attack at the start of the war in the city as garrison and the rest of the army joins up with the mini stack outside coventry. Sword in odessa attacks archer outside city... and dies causing 1 damage :rolleyes:. 2nd sword then kills archer for no damage. Sword from mini stack attacks coventry n kills spear but is yellowlined. 2nd sword kills next spear for loss of 1 hp revealing injured sword in the city. Take a risk and attack with elite spear... and we win without taking damage! Go the super spear!!! :spear: Unfortunately no leader but we take and hold the city. better news is there are no resistors. Not really sure what to do with the city tho.. its useless for everything other than unit support as in its position would probably only be able to grab maybe 4 coastal tiles making it useless even for a fishing village. set to worker. We also get 2 slaves that were in the city. Swords from the main stack now link up at Coventry leaving the sword injured by the archer to garrison warwick. Check our cities and no city is using an unworked tile. This war is over, all that remains is to take London and Newcastle and they won't be protected by anymore than 2 spears each. Goodbye england :ar15:

IBT - Nothing, i dont think England even has archers left that they can send at us.

Turn 10 - York: Settler --> granary (as a prebuild for a courthouse as I plan to get CoL from the English) another resistor quelled in warwick. Smolensk: Sword --> Sword. Start to march swords out of Coventry toward Newcastle. Will be in position to attack in 2 turns (3 till actually attack). The two injured attacking coventry move into the city to heal so the super spear accompanies the 4 swords free. Theres 1 free sword at Odessa and some more heading to the front. Sword moves onto hills east north east of London and reveals no visible offensive units though there is a vet archer in London. Decide to check and England refuses to acknowledge our envoy. Well with no more moves to make I pass it over here.

Post-Turn Thoughts
Ok well a mixed turn. No problems in the war with England, they were gassed long before this war began. We needed to go to war again for tech as we have nothing to build but military units. The bad news is our rep is gone. Before anyone says anything I'd like to say in my defence that I asked about it, I said I thought it would ruin our rep but I was assured that we were safe. I'm sorry but I could only work with the infomation i was given. And yes I am certain we didnt break any trade routes or nething, it was purely breaking the peace treaty. We have a number of elites, including 1 sword, 1 spear and 2 archers. Suggest getting them to try and do all the fighting in the hopes of popping a leader. CoL is due in 31 unless we get it from England and the FP is due in 10. We have 1 settler (english however but soon they'll be dead so that doesnt matter) around 20 english workers, 2 archers (elites), 3 spears (1 elite) and 21 swords (1 elite, 19 vet, 1 reg). We dont have MM so inter-island war is out of the question right now. When we get it I suggest hammering either Japan or China. Zulu and Persia might be at war but I can't be certain, they could have just been at war earlier. Our military is rated strong to england and china, average to japan and weak to persia.

So now I pass it on hoping that the consensus is that I'm allowed to be part fo the team.

The world today
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/8795/world9xm.jpg

Ohhh, bad news... :( That article is really wrong... I've tried this in one of my games, and I can't make gpt deals after breaking peace treaty. :blush:
Sorry about that, i will post it in war academy discussion thread, and they should correct that article :rolleyes:

Yeah I know, maybe its for C3C and Vanilla is different or something, I dunno. Either that or its like i thought, that if you took anything solid (gold, maps techs etc.) then if u break the treaty it counts as breaking a gpt deal. DW though there's nothing we can do now, like i said, we could only work with the infomation we had at hand. We'll manage without it, I've played other diety games (albeit with better starts) where ive lost my rep early and still won.

Yes, we can still win, but it will add more challange to the game :)
There is one way to recover our rep - go into MA with all civs against England, and they will "forget" all, that we have done against our common enemy. About it I'm 100% sure ;)

I'm pretty sure that if you've shot your rep it's gone for good. You can still win though, steals don't require a good rep ;) . Will be following very closely

Yep its gone for good, if you get into a MA with someone AGAINST the person you ruined ur rep with then the civ in the MA with you will forget ur past transgressions against the civ you are in the MA against for the duration of the MA.

Will they forget about our broken deal, if we will sign MA just before destroying England?

Yes but only for the duration of the MA, its not a permenant thing. After that it will be no gpt deals ever as its england who we broke our rep against. Suggest making a MA with whichever civ we want to trade with just prior to finishing off england, then make a gpt trade (luxs or actual gpt) with that civ. We should make the most of that opportunity I think.

:bump: according to me, McLman is up.

Got it, will play this evening.

Pre-turn thoughts:
I am really confused about our reputation. And am looking forward to the return of Tone & zyxy so they can explain what happened & why. Not sure I agree with getting CoL from England, unless we can get MM with it. We're going to need galleys to get across the channel & continue our expansion.

Pre Turn) 110 BC
Look at the possibility of signing an MA before destroying what's left of England. We can't at the moment, we don't have any embassies. Checking the price: China - 35g, Japan - 50g, Persia - 78g. A check of attitude shows that China is Cautious, while Japan and Persia are both Annoyed. China might be more willing to deal with us. So I build an embassy there now just in case the cost goes up in the next couple of turns.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_Beijing.jpg

Nice to see Mao is wasting his shields and upkeep money. The growth potential is amazing, just 12 surplus food to grow in size. And only 72 shields to build a colosseum that would cost us 120.

Hit Enter

IT
Moscow: Sword -> Sword (3)
Warwick Starves
Minsk: Sword -> Sword (5)

Turn 1) 90 BC
Reinforcements moving South
Vet Sword is red-lined taking out the Reg Archer on the hill E of London.
Stack captures a worker N of Newcastle.
Check to see what it's going to cost for an alliance.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Mao_alliance.jpg

This is the cheapest deal that could be worked out (Our part that is out of the window is ROP). First I tried just a straight alliance and Mao wanted WM, 189 g, & 13 gpt. I was able to talk him down to WM, 181 g, & 11 gpt. When I threw in ROP he allowed me to knock 2 gpt off of the deal, but wouldn't budge on anything else. By the way, he's polite now.

Seems a bit steep. That would leave us with 8 gold and 15 gpt to try to get a tech. Do you think we could get anything for that? I'm unsure what to do so I'm going to not going to continue without discussion from the team.

I will continue tomorrow afternoon. (GMT -5)

I'll see if i can be a bit clearer abotu what happened, obviously I'm not as knowledgeable as the likes of Tone but it is my understanding that:
we signed peace with england (20 turns, consider it to be us giving them gpt even though we werent) in exchange for techs. Now we violated that peace deal before it was up (consider that a broken trade route or that we have just stopped paying the gpt before the deal was up) and as such ruined our rep. The reason, as I understand it, that our rep was ruined is because we accepted hard goods as part of the peace deal (hard good being gold, techs etc.). Now if I am right in my assumptions then if we had been receiving purely gpt (no hard goods only things on a turn by turn basis) then our rep would not be ruined. The reason I think this is because if you have a straight lux for lux deal with nothing else, if that deal gets broken prematurely then you don't suffer a rep hit, I have found.
Hope that helps a bit, but the whole situation is a little murky. I double checked that no trades were broken so its definately the breaking the peace treaty that did it, why? Well I'm not 100% sure but what above is my understanding of it.


Tot the trades now, we have spare lux's but not much else. Are we able to trade with Persia or Zululand? If not then I don't think an alliance will do much for us. We are already trading luxuries to china and japan. Maybe we could get something with the gpt left over after paying china for an alliance, maybe not. What we could do is put the slider up to 100% tax so it appears that we have more money than we do, sign an alliance for JUST GPT with China, then buy tech using gpt and cash straight up. Once we have finished trading immediately finish off england so that we dont have to pay the gpt for the alliance anymore. Thats my suggestion as by doing that we save some of our hard cash for the trade.

This is too expensive, could leave english alive and finish them later, they might trade a bit more, then take one city claim tech for peace again.

I think what went wrong is this, they paid techs for 20 turns peace not less. It would be the same if we got a lot of cash for peace. When just getting gpt, one could say they pay that amount for every turn of peace, thus when you cancel it, they just paid for the turns of peace they got, not more, making it somewhat of a fair deal.

OK. Continuing with no alliance.

IT
St. Pete: Sword -> Sword (4)

Turn 2) 70 BC
4 vet swords and an elite spear take on Newcastle
1st sword dies redlining a vet spear
2nd sword loses 2 HP killing a reg spear & reveals the redlined spear.
Send in superspear to try for a leader. He's redlined but wins, no leader though.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/newcasltefalls.jpg

It keeps it's harbor so we keep Newcaslte. England down to one city - London.
Check to see if Elizabeth will give anything for peace and she refuses the envoy.

IT
Two Chinese galleys are making their way down the West coast of our island.
An archer out of London rushes out in a despearate counterattack and suicides vs. a vet sword making his way around the pond to meet up with the stack. The sword is redlined though.
Odessa: Worker -> Temple (60)

Turn 3) 50 BC
Moving toward London

IT
Moscow: Sword -> Sword (3)

Turn 4) 30 BC
Check to see if we can afford any techs. All 3 civs we can trade with will only give up CoL but nothing else. China with the best price at WM + 199 gold.
England still won't talk.
Stack of 4 Swords musters outside of London with reinforcements close behind.
China is a Republic, the only civ we know with a representative government.

IT
Another desperate counterattack by a reg archer from London. This time the vet sword loses only 2 HP taking him out.
Minsk: Sword -> Sword (4)

Turn 5) 10 BC
Newcastle is still in full resistance, and is likely to flip with a garrison of 2 right now (1.5% - 2.8% chance).
Don't know what to do with the Settler so I fortify him in Moscow.
A vet sword wins against a vet spear in London without losing a single HP in an attempt to persuade Elizabeth to settle for peace.
English still refuse the envoy. Gamble that there were more than 2 spears defending London and attack with another sword. The sword loses, the spear is redlined, and it is discovered that he is the sole defender of a civilization. Check to see if we knocked any sense into Elizabeth and ...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/stillrefuse.jpg

I let the remaining swords fortify on the spot.

IT
A Japanese galley appears from the East.
St. Pete: Sword -> Sword (4)
Smolensk: Sword -> Sword (5)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/newcastleflips.jpg
We lose a vet sword and the elite superspear. Would have required a garrison of 32 to prevent it from happening. We can now continue our assault of London to keep pressure on.

Turn 6) 10 AD
London is ours after a vet sword defeats the lone reg spear. Reluctantly keep the city to prevent an attitude hit.
Liz still won't talk.
Another tech becomes affordable!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/MMtradetwo.jpg

China again has the bargain. We make the deal, switch coastal builds to galleys

IT
Moscow: Sword -> Cat

Turn 7) 30 AD
London riots as 2 resistors were quelled. Switch them to taxmen.

IT
Warwick: Worker -> Cat (20)

Turn 8) 50 AD
China, Japan, & Persia know Literature.
London starves & 1 resistor is gone. Re-set specialists to taxmen.
Although flip chances are slim, 0.4 to 0.0% (I don't know why 0.4 is the min and 0.0 is the max), I move all units other than 1 sword outside of London.
Liz is finally ready to talk! And she's willing to give all she's got for peace.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/English_peace2.jpg

We get: CoL, Currency, Construction, Monarchy, and Contact with the Zulu.

The peace brings us into the Middle ages, and a free tech.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Monotheism.jpg

Japan and the Zulu don't know Monotheism. Japan is up Literature, and we are up Monotheism to the Zulu. While Japan is the best target for our invasion, I feel we should look elsewhere first because ...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Japanoffertwo.jpg

Make the deal. Lux slider goes down to 0%, mm to take taxmen out of cities and let them grow. +33 gpt. Still researching with one Scientist in Moscow (Feudalism). And check this out!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/tech_advanced.jpg

I think this would be a good stopping point for me, and a better starting point for the next player. Zulu don't have much to offer for Monotheism, but that trade is still available. Also, we don't have any turns into our current research project so it can easily be changed now after some discussion. In hindsight I wish I hadn't traded for MM, we probably could have got it from England too. I really didn't think Elizabeth would throw in everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink though.
In my opinion we shouldn't wait for Republic to change governments. 70% research will get it to us in 31 turns, with +2 gpt going into the treasury. Any higher % and we'd be running a defecit. I'm for playing this game with Monarchy. With the way the map is laid out, wars will continually cut off any luxes we're trading for and battling a luxury defecit along with war weariness could prove too expensive. With no unit support for Republic in Vanilla, and the time it will take to get it, I really don't think it will be worth it.

zyxy01_50AD.SAV (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_50AD.SAV)

Good work McLman, nice stuff getting all those techs from lizzie :goodjob:
I actually forgot we were scientific and would get a free tech. If we want to get Republic then would China sell it to us for Monotheism?

But McLman brings up an interesting point, we could go the Monarchy route however I'm pretty confident that if we can get republic NOW and for cheap (maybe using Monotheism) then we could go for Republic. We arn't religious so whatever we choose we are going to have to stick with for a while and the extra commerce and corruptin reduction from republic puts it ahead for me. At first we were worried about using Republic in Chinese Dynasty but there was very little time when we werent at war and War Weariness didn't start to set in till almost the end of the game. Obviously it would be a bigger impact here due to slower conquest and more time spent in enemy territory but I'm still in favour of republic, its a suprisingly sturdy war government. Thats just my $0.02 tho and Monarchy could be the way to go.

Well played, we're really looking good now. Got it.

If we want to get Republic then would China sell it to us for Monotheism?

Without looking at the save, IIRC the Chinese already know Monotheism & we don't have anything else to offer.

Pre-turn
activate settler, move to south
change York to lib, to claim the other spices.
change Hastings to lib
change London and Odessa to cats
70AD
Moscow cat->cat
York lib->cat
Canterbury, Minsk galley->galley
Start moving units SE, to strike persians
90AD
ST Peter galley->galley
Kiev FP->cat
110AD
Nottingham galley->cat
Smolensk galley->cat
Found Sevastopol->cat
130AD-210AD
nothing, just building units
IBT
renew deal with china
230AD
get embasies with zulu and persia, to see what we are facing.
109951
109952
250AD
York lib->cat

Fleet just needs couple of turns to complete, then land near Gordium to claim diamonds. Also send small stack to the iron near Tarsus to pillage.

109953

109954

:wavey: I'm back. And welcome, tupaclives! :wavey:

I haven't had time to look at the save, but we seem to be doing very well! I'm obviously playing with a strong team here :).

England is down, and most of the other civs have bad terrain. That's nice, they won't run away from us so fast. I'm only wondering what's up north... With standard size, we should have 7 opponents, and we can already see 5?? From here, we should probably go military expansion and pointy stick, but keep the strongest civs we can see intact to help with potential runaways on the northern hemisphere. And it won't hurt to get libs and markets to pay for all those troops.

Too bad about our rep, let's blame the war academy for this. I think I've seen various "truths" posted about reputation in the war academy, and the one that seems correct to me is what nero said (but I never seriously tested this). You start the game with a clean rep, but you break it when you break a deal that involves a per turn payment on the human side and an upfront payment on the AI side. It may also involve other items, that doesn't matter. Per turn payments are: diplomatic treaties (peace, MA, etc - they probably count as per turn payment for both treaty partners), gpt, resources. Upfront payments are: tech, gold, cities, workers, maps. With a broken rep you cannot buy on credit, except in peace (re-)negotiations and when allied against the "betrayed" civ, as mentioned before.

I'm not sure what happens when you break a deal involving only per turn payments on both sides. Your rep is not broken, but maybe you have to pay higher prices afterwards, I don't know.

Oh yeah:
Smart - up
tupaclives - on deck

Welcome back zyxy. :D

I was looking at the minimap and thinking about how I've been on maps like this where I was fortunate enough to start in the other half, in good terrain, and chomped at the bit when I found how bad the terrain was for the rest of the civs. They all were weaklings. I'd be surprised if the land up top isn't a lot better than what we're stuck in & the 2 civs up there will be powerhouses. Hopefully we're close enough to one of them to be able to offer something and make them our "friend" and help while we take out the other. There's still a lot to do down where we are though, and the production benefits the AI has at this level will even things out for their bad terrain. We've already seen this from England's quick culture production in tundra.

Nice going, team!

Am I being over confident if I ask what our preferred victory condition is?

We are going for conquest or domination, because with bad rep we cant self-research to the modern era for UN or SS win on deity...

And, got it.

A bad rep doesn't stop you trading-it only limits the opportunities. Maybe I've played too much C3C where the AI ends up in the Facism/Communism quagmire and their research comes to a grinding halt but going for fast research on Diety with a bad rep is still possible. You are just careful about what you research so as to get valuable monopoly techs and try to build up a large treasury to help with trades.

I'm happy with conquest/domination though if that everyone's preferred option.

Welcome back you all. Glad we didn't disapoint you. I prefer dom/conq as well as the other's tend to get very boring near the end.

I had some time to look at the save now.


Just in case you didn't notice, there is a red border just above China.
We can buy republic from Japan in exchange for 2 luxes, iron, peace and 7 gpt. Might be good, let's get out of despotism.
China is a good early target, they have a lux, an iron source and should be weak. The main cities are on flat land.
Japan would be a good target after China, they also have a lux. Zulu are severely weakened and make a good target later on - Zimbabwe has an insane number of rather useless wonders btw. Persia is a good trade and research partner for now.
We're at the front of the tech race, that's great. I am not very happy with the min run on feudalism, it has no trade value. With engineering or theology we would have had a shot.

AI usually don't research techs from Monotheism to Democracy, so we could get monopoly on them, and trade to all civs. Feudalism and Enginering are useless for trading.

Pre-turn
Change production in a few towns from horses to swords, in eastern coastal towns to galleys.
Load swordsmans near Warwick to galleys. China is the best choise for our first attack, because of many mountains to landing.

IT
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_GLib.JPG

Turn 1
Moving units and galleys...

Turn 2
:sleep:

IT
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_Zulu_Persia_war.JPG

Turn 3
Build aqueducts in size 6 towns.
Build harbors in frozen coastal towns.

Turn 4
Finnally ready for a war. Move galleys with cats and swords to Chinese borders, near Nanking.
Oh, we are trading luxes to China. And... Our rep isn't bad!!! Don't know why, but we can make gpt deals!
So I decide to do one trick: demand from Mao something, until he will be Furious, and then steal technology "Immediatly". I need some more money for espionage operation, and I traded 4 gpt to china for 61 gold.

Turn 5
Steal technology, and....

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_China_Declares.JPG

Turn 6
Our SoD is in the place :devil:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_SoD.JPG

IT
Japan demands Dyes, I give.

Turn 7
Capture Nanking, got two slaves. [5-0]

Turn 8
Use roads to move troops to Canton, and then abandon Nanking.
New SoD is ready in Smolensk, and loaded into galleys.
Build an embassy in Kyoto.
Who had said that AI never build army using a leader? Here you can see the Heroic Epic ;)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_Kyoto.JPG

Sign with Japan MA vs China for Spices and 5 gpt. Also got a Japanese world map in this deal.

IT
Palace expansion!

Turn 9
Moving SoD to Canton

IT

Persia demands 21 gold, I give

Turn 10
The lux deal with Japan was ended at the turn 9, and I forgot about it... Six cities are rioting, I'm sorry...
Buy Ivory from Japan for 9 gpt, and up lux slider to 10%.
Capture Canton with 3 slaves [8-0]

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_360AD.JPG


Notes for the next player:

Move slaves from 3SW hill from canton to 2 galleys, and bring them to our mainland.
Build a few settlers to fill the Chinese land.
If we are going for Domination, and don't need rep anymore, we can could attack Japan next :rolleyes:
Capture Tsingtao and Beijing ASAP, then sign peace for all techs and gold, and leave them with OCC. If we want to save our rep, destroy China, and prepare to attack the Persia.



Save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_SM_360 AD.SAV

In another thread tupaclives posted that he'll be away until jan 18. So unless I hear from him before tomorrow morning, I'll play. Roster:

tupaclives - up
zyxy - also up
Tone - on deck

Japan had/has an army?:eek: ,wonder what it is, better find out, no?

Who had said that AI never build army using a leader? Here you can see the Heroic Epic
That's the first time I've seen a sign of an AI army. Thanks for posting that, Smart!!! :cool:

Maybe in vanilla AI is more clever, and don't always use leaders to rush something unusefull, like colleseums :rolleyes:
Btw, Tupaclives last activity in CFC was six days before. Zyxy, you can play turnset now ;)

Yes, the AI uses armies in Vanilla, but not in C3C. quite the opposite of "intelligent".

On the Chinese war: Shanghai has Silks, so unless there's a Silks source hidden under Tsingtao or Beijing, I would rather bypass Tsingtao and take Shanghai. Or perhaps raze and replace, we'll see. It seems we need to fight for 15 turns to preserve our rep, as Japan paid upfront for the alliance (WM).

Got it. Btw, the link to the save is not quite right, here is the correct link (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_SM_360_AD.SAV).

Turn 0, 360AD: riots all over the place :D. Zulu has Feudalism, England has Republic, but we cannot swing a 2fer atm.

IT: Japanese shuffle a lot of troops around - some go forward, some go back - weird. China send a settler pair our way :crazyeye:. Order is restored in the empire.

Turn 1, 370AD: whack the settler pair. Thank you, Mao! Our glorious armies move to Beijing. Take Tsingtao at ridiculous losses, 5 resisters.

IT: Zulu start ST in Zimbabwe, wonder capital of the world.

Turn 2, 380AD: Chinese keep resisting, our culture is quite a bit lower than theirs.

Now, what's this?
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_380AD_whatsthis.jpg

Aha!
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_380AD_itsRome.jpg

He knows Egypt, has Feudalism and Republic, but not Monotheism. Our knowledge of Monotheism buys Feudalism, contact with Egypt, World Map, 30 gold and 7 gpt from Rome, everything he has except for Republic. I then renegotiate peace with England: we grant 20 turns of peace to Lizzy and teach her Feudalism in exchange for her knowledge of the Republic, her 2 gold pieces and her WM. I finally contact Egypt, but she has no new techs to offer and doesn't have enough to pay for Monotheism. Rome and Egypt have the best land, and both are pretty big:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_380AD_WM.jpg

Set research to Theology at min. I could buy Engineering if I sell our contacts, but there doesn't seem to be a safe crossing so it's better to keep the contacts until astronomy I think. The Zulu could cross using the GLighthouse, but sofar they haven't for some reason - too busy building wonders, no doubt.

We cannot conquer the world with swords now that pikes are around, so we'll need a better government. According to CivAssist Republic is not a good idea just yet, we need a few markets first. Monarchy is even worse. lux to 20%.

IT: Japanese kill a Beijing spear for us, and an archer from Beijing kills himself against a Japanese horse.

Turn 3, 390AD: Persia now has Chivalry, Persia and Japan have Engineering. Eight catapults knock 2 hp off a spear in Beijing and reveal that he is the only defender! An elite sword dispatches him and we raze Beijing, gaining 2 slaves. We march on Shanghai and form a block to keep the Japanese at bay.

IT: Egypt starts ST in Thebes.

Turn 4, 400AD: I'll hold the attack on China's last town because our rep is apparently still intact.

IT: Japanese are turning back. Another Chinese settler pair appears.

Turn 5, 410AD: With the Chinese settler pair around I can safely take Shanghai. Seven cats hit twice and destroy a harbor, 2 spears are killed at the loss of one sword, and Shanghai is ours. No resisters.

IT: Japan kills the Chinese settler and thus destroys the Chinese, as planned. They should get the rep hit for this. Resistance ends.

Turn 6, 420AD: Tblisi founded. lux can go back to 10%. I think we can move against Japan next. We have a deal for 14 turns, but Japan is at "remove of declare", so I'll just try to trap some troops...

Turn 7, 430AD: Sverdlovsk settled. Theology is known to Japan and Persia.

IT: Zulu restart ST, same place.

Turn 8, 440AD: zzz

Turn 9, 450AD: Rome now has Engineering. I'll stop here to get back to nice turn numbers.

notes:


Fortified units and units that can move have full movement.
We should switch to republic soon. We have 3 luxes (+ 1 import), and several markets finish in about 3-5 turns.
Our World map is valuable: Rome/Egypt and Japan/England/Persia/Zulu don't know the map of the other group. We also still have the contact monopoly. There's possibly a 2fer available for Engineering.
Japan is the next target I think, although we're probably flying in the face of their GA and UU. We have active deals, but there are a few Japanese troops and workers in our Chinese province, and they are at "remove or declare". We have two galleys with troops nearly in position at the Japanese iron source at Nara. They do have some pikes, and most of their army should still be up north near our border. I have not seen any samurai or muskets yet, it's mostly archers and horses (Japanese did not hook up iron until 10-20 turns ago). Our troops are fortified near Canton. There is a fleet north of China to assist with troop movement on the Japanese east coast. Our fleet west of China can possibly protect our eastern seaboard from ugly Japanese invaders. Of course you can always decide to attack someone else instead.
We have a boat with 2 settlers near Hastings, and an exploring boat in Roman waters.
Feel free to switch production to more useful stuff. I generally build settlers whenever I don't know anything better. I focussed on building markets and settlers, so we are a bit short on troops. We have plenty slave workers though.


Our glorious empire:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_450AD_status.jpg

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_450AD.SAV)

Roster:
Tone - Up!
McLMan - On deck!
nerovats
Smart
Beorn-eL-Feared
tupaclives - away until Jan 18 (?)
zyxy - just played

I've just taken a quick peek at the save and it looks good.

I think that we need to take advantage of the lack of contacts for Rome/Egypt whilst we can. The Zulu have the GLHouse, which might end up in Persian hands soon, and there is a safe path up north for the civ that holds this wonder.

I agree with Japan as our next target. They have just one source of iron which is highly vunerable to pillaging. You even left me a couple of swords in the galley there. How thoughtful! :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Japanese_Iron.JPG

We can get Chivalry from the Japanese for 2 luxes and 33gpt. We should then be able to get Engineering from the Romans and some gold as they will be buying a monopoly tech for one that we have several contacts with. We could then wind up the Japanese with so tribute demands and then issue a 'leave or declare' so that they hopefully declare on us and we end up getting Chiv and Engineering for free and we don't get a rep hit. We then land on their iron and pillage it before (m)any Samurai get out.

We might also consider instigating a war in the North to slow their progress. An alliance could be part of a tech deal with Rome perhaps?

Any views?

ps what's this about, zyxy?
I'll hold the attack on China's last town because our rep is apparently still intact.Is there something else I've missed on rep game mechanics?

I'll hold the attack on China's last town because our rep is apparently still intact.
Japan kills the Chinese settler and thus destroys the Chinese, as planned. They should get the rep hit for this.
You don't get a rep hit, when you destroy civ in alliance ;)

Tone,

Sounds like a good plan. Good luck!

I don't understand the rep issue, but apparently our rep is not broken: we can buy chivalry for gpt, and the price seems not outrageous. Japan is not at war with England I believe. So perhaps it is allowed to break peace deals? If so, then this is a bug IMO.

EDIT: now I understand what you mean, because of Smart's reply. I've always been under the impression that you get a rep hit if you break an alliance by destroying the target civ. If not, then I could have taken out China a turn sooner, and I could have whacked another settler :(.

Why two civilizations could sign an alliance against other?.. Sure, to destroy it :p
You will get a rep hit only if you make peace with target civ during the MA.

@Tone & zyxy

I thought the intact rep was a surprise because of the issues from posts #98 through #106 when we re-declared war on England before the peace treaty was up. You guys were out of town at that time. Now I'm really confused that our rep is intact (or was it ever gone?)and hope that someone can explain this to me.

@Smart: Very nice trick for getting China to declare. I'll have to remember that one.

On x-post with McLMan:
I don't know why rep hit was gone, but at that time, when we declare on England, we couldn't trade gpt. You may track saves and check, when ability to make gpt deals was restored :)

Just so that you are aware that I have not forgotten...

I was intending to play last night but in the end I couldn't find the time. I should be able to find some time tonight though (Weds). I haven't played :twitch: any civ since Sun pm :twitch: so I'll probably start twitching soon. :twitch:

Hey just popping in briefly.
I am away until the 22nd now as my parents thought an extra four days of nothing would be fun :rolleyes: sorry I didnt post here that I would be away.

No idea wats going on with our rep now... I have no clue at all as we definately could not make gpt deals on my last turnset. That has to be a bug but in this case its worked in our favour!
The only thing I can think of is that we made peace with england and going to war with them broke our rep... nope I got no ideas :lol:
I'll try and keep up with whats going on until I get back, but it'll be patchy at best.

Things look in excellent shape, nice work with the trades, I love good trades. Whats the game plan for the immediate future? Japan next? Are we going to stop now that they r in the MA and upgrade our forces, or keep pushing with what we have and send better reinforcements as they become available?

Whats the game plan for the immediate future? Japan next? Are we going to stop now that they r in the MA and upgrade our forces, or keep pushing with what we have and send better reinforcements as they become available?I was going to do the trades mentioned and incite them to declare on turn 0 so that I can cut the iron before Sams appear. Then just play a holding game until our markets are built. Trouble is finding the time to play at the moment.

to declare on turn 0
We are currently trading luxes with Japan, it will trash our rep :nono:

-- Edit --
Didn't read last post well... Sure, let them to declare war :ar15:

I was going to do the trades mentioned and incite them to declare on turn 0 so that I can cut the iron before Sams appear. Then just play a holding game until our markets are built. Trouble is finding the time to play at the moment.

Tone,

Could you please try to play soon, or ask for a skip or swap? I would like to keep this game moving :).

Your plan sounds good to me.

450AD (0)
It a risk but I listen to my own posts and decide to get Japan to declare on us.

Trade with Japan: 33gpt plus two luxes for Chivalry. They are still annoyed.
Trade with Rome: Give Chivalry for Engineering, WM, 30gpt and 27gp. They still have more gpt in reserve.
Establish embassy with Rome for 61g
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Rome_450AD.JPG
Demand cash from Egypt-they decline so I declare war on them and then get Rome in an alliance for 15gpt-quite expensive but I think that it should hold back Rome and Egypts progress for a while.
(Japan and Persia are the tech leaders with Theo and Invention)

I demand Invention three times and the Japenese turn Furious. I then tell them to leave or declare and they declare war.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Japan_declare_450AD.JPG

We've lost a lux deal so I up the slider to 20%.

I attack both horses in China and both withdraw. One I cannot attack a second time and so I have to withdraw two mountain slaves. Land 2 swords on the Japanese iron hill.

Being cautious and worried about our early weakness due to market production, I also sign an alliance with Persia against the Japanese for 25gpt.


IBT
SORRY I didn't think about the settler galley-we lose them to a Japanese attack.
Moscow: Market>Knight

460 (1)
Pillage iron.
We get a Great Leader. I save him for a Palace Jump.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Great_Leader_460AD.JPG

IBT
Japanese L-Bow kills one of our two swords on their iron

470 (2)
I kill the L-Bow, land some reinforcements and then notice that they've lost their iron-it's depleted!!!!! Otherwise just holding battles.

IBT
Smolensk: Market>knight
Sevastapol: settler>settler

480 (3)
zzz

IBT
Kiev: Market>Knight

490 (4)
zzz-we are too weak to take on fortified pikes at the moment.

IBT
Canterbury: Market>Pike

500 (5)
zzz

So we did well out of the deals (IMO) but I'm sitting on a GL not knowing where to jump the Palace to and waiting for some knights to take the battle to Japan. Swords vs pikes does not appeal.

Maybe we should build an army or rush a wonder instead.

Japan are weak and lack iron. They can build longbows though which makes it difficult to approach their cities.

I'm happy to continue but I've had it long enough and I'm not sure how best to proceed. I didn't realise how tough the week would be so I attach the save to pass on to the next player. Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_500AD.SAV).

Why hold a leader for palace jump? I suggest to turn it into an army and keep that small enough to ship it to egypt/rome as we need armies there. If Japan is weak we should not need armies here.

McLman up?

We can move capital using "Free palace jump" - abandon capital, and palace will be moved to the best city. I'm not sure about all criteria, but palace was usually moved to the city with highest population. So we must join many workers to the city on other continent, and then abandon capital.

If we have Chivlary I'd say to put one Knight into the army for extra movement point, and transport it to the most powerfull island with 2 more knights to fill the army. Then pillage it.
Btw, I don't know what is difference with pillaging in vanilla and C3C (I'm usually playing [c3c]), and maybe it will not work well in [civ3]. If we will use this army for attack, lets go to to Rome island, and attack Egypt in alliance with Rome.

I'm happy to use it in an army but we only have galleys so if we want to move it we can only load one unit. In vanilla this defeats the object of having an army as they do not get the various bonuses that are given in C3C, such as free pillaging and the extra MP. Additionally a wounded army takes longer to heal than separate units. AFAICS we either load it with 2 units and wait for caravels to move it off the island or use the GL to rush something else, such as Leos if we can get Invention soon. An army with one unit is next to useless in vanilla IIRC and thus is a waste of a GL so if we take the army, we put up with it being fixed to one island for a while.

If we were still considering the free palace jump why did we just waste 200 shields on an aqueduct and a market? I certainly talked earlier about jumping the palace but I assumed that this had been shelved due to the infrastructure being built subsequently. Losing a city with this much infrastructure is not making best use of the 'free' palace jump.

The reason why I am tempted to use a GL for our palace jump is that we can do it that turn rather than having to starve the foreign citizens and get sufficient troops to the location whilst hoping that our pathetic culture does not mean we lose the city in a flip but I'm happy to wait for another one. The only place in the southern hemisphere I can see at the moment that I'd want our palace is in Persia. We might benefit with a temporary jump to China/Japan as two cores is almost always more beneficial than one in vanilla although I haven't checked this out with CivAssistII in our game yet.

BTW the criteria for Palace Jump involves number of citizens (our ones being more valuable than foreign ones), the number of towns/cities/metros close by (cannot remember exactly how close they need to be) and the number of units in the town garrison. It is possible to use CivAssistII to determine how many points each town has in order to take the worry out of jumping to the 'wrong' place.

Nicely played Tone! 2 techs for free and some gold as bonus :). Good decisions on the alliances.

I'm not looking at the save right now, but if Japan has no iron, then their supply of pikes might be limited. So once we get some knights, we can start making a dent with knights and cats. Perhaps begin at the southwest end of Japan, their main force is probably up north.

Best lands for the palace core are in Egypt or second choice Persia IMO, but that's too far in the future to hold the GL. Japanese continent doesn't look very promising, all tundra and mountains. Is there a useful wonder available ? ST maybe? Otherwise army is ok, if only for the Epic.

This is Vanilla, so armies don't get a movement or other bonus. Main purpose of armies is to enable Epic, and to protect a stack AI will not attack.

McLMan - up
nero - deck

An army with one unit is next to useless in vanilla
I said, that we could transport it with one unit, and then load two extra knights on it ;)

@Smart: I know, but that point was not aimed at you (although the bit about the bonus was); just the general discussion on the validity of an army in that if we decide to make one, we really need to consider it based on the target island for the long term.

I don't think that transporting a pillaging army is on the cards at the moment. We've just built plenty of markets and so our military is pretty feeble, which is why I was fighting a defensive war against the Japanese. I think that we should load two knights up (when we finally get them :rolleyes:) and use it against the Japanese. We can't get transport to the North at the moment without ship-hopping, Persia is our ally and the other two are so weak we could take them out at our leisure so we can really only use it against Japan. It will help protect against Longbows and might just enable us to take out their main towns before they get muskets. (if we are very lucky!)

Wonders? Sun Tzu is available but it's not going to be that powerful on a map like this IMO. We're not playing the type of game that would benefit from Sistine. I think the others have gone but it might be worth checking. Nothing appealled to me yesterday though. Now we could buy Invention and then rush Leo's of course...

Are you deliberately testing my patience?:lol:

I was about to go look for the palace jump formula but indeed, CA2 is way faster. Good move on the alliances, keep it up boys. I'm glad my clumsiness is out of your way, you guys can definitely make it. Stay sharp and focused, the rest will follow. And if I may, I'd opt for Leo's, considering all the swords and horses who just wish they had better armor and maces.

I only mentioned ST because there's little else to do witha leader at this stage. Leo's is not too bad I think, depending on how many horses we have running around (no maces in Vanilla!). But buying Invention might be costly, and I would only do that if we can get some value out of it, i.e., sell it on for a good price. Alternatively we can (temporarily) move the palace to Sverdlovsk, or to Osaka or Kyoto, once we take them. Don't know if that would really be an advantage though. In the end, an army may be best. At least we can then build the Epic for higher leader chances in the future, and we can protect one stack in Japanland against longbows.

:bump: McLMan?
Nerovats, to keep it going, you can take the save. No answer from McLMan after four days from last turnset :shakehead

:bump: McLMan?
Nerovats, to keep it going, you can take the save. No answer from McLMan after four days from last turnset :shakehead

Thanks. Was just going to say that :).

McLMan - skipped
nero - up
Smart - deck

Should be able to play tomorrow.

If we have Chivlary I'd say to put one Knight into the army for extra movement point, and transport it to the most powerfull island with 2 more knights to fill the army. Then pillage it.
Btw, I don't know what is difference with pillaging in vanilla and C3C (I'm usually playing [c3c]), and maybe it will not work well in [civ3]. If we will use this army for attack, lets go to to Rome island, and attack Egypt in alliance with Rome.


Lurker comment: An army in Vanilla cannot pillage at all.

It can pillage, just very ineffective. {/delurk}

In vanilla an army can only pillage to the extent that it provides cover for a regular unit which can pillage (ie. a 3-man sword army cannot pillage but if u team it up with a horse for example u can move onto a resource and pillage with the horse but the army itself cannot actually pillage)

Pre-turn
Looking good, hit enter
IBT
Japan strikes
our horse defends against horse and becomes elite 1-0
LB loses to sword sword become elite 2-0
sword kills archer 3-0
510AD
Nottingham market->knight
use cats, use leader for army to keep option of getting another, will hold it for knights though. Keep outside cities as they have a small flip chance.
elite horse kil pike 4-0
vet sword kill archer 5-0
elite sword kil archer 6-0
vet sword redlines horse but it retreats
vet sword finishes the job 7-0
elite kill archer 8-0
*elite kill pike 9-0
IBT
forgot about samurai, Japan has got them and they move 2. Japan defeats our spear after losing 1 samurai to it. 10-1
520AD
St Peter and Minsk market->knight
Need to increase lux a lot (40%), pop-rush a settler in Tsingtao as it's gona revolt anyway.
use some cats
elite horse kil archer 11-1 and jackpot another leader->Zyxy the brave
Since we got 5 elites capable of getting another leader and lot of cats to make sure we will get opportunity and no other use for wonder/palace rushing use this leader for army as well.
IBT
LB loses to sword 12-1
Persia land in SW of former china
530AD
We get our first knight.
Found Yakustk
Use cats but don't finish units of in case of more samurai
move units towards persian lander in hope they don't settle.
IBT
Persians settle anyway
Japan does not send any more samurai, good.
540AD
another knight can fill first army shortly
elite sword finishes samurai 13-1
550AD
Overlooked that York didn't have a rax yet, we got reg knight.
finish LB 14-1
560AD
load first army
IBT
Japan finishes Sun Tzu, how nice of them :D
Persia finishes Leo
570AD
use cats
then lucky again elite archer gives leader 15-1
wil use it for army again for earlier reason, will be the last tho 3 armies will do. Put 2 in it to be able to move them in 3 techs time
Start to advance units
IBT
Zulu and Japan sign MA
japan suddenly has 2 LB's which both kill a sword 15-3
580AD
Found Vladivostok
use 2 armies to kill impi and pike 17-3
IBT
Japan has foled me a bit they now strike with 4 LB's fortunatly 3 loose and we get another elite 20-4
590AD
moving
IBT
Japan again has 2 LB's 1 for 1 this time 21-5
600AD
use cats on Osaka but no luck

Move complete stack on doorstep, will take it next turn.
NW of Vladivostok is the 3rd army and to knights can be loaded next turn. More knights on their way. Just keep 2 knight in an army otherwise it'll take to long before we can ship them. Be aware Vladivostok has a high flip risk, but this will be gone after we raze and replace Osaka and Kyoto.

112034

112035

Good buildup, and three GL's, no less!

Smart - up.
tupaclives - deck.

Got it.
(ten chars)               


 

Thanks. Was just going to say that :).

McLMan - skipped
nero - up
Smart - deck

Sorry about that. Family emergency, had to go out of town. I'm back now.

Sorry about that. Family emergency, had to go out of town. I'm back now.

No pb :). I hope everything is well.

I had problems with electricity today, and I've lost a turnlog and save on turn 5 :(
Please skip me because I don't want to replay my turns again (reloading).

Notes for the next player:
We must go out of despotism, revolt immediatly.
Bring those workers on frozen land to core ASAP, we have to irrigate some grassland tiles to get cities with size 10-12. Start irrigation from lake near Kiev, and bring water to all other towns
We are spending 40% of our income for entertainment, why not to buy Wines and Gems from Persia? ;)
Cantenbury is bad place for a lone scientist town - put that scientist to fish and change production to Aqueduct.

Ok well consider this a got it but i won't have civ access till sunday (dw after that i dont go away again until july :lol: ) ill play the save as soon as i get civ access n so should be able to post the result in around 52 hours. If thats too long then does mclman want to play now and I go straight after him?

I had problems with electricity today, and I've lost a turnlog and save on turn 5 :(
Please skip me because I don't want to replay my turns again (reloading).

Notes for the next player:
We must go out of despotism, revolt immediatly.
Bring those workers on frozen land to core ASAP, we have to irrigate some grassland tiles to get cities with size 10-12. Start irrigation from lake near Kiev, and bring water to all other towns
We are spending 40% of our income for entertainment, why not to buy Wines and Gems from Persia? ;)
Cantenbury is bad place for a lone scientist town - put that scientist to fish and change production to Aqueduct.


Alright.

Smart - skipped
McLMan - you want to take it?
tupaclives - will be up on Sunday.

Thanks, got it.

Couple of long days at work. I need to dig into the thread regarding the parts I missed, will play Saturday.

Alright.

McLMan - up and playing
tupaclives - deck

Pre-turn:
CAII assessment - Vladiviostock has an extremely high flip risk. Is it worth holding? No Settlers but several building & not due for a long time. Really need to relieve the pressure by razing Osaka. We'll have to try to hold Kyoto if we want to keep Sun Tzu's.

Open Save - Looks good. High lux slider. Don't think we'll want a war with Persia within the next 20 so I trade with Persia: Give Dyes, Spices, 5 gpt for Wines & Gems. Lux slider to zero -> making 65 gpt. Net increase of 15 gpt. Let Canterbury Scientist work the fish, set Tsingtao tax collector to scientist. Going to let a couple of Knight builds complete before revolution.
Hit Enter.

IT
A Japanese Longbow appears from the South and attacks the stack, losing to a sword. [1-0]
A reg spear moves out of Osaka into our territory, apparently to pillage Ivory.

Turn 1) 610 AD
The seige of Osaka
Cats redline the reg Pike, take 1 HP off of the reg spear, and kill one pop from Osaka.
A vet sword is redlined killing the reg spear [2-0]
A vet sword loses to a vet Longbow [2-1]
Send an elite archer after the redlined pike, he wins but no GL [3-1]
Elite sword kills a Longbow [4-1]
Vet sword kills another Longbow [5-1]
Vet sword kills yet another Longbow [6-1]
Elite archer kills Longbow [7-1]
Vet sword kills Longbow [8-1] and ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Osakafalls.jpg
2 vet swords kill 2 longbows that were outside of Osaka [10-1]

IT
Persia & Zulu sign peace
Tresspass warning from Xeres
Nottingham Knight -> Knight (9)

Turn 2) 620 AD
Road to Vladivostok is complete. With Osaka gone & road complete Flip risk is halved 2.2 - 4.5%
Moving stack toward Kyoto, covering with Knight Army. Leave a couple of units behind to heal. Unload 2 more Knights in Vladviostock, add them to stack.

IT
York Rax -> Knight (12)
Kiev Knight -> Knight (7)

Turn 3) 630 AD
Move stack next to Kyoto
Using Knight army to head off skirmishers we Kill a Longbow. [11-1]
Start revolution and pull a 7 turn anarchy.

IT
Japanese settler escorted by a spear moves into Kyoto.
3 Towns go into disorder. Employ 3 taxmen to even things up in these Towns.

Turn 4) 640 AD
Battle for Kyoto
Begin with 16 cats: 2 Hits taking Kyoto from size 7 to size 5. 14 misses. Full strength regular Pike is the defender showing.
Decide to go for it.
Vet sword is redlined killing the Pike [12-1]
Vet sword defeats another reg Pike [13-1]
Vet Knight loses to vet spear [13-2]
Vet Knight quickly loses to vet spear [13-3]
Vet Sword kills reg spear [14-3]
Elite Sword kills reg spear [15-3]
Elite Archer kills 3 HP vet spear [16-3]
Scourge of Japan wins vs. redlined vet spear [17-3] and ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Kyotoisours.jpg
Use stack-defending army to kill longbow that is outside of Kyoto, since it's only defense for 1 turn will be the Scourge of Japan with 3HP. This will allow one turn to get more defenders there.

IT
4 Longbows appear from the South.

Turn 5) 650 AD
Move stack into Kyoto to heal.
Armies kill 2 Longbows [19-3]

IT
Forestry operations continuing in Soutern Tundra Region.
Persian alliance vs. Japan and Roman alliance vs. Egypt are up. Cancel both.

Turn 6) 660 AD
Holding at Kyoto to heal. Taking a chance by keeping units in Kyoto to let the barracks heal them faster. Flip risk 5.5 - 10%. The war needs to last at least long enough to take out Tokyo and ease the cultural pressure on Kyoto and Sun Tzu's.
Armies take out 2 Japanese Longbows. [21-3]
Galley with 2 more Knights crosses the sea.
Check Peace treaty status.
Shaka won't accept peace for anything less than Engineering
Egypt is willing to give peace + World Map, but nothing else.
Tokugawa Offers 20 gold and 6 gpt, but no tech.
Take Egypts offer. Nothing to gain by holding out, we're going to be in Japan a while. Holding out vs. Shaka, continuing war with Japan.

IT
Japan and Persia sign Peace
A Japanese Longbow attacks one of our Knight armies that was yellow-lined and kills it. [21-5]
Egypt builds Sistene Chapel in Thebes

Turn 7) 670 AD
Knight Army avenges other Army's death. [22-5]
Elite Sword beats another invading Vet longbow [23-5]
The stack is on the move again, heading towards Tokyo.

IT
Nothing

Turn 8) 680 AD
Continuing toward Tokyo

IT
Japanese longbow attacks the stack and loses to Vet Knight [24-5]
Forestry operations have completed Harbor in Coventry despite anarchy -> Settler

Turn 9) 690 AD
Stack moves next to Tokyo
Assign a tax collector in Moscow to prevent disorder.

IT
Japanese Longbow attacks the stack and loses to Vet Knight [25-5]
The Revolution is over. Personally I'd go Monarchy here, especially since it's Vanilla, but I go with the consensus and pick Republic.

Turn 10) 700 AD
Need to up the lux slider to 10% to offset war weariness. Taxes netting 100 gpt. Treasury at 1254 gold.
The battle for Tokyo.
Defender showing is a vet spear, nice.
16 cats take their shots: 6 hits vs. 4 spears. No other damage
Vet Sword kills spear and is promoted to Elite [26-5]
Scourge of Japan kills another vet spear [27-5] revealing that the strongest defender is a yellow-lined spear (should be one of 2)
Regular Knigt loses to spear [27-6]
Elite Sword kills spear [28-6]
Elite Archer needs only one shot to beat last defender [29-6] and ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Tokyogone.jpg
We raze Tokyo.

Post Turn.
Flip risk to Kyoto is next to nothing. Sun Tzu's is ours. The stack is pretty healthy, and ready to roll. It would be nice to get the Furs near Edo. Satsuma should be a city we can hold. Japan is on the ropes. They throw a single LB each IT. They seem most concerned with trying to get Settlers to claim the open territory. We took one during the Kyoto episode, and I've noticed at least one other pair pop up, then retreat in the last couple of turns. We need Settlers to beat them to these open spots. Right now we have NONE, but there are several being built, due between 8 and 20 turns. Newcastle is exerting modest cultural pressure on our tundra towns. We should probably take England out to prevent a nuiscance flip. They're not good for anything any more.
I adjusted the lux slider and assigned a taxman in Moscow to prevent riots next turn, but the next player will need to do some MM pre-flight because I'm sure it can be optimized.

The World as we know it and the save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/World_as_We_Know3,_700_AD.jpg (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_700AD.SAV)

Nice, as expected. Japan has just 1 usefull city left, so no problem there. Let's clean them up and procede.

Very well done! Impressive battle odds, for city sieges. I agree with rolling through Japan, at least up to Edo and Nara, for the luxes and the trade network. Of course we'll let them live for a while if they pay techs :evil:.

The wonderbuilding Zulu are down to 2 cities :).

Roster:
tupac - up
zyxy - deck

When you guys captured Kyoto, did it come with the Heroic Epic?:D

Wow good turnset McLman, got it. Having been away for so long i'll need to take some time to assess the save, a couple of questions before i do.

What are the goals with regards to Japan? Wipe them out? Leave them with 1 city? Also, england are still alive.. wat are our plans for them? Do we have gpt deal with them? Are we planning to get anything from them? Do we have an unexpired peace deal? And finally who is our next target after Japan? I'll take a good long look at the save and post my thoughts on those topics but I won't proceed with the game till I know your thoughts. Having been away from the save for so long and not really having been able to follow the thread i doubt I'll immediately be on the same wavelength as the rest of the team. Oh well enough babbling from me... i'll start examining the save!

What are the goals with regards to Japan? Wipe them out? Leave them with 1 city? Also, england are still alive.. wat are our plans for them? Do we have gpt deal with them? Are we planning to get anything from them? Do we have an unexpired peace deal? And finally who is our next target after Japan? I'll take a good long look at the save and post my thoughts on those topics but I won't proceed with the game till I know your thoughts. Having been away from the save for so long and not really having been able to follow the thread i doubt I'll immediately be on the same wavelength as the rest of the team. Oh well enough babbling from me... i'll start examining the save!

Welcome back!

I haven't checked the save carefully, but: Japan has techs we don't have, so let them live and extort these techs. I would conquer at least Satsuma, Edo and Nara. After Japan, probably Persia. If we could reach over the ocean I would have said Egypt - better land, and probably weaker target. But Astro is still far away.

England can go if we don't have deals. It's not a priority IMO, but you probably have some spare troops in the aftermath of the Japanese war, so why not.

Thanks Zyxy its good to be back! I've been getting withdrawals even at the gorgeous beaches of noosa... neway here are my assesments so far. I'll leave this open for a few hours before i get started so other people can tell me what they think.

Pre-Flight Assesment

Economy: The economy is solid, after the Japanese war we might want a break for infrastructure like markets and libraries as persia will likely have muskets by the time we are finished with Japan. Also when we reach Nara we will have control of 3 new luxs which can be transported home so we'll be able to dispense with the lux slider for a while as well as strengthening our trade options (thank goodness our rep wasnt permanently ruined!)

Military: Its in decent shape but we are average to Egypt and weak to Rome and Persia, every1 else is negligable anyway. We need more settlers now! Will rush build them as the cities on the Japan isle grow big enough. Will continue the build up but I doubt we will be strong enough to tackle persia with knights...

Infra: Well our capital works are excellent on our home isle, need some worker investment on the Japan isle though. Markets needed in some core cities still as are libraries, I assume we plan to do some proper self research (as in not 40 turn). But that can wait until after the Japanese war. As for a palace jump i am not sure where, if indeed i get a gl, we should jump it too. i feel it would be wasted anywhere on our main isle considering the excellent position of the FP in that respect but there isnt a central area on the Japan isle that isnt tundra either. Maybe we could jump it to somewhere remote but I consider that an exploit and I'm not a fan of it.

General Impressions: Excellent shape, is this really the same game we started on? Great job to everyone I thought we were doing pretty well when I had it last... and that was in 310bc! No big changes need atm.

Plans: Push through Edo and Nara first to grab the furs and open up the sea route back home. Considering reducing japan to 1 nothing city if we have the manpower to do so. We have no deals with england and we could fit 2 fishing villages in the space taken up by the culture of their last city. We have 3 swords in the are but i'm not sure if that will be enough. Its 10.30pm here but I'm staying up for the Liverpool v Man United clash on fox sports so I wont get started for another 3 hours or so. Hopefully some people will get to read this and add their impressions along with mine and Zyxy's

thanks and hopefully hear from some of u very soon

Hi tupaclives,

I agree with your thoughts. Workers are needed in Japan. During the last turnset I broke 4 workers away from the tundra forestry operations. They are in 2 galleys for transport to Japan. We could stand to send more. England is putting mild cultural pressure on our Southern towns. A flip is not too likely, but not out of the question either (1-2%). I think it would be best to take care of them as soon as we can spare a couple of troops.

Well i'v played the turns but its very late (3am n my mum is gettin real stroppy at me) so ill post the turnlog in the morning but an executive summary - achieved all aims, england can be wiped out straight away next turn, japan be reduced to 1 city as well (ran out of attacks in both cases) have just started infra building, founded a few new towns and basicly we have control of two islands now, rome n persia r at war with each other as well which is a plus. will post turnlog 2moro gnite all

TURNLOG

IBT - Japanese settler pairs head north from their tundra lands... can anyone say slaves? Upgrade Zyxy the Brave to knight.

Turn 1 - Bombard the settler pairs down and attack and kill both pairs with an elite archer and an elite sword. No loss but no leaders either. 2-0

IBT - Jap longbow kills elite archer. 2-1

Turn 2 - Tblsi: Settler --> Settler
Sverdlosk: Settler --> Settler
Shanghai: Settler --> Settler
Moscow: Knight --> Knight
St. Petersburg: Knight --> Knight

Kill longbow with elite archer. 3-1 Attack Satsuma with the 2 knight armies and kill a reg musket and vet spear 5-1. An elite sword kills a longbow 6-1, we attack another redlined longbow with another elite sword and still fail to produce a leader, we dont take a scratch however 7-1. Not sure what the forestry plan in our islands tundra land is so continue looking to plant forests on every tundra tile there.

IBT - No japanese troop movement.

Turn 3 - Minsk: knight --> knight
Smolensk: Knight --> knight

Kill the last spear in Satsuma with one of the knight armies and capture the city. 8-1 Ouch theres a fair few resistors here... i sell the harbor to help starve the city, put all the citizens as tax collectors to starve the city and cross my fingers it doesnt flip with our armies in it. 2 galleys of knights head from our mainland to the mountains just north of Nara with a view to a covert strike.

IBT - lose and elite archer to a longbow again! 8-2

Turn 4 - Kill an elite longbow with an elite swordsmen no leader tho, 9-2 I found Novgorod --> Aqueduct. Troops continue to move into position in various places.

IBT - Egypt offers to sell us invention for 1010 gold but I refuse. WW goes up. Japan lands a spear next to undefended Tblsi, our nearby sword is 1 tile to far away to be able to save the city. Ouch.

Turn 5 - Odessa: Courthouse --> Rax. I had to hire entertainers to prevent disorder and some cities starve. The siege of Edo, bombard the visible reg musket down and nothing else shows up... curious I attack with an elite sword winning without being hurt and taking the city! 10-2 I decide to raze the city. Zyxy the brave who is lagging behind the main stack attacks and kills the pike defender of a settler pair 11-2. Land the 'guerrila knights' (GK) next to Nara.

IBT - Persia demands TM and 94 gold. I dont want war now so I submit. Japan captures Tblsi, Warwick flips to the english... thats it! They are both gunna pay!

Turn 6 - Declare on england, capture back Tblsi from Japan 12-2. Kill first musket with one of our GK's 13-2 and reveal a yellowlined longbow. I attack and kill it and take the city and the shipping lanes are ours! 14-2 We now have all our luxs hooked up so I can turn off the lux slider and get rid of all those entertainers. Kill an elite longbow with an elite sword but no leader 15-2.

IBT - Persia declares on Rome. This is only good news for us. Rome makes peace with Egypt, less good news :( lose an elite sword to a longbow 15-3

Turn 7 - Found krasnoyarsk --> walls (next person change it to something useful). Recapture warwick and garrison with 2 swords. Needed to kill two reg spears to get it back and didnt lose either sword. 17-3. Kill skirmishing spear near newcastle 18-3. It takes two galleys to wipe out the english navy (1 galley) 19-4.

IBT - Theology comes in, set research to printing press at 1 scientist research.

Turn 8 - St. Petersburg: knight --> knight
Kiev: knight --> knight
found Riga --> settler. Kill english archer with a sword 20-4 and another with a knight 21-4.

IBT - Nara flips, luckily i suspected it would and had the knights garrisoned on the mountains instead of in the city anyway. WW goes up again.

Turn 9 - first knight army attacks Kagoshima and kills a reg musket 22-4. That was the cities only defender! So Kagoshima is ours. Its probably a high flip risk but until we get some more settlers finished we'r going to have to risk it or concede it back to Japan via resettlement anyway. Found Rostov, recapture Nara it was defended by 1 regular musket, our knight is redlined retaking the city. 23-4

IBT - Nothing at all

Turn 10 - Moscow: knight --> Heroic Epic (sorry I should have started it earlier but I forgot :blush: )
Nottingham: knight --> Aqueduct (wait why was it building a knight when it didnt have a rax? it was half way into building when i took over so thats my excuse for not picking it up :p)
Smolensk: knight --> library
attack Newcastle with the only two knights close enough, kill 2 reg spears 25-4 but there is still a reg archer and I cant attack the city again this turn with anything! :(
Can't quite reach Izumo, could next turn though. However at present Japan will take peace and give us 49 gold, 35gpt and invention. I will leave the decision of whether to take Izumo first up to the next player.

Post Turn Analysis

-Well overall things went well, all the goals originally set out were accomplished, our kill ratio was better than the advantage the AI gets to production. MM is needed in most core cities sorry. I neglected to go through it all after I switched off the entertainers when we got our Japanese luxs hooked up.
-The next player needs to make a decision about peace with Japan, also are we at war with the zulu through a military alliance or the like? If so are we planning to fight the Zulu? If not then should we make peace?
-England has to die, that can happen immediately on 810AD
-There is the need for library's and the like in our core lands, that should take priority during the next turnset I feel.
-We also need to decide about buildup for our next opponent.

Oh well good luck

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/2047/zyxyendmap2et.jpg

Got it, it's looking good!

some thoughts about our research. I think we should research Printing Press as fast as we can without running deficit research and then hang onto it as long as possible as a trading tool (as I suspect the other nations are only 1, maybe two techs ahead of what we will be it once we make peace with Japan)

Sorry tupac. Already played, and decided otherwise.

Turn 0, 800AD: All looks well.

- We have a lot of troops, searching for a war. My preferred target would still be Egypt, but we need Astro first. That leaves Persia, who will probably have a lot of troops because they are at war with Rome, and Rome cannot reach Persia and Persia cannot easily reach Rome. I'll try to set up the next player for an attack on Persia.
- Persia has Education as monopoly, perhaps we can trade for it in a while.
- Our economy looks really good.

Switch a few builds, MM some, and move some troops into Nara to try and suppress resistance.

Btw, "zyxy the brave"? I'm really honored :blush:.

IT: Renew our lux deal with Persia, though it is expensive: We give 4 lux to Persia in return for 2 lux. Straight per-turn deal, so we can cancel whenever we want. Resistance in Satsuma and Kagoshima ends.

Turn 1, 810AD: Raze Satsuma. Take Newcastle and destroy the English. Japan would give everything we can ask for peace: Invention + 36 gpt + change (where's he getting all that money?). Obviously he also has Gunpowder, so I'll try to get that instead. First I open an embassy with Egypt for 73 gold:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_embassy_Egypt_810AD.jpg

Egypt has saltpeter, so she has gunpowder already. For 32 gold I look at Ravenna:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_spy_Ravenna_810AD.jpg

And for 29 gold at Swazi, Persia:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_spy_Swazi_810AD.jpg

Is is possible that the Persian tech king does not have Gunpowder? Not likely, so:
We buy Invention from Rome for 741 gold, 1 gpt and WM. Indeed, Persia has Gunpowder.
We grant peace to Japan for Gunpowder, 36 gpt, WM and 24 gold.
There is saltpeter just outside our borders at Newcastle. The Coventry library will grab it in 16 turns. Persia is up Edu, and we are at parity or above with all others.
Odd thing is, the Persian saltpeter source doesn't show up for trade. Anyway, knights vs muskets isn't a good deal, attack on Persia (or Egypt) can wait for Cossacks. Printing Press isn't going to help us, so I switch to Chemistry.

Several Knights move to Newcastle on auto-move - too late guys :).

IT: Kagoshima flips back to Japan, no troops inside. Nara resistance ends. I add a Japanese trophy room to our palace.

Turn 2, 820AD: Egypt has Edu now. Rush a lib in Rostove to try and prevent a flip there. Make peace w Zulu for their 31 gold and WM. There's nothing to be gained from continuing this war.

IT: Japan boots our troops, the impatient fool - tssk.

Turn 3, 830AD: Rome also has Edu now. Astrakhan founded.

Turn 4, 840AD: zzz.

IT: Rome and Persia sign peace.

Turn 7, 870AD: Kyoto Canal founded.

IT: Caesar threatens for TM + 92. I should have bought Invention on credit :(. Anyway, he cannot reach us yet, so I refuse and he declares. At least we'll get WH.

Turn 8, 880AD: I'm sending some forces to our northern borders just in case. Egypt will fight the Romans for about 14 gpt. I would do this, but it is near the end of my turns and I'll leave the choice for the next player.

Notes:


We can ally vs Rome with Egypt. Might be good. Rome cannot hit us until they get Astro.
We can research Chemistry in 9 (with deficit). It may have trade value, so perhaps this is a good idea. Also it would be good to get to Cossacks long before the AI gets to rifles.
There's a stack of galleys, some loaded with knights at the SE Japanese coast. They could attack Persia, but I would wait for Cossacks. There are more knights, swords and catapults spread around our lands. There's an unmoved settler in Tsingtao, don't know what to do with him. Maybe another canal city S-SE of Kyoto?


Mother Russia:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_empire_900AD.jpg

The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_900AD.SAV)

Roster:

Tone - up
McLMan - on deck
nerovats
Smart
tupaclives
zyxy - just played

Sorry. I cannot play until the weekend. I'll have to ask for a skip or a swap. Can anyone help me out please?

Some thoughts without looking at the save. I hope that they're not too stupid as I've just got up and am on my way to work.

Chemistry sounds good. The AI will be looking at other techs first so it offers a good chance of getting a valuable monopoly tech. Also you're right; the sooner we get our UU the better.

We could ally Egypt against Rome but it seems they came of slightly worse when we allied Rome against them so I'm not sure how useful they would be. Still, it would slow down the tech rate up there and if Egypt was reduced even further it would give us a weaker victim to establish a beachhead for our Northern assault in the future.

Persia has got the GLHouse and met the pair of them, right? If so is there any way that we could get Persia on our side? We could try and use that salt that zyxy mentions (using a colony if required) but I'm reluctant to trade it to Persia as I'd rather our Cossasks meet steel than guns.

I'd be happy to swap. On my way to work also (extremely big day - really early, going to be late too). Not sure whether I'll be able to play tonight, but if not then Thursday.

Ok,
McLMan - up
Tone - deck

Persia has salt. I still don't understand why it didn't show up for trade earlier, but it does so now IIRC.

lurkers comment: I wouldn't have got into a war with Rome over 92 gold. Surely being in Republic will result in some war weariness even though they declared? In addition getting into any alliances will result in a 20 turn min war else you will lose your rep? should have gone for :king: IMHO

lurkers comment: I wouldn't have got into a war with Rome over 92 gold. Surely being in Republic will result in some war weariness even though they declared? In addition getting into any alliances will result in a 20 turn min war else you will lose your rep? should have gone for :king: IMHO

More lurker comment:
Actually, it is quite the opposite. They will get war happiness since Rome did the declaring. Also, if they had traded gpt instead of the gold, they would have basically gotten invention for free.


@zyxy - do you have the 4000BC save? I only saw the 3000 and would like to try this some time...

TIA

zyxy, did you investigate Ravenna and Swazi to know if rome and persia had saltpeper?,since they are the cheapest cities to investigate?

Thanks, McLMan!

Forgot to say well done on the latest turn set, zyxy. You guys are making mincemeat of the pathetic Diety AI.:goodjob:

@bhinso: You may have already read this (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/war_weariness.php) article on WW by Oystein but if not I recommend it. In short if the AI cannot reach us, we cannot be attacked or lose any units and so we get 30 turns of war happiness. Happiness for free sounds like a great deal with me and it's a technique I've used quite frequently in the early game after getting some success from suicide galleys in archi/continents maps.

The only downside in this game is if Rome gets Astro in the next 20 turns (assuming that we sign alliances that we don't want to break) but even then we should be able to fight off a couple of longbows or knights every few turns.

Pre turn:
I thought we were looking at an eventual Palace jump, that's why we built the FP in Kiev. However we've wasted a lot of shields in Moscow on infrastructure, and the Heroic Epic is the being built there now, its also close to completion. Did I miss something? Goals for this turnset - ???? I guess establish a beachead at Swazi or Umtata, then wait for Cossacks?

Set research to 100% on Chemistry (-18 gpt) due in 9.
Short-rush Lib in Coventry for 16g.

Turn 0) 900 AD
9 units with movement left. Move them toward Galleys.

IT
St Pete: Knight -> Knight (5)
Coventry: Library -> Galley (30)
London: CH -> Marketplace (15)
Egyptians building Copernicus's

Turn 1) 910 AD
zzzzzz

ITKiev: Knight -> Knight (7)
Persians are building Smiths! They have Economics.

Turn 2) 920 AD
Begin shuttle to Persian land. Going to see if we can sit on a tile ouside of Persia's borders and build a stack.

IT
Japan wants to trade his WM for ours and 10g. No.
Odessa: Lib -> Cat (3)
Minsk: Harbor -> Knight (7)
Smolensk: Knight -> Knight (5)
Added another Japanese wing to the Palace because I like balance.

Turn 3) 930 AD
Land some Knights ouside of Umtata.

IT
Coventry border expansion gets us the saltpeter.

Turn 4) 940 AD
shuttle cats & Knights
Change a couple of builds to Muskets. Nice to have with cats.

IT
Nothing

Turn 5) 950 AD
Found Kharkov as another canal town.

IT
Heroic Epic Completes in Moscow -> Knight (5)
St. Pete: Knight -> Knight (5)
Odessa: Cat -> CAt (3)
Egyptians building Magellan's

Turn 6) 960 AD
Nothing, just shuttling troops

IT
York: Marketplace -> Musket (9)
Canterbury: Musket -> Knight (10)
Persians building Magellan's

Turn 7) 970 AD
Nothing much

IT
Nottingham: Harbor -> Aqueduct (15)
Bad News...Nara Flips to Japan. :(
Kiev: Musket -> Musket (6)
Smolensk: Knight -> Knight (5)
Yakutsk: Lib -> Cat (7)

Turn 8) 980 AD
Again, just some shuttling

IT
We learn Chmistry. Set research to Metallurgy at 60%. Highest without defecit.
Hastings Courthouse -> Cat (5)
Odesa: Cat -> Cat (3)

Turn 9) 990 AD
Persia's borders have expanded. Our stack is now inside of their territory.
More bad news. Chemistry isn't a monopoly tech, or even close. It's known by everybody but Zululand.

ITWe get booted from Persia because I didn't want to start a war from within their territory.
Minsk: Knight -> Knight (7)

Turn 10) 1000 AD
Our stack has moved back to the former Japanese Territory.
Again, nothing much. Loaded galleys with displaced stack members and sent them across to Persia's lands.

Not much of a turnset I'm afraid. I opted to not try for an alliance against Rome because I didn't want to spend the $. Didn't think the return would be worth it. The AI is starting to pull ahead in tech, we should be able to remedy this with Persia. Not far off from being able to go IMO. When we go, the minimum target should be to take their Saltpeter resource. We're cranking out units at a nice clip in our core, the problem is getting them there. I've dispatched a galley from ferry service on the E side of Japan to the W side of Japan to help ferry units from our core. He's at the Southern end of the continent now. I had a picture but I can't get Uploads to do anything.

113648

Attach seems to be working fine.

If we were still considering the free palace jump why did we just waste 200 shields on an aqueduct and a market? I certainly talked earlier about jumping the palace but I assumed that this had been shelved due to the infrastructure being built subsequently. Losing a city with this much infrastructure is not making best use of the 'free' palace jump. I thought we were looking at an eventual Palace jump, that's why we built the FP in Kiev. However we've wasted a lot of shields in Moscow on infrastructure, and the Heroic Epic is the being built there now, its also close to completion. Did I miss something?

If you missed something, McLMan then so did I. We don't seem to be playing as a team on this issue! We now cannot consider a Palace Jump without a leader IMO.

I can pick the save up later this evening and play over the weekend so consider this a 'got it'.

I've built an aqueduct in a Capital I was planning to abandon before. Only when I knew it was going to be a late jump, and had shields to spare. I didn't get too concerned when I saw the infrastructure before, it was just a little more than I usually prefer. I was really surprised to see a small wonder though.

I'm sorry guys thats 100% my fault :( At the end of my turn it just completely slipped my mind and I set it to build on my last turn. Zyxy obviously thought I knew what I was doing there so he didnt change the build and now I've buggered it up royally... theres no chance we could spare a leader for the jump once the war with Persia starts (assuming we get 1) is there? Or do we need them all for armies?

I'm really really sorry guys :sad: :(

Let's share the blame :).

I actually did switch the Epic build, to do a library first. And then I switched back to Epic. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about the free palace jump. I think most of the infra in Moscow was actually built by me. So in short, this is definitely not "100% tupac's fault". I'll claim at least half the blame.

I guess this means we'll have to jump the palace with a GL. On the bright side, the Epic increases our chances of getting one ;). We don't really need GL's for armies, armies are not very useful in Vanilla.

EDIT:
@McLMan: I have no time to look at the save now, but from your report it seems you had some bad luck with Chemistry and with the landing. Well, it cannot be helped - in hindsight, everything would have been cool had we started on chemistry a few turns sooner...

@Tone: I know it's a tall order but we should try to get back in the trading game. If you feel we have a shot to get Metallurgy first then I would go for it as fast as possible, otherwise perhaps try to broker...
We should probably try to hit Persia at the saltpeter source, it's on the coast IIRC.

@AnsarKing: yes, Swazi and Ravenna were the cheapest towns connected to the capital.

@k-a-bob: the 4000BC save is attached. As a courtesy, anyone who downloads the save please do not post any spoiler info until this SG is finished.

zyxy, nice trick, will try it in my games.:goodjob:

Lurker's Comment: Good job guys, unteresting game indeed.

We were one turn late with Chemistry & whoever got it traded it around the very same turn. With Persia, I was looking to set Tone up to declare on Turn 1 with a nice stack in place. Now we've got to land a smaller force, and ferry reinforcements.

A GL Palace jump is a good idea. There isn't a good spot to put it that will give us a decent ring in the former Japan. Persia on the other hand ...

Warning: Long post ahead!

I've just taken a look at the save and I'd like to test the water on a couple of thoughts I'm having.

I'm not keen on fighting the Persian giant at the moment. I think that Rome has Astro now (see option 1 below) and if we are their only target, we may be spreading ourselves too thinly in fighting two of the three major powers at the same time. I would like to either take peace with Rome before starting another war or get a few others to keep the main bulk of their forces occupied whilst we concentrate on our plans in the South.

Option 1
Rome will take peace. In fact they will pay us. They haven't got cash but they will give us a discount on Education so we can get it for 38gpt. (The next cheapest is Egypt on 47gpt and Japan actually wants 63gpt.) Egypt has Astro as we can trade resources with them and with 5 luxes that they might want to buy, I would imagine that we could also get this tech at a reasonable price. This might be worth it if Rome hasn't got Astro yet but I think they have as the F4 trade is showing as an active link so I'm not too keen on this option. Particularly as we lose 36gpt from the Japanese next turn.

Option 2
Egypt will give us Education for 3 luxes and gpt. However they will sign an alliance with us against Rome and also give us Edu for 4 luxes and 5gpt. We also have a deal with Persia giving four luxes for 2 in return. Our relative sizes are such that we should be able to get something extra in this deal. We can drag them into the war for 20gpt but I think that we might be able to renegotiate the lux deal and get them into the war for very little, if not nothing at all. This means that the main powers will all be at war and this should slow down their research. It will certainly limit trading opportunities.

Option 3
Buy Edu from Japan for 63gpt, get Astro from Egypt using our luxes and then sell it to Japan getting as much of our cash back as possible. Surely they have't got Astro yet with them having just a couple of towns and they've also been giving us 36gpt for the last 20 turns. This could be dangerous though as if they have got Astro as well we've landed ourselves with a massive debt or they might not be willing to give us much for the tech deal. We could get them to declare war I guess but they may not be so keen this time.

I favour option 2 and thus we leave the Persians alone until we get Cossacks (and cannons). In the meantime our PTs with the two weaker powers are up in the next two turn. I say we take Japan out to stop those annoying flips and also consider doing the same to the Zulu. This will not leave us open to an attack from behind the lines when we do go after Persia.

Oh, and if we do get a GL I say we rush the Palace in Kyoto until we can take over the nice Persian lands for a permanant new Palace site. This jump will give an an extra 20gpt and also make those old Japanese cities more productive. Whilst they are productive we get courts set up so that when the palace moves again these towns don't revert to being totally useless.

If you've managed to get this far without getting bored, let me know what you think. I'm going with option 2 tomorrow unless you give me a good reason not to.:)

I vote option 2, the more we can slow down the major powers the more likely we are to be able to catch up to them. Once we catch up by stealing and wheeling and dealing we should be able to stay with them and get ahead of thme. Definately option 2

lurker comment How is Egypt doing compared to Rome? If Cleo isn't going to be able to muster the muskets to turn back Rome, then pulling her into the war with Caesar might just end up helping Rome more than hurting it. Otherwise option 2 makes the most sense to this monkey. Eliminate Japan and Zulu and then push for MT to wipe out the Persians with Cossacks. Blitzing cavs rock! :ar15:

edit: it also looks like Egypt, Persia and Rome are also all lux poor, so Rome is likely to switch to Monarchy soon if it hasn't already, just to bail out of the war weariness.

@SimpleMonkey - very true about not wanting egypt to be absorbed into Rome but chances are Persia will land enough troops to distract Rome (you know where the troops get jerked back and forth, i forget the phrase used here to describe it). Also sadly Cossacks arnt blitzing cavalry in vanilla, they r just regular cavalry with an extra point of defence

@Simple Monkey: Fair point about making Rome a superpower but I think that the extra luxes that we'll give Egypt will enable them to use more of their citizens, thus increasing their production capacity. This should enable them to hold their own against Rome. The main thing though is to get those main powers wasting their shields on military units that will kill each other rather than putting those shields towards improving their research capacity. If some also end up in Monarchy, then so much the better. Rome should benefit from a certain amount of war happiness so I'm not quite sure if we'll get any revolutions but we can hope.

@Tone Good point about lux's ultimately adding to production. And I was figuring that not only unit production but also going back to Monarchy would slow Rome down. With luck, Rome and Egypt should spend a good long time pumping out knights and sending them out to be slaughtered.

@tupaclives --:blush: Doh! I'm still forgeting the difference between C3C and vanilla! The extra defense in vanilla isn't even close to the bonus of the blitz in C3C, but the cossack should still tear up the Persians pretty good.

My only other thought would be that if you pull Persia into the war, X-man may just build a lot of troops in his homeland but not have the shipping to send them over, making his eventual extermination a bit more problematic.

But I have to say, this has been one of the best come-from-behind SG's that I've ever read. Let's see if anyone who picks up the 4000BC save can do even near as well.

Tone,

Nothing like a jolly World War to slow down the AI's! Option 2 sounds best to me. We are getting WH from Rome, I think - another reason to keep it going. I also agree on eliminating Japan, and don't care about the Zulu.

Kyoto is not ideal for a palace as it has a somewhat useful wonder. Perhaps one of the nearby towns?

Another variant that might work: Next turn, buy Edu from Japan for hard cash. Then ally with Persia and Egypt vs Rome, hopefully getting Astro as well. If possible, sell Astro to Japan. In any case, declare on Japan. We should be able to get all their cities within 2 turns, and hopefully we will recover the cash we paid for Edu.

This will not tie us to another 20 turns of peace with Japan, but I am not certain if it works. Best option would be if Japan doesn't have Astro. Perhaps they don't as there is no potential Japan-Zulu trade according to F4, but then maybe that's because Zulu have no resources and Japan has no spares.

If Japan has Astro, then possibly she manages to spend the cash in 1 turn, on muskets or so :eek:. And perhaps you do not get the entire treasury if you eliminate an AI, I don't know.

Please note that Japan is shipping furs to Persia. (They used to own 2 sources before Rostov expanded. As you can see, we can sell furs to Japan.) Once we declare on Japan, we can sell furs to Persia.

Well, it's up to you. Your idea is probably much safer :).

Kyoto is not ideal for a palace as it has a somewhat useful wonder. Perhaps one of the nearby towns?Thanks. I forgot that once we rush the Palace elsewhere, we can benefit from a Palace Jump later by abandoning the new capital. :blush:

Good spot on the furs trade.:goodjob: I'm tempted by your idea, zyxy although I'm not over keen on giving Japan a small war chest. AFAICS it could be very successful or rather costly depending upon the RNG rolls for the first wave of attacks. I'll mull it over and wait for further postings before I play. Who knows, maybe someone else will come up with a variation that beats all the rest? When I started typing my first post, I started with only two options and the third came to me whilst I was looking at the trade details.

I'm enjoying this game. Plenty to think about and it's giving about the right degree of challange to take satisfaction from any successes gained. (Possibly most of the games I play are too easy.)

0 (1000AD)
Sign alliance with Egypt against Rome getting Education for 4 luxes and 5gpt. (We are trading and allies but they are still annoyed with us!) The three major powers have both Banking and Astro but Japan has neither.

Renegotiate lux deal with Persia. They will add on an alliance for a few gpt but I don't want us to lose the luxes when they take a PT so I take the two luxes giving three in return plus 8gpt. I then arrange an alliance giving them a lux and getting 5gpt back from them.

Switch most of our core towns to Universities. I also bump up our research to 70% as we cannot afford to lose out on this race.

IT
Persians get Music Theory and start JSB.

1 (1010)
The Japanese are still paying us 36gpt for peace it seems so I'll not declare yet. Not all troops are in position anyway.

Recall galley fleet from Persian shore.

IT
Romans land two knights in northern China-*@~#!
Japan demands that we accept the PT and we decline so we are now at war with them.
Shanghai: settler>pike (if only I could have changed the build interturn.)
York riots and we only have 3 luxes there-WTF?! I scroll around the cities and rescue us from further riots but we've lost the Persian luxes.
Hastings: cat>galley
St Petersburg: Uni>Knight
Odessa: cat>rax
Sverdlovsk: settler>settler

2 (1020)
Persians will trade wines and gems but we only have two luxes that we can offer. Our rep is trashed and only now can I see how. The Japanese have blocked our trade route between our capital and the Chinese island. How could I be so stupid not to have thought of it before? Sorry folks!

I can move only one knight and a sword to protect Shanghai from the pair of Roman knights. More pain could be on the way during the interturn. First job though is to get that trade route reconnected. knights attack Kagoshima.

1st loses 3hp and withdraw after causing 1hp of damage to a (3/3) musket.
2nd kills the second 3/3/ musket without taking a hit.
3rd knight attacks the 2/3 musket and just wins. Kagoshima is ours and the trade route is reopened. Another knight kills a longbow that was just outside the city.

Send troops to hill outside Nara.

Give four luxes and 5 gpt to Persia for 2 luxes in return. Losing your rep hurts! Could trade with Egypt for the eighth lux but no need at the moment.

Oh well, as our alliances have now been broken anyway and we have plenty of luxes for happiness, I decide to take peace with Rome for 20g and save our silk town.

Reduce research to 60%

IT
Moscow: Uni>knight
Thebes has built Copers.

3 (1030)
Nara: cats knock off 1 hp from a defending musket but there isn't a second musket there.
1st knight withdraws after waving at thin air.
2nd knight kills the musket to reveal a 3/3 spear.
5/5 sword takes Nara but no GL.

knights move through Nara and onto Nagoya:
1st loses to a musket 2/4 and reveals a 4/4 Samurai!
9/9 army reduced by 7 points but deals with the Sam.
4/4 knight kills 2/4 musket and takes Nagoya. Bye-bye Japan!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/1030_Japan_KO.JPG

IT
Egypt now has Music Th as well.

4 1040
zzz

IT
London: market>aqueduct

5 1050
zzz

IT
Tblisi: settler>settler
Odessa: rax>musket
Smolensk: uni>knight

6 1060
Up research to 70%-metallurgy in 5.


IT
York: uni>knight
St Peters: knight>knight


7 1070
Up research to 80% for one turn to get metallurgy one turn quicker.


IT
Moscow: knight>knight
Warwick: galley>galley
Kiev: uni>knight

8 1080
zzz

IT
Rome and Egypt sign PT
Memphis completes Magellan's
Rome has Music Th.

9 1090
zzz

IT
Metallurgy>M-Trad and we have a monopoly on the tech!!!![party]
Hastings: galley>galley
Canterbury: uni>knight
Minsk: uni>knight

10 1100
I think that this is a good place to stop as I've not been doing much since the end of the Japanese war. The slaves North of Kiev are to get water up to Nottingham and York so that those towns can use the plains and hills around there.

After my experience with those Roman knights I've tried to leave pockets of knights around to deal with any landings (not that we're at war anymore).

Research is currently @ 60% which is a bit high for our income. The trouble is that only Persia has spare gpt but only 12 per turn.

We can get all three techs from any of the top civs so I don't think that they can be that near to discovering Metallugy themselves. The question is therefore do we trade our monopoly tech and risk them getting to cavs before us? I suggest that we hold back on any trade and check the deals they offer each turn to get a warning of when one of them is heading towards Metallugy and then trade. In the meantime we get a headstart on M-Trad research.

Sorry about the rep hit. I really should have recognised the danger when looking at those options I posted before.

The save. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_1100AD.SAV)

nerovats - up
Smart - on deck
tupaclives
zyxy
Tone - just played
McLMan - (swapped turn)

Good work over all Tone! We have a monopoly on a valuable tech which we can use for trade, we have the 3 major powers at war with each other (although for how long I don't know), we have the japanese dealt with and on the whole we are going strongly. Shame about losing our rep but who knows, maybe we'll get lucky again and our rep will miraculously reappear again ;)

Questions that I think we need to answer before we continue

1. What do we do with mettalurgy? Tone has probably the best idea, hold off on trading to give us a head start on Mil Trad, but we don't want to hold off for too long and miss the opportunity.
2. What are our research plans once we have Mil Trad? Shut off research and use the cash to rush cavalry and upgrade knights and for steals? Or continue sel-research selling techs to the ai to fund our research?
3. Is Persia still our next target? We will be able to reach Rome or Egypt if we trade for Astro and once we have cav's who are we going to go for? Its not like any of them have an IA UU we need to worry about. Persia might be the best choice for the wonders (if we keep cities) and for their 2 luxs.

we have the 3 major powers at war with each other...Not quite, unfortunately. Egypt and Rome signed a PT a couple of turns from the end of my set so only Rome and Persia are still at war.

1. We should be OK as long as we keep checking all three each turn. I find it hard to believe that any AI civ would give three techs for Metallurgy once they are one turn from getting in themselves. However the AI normally seems to favour this tech over many others so this may not last for long.

2. I don't think that we'll be able to deal with all AIs before rifles appear. We are now mainly building knights and they are quite cheap to upgrade. I vote that we either self research or store enough cash to buy techs just in case.

3. Attacking Persia first will hopefully delay the appearance of rifles, as they are almost certainly going to get Nationalism as their free tech if they reach the IA. This fact alone would sway my vote towards them but they also have several luxes that would signal the end of our happiness issues and maybe give us permenant WLTKD in many cities. These luxes are also valuable to the AIs as without them Rome and Egypt will have just incense IIRC and so their production and research will be severely hampered once we have Persia. They also have a good block of land for our long overdue palace jump. We can always use our luxes to drag the others into an alliance to cover our backs. BTW we have just two muskets for the initial landings; should we take a couple more?

1. Fair enough just too many times in sp games I've held off trading for just 1 more turn and an AI will pick up the tech during that turn :(
2. Thats why I suggested steals. Once into the IA techs become so expensive you can rarely get anything even for peace after beating an ai into the dust, also the higher cost makes research cost prohibitive if you don't have both cores up and running. Soon it will reach the stage of the game where steals start to really shine.
3. I thought as much, also as they are nearer it will make shuttling troops easier and faster. Good point about controlling the luxs allowing us to hinder or help the remaining ai's. Definately need more than 2 muskets though as Persia will still have lots and lots of troops hanging around from their war with the Zulu on their continent. Without railroads I think we should be looking at 6 muskets, maybe more, we should also consider upgrading all our cats to cannons as soon as we can afford it. As this is vanilla Scientific AI's always get the same tech when they go up an age.
Monotheism for MA
Nationalism for IA
Rocketry for Modern

so with that in mind we will want to hit Persia before they reach the IA.

I think reputation becomes less of a factor at this point in a game and it becomes more of a matter of have's and have-not's. I think Persia is a good choice for all of the reasons you guy's have mentioned. Additionally, they have only one saltpeter source that is not too far away from our landing zone. Getting that under control/pillaged will make things a lot easier so long as we can take care of them by the IA. I would consider taking a galley directly to the saltpeter to pillage it with the 1st shipment of reinforcements.

:goodjob: Tone!

I agree with the others: hold back Metallurgy until someone is close to researching it, or until we get full value from all three big guys. And let's hit Persia with Cossacks.

Agree with discussion, will play tomorow.

Sorry I didn't post this earlier, but things came up, can't play now, please skip me.

Ok, let's try to keep this moving.

Smart - up.
tupac - deck.

Smart have you got it? If Smart doesnt respond in the next 24 hours I'll pick it up.

Ok consider this a got it, will play in the next few hours

Ok Pre-Flight

Everything seems to be in order. Mil Trad is in 11 so Persia will have to wait for the next leader :(
Goals for the turnset
- See if i can't get Mil Trad within 10.
- Get us enough galleys and musketmen and knights for the invasion force
- Hold off Mettalurgy until the final possible turn and then trade it for mucho mazoola.
- Get those irritating Zulu's off our Japanese island

lets go!

IBT - still heaps of moves so I'll count this as turn 1 I spose
*Turn 1* - Move galley out of Zulu territory then declare on them. The two knights conveniently ;) stationed outside Tugela attack. Two wins out of two and the city is ours. Decide to raze it as we can fit another two cities in the space its taking up (fishing villages tho). The elite sword decides to go leader fishing against the mighty Zulu army of 1 reg archer... and accidently squashes him and fails to produce a leader. I set two cities on Japan Isle to produce settlers to replace the 1's fortified in Astrakhan (I assume they are for founding cities in Persia). Start sending galleys to Astrakhan. Worker moves etc. end of the turn

IBT - We watch Roman knights suicide against fortified muskets in Samaria

Turn 2 - Nottingham: Aqueduct --> Musketman, Newcastle: Galley --> Galley, Odessa: Musket --> Musket, Smolensk: Knight --> Knight. Transporting troops to Astrakhan. Mettalurgy is still definately unknown to them... mucho mazoola available... but must... not... trade... I resist the temptation. Just 1 thing I have to ask... why do we have so many troops garrisoning cities? Obviously protection from landings is 1 thing but having swords guarding the inner cities on our main island when we have protection on the actual coast and the whole land is roaded? Will move these troops to the gathering point. Thats about it for the turn

IBT - Persia completes Smiths, well thats just another reason for us to go wack them :crazyeye:

Turn 3 - York: Knight --> Knight, St. Petersburg: Knight --> Knight. Lots of troop movement etc. Found Grozny --> Knight.

IBT - zzzz

Turn 4 - Moscow: Knight --> Knight, check mettalurgy. Persia is offering 1gpt less than 2 turns ago. Egypt is still offering everythign it has, as is Rome. Don't trade yet. Found Dnepropetrovsk which I believe translate into English as 'hard to pronounce and spell!' :lol: set it to galley. Lots of worker moves and troop movement.

IBT - The zulu come asking for peace and as we cant reach their capital (all they have left) we make peace for 35gold and WM. The Persians come asking for a MA against Rome claiming 'myspies tell me that Rome plans to attack you at any moment, Catherine! You had better joine forces with Perisa quickly if you wish to survive!' :lol: you should have your spies looking at US! Naturally I refuse.

Turn 5 - No builds finished but a couple of WLTC day and we have a few culture expansions. Found Maikop --> Knight. Worker moves and troop movement... Persia now offers more for Mettalurgy than it did before :rolleyes:

IBT - Persian Immortal kills Roman knight near Samaria.

Turn 6 - Moscow: Knight --> Knight. Turns are flashing past at this stage. Worker moves, troop movement. Checking on Mettalurgy, nothing interesting.

IBT - Some ship movement by Persia and Rome.

Turn 7 - St. Petersburg: Knight --> Knight, Odessa: Musket --> Musket, Smolensk: Knight --> Knight. Rostov grows culturally. A quick look at our army reveals that we have 4 Muskets (would like 8 or more for invasion force), 33 Knights, 21 Cats and 12 galleys. Well ideally 40 knights (not inc. 1's in Armies) 8 Muskets and 21 cats all transported at once would require... 35 galleys. Ouch. Switch a few coastal builds to galleys and some other knight builds to muskets. Give knights, cats and muskets priority over swords in all galleys unless elite. Mil Trad in 3 at -80gpt.

IBT - Romans drop more knights off to suicide against Persians at Samaria.

Turn 8 - Kyoto: Galley --> Galley, York: Knight --> Knight, Moscow: Musket --> Knight, Canterbury: Musket --> Galley, Minsk: Knight --> Knight. Troop movements and a painful number of worker turns though still not as bad as at the end of Chinese Dynasty (honestly I was contemplating just automating them by the end of that game :rolleyes:)

IBT - Roman knight actually kills 1 of the Persian muskets!

Turn 9 - Nottingham: Musket --> Knight, Coventry: Galley --> Galley. Can reduce science by 10% and still have Mil Trad next turn, will need cash for upgrades though.

IBT - Mil Trad comes in set to Printing press at positive cash flow (40% Science, 9 turns). Our people want the Mil Academy.

Turn 10 - It costs 20 gold per Knight upgrade, we can do 11 upgrades this turn and if we leave research as it is we can do 3 every 2 turns from then on in. Mettalurgy is still as valuable as ever. I'm worried however. Even after making 11 Upgrades we are rated as weak compared to Persia, although we are strong compared to Egypt and Zulu and average to Rome. We could also switch off research and use cash to upgrade knights and Cats.

Decide to leave it here, lots of irrelevant worker moves to make and thats about all. I'll leave it up to the next player as to whether or not we put any research into Printing Press (might be good to trade with). Mettalurgy is still on Monopoly.

Post-Flight

Reasonably happy, slow turnset as it was buildup. We are weak to Persia which is a worry as we plan to attack them... still if we set up the appropriate beachhead and take out their saltpetre on turn 1 of the war we will be fine, especially if they are yet to get Mil Trad. Suggest cutting off their horses as well so that our beachhead can only be attacked by slowmovers who can be easily picked off. An interesting thing to not is that Persia have no horses of their own, they are getting them from Egypt. Might be a very good idea to get Egypt in an alliance when the war starts.
Lets check the goals

- Get mil trad in 10 turns Check.
- Get enough muskets, knights and galleys for the invasion force we have 24 knights (20 useable, 4 in armies) and 11 Cossacks, 7 muskets and 14 galleys. We need a couple more muskets, and lots more galleys but our fast movers will suffice at the start at present, dont stop building Cossacks though.
- Hold off Mettalurgy until the final possible turn and then trade it for mucho mazoola. Check, well apart from the trading bit as we still have monopoly.
- Get those irritating Zulu's off our Japanese island Check

A screenshot of our empire

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/4116/picture988dt.jpg

and of course the save

Are cossacks 6/3/3 with blitz or 6/4/3? Was it the patch in vanilla or conquests that fixed them?

They are just 6/4/3 with no blitz

Sounds like you've set up the boss nicely, tupac! :goodjob: I can't look at the moment as I have my C3C disc in but I'll take a look later if I have time. I'm really surprised that the AI have not gone for metallurgy.

A question that I didn't think I'd be asking before today: is it worth trading with Persia before we attack them, getting the techs from them and then additional techs/cash (and alliances?) from the others?

I wonder exactly what the AI have researched? Caravels would be useful or have we got enough boats to invade Persai with?

Caravels would be nice but if I were doing this in a SP I would load up our galleys with all the muskets, a settler, and as many knights/cossacks and cats we can fit (prob 1 knight/cossack and 1 cat each boat, maybe upgrade the cats first) and land them all on the saltpeter source on turn 1 of the war. Use the knights/cossacks to raze the city next ot hte saltpeter then found a city and on the hill, by the coast and on the saltpeter and rush walls and set up a killzone. Sign an alliance with egypt to cut off their horses so their troops have to sit in our territory for a turn n get bombarded by cannons n then cut down by cossacks. Send the boats home n start dropping off the cossacks somewhere else to draw their forces in 2 directions to start to split them up. Rome n Egypt would hopefully drop troops off as well which would further distract the Persians. We have enough boats as it is to do that, although having caravels or more galleys would be easier. The only problem with getting caravels is we are short on cash and need the cash for upgrading knights and cats before galleys.

I agree with tupaclives. We have enough galleys to land a formiddable force on turn 1, then bring in all the rest of the reinforcements with the 2nd wave.

Sounds fine guys. It was me thinking aloud without looking at the save. If we have enough boats, then hold back on trading and lets finally claim the rest of the Southern Hemisphere. Should be some fun turns coming up.

Played a few turns, and we have a tough decision.

Perhaps I shouldn't have done this, but I traded Metallurgy to Rome and Egypt and picked up Astro, Banking, Physics, Music and Press. But: Persia is already at the end of the MA, and the only tech they need is: Metallurgy :(.

So we can either: declare on Persia, sign in Egypt and Rome to prevent trading, and hope we can make some headway before rifles get to the scene. Our troops will have to survive 1-2 turns in the water near Persia before we can land: risky because Persia may have frigates around.

Or: attack Egypt or Rome. Of course this means a delay, because our troops have to move up first.

I'll wait a bit for your opinions. I am tempted to press on against Persia and hope that we can get enough cannons and cossacks to the scene to make a dent. It's a bit of a gamble though. I'll continue later today.

In case you want to look, here is the save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_1230AD.SAV).

Also, if Persia gets Nationalism as free tech, its trouble.:sad:

I think we should press on against Persia and sign in Egypt and Rome. Hopefully they'll stay on for a while (unlikely the full 20). The longer we can keep them from Metallurgy (which they can research cheap now) the better off we'll be. I'm afraid that if we switch to target either Rome or Egypt we'll be in about the same position we're in with Persia now by the time we're ready to go.

Wow. That's a tough call. I also say go for Persia. I do't think that we'll get hit hard at first as it looks as if the salt is in their soft underbelly. As soon as we cut it they will not be able to start anymore frigate builds.

I'd say rope in Rome via a lux deal-they would give an alliance for free but shouldn't we give them a sweetner to encourage them to stay the course? They've been at war for a while now and might well take a PT if offered it by Persia. Including Egypt should cut down Persia's income. I assume that at least some of their spare 106gpt is coming from them. We can get incense from the North as well.

BTW I assume research is at 10% just whilst you were trading. Shouldn't we go for Magnetism @ max so that we can gain control of the seas? Persia may have a number of frigates around already.

My thought would be to jump on Persia as hard as possible now and hit them with cossacks in a second wave. X-man is likely to skip the optional techs and jump right to the industrial age, and it seems that the scientific AI get Nationalism as the free tech most of the time. Riflemen would be trouble. Pull in Rome and Egypt to stop trading. This would start you all on the quest to own the southern hemisphere earlier than planned, but not very much so. Good luck! :goodjob:

Thanks for the advice everyone! It's much appreciated. :thanx:

Turnlog

Turn 0, 1190AD: Everything looks good. Thanks tupac!
Each rival will give three techs for Metall, and Persia will pay gpt as well. I'll hold off trading for now, maybe later. We need cash for upgrades, so I set research to 0 for a while. Hire some scientists and we'll get Press in 22. A few goto's :nono:.

IT: Persians take out the Roman knight at Samaria. Built 1 settler, 1 aqueduct, 1 court, and our Palace gets a cell for Xerxes.

Turn 1, 1200AD: Rome and Egypt have Press.

IT: Egyptians and Persians start Newton. We run a little risk of falling behind.

Turn 2, 1210AD: Troops are sailing to Persia. Will hold off trading for 1-2 more turns.

IT: Build 3 cossacks. Ulundi builds Bach.

Turn 3, 1220AD: Wait 1 more turn with trading, till our troops are in position. Persia is at remove or declare. Sell Theology to Zulu for 1 gpt, WM, 27 gold.

IT: Persia shows up with a Frigate. Train 2 Cossacks. Egypt completes Newton - switch from Bach's probably.

Turn 4, 1230AD: Persia now has Press :(. Waited 1 turn too long. I have to trade now, because I need Astro to survive in the sea. Sell Metall to Rome for Astro, Banking, Music, Press, 1 gold, WM. Send Metall + WM + 7 gold to Egypt for Physics. Persia already has ToG and Magn, so is very close to rifles, this is not good. An attack on Persia is rather suicidal at this point, they'll get rifles real soon. Of course we can sign Egypt vs Persia, then they have to research Metall themselves, but even then it will be a few turns only, and a few more to actually build some. Perhaps it is better to attack Egypt or Rome first? OTOH, our troops are hopelessly out of position for that...

After consulting the team, I decide to continue against Persia. Tell them to leave or declare, and
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_AD1230_Persia_declares.jpg (http://photobucket.com)

We ally vs Persia with Egypt, giving Egypt an RoP and Ivory for her trouble. I sell Furs, Dyes, Spices to Rome in exchange for Incense. We also ally vs Persia with Rome. They would do it for free, but I give them Ivory for their trouble. For good measure I also ally vs Persia with the OCC-ing Zulu, who get Press for it:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_AD1230_diplo.jpg (http://photobucket.com)

sci 40%, Magnetism in 13.

IT: Keep my fingers crossed - a few Persian frigates appears, but not near our troops. Phew.

Turn 5, 1240AD: Unloaded 10 cossacks at Ngomi. Lost 1 cossack at Samaria, redlining a musket, and then:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_AD1240_GAstart.jpg (http://photobucket.com)
Our army takes Samaria. sci 60%, Magn in 6.

IT:

Turn 6, 1250AD: Kill 2 muskets at no losses and raze Ngome.

IT: Lost an empty galley and a cossack, kill an immo.

Turn 7, 1255AD: Persia has rifles :(. That's very soon. We raze Umtata and Swazi, losing 2 cossacks but killing 1 rifle, 3 muskets, 1 immo. lower sci to 50%, I need some upgrade money.

IT: Our galley kills a yellowlined frigate, our cossack kills a knight. Persia lands 2 immo's and a pike between Moscow and Minsk.

Turn 8, 1260AD: Some small skirmishes. We kill the landing party. Egypt has gpt now, so: Sell furs to Egypt for 14 gpt. Sell Dyes to Egypt for 14 gpt. Sell Silks to Egypt for 16 gpt. Sell Spices to Egypt, also for 16 gpt.

IT: another frigate dies to a galley. Cossack retreats from immo.

Turn 9, 1265AD: Egypt knows Democracy now, how nice. We get our first elite cossack.

IT: Persia sends large numbers of foot soldiers.

Turn 10, 1270AD: Kill 2 rifles in Umfolozi, and I decide to keep it. The single citizen is Zulu. Change all scientists to taxmen for a little extra gold, we'll learn Magnetism next turn.

Notes:

EDIT: we are getting War Happiness!
Persia landed some troops between Moscow and Minsk, that's why there are some cannons there. Persian ships came from Tyre.
Persia has rifles. It seems they are out of fast units (I killed 1 knight, that was all). I think the best option is to upgrade cats to cannons and use them to soften up the Persians. This will cost some money, 40 gold per cat. We'll definitely want to own the underbelly, and get control of all the gems. Btw, Gordium decreased in size from 6 to 4. There may be a settler coming :).
I would raze towns rather than keep, as they get a free rifle when they flip back.
There's a settler in a boat near the saltpeter. You can set up a nice kill zone settling west of the saltpeter maybe. Put some cannons in the town and absorb the attacks. Perhaps rush a wall. We could use a caravel, then you can move an army across the water.
I think we destroyed the Persian navy near the front, where all our galleys are.
We are now better off building cossacks than muskets I think, they have the same defense value.
Magnetism comes in next turn and has trade value, hopefully.
CivAssist will not tell me which forests can be chopped for shields for some reason. So I've started forestry more or less at random.


Good luck!

The front:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/zyxy01_AD1270_front.jpg (http://photobucket.com)

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_1270AD.SAV).

Roster:
Tone - up, gets to smack some Persians
McLMan - on deck, will have the tail end of the GA
nero - nada
Smart - MIA? Patiently waiting for his turn
tupac - resting
zyxy - just played

Got it and it looks mighty fine!

I expect that we'll be facing a few rifles in the next few turns and so cannons will be needed en masse. Agree with settler by the Persian salt.

The more that we raze, the more settlers that Persia will hopefully build. Zimbabwe has dropped from size 12 to 7 inbetween the two saves posted-let's hope that there's more settlers than rifles.

I'll take a good look tomorrow.

There will definitely be some rifles to chew on.

Btw, the string of green units in the last pic seems to be heading west - the endpoint of the string was 2 tiles N of Bactra at the start of the turn, but those units "met with an accident" :evil:. No idea what they are aiming for, but if they keep doing that, they'll walk off the mountain range.

Good stuff Zyxy! If I might make a recomendation, what about dropping a city on the Saltpeter tile? In vanilla the Ai goes after cities that have a resource in their radius even when ridiculously well defended. So drop a city on top of it, throw in a couple of muskets and plenty of cannons and half a dozen cossacks to set up a killzone city (rush walls of course) and then land attacking forces (groups of 10 cossacks I'm thinking) around key cities elsewhere on Persia isle in order to divide their troop attentions and start burning major cities (suggest keeping those with wonders where possible though, in particular Persopolis as despite its flip risk it has, amongst other things, Smiths.). Just my $0.02.

Good luck Tone go wack those persians :hammer:

Smart - MIA?
Sorry, I was busy with other stuff, now I will try to play when save will come to me :mischief:

Did you want to play before me, Smart?

I will better wait for my turn, or maybe I will take it after you. Anyway, I can't play today, because I'm up in two other SG's...

Hi Smart,

I somehow had the idea we might have lost you. Good to see you're still here :).

If you want to jump in after Tone, that's fine with me.

:bump: :D

Tone, how's it going?

Tone, how's it going?
Too much fun to let go of without a prompt. It's been a tough week at work but the thought of playing this has kept me going. I'm not the most aggressive player so I hope that we're going along as planned. We've got Persia on the ropes but it's still expensive.

1270 (0)
press enter
IT
Mag>ToG I think that we could do a deal with Egypt but I'd like to keep them away from Nat as long as possible.
Cossacks from Canterbury, Minsk

1275 (1)
Some units entered Bactra and so I decide to not attack as three cossacks would be insufficient IMO! Land our settler on the salt as suggested by tupac.
IT
Persians attack with immos and kill a couple of units!
Cossacks built in York, Smolensk,
St Petersburg: bank>frigate

1280 (2)
Kursk built on the Persian salt. Then clearing the surrounding hills we get a GL. I lose my modesty for a moment...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Tone::s_Triumph.JPG
We can now rush our palace in Persepolis and therefore not risk a flip when we capture it.

IT
Shanghai:settler>settler, Sverdlovsk: settler>settler,
Cossacks: Moscow, Kiev

1285 (3)
Cannons bombard Bactra knocking 1 hp from 2 rifles. First cossack is killed but reduces rifle to 1/4. 2nd cossack kills 2/3 rifle, 3rd cossack kills 1/4 rifle and Bactra is razed.

Have 2nd thoughts on the palace rush. We will have plenty of elite chances before we get to Persepolis so I decide to build an army.

IT
Cossacks in: Notts(>rax), Odessa
St Petersburg: Frigate>cossack
London: cannon>Galleon

1290 (4)
Troops approach Gordium

IT
Persian catapult bombards the army from the open!!! I've never seen that before. They also have some more knights. Settler lands in land cleared by the boss.
Cossacks from Riga, Novgorod.

Egypt has M-TRAD

1295 (5)
Gordium bombarded-rax destroyed and 1 pop lost. 1sy cossack kills a 4/4 rifle:). 2nd one reduces rifle to 1hp but loses. 3rd one razes Gordium and we get a slave. We get two more from the Persian settler. Some other battles are not so successful and we lose a couple of cossacks.

IT
Cossacks from Moscow, Canterbury, Minsk,
Rostov: harbour>galleon
WW has set in.

1300 (6)
Troops march on Mpondo and more land outside Bapedi. Up lux to 10% to cope with WW. reduce research to 30% as ToG due next turn.

IT
ToG>Nationalism>Steam
Tblisi settler
Cossacks: York, St Petersburg, Smolensk,
Cannons: Sevastopol, Yakusk,
Notts: rax>rifle

1305 (7)
Bombardment of Mpondo ruins rax and lib.
Bombardment of Bapedi reduces both a 4/4 and a 3/3 rifle to 2hp each and ruins the rax there.
Mpondo: first cossack killed after reducing rifle to 2/4. 2nd one reduces rifle to 1/4 but loses. Probably not helping our WW. 3rd wins but 4th loses, promoting rifle to 2/5. Another cossack loses to the super rifle before we raze Mpondo.
Bapedi: 1st cossack just wins and the second one razes the town. This deprives them of iron and we are onto flat ground.
We can attack Zimbabwe with other cossacks landed outside Bapedi and the first to go finds the town defended by a 4/4 pike. The pike loses and a 2nd 4/4 pike is also killed to be replaced by a 3/3 musket. the musket is redlined but we lose the 3rd cossack. The fourth cossack takes Bapedi but we cannot expect to hold it and so a wonder city is razed. :(
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Bapedi_falls.JPG
I then clear the land south of the choke and man the fort.

IT
Persians attack our muskets with rifles, losing 2 to 1.
Cossacks in Hastings,
Nara: harbour>galleon, Kiev

1310 (8)
Generally quiet, but I take another Persian settler.

IT
Persia signs PT with Rome.
Cossacks in Moscow, Odessa.
Rome have Magnetism

1315 (9)
Negotiate alliance with Rome vs Persia for ivory plus 2gpt. Egypt are close to getting Magnetism judging by what they will give for it now. Troops march towards Ulundi.

IT
Cossacks: St Petersburg,
Astrakahn: harbour>settler
London: galleon
Egypt and Rome enter the IA

1320 (10)
Attack Ulundi with cossacks. First withdraws after knocking 1hp froma 4/4 rifle. 2nd defeats 4/4 rifle. 3rd loses to 4/4 rifle, knocking off 1 hp but revealing a 3/5 rifle. 4th and 5th withdraw doing no damage. The 6th also does no damge but loses!! 7th kills the elite rifle, the 8th defeats a 3/4 rifle, the 9th losesand thus promotes the defender to 2/5. The 10th defeats the last rifle, revealing a longbow! The elite takes Ulundi with JSB. I wish that I'd sought opinions before attacking this town but it's too late now. I decide to keep it but we can always abandon it before the next turn set. 11 cossacks to take one town. Is this the shape of things to come as we enter the Persian homeland.

Build Kuibishev to claim gems.


I'll leave it with a few moves to make so that the next player can start to move what they want. There are a number of healed troops that are fortified and thus can be waked and moved. So, do we keep Ulundi?

I hope that we get another GL soon. I'm beginning to doubt my decision to use the last one for an army.

The save. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_1320AD.SAV)

McLMan-delivers the killer blow?
nero - on deck?
Smart
tupac
zyxy
Tone- just played

Nice progress, share your doubt about the leader though.

Nice progress :), Persia is going down faster than I thought. Without iron and saltpeter they can only throw rifles and longbows at us.

GL decisions are always hard - well, we will just have to hope for another one. Let's use the next one for a palace, ok?

I haven't looked at the save yet, but we should have a large stack of arty and that might help to reduce Persian mainland towns and keep our losses low. And 11 cossacks with 3 losses to take a core town defended by 4 rifles is not bad at all I think.

Ulundi has Bach's, that's tempting. It's hard to say, if we can lower flip risks quickly by quelling resistance and taking out the surrounding towns then keeping it might be an option.

Good work Tone, dw about the leader I'm sure you will be vindicated ebfore the end, there is still a LOT of killing to go before the end. If we want to get more leaders rather than saving the enxt 1 till we reach persopolis we could always jump to 1 of the size 1 cities in former zulu/persian territory and then the abandon city palace jump later making sure it goes to Persopolis or wherever. OTOH we could just save the leader and be patient :lol:

Inherited Partial Turn) 1320 AD
Everything looks really good. Want to raze Hlobane to ease the pressure on Ulundi. Healing some troops with movement. Pressing on with the healthy.

IT
Cossack -> Cossack in Canterbury & Minsk

Turn 1) 1325 AD
Moving toward Hlobane.

IT
Persian ships about.
Cossack -> Cossack in Moscow
Galleon -> Frigate in Newcastle

Turn 2) 1330 AD
Ferrying and moving on Hlobane

IT
Persian Frigate attempts to pillage near Ulundi
Cossack -> Cossack in York, St. Pete, Kiev, Smolensk
Rifle -> Rifle in Nottingham
Settler -> Settler in Warwick

Turn 3) 1335 AD
Stack next to Hlobane
Land 4 cossacks on Tyre Island in the hopes it's lightly defended

IT
A Persian Longbow runs out of Hlobane and kills a vet musket guarding a follow-up stack of cannons.
Persian Rifles on the move, looks like they're going to go after Ulundi
Cossack -> Rifle in Odessa
Cannon -> Cannon in Sevastopol
We get a Persian trophy room in our Palace

Turn 4) 1340 AD
Rifle picks off the brave Longbow
Artillery reveals 3 rifles defending Hlobane. 9 cannon, 3 cats and a Frigate knock 2 down to 2HP and 1 down to 3. Ulundi is under great cultural pressure so I go in.
Vet Cossack is redlined but wins vs. 3HP Rifle
Go after 1st 2HP Rifle with an Elite and ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/tonesbrilliance.jpg

With a leader in our pocket, I send a vet against the last Rifle
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Hlobanefalls.jpg
We get 4 slaves.
Pick off a suicidal Longbow heading toward Ulundi before he can do any damage.
With the stack still at relatively full health I set my sights on Tarsus.
Ferrying Units
Tyre shows a reg Rifle, take a crack since the city's only size 4.
Vet Cossack is redlined killing the Rifle revealing a reg Musket.
2nd Cossack retreats vs. the Musket
3rd Cossack wins vs. the Musket revealing a Warrior
The Warrior had me worried for a minute, but he succumbs to the 4th Cossack and 2 Persian ships are burned as we capture Tyre (Harbor).
The GL removes himself from harm's way, and retreats to the back of the continent.

IT
3 Persian Rifles attack 3 stray Cossacks. The valiant Cossacks redlined the Rifles but were defeated. Promoted rifle right outside of Ulundi, which has starved down to size one, and the flip risk is now 2-4%.

Turn 5) 1345 AD
Our Army takes care of the Rifle outside of Ulundi, which is due to get it's 1st Russian citizen in 10 turns.
Move a Settler toward a home on the Persian Continent and whoa ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/barbsanywhere.jpg
Those barbs will show up anywhere.
Land some more Cossacks in the East Persian Islands

IT
Xeres lands a Settler, Rifle, and Musket next to barb in open continent.
Barb attacks Persian rifle and does a little damage.
A Barb Warrior appears out of the fog near Kursk and kills 3 of our workers. Our Golden age has ended and some towns riot. Send in some taxmen and set some builds to Settlers

Turn 6) 1350 AD
We have Cannon and Cossacks in the vicinity of the Persian landing. Take rifle down to 2HP and Musket down to 3. Send in 2 Cossacks and get 2 slaves out of the Settler. Send one of the Cossacks on an end around and he takes out the barb camp on the Southern peninsula. Another disposes of the camp on the middle peninsula.
Magnitogorsk is founded near the tip of the middle peninsula.
Moving stack toward Tarsus. Another small stack set to attack Sidon next turn.
A Persian Longbow moves out of Sardis towards the stack at Sidon.
Cats in Susa take 2HP away from our Frigate which was pestering them.

IT
A Persian Rifle suicides against some roving Cossacks. The barb that killed the workers is not successful in his attempt to avenge the destruction of his camp.
Minsk: Cossack -> Rifle
Smolensk: Settler -> Cossack

Turn 7) 1355 AD
Cannon don't do anything at Sidon. Cossack removes the Longbow before it can do any damage. Decide to not try Sidon this turn.
Stack moves to mountain next to Tarsus

IT
A lot of Persian naval activity.
An Egyptian ship appears near the lower Persian peninsula
St. Pete: Settler -> Cossack
London: Galleon -> Frigate
Yakutsk: Cannon -> Cannon
More Cossacks produced in Kyoto Canal, Krasnoyarsk

Turn 8) 1360 AD
Found Uralsk on the middle peninsula
Attempting to block the Egyptian landing. Too many places for the ship to go to be successful.
Cossack wins vs. stray Longbow
16 Cannons and 3 Cats do very little at Tarsus. Decide to hold off there.
The 2 cannons at Sidon hit and we defeat the 2 Rifles guarding without loss. We destroy 4 Persian ships in it's capture. It also keeps its harbor.

IT
Egyptian galley pulls an end-around but doesn't land anybody.
Kiev: Cossack -> Cossack

Turn 9) 1365 AD
Artillery at Tarsus do a nice job, reducing 2 defenders to 2HP, one to 3 and taking away a pop point.
A vet Cossack wins against the 3HP Rifle without taking damage.
2nd vet is redlined but wins vs. a 2HP Rifle.
3rd vet retreats, promoting the last 2HP Rifle
4th vet wins, revealing a redlined Rifle
5th is promoted to elite vs. the last Rifle, but a Longbow is now defending.
6th is also promoted to elite vs. the Longbow
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Tarsusfalls.jpg
Army picks off a loose Rifle, but takes a lot of damage.

IT
Egypt and Persia sign peace treaty
Egyptian ships leave. I guess they weren't coming to settle the open land.
Kyoto: Settler -> Settler
York: Cossack -> Rifle
Moscow: Rifle -> Cossack
Coventry: Galleon -> Frigate
Nara: Galleon -> Galleon

Turn 10) 1370 AD
Main stack begins march towards Persepolis
Dropped a Galleon load containing a Settler on mountain next to Persepolis.
There is a small stack just outside of Isandhlwana, and another one outside of Sardis.
Galleons are loading in London, and there are 10 galleys in Astrakhan.
There are settlers on the Galleons taking the Southerly route to the Persian continent, a couple on land, and some more being built.

We didn't take many losses, but it went kind of slow. I expected to take more cities going in.

*****The Save***** (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/zyxy01_1370AD.SAV)

Looks ok to me, will try to claim the islanmd in my turnset. We use this leader for a capitol right?

good solid progress McLman. Should we save the leader for the palace jump? The alternative would be to make jump it to any size 1 city in the new persian lands so we can keep generating leaders, and then when we get persopolis, load it with troops and then abandon the size 1 city making sure it goes to persopolis or wherever we want it to go.
Good luck nerovats

Phew! I'm glad that you got another GL, McLMan. You've saved my bacon without a doubt! :) I agree that we use it for the palace jump to keep Moscow and its improvements. Should happen during nero's turnset, all being well.

Nice progress. I'll take a good look late but it seems like we're now well into the Persian core. We'll soon be discussing who's next on our list.:D

What a team! :cool: